Rabbi Meir Kahane on the Current Situation

The following is a three chapter excerpt from Rabbi Kahane's last book and is very relevant to the issue of disobeying orders and matters of that nature. The reading starts a little slow but is well worth the time.


8 The Legitimacy of Government and Revolution

An ocean of people-millions-and rivers of money-millions-poured into the streets of Paris in July 1989, to celebrate a revolution. It was the 200th anniversary of the rising up of the French people against a government that had been accepted originally as legitimate, legal and, indeed, divine. It was the 200th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and the freeing of the prisoners of the regime. It was the 200th anniversary of the taking of the law into the hands of the people, and Frenchmen joined by people from all over the world, cheered and reveled in the memory hailing it as a landmark in history with fireworks, parades, operas, marching bands and singing and dancing in the streets through the wee hours of the morning.

"Vive la Revolution!" Hail the Revolution! Hail the right of the people to rise up against a government that it feels to be repressive, that refuses to grant liberty equality and fraternity. That was the message that western civilization gave the world in July 1989, as more than 30 heads of state looked on beaming approvingly.

That revolution has become an accepted, indeed, an applauded concept in a world that regularly pays lip service to condemnation of "violence" and homage to "law and order" is a subject for contemplation.

WHY IS REVOLUTION AN ACCEPTED CONCEPT? AND IS IT ALWAYS SO? WHAT ARE ITS LIMITATIONS, IF ANY? AND WHAT ARE THE LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCES THAT MAY GIVE RISE TO IT?

To understand this, we must understand, first, the very nature of the state, of government, of the individual. We must understand the relationship that exists between them. We must understand the birth of the nation and state, their origins; hence, the nature of their existence and the rights and obligations possessed by government and individual. From this, we can better grasp the right or illegality of revolution, rebellion, civil disobedience and any act of conflict with authority.

The nature of government, by definition, is limitation on the freedom of the individual to live his life as he sees fit. The right of government to be, to take away freedom from a human being in any degree, is based in western, secular, democratic society only on the consent of the individual to give up that absolute freedom he once possessed in return for a thing that is both more urgent and important and that only a government can give-security of life and property.

According to modern western political theory the modern state as we know it came into being through the evolutionary process of families and tribes and clans, eventually forming into a recognizable nation-people which, for reasons of security and survival, recognized an authority settled in a particular place of their own, so that both nation and state were governed by the authority chosen by the people. The state was created by consent of the people who, for practical and pragmatic reasons, recognized the need for an authority which would preserve internal order and carry out the defense of the people against external enemies. The authority-government derived its right to decree without defiance both from the practical need to have orderly process as well as from the grant by the people of power to speak and act in their name.

For secular, western democratic civilization, freedom of the individual is the starting point of society; a thing that is absolute; a thing that is granted by natural law or simply a thing that, by the nature of things, is the basis of human existence. No one, no individual and no group of individuals has the right to arbitrarily set up as authority over the individual and to take away any freedom from him whatsoever. The concept of government in modern western democracy is a concept based on consent, con-sent of the people to be governed.

And that is not a cheap and simple matter. The people does not easily give up its freedom. It does so only in return for something that is supremely important for them, a thing that by its absence threatens all the freedoms that they possess and desire. Security. Without security and safety of life and limb and property little else matters for the individual; and it is this that is the minimal, fundamental basis for governmental authority and intervention in the life of the individual. It is based upon government's assurance to guarantee security and safety that the individual grudgingly surrenders total freedom.

This political axiom is accepted by even the most libertarian of philosophers. Even those who are Spencerian in their thinking and who deny the most basic social and economic role of government, admit and accept fully the fundamental role of government to secure the life and property of the individual from threat from within or from without; and this only because the individual himself so desires and has thus agreed to the limitation on his absolute freedom. It is a quid pro quo; it is the essence of the social contract theory that has become an axiom in democratic society.

