Q&A: Terrorism: Who Is To Blame? Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

yeah it's it's a very very interesting question the question is when you have people like Hamas uh where a lot of the uh people were lit literally indoctrinated they were brainwashed from a very young age to hate Jews to want to kill Jews and then they grow up and they become murderers and they become terrorists so the question becomes how does Hashem judge them does Hashem say hey you guys are Nazis you guys are Hitlers therefore you get the biggest punishments that one can imagine or there is is there some side of mitigation giving the fact given the fact that they were brainwashed so it's very interesting so first of all we do have to differentiate between let's say the leadership of Kamas and maybe the rank and file followers uh the leadership are sitting in Qatar with uh billion dollar uh Estates and enjoying the fruit of the land while they're ordering their followers to uh do suicide missions and and everything else so certainly I don't think the leaders get a pass at all uh with respect to the uh Ranken file again this may be a little controversial I think the one thing kesu V looks at a person's background he looks at the difficulties and that will be a mitigation Factor there's no question but it's not an excuse and the proof that it's the very proof that it's not an excuse is from the guy I referred to more than once already son of Kamas or green Prince whatever he goes by uh that guy very very fascinating person he was a son of one of the founders of Kamas who was arrested in Israel for terrorism and he underwent uh literally a conversion talk about Bal chuba he became a spy for Israel in Kamas and uh now he goes around and talks about it a lot and he's very very pro-israel although it's kind of amazing why there's not a fatwa against him but uh apparently he goes around and does this so the Kish of that is that you see that even the person who's brainwashed from youth has the kak to make the right decisions and therefore Hashem will hold people accountable for not making those right decisions I've mentioned a number of times the famous of RAB n the beginning of M where he points out that the people of Sodom were punished for not being charitable and even though charity is not one of the seven Mitzvah no so why are responsible he said a human being is supposed to figure certain things out and if he doesn't figure certain things out out then Hashem will hold him accountable so this doesn't totally answer your question meaning my answer would be for sure they will be accountable and punished for their Rous but it won't be as as the person who made a premeditated meditated choice because you are correct their B has been taken away from them now you might be thinking right off the bat well maybe this is similar to a pyro situation right the famous question where it says Hashem hardened parro's heart and then Hashem punished MIM and the rambam asks theha if parro didn't have B how could there be punishments but the rambam's answer doesn't cover this situation the rambam's answer was that for the first five plagues pyro hardened his own heart and therefore the rambam says if you repeatedly go against hem eventually you you lose your capacity of but then you'll be accountable for everything you do because after all it came from your B in the first five so that doesn't really cover that that you can't I don't think you can use the rambam to cover your situation because the kids who were indoctrinated from the age of three never had a b that they were they were choosing to assert in a good way right so it's different than parro who initially had PIR and then lost it as a result of his Rebellion so it is an excellent question but as I say um one way of looking at this is that we're not going after Hamas in Revenge for their being bad people we're going after Kamas because it's like a rabid dog that you have to kill mean meaning the issue is not I mean Hashem will deal with punishment but our issue is not punishment where we are not into punishing Kamas we are into eliminating a threat now at that point it makes no difference if it's a rabid dog or or or whatever it is uh you have to destroy that which is a threat to humanity or to the threat of am Israel see it's very very important that the law of Roda and the laws of mil that says we destroy an enemy is not based on punishment in fact even a cuton can be aod if God forbid you had a you had a little kid who was wielding a gun that could go off any second the would be you could do whatever you have to do to disable the child including killing him so it's not a question of fault or Rus it's a question of uh d d