Monday, May 20, 2013

Double Effect and Double Standards

“It is permissible to kill the Righteous among non-Jews even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation,” Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement in the occupied West Bank, wrote in his book “The King’s Torah.”

Interesting to note how the corollary ("It is permissible to kill the Righteous among non-Americans . . . .") to this Judeo (not "Judeo-Christian"--and certainly not Christian!) precept underlies the American imperial ethic of "double effect" and its ensuing "collateral damage." Otherwise decent Americans have invoked it to justify everything from Sherman's March to the Sea, through Truman's nuclear terrorism on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, down to Obama's drone strikes on Pakistani wedding parties.

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