Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef on Saturday night told his students at the Yazdi synagogue in Jerusalem that when a terrorist approaches you with a knife, you are commanded to kill him. “If a terrorist reached someone with a knife — it’s a mitzvah to kill him,” the Chief Rabbi taught, citing the Midrashic statement “He who comes to kill you, kill him first.” (Bamidbar Rabba 21:4; Tankhuma Pinkhas c. 3).
Last month, IDF Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot belittled the value of the sages’ teaching, calling it “strictly a slogan.”
“Don’t fear what the high court would do to you, or that some chief of staff would come and say something else,” the chief rabbi insisted. “You needn’t fear.”
Rabbi Yosef added that his approach would also serve as a deterrence. “Once the terrorist knows that if he shows up with a knife he doesn’t go back alive – this will deter them, which is why it’s a mitzvah to kill him.”
However, the Chief Rabbi also said that if the terrorist no longer poses a threat — he should be imprisoned for life, “until Messiah will come and instruct us who is [part of the mythical nation] Amalek, at which point we’ll be able to kill them.”
Yesh Atid whip MK Ofer Shelah on Sunday morning attacked the chief rabbi, saying, “At the age when young Israelis risk their lives, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef was busy editing his father’s books — yet he purports to decide issues of war ethics and even challenges the chief of staff.”
“The army will be led only by its commanders,” Shelah added, “and the rabbis should not try to replace them.”
Except that Yesh Atid Chairman MK Yair Lapid said very similar things only months ago, when he told Walla: “The instructions should be clear, anyone who pulls out a knife or a screwdriver must be shot dead.” He repeated, just to be understood clearly: “If an attack has begun, we must shoot to kill.”
MK Bezalel Smotrich (Bayit Yehudi) on Sunday afternoon defended the chief rabbi, saying, “Have you lost your mind? The Chief Rabbi Rav Yitzhak Yosef repeated in his talk the Jewish teaching of thousands of years, He who comes to kill you, kill him first. Only last week it was made clear in a published survey that the majority of the people in Israel are [mentally] healthy and identify with this important moral principle.”
Smotrich added, “Let the sanctimonious and the condemning crowd kindly take a deep breath and refer from attacking the obvious. Let any terrorist who raises a hand at a Jew know that his blood is on his own head.”