“In that day will I make the chiefs of Judah like a pan of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire among sheaves; and they shall devour all the peoples round about, on the right hand and on the left… And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.” Zechariah 12:6, 9
Rabbis, when they were real rabbis, maintained that Jews must kill all the inhabitants of the Promised Land during the invasion. Joshua bin Nun allegedly sent three letters to the Canaanite nations before the invasion: Whoever wants to leave, leave; whoever wants to make a treaty of tribute and servitude, make the treaty; whoever wants to fight, fight.
How come? On the face of it, the Torah promises to evict the natives rather than exterminate them. Moreover, it is God who will do the expelling (Exodus 23:27). The last misconception is simple: wherever the Torah speaks of God doing something, it means him working through human agents. Only on a handful of occasions did God resort to outright miracles, and every time they were very short. Thus, God expelling the natives means that he will empower the Jews to do his bidding. That is like the events of 1948: God made Stalin supply us with weapons, but the Jews had to pull the triggers themselves.
The promise of eviction touches on the fundamental question of free will. At every junction, the choice can only be made once; there is no Replay option. God gave the natives the relatively easy choice of moving out, but it was up to them to accept or reject it. Just as in 1948, the natives had to vacate their villages in good order so that Jews could take them over. They couldn’t even take their idols with them, as Jews are commanded to destroy those traces of foreign worship (v.24). Is that just? Definitely. Not in your common sense of human morality, but in the ultimate sense: whatever God has pronounced is just. Genocide, thus, can also be just.
At the time of Deuteronomy, just as they did 3,000 years later, the natives exercised their free will: they said, No. Pharaoh responded similarly to God’s demand to release the Jews; God took away his free will by hardening his heart, so that the pharaoh could suffer the punishment for his prior offenses. The Canaanite nations, on the on the other hand, exercised their free will unhindered, and the time has come for them to suffer the consequences.
“Only from the towns of the nations which Lord your God gives you for inheritance, you shall leave none alive. But you shall cease, cease them” (Deut20:16-17). The commandment can be interpreted in a minimally bloodthirsty manner: evicting the natives leaves none of them alive in our towns and ceases their existence in the land God promised to us. Such a relatively peaceful interpretation, however, flies in the face of the context.
Jewish law distinguishes between two kinds of war: obligatory and voluntary. The obligatory war is fought to conquer the Promised Land and defend it from any enemy, even one who offers a land-for-peace deal (like the Amonites) or merely demands straw and hay. The voluntary war is fought for expansion of the boundaries of the Promised Land. The earlier verses deal with a voluntary war: much of the population, notably newlyweds and cowards, are exempted from military service. Now the Torah spells out the consequences of the enemy’s freedom of choice clearly. He can accept the Jewish offer of peace or fight. The peace deal that normal Jews offered to our enemies would have sent your Temple rabbi running for the Criminal Court in Hague: the surrendering inhabitants had to accept “tribute and servitude.” They could, however, continue pagan worship because these things happened away from the Promised Land; contrary to the liberal tikkun olam nonsense, Jews did not intend to serve as a beacon to nations who could persist in their pagan filth. The Exodus 20:24 commandment to extirpate foreign worship only applies to the Promised Land, not to the entire territory conquered by Jews.
The enemy can also reject the rather illiberal Jewish peace initiative. Upon respecting his freedom of choice, Jews are commanded to slay all adult males and take women and children captive (Deut20:14). Here lies a concept of immense importance: they are not enemies spared out of humanitarian concern, but as a harmless trophy. The defeated enemy’s women and children suddenly became rootless and can be safely assimilated into the Jewish nation. As Moses, the humblest of all people, told Jewish soldiers, “But leave alive for yourself all female children who did not know a man.” (Num31:18) Enemy women and children can be left alive only insofar as they can be distributed among the conquerors, albeit on relatively humane terms of treatment.
Obligatory wars are fought on divine command to purify the land; those wars are critical to Israeli nationhood and religious objectives. Obligatory war has to be harsher on Israel’s enemies than a voluntary war. If all the adult males are killed in voluntary wars, then that is all the more reason for them to be killed—rather than merely evicted—in obligatory wars. Once they have refused the divine command to flee before the Jews, they lose the benefit of the divine offer which allowed them to stay alive. God is merciful to his creatures: the natives are killed so that they don’t compound their sin of opposing God and his people.
Many rabbis take refuge in the list of nations to be exterminated: the Torah lists seven of them, none of which exists today, though some Palestinians claim descent from the Canaanites. Palestinian Arabs, who refused to vacate the divinely established Jewish state, need not be exterminated according to this logic. As a human being educated in atheistic morality, I would be greatly relieved had it really been so. Unfortunately, the list of nations is clearly illustrative. In those days, nations did not exist. People thought on the level of kingdoms, towns, and clans. It is extremely unlikely that any town’s population considered themselves, for example, Canaanites. Deut20:16 is clear: “From the towns of those people which God your Lord gives you for inheritance, leave none alive.” If we constrain this verse to the long-gone nations, then we have to assume that today God gave us no land at all. Indeed, we’re commanded throughout the Torah to take the land of “those nations”—six or seven of them. If the nations don’t exist, Jews have no religious right to take over the land. Nevertheless, the Torah commands us to return from Exile and take over this land (Deut30:5). Thus, the list of particular nations is expendable; Jews must take the towns in the Promised Land from whatever nations happen to have settled them at the time. And when we take the towns, the exterminatory commandment of Deut20:16 kicks in.
Machiavelli agrees: exterminating the natives is the only way for a conqueror to establish himself in the land. If he does not follow the cruel logic of conquest, the natives would become “thorns in his side,” which the Palestinian population has indeed become to Israel.
The Palestinians exercised their freedom of choice in 1948 when they fought the Jewish state. There is no room, accordingly, for the peace process. And in case you think that the Torah is out of sync with modern realities, ask the Native Indians who were exterminated by good Christians arriving from Europe.