Shimon and Levi as models for war conduct in rightwing Religious Zionism - on this week's parshah and settler violence
David Seidenberg
‘Weapons of Violence Are Their Trade’ — Expel Violent Settlers Now!
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/weapons-of-violence-are-their-trade-expel-violent-settlers-now/
This week we encounter the horrifying story of Shechem, the first genocide committed by human beings in the Torah. Jacob is “whole” when he arrives with his family and retinue at the city of Shechem and buys a site where he can encamp for a hundred kesitah from Hamor, the head man of the city of Shechem (Gen 33:18-19). Then Dinah, who has ventured out from the camp of her family “to see the daughters of the land” (Gen 34:1) is taken by Hamor’s son Shechem (the same name as the city), whether by rape or seduction is not certain.*
Either way, Dinah’s brothers see this as a corruption of the family name and plot to rescue her, demanding that all the males of the city get circumcised, so that they can get into the city and take Dinah out without opposition. But on top of this plan, Dinah’s full blood brothers, Shimon and Levi, plot to murder all the males of Shechem “on the third day”, when they are all convalescing and in pain.
They successfully carry out the deed, a seemingly quintessential example of “ma’aseh avot siman labanim” (the deeds of the fathers are a sign for what the descendants will do), which reflects the later stories of conquest under Joshua. Then the other brothers come to loot the city and carry off the women and children.
Jacob’s response is to reprimand Shimon and Levi for “making me ugly, making me to stink to those living in the land, the Canaanite and the Perizite…and they will gather against me and strike me down…” (Gen 34:30).
The conquest and genocide themselves are seemingly morally neutral, given that Jacob objects not on the basis of morality, but rather public relations and strategy. Perhaps Jacob is simply too terrified of his own sons to actually reprimand them. Regardless, the whole situation receives an imprimatur of divinely-placed terror (chitat Elohim) that falls upon the inhabitants of the land, in order to protect Jacob’s household from being attacked (Gen 35:5).
The tribe of Shechem having been subject to genocide, the city of Shechem now belonged to Jacob’s clan, and perhaps specifically to Shimon and Levi. Except that on Jacob’s deathbed, he roundly curses the two murderous brothers for their genocidal actions: “Shimon and Levi, brothers, weapons of violence/chamas are their trade…Cursed be their anger…I will divide them in Jacob; I will scatter them in Israel (Gen 49:5-7).”
The outcome of their taking the land by conquest is as clear as day: their descendants will get no land at all, no tribal territory. Conquest is not the way to take the land. That is the p’shat, the plain meaning of the text, and the message of Genesis -- as long as you read to the end of the book.
But the resonance in modern-day Israel of the Shechem story seems to be the opposite: extreme violence equals superiority and victory. That is certainly how the most extreme West Bank settlers see it. They attack Palestinians every single day, burn and cut down olive trees, torch houses with people inside, beat the elderly and beat Palestinian sheep to death, assault Israelis who try to stand between the marauders and their Palestinians victims and provide a protective presence, and even directly assassinate Palestinians activists like Awdah al-Hathaleen, ztz"l.
The IDF protects these thugs, taking their side in almost every single case. Even al-Hathaleen's murderer was kept under house arrest for a shorter time than the IDF kept al-Hathaleen's body from being buried. The IDF repeatedly declares closed military zones so that Palestinians cannot harvest their olives; they arrest Palestinians who are trying to protect their own property; they let the settlers destroy orchards, terrorize towns, and run amok. And the IDF has continued to facilitate the violence, even after Netanyahu himself denounced it – but this is no surprise, given that the fascist parties in th government are driving what is happening.
The settler attacks have become so dangerous this year, and so well-known, that even the leaders of the settler movement have started calling for the extremists to be arrested and jailed. But the rabbis and council leaders who decry the attacks are like Jacob 1.0 – they don’t like what’s happening because it makes the settlement movement look bad, not because it's evil.
No wonder their calls amount to nothing. If they want change, the settler leaders should go and help Palestinians harvest olives. Let them stand between Palestinians and the violent, psychopathic movement that they helped create. Until then, their former words or lack of words, ignoring and supporting the violence, still ring out.
The violent settlers are after all not just making up their zealotry out of thin air. They learned to follow in the tracks of Shimon and Levi’s genocide from rightwing poskim, the rabbinic deciders of Jewish law, in the Religious Zionist movement. The halakhah according to the leading lights of the Chardal movement (Charedi Dati Leumi) is that one does not and should not make a distinction between civilians and combatants. That all Palestinians are at war with “us”, and one should treat them all as the enemy.