And this being so, western democratic society goes on to maintain that if government violates its part of the contract or compact; if, having been given power over the individual on the condition that it safeguard his life and property, it fails to do so; why then the contract has been breached, violated and is no longer in effect. The people who voluntarily gave of their freedom and power to a governmental authority have the basic natural right to cancel the breached contract, to nullify government, to take back their original absolute powers.

This is the general consensus of the secular western thinkers of modern times. This is the origin of state and nation; this is the basis of the relationship between individual and authority; upon this was built the rock of mutual rights and obligations.

Clearly this was not always so. Indeed, all the above mentioned constitutes what is essentially a radical, revolutionary theory born in the relatively recent events of the past 300 years or so. It is the product of a radical break with the ancien regime-and not that of the French court alone. Western civilization, per se (not to mention Oriental and African cultures), saw the individual as not only not free to live life as he saw fit, but as a part of a society in which he served his god and the divine emissary of that god-the monarch. There were no "natural rights" of man. There were no basic and fundamental prerogatives for the ordinary individual. He had a status into which he was born and that status was one that obliged him to bend the knee and bow the head before authority-king or oligarchy-that drew its legitimacy from Heaven.

It was the dawn of modern times, with the profound explosion of the Renaissance; the expansion 0f the mind of man; the lighting of the darkness of the cornered mysteries of the world through the light of reason, science and technology that led man, the subser-vient and obedient, to dare to be man the questioner, prober and, eventually the breaker of idols. In a sense, it was yet another serpent that now entered the medieval Eden and tempted man with the glorious pleasure of Rebellion.

Long before the French Revolution, the principle of the Social Contract, with its primacy of the individual and his rights, was waved on high. A stormy seventeenth century saw an even stormier England undergo a series of upheavals, each of which buried ever more the Old Authority and raised ever higher the rights of individual man. Bitter conflict between the Stuart king, Charles I, who had dissolved parliament after parliament, and the people, led by Cromwell, resulted in a bloody civil war that led to the overthrow of the monarchy itself and the execution of Charles in 1649.

The insistence of the king on absolute powers that made a mockery of Parliament, had raised the question of the rights and obligations of both state and individual. A basic discussion of the rights of the individual was held as early as 1647 at the General Council of the Parliamentary Army in Putney near London. There, a number of army officers defended an Agreement of the People, a compact that called for basic rights. A classic statement of rights was presented by Major Wildman:

"A principle much spreading and much to my trouble… is this: that when persons once be engaged, though the Engagement appears to be unjust, yet the person must set down and suffer under it; and that therefore, in case a parliament, as a true Parliament, does anything unjustly, if we be engaged to submit to the laws that they shall make, if they make an unjust law, though they make an unrighteous law, yet we must swear obedience.

"I confess to me this principle is very dangerous, and I speak it the rather because I see it spreading abroad in the Army again. Whereas it is contrary to what the Army first declared: that they stood upon such principles of right and freedom, and the laws of nature and nations, whereby men were to preserve themselves though the persons to whom authority belonged should fail in it... and therefore if anything tends to the destruction of a people, because the thing is absolutely unjust and tends to their destruction [they may preserve themselves]."

What was being declared here was that there were certain natural rights of man that could not be abrogated or curtailed by any authority and that while, in general, the individual was bound to obey government, that in no way bound him to sit quietly and passively as his just and basic rights were being trampled.

Though the monarchy was restored in 1660 after the death of the Republican Cromwell, nothing would ever be the same. Charles, himself, had been forced to sign the Petition of Rights which followed the tradition of the ancient Magna Carta in estab-lishing fundamental English liberties, and the restored Monarchy guaranteed that absolute power was a thing of the past. In the reign of the new king, Charles II, Parliament enacted the Habeas Corpus Act and the swirling dissatisfaction of the country led to far more sweeping and revolutionary events, Indeed, this was the time of what has come to be known as the Glorious Revolution.

This was the uprising against James II, who had attempted to coerce England into surrendering both constitution and religion. Led by William of Orange, the Glorious Revolution toppled the Stuart dynasty and James fled to France in 1688. William of Orange now convened a convention that called for an elected Parliament which in turn met in 1689 to draw up the famous Declaration of Rights.

