It could have been nothing but hatred that motivated
Hizbullah to attack along the northern border and take two
prisoners. There was no action or event that provided any
pretext for their attack — just their evident desire to
murder and maim Jews, made so painfully clear in the weeks
since then.
The political background should have held them in check. The
current government, only a few months in office, was elected
on the basis of a plan to undertake massive further
withdrawals which Hizbullah has always promoted as victories
for them. Vicious attacks are not the reaction that this
policy was calculated to draw.
Since then we have been seeing viciousness and cruelty, and
more viciousness and more cruelty. Hizbullah fires rockets
that are targeted at noncombatants, and their weapons are
filled with criminal antipersonnel shrapnel. Their cruelty
even extends to their own people whose lives they apparently
view as cannon fodder and mere public relations assets.
We must respond as we best know how. Our job is to discuss
the aspect of the war in which we have our greatest
expertise: the moral ramifications.
Almost thirty-three years ago during the 1973 Yom Kippur War,
Maran HaRav Shach zt"l addressed these issues in a
talk that is printed in the sefer Bezos Ani
Botei'ach.
He explained that every act that anyone does has effects that
reverberate beyond the confines of the immediate act itself:
a good deed can influence the world for good, and an evil
deed Rachmono litzlan can have the opposite
influence.
"In this time of war, we must be aware that the [effects of]
the war are not limited to the battlefield itself. [A war] is
an instance of "vatishocheis ho'oretz" (Bereishis
6:11), a time of general corruption when the Sitra
Achra comes down and unleashes its powers of tumah
that bring murder and cruelty to the world [on the
battlefield] and the influence of this war and cruelty
spreads throughout the world. These forces express themselves
in an insensitivity and hardheartedness that touches every
person. The experience of previous wars teaches us that even
people who were originally, by nature, softhearted, made
themselves insensitive and hardened their hearts under the
influence of the cruelty of the fighting. Only learning
Torah, yiras Shomayim, and doing chessed were
an adequate shield against this influence. . . .
"In a situation such as this one, where cruelty spreads
throughout the world, we must not stand apart. We must fight
against and stop the spread of cruelty. How can we fight
against this and what must we do at a time like this?
"We must know that against cruelty, we must fight with its
opposite, namely, by increasing mercy and lovingkindness, and
benefiting our fellows. Only these have the power to stop the
spirit of tumah that carries with it the cruelty that
is characteristic of this war. And [even] every thought in
the direction of doing chessed is a counter-influence
to the cruelty."
Some people say that we must answer cruelty with cruelty.
We say that is not our way. Doing so does not destroy our
enemies but in fact strengthens them since it strengthens the
powers that animate them.
They are promoting death and cruelty. We must fight back by
promoting life and chessed.