There are important Religious Zionist leaders who clearly opposed that position, including Rabbis Aharon Lichtenstein and Shlomo Goren, ztz”l. But the voices that matter now are extremist rabbis like Eliezer Melamed (head of Yeshivat Har Habracha in the northern West Bank/Samaria), or Shmuel Eliyahu or Yaakov Ariel or Dov Lior (chief rabbis of Tsfat and Ramat-Gan and Kiryat Arba respectively).**
They all follow and expand on the rulings of Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli (1909-1995, rosh yeshivah at Mercaz Harav), while taking Yisraeli's rulings to even more noxious extremes. And he based his ruling that one has no obligation to distinguish between Palestinian civilians and combatants on the very story of Shechem we started out with. According to Yisraeli and his ilk, Shimon and Levi provide an exemplary model for how to go to war.
It is hard to imagine that the rabbi ever read the end of the book of Genesis, or most of the Torah, or any ethical treatise. Almost all the commentators condemn the actions of Shimon and Levi – just as Jacob does on his deathbed.
There are only two who justify Shimon and Levi’s violence. Rambam (Maimonides), for one, justifies their actions by arguing that b’nei Noach (non-Jews) have an obligation to bring criminals like Hamor’s son Shechem to trial—and if they don’t, they can be punished with death (Mishneh Torah Hilkhot Melakhim 9:14). However, as many critics (even Rabbi Yisraeli) point out, there is no reason to imagine that the people of Shechem could have exercised authority over their rulers.
Instead, it is Maharal (Yehudah Loew of Prague) who comes to the rescue of modern-day religious fascism and fanaticism. He holds that in a time of war between two peoples, total war is permissible (“even though only one of them acted…it is permitted to take vengeance on them all” – Gur Aryeh on Gen 34:13). While the Maharal resolves a question about the text (why did Shimon and Levi think it was ok to commit genocide?), his words are a moral and human disaster when applied in a real context, especially in a modern nation-state.
This question of attacking civilians gripped Israel in 1953, when IDF soldiers attacked the Jordanian village of Kibiyeh (Qibya, Kibiya) in retaliation for an attack that killed a woman and two children in Yehud. Sixty Jordanians were killed, including women and children. On the basis of the Maharal, R’ Yisraeli ruled after the fact that there was no obligation on the part of the attacking IDF unit to distinguish between fighters and civilians, because “whatever disaster and harm is inflicted on the perpetrators, their associates, and their children, it is their very own responsibility, and they will bear their sin…we are guiltless” (Amud HaYemini 139, 16:5:32).***
This same cry has been heard time and time again from defenders of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. This part of Yisraeli’s p’sakgives soldiers almost unlimited freedom to commit war crimes. And while even Yisraeli warns against targeting children, and does not technically rule that it's ok to destroy olive trees, his words have empowered the rabbis who have empowered this evil generation who have become Jewish terrorists.
The idea that this whole edifice can be built on the story of the genocide of Shechem, when almost all commentators condemn Shimon and Levi for their actions, is something that should be incomprehensible.
It is even more incomprehensible that none of these Chardal poskim mention the one example in Torah of a drastically unethical war, a story from which one could learn rules of war. I’m talking about Amalek’s attack on the Israelites,
when he met/surprised you on the way and cut off [your] tail (vay’zaneiv), all the weak behind you, when you were tired and exhausted, and he did not fear Elohim…You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens; do not forget. (Deut 25:18-19)
There are various interpretations of this passage, including that Amalek attacked non-combatants (which is more or less p’shat). The commandment about the “remembrance of Amalek”, according to Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch, means remember that you can become Amalek, remember what makes you different from Amalek. He wrote:
Do not forget this thing when the day comes and you yourself suffer Amalek’s violence… Preserve the humanity and values of justice that you learned from your God. The future belongs to [those values]… You yourself were sent to bring near…that future.
We have met the enemy, and it is (also) us.****
The bottom line is that Shimon and Levi behaved like Amalek, attacking the weakened. Anyone learning from their example is learning to become Amalek. And while we don't wish the punishment of extirpation for anyone who is acting like Amalek, we certainly must wish for such people --whether they are extremist settlers, or extremist rabbis--that they be expelled from the West Bank and banned from ever re-entering.
After all, if the pro-fascist government of Israel can ban two young Jewish women, who have come to the West Bank to provide protective presence, from returning to Israel for 10 years (a complete travesty against Torah and human rights if there ever was one), then they can and must ban extremist Jewish terrorists and their teachers and rabbis from the West Bank, permanently.
"Let them be scattered in Israel," forever. Let their violence be cursed, and their plans, and their nightmarish dreams.
For the footnotes go to the linked article.
Finally: As a small protest against this violence, I plan to light my Chanukah menorah this year with Palestinian olive oil. I invite everyone to do the same.