Are Jews Commanded to Commit Genocide?

本站添加: 2026-05-15

[00:00:01][music] >> Genocide, we have to talk about that.

[00:00:05]There's the Torah command genocide.

[00:00:06]There's been picked up by anti-Semites.

[00:00:09]The Old Testament commands Israelites commit genocide, and even today there's some extremist Jews who believe in committing a genocide. They label people Amalek and they want to commit genocide on them, and they're even committing genocide today.

[00:00:23]But of course, the you know, that's not true. Uh erasing Amalek is actually a pack of commandments about how we're to wage complete war against genocidal nations.

[00:00:34]Just like it's not that you get slavery from the Torah.

[00:00:38]When let's say people in the Western world think of slavery, what do they think of slavery? Chattel slavery, right?

[00:00:44]That means people were kidnapped and sold into slavery against their will and held captive for eternity and their descendants, right?

[00:00:52]And the Bible condones such a thing. Just like it has eye for an eye, right?

[00:00:58]No, it doesn't. The I read this week's parsha. Does the Torah allow for such a thing?

[00:01:03]Of course not. You can't just kidnap people and force them into slavery.

[00:01:07]What we have the Avadim described in this week's parsha for example, let's say people born non-Jewish, they are they elect to become servants, indentured servants. It's a monetary transaction. May have to knew Evan Velma.

[00:01:21]What happens? A man says, "I am financially unstable.

[00:01:26]It's better for me to sell myself to the Jewish people."

[00:01:30]What does that mean? They pay a lot of money to my family and I go to Eretz Yisrael and they start working for them.

[00:01:36]And I convert sort of to to Judaism.

[00:01:39]That's what an Eved Kena'ani is. An Eved you cannot kidnap a gentile man and force him to be your slave.

[00:01:45]That's against the Torah. You're not allowed to steal from from gentiles. You cannot kidnap anybody and force him to be your slave, correct?

[00:01:53]If you kidnap, let's say a fellow Jew, that'd be of capital crime.

[00:01:57]You cannot just kidnap a gentile fellow and make him your slave.

[00:02:01]It never was never It's It's It's unconscionable.

[00:02:05]It's also against the Torah.

[00:02:07]What we read here is voluntary monetary transactions whereby the person becomes the No, I wouldn't say even slave. The indentured servant has already received a lump sum of money at the beginning at the outset that's given to his family.

[00:02:23]That's all it describes.

[00:02:25]And as for the servitude that the Jews experienced among themselves, read all of Rambam.

[00:02:30]Read what it says in the Torah. There's no such thing. Our Torah was the beginning of the abolitionist movement.

[00:02:37]It paved the way for the gentiles to eventually learn, "Hey, the type of slavery that existed across most of human societies across history is wrong."

[00:02:49]Eventually the British realized, "Yeah, you can't kidnap people from Africa and sell them continents away.

[00:02:54]That's not right." We're going to put a stop to that.

[00:02:56]They did that under the influence of what they learned from the Torah, by the way.

[00:03:00]So, the Torah doesn't condone slavery.

[00:03:02]We're the first ones to begin to realize, "Hey, this should not be done."

[00:03:06]So, too, what is the mitzvah of Amalek?

[00:03:09]What is it teaching us? Like I just said before, it is the most anti-genocidal commandment in the Torah.

[00:03:16]There are actual genocidal groups in this world. And by the way, genocide, unfortunately, was also something that was almost universal.

[00:03:24]Right?

[00:03:25]The idea that make total war and destroy the enemy was something practiced by all the great empires.

[00:03:33]Or close to it.

[00:03:34]The Jewish people were the ones who were given this commandment by God. And if you don't believe in God, their prophets their holy men told them that if you ever encounter a genocidal group, a maniacally genocidal group that shows no pity to women and children and even the unborn, then you have to fight them with all you have.

[00:03:55]You have to use the strongest weapons you have against them and not show any compassion, false compassion for them, because they're genocidal.

[00:04:03]The commandments regarding Amalek mean that we are to fight genocidal forces in this world.

[00:04:09]And we are to destroy them.

[00:04:11]I'll give you an off camino practical example of a case.

[00:04:16]Nazi Germany was incredibly genocidal.

[00:04:19]The commandment that tell me that if there had been a Jewish army, a Jewish state around during Nazi Germany times, then the King David-like character, who was their leader, would have had to destroy them completely. Why?

[00:04:34]Because that's all you could do with these genocidal maniacs.

[00:04:37]That's what it teaches us, not to commit genocide against innocent people. Or, like I said, you don't know women and children, all you get is terrible. No.

[00:04:45]It's that you have to have moral clarity and realize who the genocidal maniacs are, and deal with them appropriately.