This document contained a list of the main principles of the constitution which had been violated by James II, with a statement that they were ancient and undoubted rights of the English people. It stigmatized the powers claimed by the late king to dispense with or suspend laws as illegal usurpations. It stated that every subject had a right to petition the king, and should not be molested for so doing. It stipulated for the frequent summoning of Parliaments, and for free speech and debate within the two Houses. The raising and maintenance of a standing army without the permission of Parlia-ment was declared illegal. In a clause recalling the most famous paragraph of Magna Carta, it was stated that all levying of taxes or loans without the consent of the representatives of the nation was illegal. The Declaration was afterwards confirmed and made permanent as the "Bill of Rights."

And there now arose an effort to philosophically and ideologically justify the stormy and revolutionary events of the chaos and uprising, the convulsions and rebellions against authority. And the man who became the philosopher-king of modern western, liberal, democratic man was the philosophical apologist for the Glorious Revolution, John Locke. But he was destined to be more than that. His arguments were to be set in the concrete of historical perma-nence and used by every revolutionary of his time and beyond. Those who rose up in the Americas against British rule leaned on Locke and those in France who guillotined Louis and Marie-An-toinette borrowed from his arguments.

And let it never be forgotten that the leaders of the State of Israel, who see in it a secular western democratic entity fully subscribe to the postulates of the man named Locke. Indeed, his treatises on government were written so as to provide a philosophical basis and justification for the Glorious Revolution, but they remain the cornerstone of modern, secular western democratic theory.

Locke's first point is that Man is, by nature, free. This "state of nature" is described by Locke as follows:

"To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man."

This being so, not only can no one-no authority-take away freedom from individual man without his consent, but the only legitimacy that government possesses derives from the individual's consent to a limitation on his own freedom. And this he does only in order to assure his safety and security, without which none of his rights would be safe. The threat from within and from without to his life and property, the "state of war" that threatens his "state of nature" leads him to agree to a social contract with government, under which he gives up the absolute freedom that is his natural state in return for protection from the state of war. And that power which he gives government is absolutely limited by the social contract to that which is good for the individual. In Locke's words:

"Men, being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. The only way whereby anyone divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one among another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties and a greater security against any that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the limberly of the state of nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated and make one body politic wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest."

And concerning governments:

"Their power, in the utmost bounds of it, is limited to the public good of the society. It is a power that has no other end but preservation, and therefore can never have to right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects."

The reason for giving up unlimited freedom, hence the sole raison d'etre for government and its legitimacy, is the preservation of property, as Locke says directly: Government has no other end but the preservation of property." And he adds: "The supreme power (government) cannot take from any man part of his property without consent."

One cannot emphasize too much the importance and centrality of this concept in the ideas of Locke and, down to this day in the western democratic ideology Government exists totally (or certainly primarily) to preserve the individual's right to hold and enjoy property. And government itself cannot take the individual's property without his consent.

Let it be written on the tablet of our hearts and minds that the epitome of "property" is surely the very body and life of the individual. If government is committed to preserving "property", then that 'property" means, first and foremost, life and body. We will return to that later.

And that which western liberal and democratic thinking has built, it also can dissolve. And so Locke lays down the rule that a breach of the social contract by government leads to a dissolution of the contract and an end to the legitimacy of government and its authority over the individual. Yes, western democratic thinking, to which Israel's secular leaders pay obeisance and homage, legitimizes and, indeed, blesses revolution and the rising up of the people against a government that betrayed its word. In the words of Locke:

"There is, therefore, secondly, another way whereby governments are dissolved, and that is when the legislative or the prince, either of them act contrary to their trust.

"First, the legislative acts against the trust reposes in them when they endeavor to invade the property of the subject, and to make themselves or any part of the community masters or arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties, or fortunes of the people.

