Excerpt from an "Introduction" by Vesselin Popovski in World Religions and Norms of War, Edited by Vesselin Popovski, Gregory M. Reichberg and Nicholas Turner (United Nations University Press, Tokyo, 2009), pp. 5-6.
Jack Bemporad recognizes that the Jewish tradition does not operate explicitly with the just war categories of jus ad bellum and jus in bello, but shows how many discussions in biblical and rabbinical sources engage in very similar considerations. One can categorize certain Jewish statements as contributing to right reasons for going to war and the right conduct of war. What is significantly different between these principles in Judaism and just war theory is the Jewish belief that war is not a natural condition and that universal peace can be a reality.
The biblical and rabbinical sources are concerned with peace more than with war, even if the Old Testament contains stories of brutal mass slaying. Bemporad, similarly to the other authors, makes a brilliant cross-century historical voyage, arriving at the current state of affairs. He argues that Israel as a Jewish state cannot forsake the task of explaining its existence and behaviour in terms of Jewish tradition and heritage, and thereby in universal ethical categories. If Israel were a secular nation-state, it would respond in terms of realpolitik and ethics would apply secondarily, if at all. The dilemma becomes complicated with the issue of asymmetric war and with the post-Holocaust imperative of survival. Asymmetric warfare evolved gradually and the rift between political and religious factors deepened. The concepts of restraint and purity of arms, developed in the 1930s by what later became the State of Israel, were constantly under review, and the protection of enemy non-combatants in modern warfare has increasingly been called into question, owing to weapons of mass destruction, guerrilla warfare, terrorism and suicide bombing. Also important in the historical heritage is that many Holocaust survivors witnessed how millions of Jews, predominantly non-combatants, were marked for total extermination. The inhuman Nazi ideology - which not many could predict at the time - led to real and duly implemented genocidal policies, which the League of Nations and governments could not stop. As a result, Israel still lives with a ''siege mentality'' and the great challenge, as Bemporad ascertains, is how to preserve the original Jewish ethics when it comes to modern methods of warfare.
