Protests – though not necessarily mass protests – have been in the news ever since Abraham argued with G-d on behalf of the potentially innocent people in the city of Sdom, and we all know how that worked out – but only after G-d patiently listened to the protester, and even “negotiated” with him.
Many things have changed since then, including the relationship of even select human beings to G-d, but protests are in the news once again. They are also in the daf yomi once again. First the big picture and the similarities, and then the differences, and the daf yomi.
According to the Talmud, legitimate protests for legitimate causes are not only permitted but even required, and not only required, but even necessary to the point of potential protesters being held to account for NOT participating.
Rav, R. Hanina, R. Yohanan, and R. Haviva taught: “All who can protest against something wrong that one member of their family is doing and do not [protest], is accountable together with their family. All who can protest against something wrong that a citizen of their city is doing and do not protest are accountable together with all the citizens of the city. All who can protest against something wrong that is being done in the whole world are accountable together with all of the citizens of the world” (Shabbat, 54b).
Nothing in this article is intended to criticize, G-d forbid, any people of good will who advocate the freeing of any innocent hostages – in Israel or anywhere else in the world at any time. It is only intended to criticize “peaceful” demonstrators who resort to violence against fellow human beings, whether directly or indirectly, and the defacing or destruction of private and public property, as well as protestors who fail to even make a good faith effort to try to ascertain the justness of the causes they advocate.
The Talmud at page 54b, above, says nothing about violence, but does say something very important – that the subject of the protest had to be to protest against “something wrong.” We all agree that genocide is wrong and worth protesting against. The question is how to define genocide and who is advocating it. Eliminating Israel “from the river to the sea,” G-d forbid, would certainly seem to be one way to define it. And supporting what happened on October 7 would be another way. What happened subsequent to that time, however, in the battle to remove the missile launchers pointed at Israel is not so simple. I have always been and remain as opposed to the loss of innocent life and needless suffering as any protestor; however, as I’ve done before, all I humbly suggest is that as many open-minded skeptics as possible should Google the articles and books on warfare by the American military expert John Spencer, of West Point, and judge for yourself whether he seems to be able to substantiate the claim that the Israeli army has done more to protect enemy civilians than any other army in wartime.
The daf yomi of pages 38-39 of Bava Batra, read by people around the world this week, refers to protests, though for private property claimed by unauthorized people, but a protest is a protest. The Rashbam actually says (39b) that this situation presents an opportunity for a person to actually fulfill a mitzvah by telling a landowner that somebody who is unauthorized is occupying the property so that the true owner should be careful to hold onto his deed.
The question is raised there as to what kind of assertion constitutes a protest. “Rav Zvid said that if the person who claimed to be the owner merely alleged that a certain person was a robber, that allegation was not considered to be a valid protest, but if the purported owner alleged that “So and so is a robber as he is holding my land through robbery (having committed title fraud), and ‘tomorrow’ (in the near future) I will bring a claim against him in court, it is a [valid] protest.” Of course in the case described in the Talmud, the court was presumed to be a legitimate one.
Query how legitimate the current International Criminal Court (ICC) can be considered. Two countries historically seen as models of democracy – at least until the past few years – the U.S. and Israel – opted not to be parties to the ICC, which continues to be supported by countries with values antithetical to the values of the U.S. and Israel. Both the U.S. and Israel signed a document in support of the ICC under pressure, but neither of these countries ratified the treaty that established the ICC, and as such neither is obligated to submit to the ICC’s jurisdiction. In 2002, the U.S. formally “unsigned” it. Then, in June of this year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would sanction the ICC for issuing warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials (although warrants were also issued against Hamas officials, as if they were morally equivalent). The U.S. reacted to the warrants by inviting the prime minister to address a joint session of Congress for an unprecedented fourth time.
I may not have been in the audience when the prime minister of Israel tried to convince wavering members of Congress to support those of his policies that even most members of Israel’s opposition agree on, but I like to think that I did play a small role in influencing influential people to change their minds for the better. On various occasions, back in the 1970s, I was among the hundreds of thousands of people – and in some cases just a few dozen – who marched to protest what was being done to Soviet Jews, and to demand that the Soviets let our people go, although I did so while carrying my notes and studying the Talmud for exams, never imagining that a little bit more than a decade later I would actually marry somebody who had participated in protest demonstrations in the U.S.S.R. at far greater personal risk than the demonstrators faced then or face now in the U.S., and she then managed to get out of the U.S.S.R. with her equally courageous and principled parents when emigration from the U.S.S.R. was risky and limited.
May people of good will continue to protest freely, but only after ascertaining the facts on which their protests are based, and only by peacefully and nonviolently targeting the wrongdoers.