"The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative is that there may be laws made and rules set as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society to limit the power and moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society; for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making. Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God has provided for all men against force and violence. Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty and, but the establishment of a new legislative such as they shall think fit, provide for their own safety and security which is the end for which they are in society."

The doctrine of revolution or rising up against a government that had turned illegitimate through the breaking of its word, through the dissolution of the social contract, is a fundamental one, that has been accepted as a kind of secular Holy Grail by the west and by the secular Israeli establishment that piously accepts its sacrament.

"The people are absolved from obedience when illegal attempts are made upon their liberties or properties,' declares Locke. Let us burn that into our memories as we contemplate the situation inside Israel and again let us never forget that "liberties and property" begin with the freedom to live in safety arid security.

The sermon of Locke on the English mount, spread rapidly throughout a worm in turmoil that eagerly used it as justification for rising up against the ancien regime, whether in Europe or across the sea, in the American colonies.

In the latter, men like Thomas Paine readily adopted the new ideas and concepts. Paine, in his "Common Sense", wrote:

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness…

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; For when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer… [Man]… finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerable follows, that whatever form thereof appears most likely to insure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others…

"Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too, is the design and end of government, viz. freedom and security."

And when the American colonists rebelled against the British monarchy of George III, they adopted the ideas of individual rights and that of rebellion in the Declaration of Independence.

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station, to which the Laws of Nature and of God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure their rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under Absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved…"

Perhaps an even more remarkable statement on the right of the people to rebel can be found in a better from Thomas Jefferson, main architect of the Declaration of Independence, written to William S. Paris On November 13, 1787. The United States of America was already established and in the difficult early years, a tax rebellion had been led in the state of Massachusetts by a war veteran named Daniel Shays. Jefferson devoted himself to this rebellion when he wrote:

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well-informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the fore-runner of death to the public liberty... And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is a natural manure."

Remarkable.

The American Revolution that declared that the authority of government was justified only if it preserved the rights of all individuals to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and which justified revolution when government violated its obligations, deeply influenced an angry and unhappy France which, itself, rose up in revolution, executing the king and queen and, in 1798, convened a National Assembly that produced a Declaration of the Rights of Man. These laid down "natural, sacred and inalienable rights," which were defined as "Liberty, Property, Security and Resistance to Oppression." The latter clearly implied that any government could be legitimately overthrown (as was the French monarchy) when it trampled upon individual liberty.

The spiritual philosopher of the French Revolution was Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose Social Contract was a kind of Bible for those who overthrew the ancien order Among Rousseau's ideas were:

"For to admit that Might makes Right is to reverse the process of affect and cause. The mighty man who defeats his rival becomes heir to his Right. So soon as we can disobey with impunity disobedience become legitimate. And, since the Mightiest is always right, it merely remains for us to become possessed of Might. But what validity can there be in a Right which ceases to exist when Might changes hands? If a man be constrained by Might to obey, what need has he to obey by Duty? And if he is not constrained to obey there is no further obligation on him to do so. It follows, therefore, that the word Right adds nothing to the idea of Might. It becomes, in this connection, completely meaningless…

"It must, then, be admitted that Might does not create Right, and that no man is under an obligation to obey any but the legitimate powers of the State."

And again:

"To say that a man gives himself for nothing is to commit oneself to an absurd and inconceivable statement. Such an act of surrender is illegitimate, null and void by the mere fact that he who makes it is not in his right mind. To say the same thing of a whole People is tantamount to admitting that the People in question are a nation of imbeciles. Imbecility does not produce Right.

"Even if a man can alienate himself, he cannot alienate his children. They are born free, their liberty belongs to them, and no one but themselves has a right to dispose of it. Before they have attained the age of reason their father may make, on their behalf, certain rules with a view to ensuring their preservation and well-being. But any such limitation of their freedom of choice must be regarded as neither irrevocable nor unconditional, for to alienate another~ liberty is contrary to the natural order, and is an abuse of the father's rights. it follows that an arbitrary government can be legitimate only on condition that each successive generation of subjects is free either to accept or to reject it, and ii this is so, then the government will no longer be arbitrary…

"Such services as the citizen owes to the State must be rendered by him whenever the sovereign demands. But the sovereign cannot lay upon its subjects any burden not necessitated by the well-being of the community."

