What Jewish Tradition Teaches Us About the Violence in Gaza

“When you besiege a city,” reads Deuteronomy 20:19, “you shall not destroy its trees.”

The Torah is clear enough. Even in a time of war, even when conditions are most brutal, Jews are commanded to observe restraint, to practice proportionality. The rabbis expanded on this notion over the centuries. The commandment of bal taschit prohibits wasteful destruction and is especially relevant in military conflict because in the fog of war humans can feel justified in destroying anything in their paths. 

Apologists for Israeli Government policy may argue that Israel is not intentionally starving people in Gaza, dismissing the famine as a sad consequence of a war, but the traditional Jewish sources are unequivocal. The concept of Adam Mu’ad L’Olam suggests that people are responsible for their actions—even when they are not a product of direct intention. Since starvation is a predictable outcome of the Israeli policies, Israel is morally responsible under Jewish teaching. 

And not just Israel, but also those who enable its actions. It’s not enough that we Jews in leadership positions conscientiously read the newspapers or watch television reports and feel angst and sadness. We must demand that our government put an end to this manufactured hunger crisis. Every day brings accounts of children dying in Gaza of starvation, of mothers unable to suckle their newborns because they themselves are so malnourished that they have no milk to give. Those who respond to this dreadful situation by defending the historical legitimacy of “sieges” or noting that “if Israel really wanted to kill them all, there would be a lot more dead,” are participating in a moral abomination, and, unless we object, we are too.   

The apologists are not irrational, but they seem to believe that the very real crimes of Hamas allow them to justify whatever the Israeli soldiers do. Whatever they do. Omer Bartov and Peter Beinart have called this the Holocaust’s “infinite license.” The rationale being that since we were the victims of the worst crime, we are entitled to do anything to prevent its recurrence. Now it’s Oct. 7^th that is brought out as the justification for anything and everything. This is not irrational, but it is a schande.

In the Jewish tradition shame, schande, is not just something an individual experiences when breaking a moral code. No, it is a communal feeling of unworthiness, of being unclean and being seen as unclean. 

In the psychoanalytic tradition, shame is tied to exposure—the feeling of being seen for who one really is. For instance, the English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott talked about shame as the pain of having one’s true self exposed in ways that one isn’t prepared for. And the Austrian-born American psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut described shame as a “narcissistic blow”—the failure to live up to an idealized self-image. 

For many Jews of my generation who grew up with an idealized view of the Israeli citizen soldier forced to fight to defend a country surrounded by enemies, contemporary events are shattering in the way Kohut described. The pictures of children starving to death because of Israeli military tactics in the face of Hamas’ refusal to surrender are painful for almost everyone to see. As a Jew, I experience schande because of the accusation reverberating in my head: Is this who we have become in the wake of the massacres of Oct 7^th? Or worse, is this who we really are?

Antisemites are, of course, having a field day. Jew haters have long alleged the wickedness of Israel and its ties with powerful elites across the world. They’ve long denied the importance (or reality) of the Holocaust and even rejected the historical claims of Jews in the Holy Land. Whether they consider themselves nationalists or progressives, antisemites feel free to treat the current moral catastrophe of Gaza as the revelation of an essential truth about Jews in the Middle East: We don’t belong there.

But Jews are at home in Israel. I am among many who have always supported Israel as a Jewish state that aspires to treat all its citizens fairly and to live at peace with its neighbors. I am among many who have been proud of its accomplishments, critical of its shortcomings, and worried about its weaknesses. But now, there is more; there is the schande, the shame at seeing a country I respect act with wanton cruelty. 

I know there are still hostages in Gaza, and I have not forgotten the bloodbath that was Oct. 7^th. But this does not relieve me of the responsibility of speaking out in the current situation. I take no comfort when people point out that America and plenty of other countries have behaved very badly in times of war. I take no comfort in the point that Hamas is willing to martyr Palestinians rather than to surrender. In what world would these points excuse what we see on our screens each day, the brutal killing of innocent people by forcing them to starve? Not in the world as imagined by the Jewish tradition.

The Talmud tells us “one is always forewarned,” and Maimonides in the medieval period took this to mean that one should be aware of the wrongs that might stem from the actions one takes. People are responsible for the damage they cause, whether intentional or unintentional. Rashi, writing in the 11^th century, underscored that if one could have anticipated the harm caused, one is obligated to repair it—regardless of whether that harm was intended or not. Israeli leaders should have anticipated the harm they are causing to innocent people, and now they must turn away from their current tactics to get food and medicine to those people as quickly as possible. Of course, Hamas is wrong to dehumanize Palestinians by turning them into human shields, but this is no excuse for Israel to dehumanize Gazans, treating their plight merely as collateral damage.

When people feel shame, they often try to avoid the issue with obfuscation or even act out with greater rage and destructiveness. But when they are brought to recognize the roots of their shame, when they acknowledge their wrongdoing, change is possible. Leaders of organizations in the United States with ties to Israel should demand the country turn away from this wanton destruction.