Genocide apologetics

In my post The Midian genocide I described the horrible crimes against humanity that Moses and the Israelites committed against Midianite noncombatants, including women, children, toddlers and infants, and pointed out the parallels between those actions and the actions of ISIS.

The genocides in the Tanakh were one of the major reasons why I started seriously doubting Judaism. The Gemara says that a father is obligated to teach his sons the entire Chumash. I remember thinking to myself, as a young chap, “how am I supposed to explain this to my future children?”. This question tormented me for years. I remember asking my rabbi the Amalek question, and he blabbered something about how “there is such a thing as רע in this world...”, and that’s when I tuned out. How can a toddler be evil? I grew up hearing about how the Nazis mercilessly threw Jewish children into gas chambers. The Nazis rationalized this by saying that the Jewish children are evil or will grow up to be evil. We say NEVER AGAIN because we all understand that children are not evil, people throw children into gas chambers are evil. The real reason why the Nazis murdered Jewish children was not because the Jewish children were evil, but rather, because the Nazis were filled with hatred. Whenever I hear someone talk about how the Amalekite babies were innately evil and had to be destroyed, I imagine them dressed head-to-toe in full uniform with the swastika armband giving a Nazi salute.

And if the Nazis were evil, why aren’t Moses, Joshua and Samuel also evil? If we applied the same standards, then Moses, Joshua and Samuel were evil genocidal maniacs. If they lived in modern times, they would’ve been hanged at Nuremberg with the other Nazi war criminals for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Why do we look up to people who are genocidal war criminals? Why do we name our children after these monsters? Is genocide only bad when others do it to us, but not when we do it to others? What is that but a shameless double standard?

My (grandmother’s) cousin Pinchas said that the genocides were exaggerated over time as the stories were passed down. He gave the analogy of a fisherman who catches a humongous fish. The first time he tells the story, the fish is n inches long. The second time he tells the story, the fish is n + 1 inches long. And by the time you finally hear the story, the fish is n + 20 inches long.

This seems plausible to me as a theory about how these stories might have actually developed. But as an Orthodox Jew, I was not at liberty to say that these narratives were merely exaggerated (and also, is killing children really something to brag about anyway? Why would you want to exaggerate that?). I realized that, essentially, there was only one option: I had to come up with justifications for genocide. I had to become a genocide apologist. There was no other choice. This made me very uncomfortable, because I quickly realized that every possible rationalization for the Tanakh genocides can be and, in fact, have been used to justify other genocides. Consider, for example, the most obvious and intuitive rationalization: “God Was On Our Side.” This is the first thing that comes to mind for many people. As my uncle put it, the difference is that “the Riboinoi shel Oilem told us to do it”.

The problem with this rationalization is that others who slaughter civilians can also claim God was on their side. Every jihadist believes that God is on his side, and he believes this much more strongly than you do. He believes it so strongly that he’s willing to blow himself up for it, and even screams “GOD IS GREAT” as he does it. Al-Qaeda thought God was on their side. ISIS thought God was on their side. The Crusaders who massacred Jewish communities thought God was on their side. The Nazis, too, thought that God was on their side. The belt buckle of every Wehrmacht soldier had the words “GOTT MIT UNS” (GOD WITH US) emblazoned on it.

The Torah says that God is merciful, compassionate, perfect, just, righteous, upright, etc. If butchering toddlers is considered merciful, compassionate, perfect, just, righteous, upright, then these words are completely meaningless.

But if the Torah was made up by primitive desert barbarians who made their god in their image, then there is absolutely nothing mysterious about this at all. The genocides in the Tanakh simply reflect the cultural values of the people who made it up. Humans are known to occasionally commit mass murder in the name of their god. In every case, we recognize that they are wrong. The Tanakh genocides are consistent with well-known patterns of human behavior. This provides us with strong inductive evidence that the Torah is not God-given.