Complicit in Murder
When a Jew is found murdered and the shedder of blood is yet unknown, the Torah enjoins the elders of the Sanhedrin and the elders of the nearest town to come to a barren riverbed – symbolizing the barren, sterile state of the murdered Jew who will never again bring forth children into the world – and declare, “Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it” (Deuteronomy 21:7).
“Our hands have not shed this blood”?! Is there, then, the slightest suspicion that the elders have shed blood? Of course not. Rather, what the elders mean by their statement is that they did everything possible to ensure that the murdered Jew would be safe and not endangered (Sotah 38b).
Can the Israeli government make this declaration? Can it stand up before heaven and its own Jewish citizens and proclaim that it did everything possible to save Jewish lives?
In 1967, as the glory and sanctification of G-d’s Name swept through the liberated lands, the Ishmaelites quaked in fear. Today, they stone, stab, shoot at, and bomb Jews. Who is to blame if not the government, along with all the timid, frightened, gentilized Hebrews, whose utter lack of belief and faith in the G-d of Israel led them to reject and bitterly condemn anything like the ideas I suggest?
The Jewish Press, 1980