Yair Lapid : ‘If Soldiers Fired On From Kindergarten, Should They Respond? There’s No Answer’

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — In a peculiar speech in which he attempted to define ethical parameters for the IDF, Prime Minister Yair Lapid presented a dilemma to his audience. Lapid described a hypothetical situation as ‘the tension between survival and ethics’. A young captain is standing with his soldiers near a Gaza kindergarten and they are shooting at him. If he won’t respond his soldiers will die and if he does respond, children will die and the Jewish army, the Israeli army does not kill children.

Lapid asked how one should deal with this situation and answered ‘the true answer is that there is no answer.’

לפיד: "המתח בין ההישרדות, לבין המוסר, בסוף, זה סגן משנה צעיר שעומד עם החיילים שלו מול גן ילדים בעזה ויורים עליו. אם הוא לא יגיב החיילים שלו ימותו, ואם הוא כן יגיב ימותו ילדים, וצבא של יהודים, צבא יש ישראלים לא הורג ילדים.
איך מתמודדים עם זה?
והתשובה האמיתית היא שאין תשובה" pic.twitter.com/z8krj6i2ES

— ינון מגל (@YinonMagal) September 18, 2022

Lapid addresses audience on IDF morality

Lapid’s lack of an answer is typical of the moral myopia prevalent among Israel’s leaders. In previous eras it was clear and unequivocal that IDF soldiers should not be endangered to save enemy civilians in the line of fire. This was accepted practice in war, especially when the enemy indoctrinates even its children to fight and murder Israelis. Yet Lapid’s question was posed by none other than Defense Minister Gantz, who in 2016 boasted that he had endangered Golani soldiers in Gaza to ensure that no civilians were present at an enemy target being fired on.

https://twitter.com/65347_osnat/status/1571547682107432960

Neither Lapid or Gantz’s morals are in consonance with Torah values, which stress that those who threaten to kill us and make every effort to attack us have forfeited the lives of all of their families, as evident in the Torah’s commands and in biblical descriptions of war. Yet modern leaders cannot even honestly fulfill Ben-Gurion’s famous declaration “let every Israeli mother know that she has placed the fate of her son in the hands of worthy officers.” If the officer endangers his soldiers for a dubious moral of protecting enemy children, how can he be deemed worthy?