I’ve just been reading more about that justification for killing innocent people
by Rabbi Yochai (2nd Century C.E.) and cited by England.
A modern Rabbi Engelmeyer writing in 2010 in
https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/there-is-no-ae%cb%9cotherae/ says,
The most extreme such dictate comes from Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who said it was a mitzvah to “kill even the nicest among the gentiles.” (See M’khilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, B’shallach Chapter 2; also, the Jerusalem Talmud tractate Kiddushin 4:11.) This comment most recently surfaced in a different context – in the writings of the radical Chabad rabbi Yitzchak Ginzberg, who uses it to justify the killing of innocent civilians in Gaza.
How – and why – did Rabbi Shimon, as he is often referred to in the Talmud, reach such a harsh decision?
According to the Torah in the parashah we will read next Shabbat, Pharaoh gathered “600 chosen chariots” in order to run down the Israelites in the wilderness. (See Exodus 14:7.) Yet, if all of Egypt’s livestock was killed during the plagues, where did the horses come from to draw those chariots? As the Torah reported regarding one plague in the parashah we read last Shabbat, “he who feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses.”(See Exodus 9:20.)
In other words, those Egyptians who feared the God of Israel saved their horses and Pharaoh used those horses to try to kill the People of Israel. Reasoned Bar Yochai, even the best and most well meaning among non-Jews endanger Jewish lives.
In truth, though, the Torah teaches no so such lesson.………
and,
Bar Yochai’s opinion, however, was never normative. Thus, for example, the 13th-century French commentator Rabbi M’nachem ben Shlomo Ha-Me’iri states, “In our times, no one observes these practices, not a ga’on, not a rabbi, not a sage, not a pietist nor even an alleged pietist.” (See the introduction to the section on idol worship in his Talmud commentary Bet Ha-b’chirah.)…..
and in summing up paragraphs this Rabbi writes,
When Rabbi Akiva said that “‘love your neighbor as yourself’ [Leviticus 19:18] is the great principle of the Torah,” another of his students, Ben Azzai, disagreed. “‘This is the record of adam’s line’ [Genesis 5:1] is the greater principle,” he said. (“Adam” in Genesis means “human”; it is not a proper name.)
What Ben Azzai meant is clear. Obviously, “This is the record of adam’s line” is not a principle at all, but a statement of fact. If that fact is understood, however, then there is no need for any kind of principle relating to how one person treats another. If all human beings are descended from the original unique human being created by God – if we are all descended from “the adam” – then regardless of who we are, what we believe, what color our skin is, what continent we live on, what language we speak, we are all brothers and sisters.
When one’s brother or sister or other family member is in trouble, we must move heaven and earth, if necessary, to help.
As God’s “kingdom of priests and holy nation,” our job is to teach by example a moral and ethical code that, as Ben Azzai said, is summed up by a simple statement, “This is the record of adam’s line.”