This overview of modern western democratic thought is made for two reasons: One, because the situation inside Israel is rapidly disintegrating as attacks on Jews, combined with governmental failure or refusal to deal with the problem, threatens the safety and security of citizens there, a thing that many Jews may claim undermines the most basic obligation of government. Two, because Israel, as a secular, democratic state, accepts the above doctrine of freedom as warp and woof of its ideology Given this, it should not be surprising if voices-more and more-will arise to demand the implementation of the social contract in its entirety, and it would be difficult to understand the government of secular, western democracy rejecting the roots of its own alleged political philosophy.


9 Government in the Eyes of Judaism


One brief, but most important aside.

Sadly, tragically the state of Israel is not a Jewish one, in the sense that it rejects the halachic, Torah basis of Judaism. That the state and all those in it will suffer terrible tragedy because of this is clear, but for the moment, that is not the issue. What is important at this juncture is to understand the viewpoint of Judaism on the origins and authority of government and on the rights and obligations to authority by the individual.

In terms of Judaism, and its unique political system of authority and government, none of the above discussion of western, secular view of government is relevant. Judaism and the Jewish concept of government that is rooted in Jewish law know nothing of a social compactor contract as the basis of government. Judaism certainly does not draw its ideas from gentile philosophers and thinkers, and it establishes as the fundamental basis of government neither people nor ruler, It is certainly not democracy or oligarchy or monarchy or indeed any other "system" that is sacred in the eyes of the Jewish Torah, since the basis of government, just as with every other phase of human life, is the law of G~d.

For Judaism, the origin of the Jewish people as a nation is neither natural nor evolutionary and ultimate authority does not rest on anything that comes from within themselves but rather from a source from outside of themselves.

There is a precise moment in time when the Jewish people became a nation-and a particular, special one at that:

"Now, therefore, if you will obey My voice and guard My covenant then shall you be a special treasure unto me above all other peoples, for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation...

"And all the people answered together and said: All that the L~rd has spoken we will do…" (Exodus 19:5-8).

And the specific, directed and planned extra-natural moment of birth of the people was re-emphasized as Moses approached his death, when he said:

"You stand this day all of you before the L~rd your G~d, your heads of your tribes, your elders and your officers-all the men of Israel. Your little ones, your wives and the convert that is in your camp; from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water. In order that you should enter into the covenant of the L~rd your G~d and into His oath which the L~rd, your Gd makes with you this day That He may establish you this day as a people unto Himself and that He maybe unto you a G~d." (Deuteronomy 29:9-12).

That was the specific moment of creation of the Jewish people. It was a specific, supernatural planned moment of precise begin-ning and the creation came from outside of the people so that the ultimate authority and right to decide its fate and future comes not from its own wiIl-as with all others-but from the outside force that created it-G~d. The creation of the people was as the result of a treaty with G~d, and that treaty created a very special kind of people committed to obedience to the laws and statutes of G~d and to accepting the authority of the ultimate authority.

That ultimate authority is absolute and not subject to any limitations and contradictions. It is Malchut shamayim, the kingdom of heaven, and the Jew is exhorted to take upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven. As stated so succinctly in the Talmud:

"Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karcha said: Why does the paragraph of Sh'ma precede the paragraph of V'haya im shamoa (in the daily prayers)? In order that one might take upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven before taking upon himself the yoke of the commandments..." (Brachot II, 3).

