Enemy must be killed
Police failure to kill terrorists has nothing to do with Jewish morals
For 30 years, I served in the IDF on the frontlines of the war to defend the State of Israel and its citizens. During those years, I educated generations of soldiers that the most moral demand made of a fighter is to defeat his enemies. Any type of weapon, assault drills, and hand grenades were meant to kill the enemy. This is the objective and most moral result of an army’s existence.
We never thought that the need to kill the enemy tainted us or constituted some kind of problem with regards to the code of the purity of arms. This is how we educate our soldiers, and this is how the Israel Police should educate its police officers – they must hurt the enemy and risk their lives in order to protect the lives of citizens. To my regret, the police fail time and again when it comes to implementing this simple equation: Terrorists who fire or go on a rampage should be killed, even if it means the police must risk their lives to do so.
Of course, we do not wish to harm people who are not parties to terror attacks or acts of hostility against the State and its citizens. Yet the hesitation stemming from distorted morality undermines our actions in the face of a clear and immediate enemy and lead to failure when it comes to the supreme principle guiding the defense establishment: Completing the mission – and the mission is always, under any circumstances, protecting our citizens.
In the Jerusalem bulldozer attack, a terrorist murderer was indeed identified while rampaging through the streets of our capital. Despite the acts of police, which were initially appropriate, police officers were overcome by moral confusion at the crucial stage where they should have made sure the incident is over by killing the terrorist. As result, the police again risked the lives of citizens while showing negligence, while failing to do everything they could, beyond a reasonable doubt, to ensure the danger was indeed lifted.
No room for pseudo-moralistic theories
The claim that the guilty party is the civilian who hurled the stone that aroused the unconscious terrorist reflects a highly cynical attitude. This argument implies that had the stone not been hurled, the terrorist would have remained unconscious and police could have boasted a victory at the end of the day. Yet this is a ridiculous claim used as an excuse by those who may have started the mission on the right track, like police officer Revital Nahum, but finished it in an uncertain and negligent manner that enabled the killing spree to go on. The terrorist was only stopped by a soldier on vacation who happened to be in the area.
Using the term “shooting in cold blood” in relation to a person who spilled the blood of innocents and who was able to continue his killing spree, with an armed policeman choosing to jeopardize civilians over the complete certainty of killing the terrorist, has nothing to do with the world of Jewish morals or with morality at all. The fundamental rule of self-defense is “he who rises to kill you, kill him first” and every person and citizen deserve this defense, which the security forces are tasked with providing – this is the guiding moral principle.
If generations of police officers are indeed trained on pretenses of moral education, which is in fact nothing but negligence in carrying out the mission, and if senior police officers voice such ideas, it is no wonder that the mission of saving civilians on a city street or at a yeshiva is carried out, time and again, by civilians who were educated elsewhere.
The police would do well if they clarify the fundamentals of their raison d’etre and the essence of their mission not in line with pseudo-moralistic theories that are fit for some kind of altruistic discussion group – this would enable police to bring back security, order, and morality to their rightful place: Life for citizens, security for the State, and the certain elimination of immediate murderous danger.
National Union-NRP Knesset Member Effie Eitam is an IDF Brigadier General (res.)