[00:04:52]Like Fagan said, there's evil in this world, destroy the evil.

[00:04:57]Some people don't know how to make that distinction.

[00:05:00]Um What is it What is it like? Um let's say killing a man.

[00:05:05]Walking over to a man and chopping off his head.

[00:05:08]What do you call that?

[00:05:09]You call it murder.

[00:05:11]I say, on condition that man was innocent.

[00:05:14]But if you are attacked, and you are doing that in self-defense to your attacker, or someone else is being attacked, and you that do that in defense of the pursued, or you are appointed by the court to execute a murderer, then what you're doing is a mitzvah.

[00:05:30]It's not murder.

[00:05:32]And if it's in war, that's war. That's not murder.

[00:05:36]So, killing a man isn't just the final oh, it's murder.

[00:05:40]We say you should kill certain people.

[00:05:42]Well, we shouldn't kill the innocent, that's murder.

[00:05:44]You should kill the criminals.

[00:05:47]You should kill the evildoers. You should kill the people who are intending to kill unjustifiably.

[00:05:53]But, it's not the same thing.

[00:05:55]So, wiping out an Amalek and properly defining who an Amalek is, we don't just say, "Oh, we don't like that they're Amalek."

[00:06:01]Declaring or realizing who Amalek is is a deliberate action.

[00:06:08]It has to be taken with the uh I guess with very very the greatest seriousness and gravity.

[00:06:13]Gravitas, as they say in Latin, right?

[00:06:16]And know that applying the Torah's commandment regarding Amalek to these people is the act of stopping a genocide.

[00:06:25]It's the opposite of genocide.

[00:06:28]Okay? It's analogous, like I said. It's not It's not murder. It's justice. And that's what should be done.

[00:06:34]Um what I say about here. Calling someone, by the way, Amalek is not like the the the radical Muslims today. They issue a fatwa, right?

[00:06:42]Like they did to that Rushdie guy. Uh it's conquering people and acknowledging that uh who the genocidal extremists are. That's basically what you have to do.

[00:06:53]Hope that makes makes makes clear, but they have to say it out loud. Jewish rabbis do not call for genocide.

[00:06:59]They call for stopping genocide.

[00:07:02]And declaring someone Amalek means those people are genocidal. They must be stopped completely.

[00:07:08]So, the law is there is one time where Shmuel Navi declared that.

[00:07:13]We saw that Shmuel Navi was a hora'ah.

[00:07:15]There's always the commandment to destroy Amalek, right?

[00:07:19]But, the law actually allows for, for example, taking their property.

[00:07:23]It says lo tikhaier kol neshamah about the Kena'ani.

[00:07:26]But, those are talking about the Kena'anim who are fighting till last man.

[00:07:30]You know, sometimes it happens that if you have an Amalek what they do is even the women and the children are used as combatants.

[00:07:38]And by the way, where have we seen this?

[00:07:40]Oh, it so happens you go to Gaza. What do they have Oh, the women are smuggling what?

[00:07:45]Weapons. Or they even attack the soldiers want to let the woman through the checkpoint, then she pulls out a knife on them.

[00:07:51]It stopped that, yes. Go find the innocent women and children in a nursery or in the delivery room and kill them.

[00:07:57]The Torah never gives such a commandment. When the Torah says, if it does, if there's ever a cause for, you must kill the women and children also, it's being it's telling you the women and children are attacking you also. And this whole silly when you create this rule, well, they're non-combatants, I'm not going to fight them. That western idea, which by the way, the western countries never really held of anyways.

[00:08:18]They never held themselves to that own standard. The Torah is telling you watch out, the woman has a bomb under her skirt. Watch out, that child has has a knife or a gun.

[00:08:28]Child but this also Nazi Germany was running out of men to fight. So, what did they do?

[00:08:35]The Hitler Youth became the what's it called? The Volksgrenadier. You know what that means? The people's army.

[00:08:41]They're They're people at D-Day. They found in dugouts after, you know, like the Normandy landings and the rest of them and elsewhere. I have two books, first-hand accounts of United States soldiers in Nazi Germany and in European theater. And what they say, one of the things they noticed was, "Hey, a lot of these enemy soldiers looked kind of young."

[00:09:06]According to the Torah, who who's who's considered a combatant?

[00:09:09]Who goes to war? What age?

[00:09:11]20.

[00:09:13]20 to 60.

[00:09:15]Nazi Germany was using kids as young as 15.

[00:09:19]Okay?

[00:09:20]Where they get that? That's only because, you know, Hitler Youth was a was your way. They're running out of soldiers. Instead of surrendering like they should have, what did they do?

[00:09:28]Fight to the last man. Did you know one of the considerations to end the war, the Japanese were ready to also fight to the last child in the Japanese home islands, right?

