I know there's a lot of talk about whether Allied forces during World War II could have / should have taken military action directly against the Holocaust. I'm not opening that can of worms here.
One of the options suggested was "they could have bombed the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz"; another one is "they could have bombed the extermination camp itself."
For theory's sake: would halacha permit bombing the camp (and thus directly killing several thousand innocent people in it right now) so the Nazis couldn't use it to kill millions more?
One similar question is the halacha regarding shooting down a hijacked airplane. After some very complicated discussion, Rabbi J David Bleich concludes that halacha would prohibit it, but:
I'm not sure everyone agrees (see comments there; I recall hearing about a teleconference shiur for rabbis given by ... I think Rabbi Dr Moshe Tendler ... several days after 9/11, concluding otherwise on this issue).
I've heard that some halachic ethics apply differently in times of war, not sure how that influences this.
Is the hijacked-plane case completely analogous to the extermination-camp case?
No comments:
Post a Comment