Torah is the authority and its laws bind the Jew and govern him. In order that he may know and recognize his authority and his ultimate government, in order that he may recognize that the laws of the real authority are binding and unchallengeable, he pledges allegiance daily to the government, to the constitution, to the authority He pledges: "Hear O Israel, the L~rd our G~d, the L~rd is One." He pledges allegiance and takes upon himself, daily the yoke of the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven. The Torah laws. This is the ultimate authority of the Jewish people. Certainly there is a human, finite, natural government of men which carries out the daily law and order of the people. But just as the people themselves-who surely stand over their natural, elected leaders whom they choose to govern them-are subject to the ultimate authority of Torah Law, so too-and how much more so-is the government of the people which is ultimately inferior to the men who choose them, subjected to an inferior role vis-à-vis the ultimate authority of heaven, Even if we were to conclude that natural government stands in a position of pater familias to the people, it cannot ever be in a stronger position than the pater of the individual himself, concerning whom it is written:

"You shall fear, every man, his mother and his father and keep My Sabbaths; I am the L~rd, your G~d." (Leviticus 19:3)

And the Talmud (Yebamot 5) states:

"Is it possible that the honor of a father and mother shall take precedence over the Sabbath? No, for the verse says: You shall fear... All of you are obligated to honor Me."

And the great Commentator, Rashi, adds:

"Though I have warned you concerning the fear of parents, if they tell you to violate the Sabbath, do not listen. And thus is it with all the other commandments." (Leviticus, Ibid.)

And so is it with the government of the people of Israel, that government whose origin is derived from the Torah and whose major function is to preserve internal order and defend against external enemies so that the Jew may fulfill his heavenly duties in peace. The obligation to respect and obey natural government is clear but only to the extent that the government itself respects and obeys the Law, the constitution, the kingdom of heaven which is the ultimate authority for both the Jewish people and the govern-ment that it has chosen for itself.

The origin of Jewish government is found in Deuteronomy 17:15:

"You shall put over you a king whom the L~rd thy G~d shall choose."

And Maimonides brings down this commandment of government (Hilehot Mlachim 1:1) and explicitly defines the authority invested in the king and the respect that is due to him:

"The king is accorded great respect and his awe and fear are placed in the heart of every man… (Ibid, 2:1) Should anyone rebel against the king, the king has the right to kill him... and similarly should anyone be in contempt of or humiliate the king, the king has the right to kill him." (Ibid, 3:8).

The authority and power of the king, the government, are clear; as are the limitations:

"And it shall be, when he sits upon the throne of his kingdom that he shall write for himself a copy of this Mishne Torah [Deuteronomy]-and it shall be with him and he shall read from it all the days of his life, tat he may learn to fear the L~rd his G~d, to keep all the words of this Law and these statues to do them. That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren and that he turn not aside from the commandment, either to the right or to the left, so that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel." (Deuteronomy 17:18-20).

The people must respect and fear their government but their government, their king, must "learn to fear the L~rd, his G~d" and "turn not aside from the commandment."

The Torah stays with the king, physically lest he forget for one moment who is his king, who governs him. And the Prophet Samuel told the people as he appointed for them their first king:

"But if you shall do wickedly you shall be consumed, both you and your king." (Samuel 1, 12:25).

And the government, the king, indeed loses his authority and the right to rule when disobeying G~d:

"Then came the word of the L~rd unto Samuel, saying: I regret that I have set up Saul as king for he has turned back from following Me and not performed My word..." (Ibid. 15).

And Samuel faced his king, the government, and said:

"The L~rd has rent the kingdom of Israel from you this day…" (Ibid.)

The authority of the king, of government, rests on the assumption that the king will obey the higher authority When he disobeys it, his own authority is no longer valid and this is explicitly taught (Sanhedrin 49):

"It is written: 'Any man that shall disobey you and not hearken unto your words in all that you shall command him, shall die' (Joshua 1:18). Can this also apply to the words of the Torah [i.e. if the authority orders to disobey the words of the Torah]? No, for the verse says: Only be strong and courageous [to keep the Torah].'"

The explanation of Rashi is categorical:

"If the king desires to negate the words of the Torah, we do not listen to him."

Maimonides codifies this in Hilchot Mlachim 3:9, stating:

"If one disregards an order of the king because he is engrossed in mitzvot (commandments), even a minor mitzvah, he is free from sin for when faced with the words of the master (G~d) and the words of the servant (the king) the words of the master take precedence. And there is no need to say that if the king ordered him to negate a mitzvah that he does not listen to him."