[00:09:40]The commandment in Amalek, if you ever find, yes, you have to kill women and children, is not telling you something that's sort of bloodthirsty, kill innocent women and children. The Torah is telling you, watch out when you have genocidal societies, they turn their women and children into lethal combatants.

[00:09:57]Brainwashed lethal combatants.

[00:09:59]And instead of you know, when they're coming at you and you have the chance to kill them, instead of giving them a chance to take out one of your soldiers because you didn't think fast enough, or you're like, "But it's a woman." They're telling you, once you're in the battle with Amalek, once you're in the battle with Amalek, you have to, you know, disregard what they're wearing or their age because they are so genocidal and so committed to killing you, you're going to have to kill them. That's what it means.

[00:10:27]Yeah.

[00:10:28]Yeah.

[00:10:31]Yes, yes, but the Torah given to specifically the Jewish people, and that goes back to this theory. Why did the Torah tell you to reproduce?

[00:10:39]A lot of the mitzvahs were given specifically to Am Yisrael because they would have argued to themselves, "It's better not to do this."

[00:10:47]Yeah, I gave you examples about this before. A Vilna Gaon or a Rambam would have told you, "Never eat meat, never drink wine. Perhaps the holiest man is celibate. If he can control his urges, he should really be a holy man." Like eventually Christians did. It started with there were certain Jews who came to that conclusion in Second Temple times.

[00:11:03]The holiest man has no woman, right?

[00:11:07]But what comes out of Amalek?

[00:11:10]Amalek, the Torah tells you you have to eat meat and wine once a week, and that's the Onas Talmidei Chachamim.

[00:11:18]Minimally, right? That's how the Vilna Gaon lived.

[00:11:21]The Vilna Gaon didn't do these things on Shabbos and on Yom Tov.

[00:11:26]So too, Am Yisrael are Rachmanim bnei Rachmanim u'Gomlei Chassadim.

[00:11:31]If you did not give them the mitzvah of milchemet mitzvah, you know what they would do? They would roll over and die.

[00:11:36]They'd come up with all sorts of reasons why you shouldn't fight for Eretz Israel. You shouldn't fight for self-defense.

[00:11:42]So, they have to be told Bulgarians and Russians and I don't know, the the Chinese, they don't need to be told keep your country for yourself and fight back if you're under attack. You know why?

[00:11:54]Cuz they know to do that. But, Jews are too They're they're they're too much inclined to to mercy. Misplaced mercy.

[00:12:01]So, God had to tell them you have to fight.

[00:12:04]God had to tell them you have to reproduce. God had to tell them every now and then you have to eat meat because they would have reasoned it's better not to.

[00:12:11]And all sorts of other commandments.

[00:12:13]They're given to us because we wouldn't have done it if it wasn't commanded.

[00:12:17]Big problem. I would imagine that the the the war, could you imagine if there wasn't a Hester movement among the so-called religious Zionists that held war to be a sacred duty?

[00:12:30]How many less people would be in the army because of that?

[00:12:34]It's bad enough chareidim don't hold of it.

[00:12:36]Right?

[00:12:37]They hold of milchemet mitzvah. Let's just say for whatever reason it doesn't apply.

[00:12:40]Okay. And could you imagine the Hester Yeshivas didn't exist?

[00:12:44]If there wasn't that idea among certain religious Jews that milcham that milchama was a mitzvah, would they fight?

[00:12:51]It'd be left to all the secular Zionist types.

[00:12:54]And even then my secular so-called Zionists they're already going off the derech. It'd be left with the types of people who were uh my pi uh what was what was it called?

[00:13:02]Haganah type people in in the those types. Ben-Gurion types, right?

[00:13:07]Jews who were really nationalistic and wanted to fight.

[00:13:10]But, there would be no one else left in the army.

[00:13:12]Maybe it's better that we only have religious people in the army, but you first have to have religious people.

[00:13:16]If the religious people had no commandments, they they they wouldn't be there.

[00:13:21]Yeah, it's a very important thing. So, let's let's let's uh just say it again.

[00:13:25]There is no commandment to commit genocide and Jews do not want to commit genocide, certainly against no innocent people, and we have no commandment to go looking to make aggressive war.

[00:13:34]We only know our Torah says this in its own way to tell us that if you're faced with Nazi Germany and other genocidal forces, then we have to fight them and not be fooled by them.

[00:13:48]No ceasefires and things like that. And if you ever if you ever and I have a have a thing that says kill women and children, it doesn't mean kill innocent women and children. It means kill the ones who have been indoctrinated and themselves are genocidal and are also taking up arms against you because that's what they do.

[00:14:04]You can't even think that any of them are safe.

[00:14:08]Yeah.

[00:14:10]There you go. I hope that that answers the question.