The obligation to listen to, obey and respect the authority of government rests upon whether that government, in a particular case, is itself obeying the Torah, the need of the people. Thus we find (Bava Batra 4) the story of Herod killing the Rabbis in his fear that they would revolt against him. One, Bava ben Buta, was left alive after first being blinded. The paranoid Herod came to him, disguising his identity and urged him to curse Herod. Bava ben Butra objected, saying:

"It says: 'Thou shalt not curse a ruler amongst they people.'" (Exodus 22).

And Herod replies:

"But that is only if the ruler does acts that are acts of the people, and Herod does not."

And Bava Ben Butra accepted the argument saying only that he was afraid. "When the ruler does acts of the people." This is the criterion for not obeying the authority of the government in a particular case, and while people cannot simply take it upon themselves to decide that the government is not doing 'acts of the people' merely because their own political views differ, certainly the rule is clear when the government disobeys the Torah, thus guaranteeing disaster and suffering for the people.

Among the most basic of all concepts in Torah Judaism is that of life. When the Torah (Leviticus 18:5) decrees: "Ye shall keep My statutes and Mine ordinances, which if a man do, he shall live by them; I am the L~rd," the Rabbis (Talmud, Yuma 85b) declare:

"From whence do we know that the saving of a life transcends (the observance of) the Sabbath? Because it declares: 'Ye shall keep My statutes and Mine ordinances, which if a man do, he shall live by them.' (He shall live by them) and not die by them."

In Judaism there is a basic right to live, for the magnificent reason that there is a basic obligation to live, in order to carry out G~d's will. And certainly, it is the most basic of obligations in Judaism for the king or government to defend Jewish lives and property This is referred to as an obligatory war as Maimonides says (Hilchot Mlachim 5:1): "The king gives precedence to an obligatory war (as opposed to a voluntary one). And what is considered an obligatory war? The war against the seven (Canaanite) nations, the war against Amalek, and aiding Jews against an enemy that rises against them."

Indeed, it was for protection against their enemies that the Jews demanded that Samuel appoint for them a king, as they declared: (Samuel I, 8): "That we may also be like all the nations and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles."

Certainly that is a primary obligation of a king, of government, in Judaism. (And the reason that Samuel was angered at the request for a king was that the Jews, in asking for one, did so not because it was a commandment of G~d but because they rejected Samuel and desired to be like all the nations." (See Maimonides, Hilchot Mlachim 1:2)

And certainly when the king or government fails to protect the people from "the enemy that rises against them," in Judaism's eyes it has failed to live up to its obligation to the people. And certainly, when it refuses to allow the people to defend themselves and, indeed, jails those who do, it loses the right to demand of the people obedience to orders that go against the Torah command of self-preservation, of "he shall live by them" and not die by them.

The question of democracy itself, i.e. majority rule and the fact that a majority of Jews has the moral and legal right to decide any question and then demand acceptance of that decision, is discussed in Sanhedrin 26.

When Sennacherib and the Assyrians invaded the Land of Israel and surrounded
Jerusalem, a fierce debate erupted over whether to surrender or not. King Hezekiah, under the prodding of the Prophet Isaiah, refused to surrender despite the overwhelming strength of the mightiest empire of its day, one that swept over every nation it had faced. Shevna, a scribe, and one of the powers of the government, on the other hand, urged surrender. Each group took its cause to the people and this is the background for the following words of the Talmud:

"What does the concept kesher r'shayim, a band of wicked people, mean?

"Shevua gathered together and spoke to 130,000 people (who supported him) while Hezekiah gathered (only) 110,000 people. When Sennacherib laid siege to the city, Shevna wrote the following message and sent it by arrow to the enemy camp: 'Shevna and his party have capitulated; Hezekiah and his party have not.'

"Hezekiah was fearful and thought: 'Is it possible, heaven forbid, that G~d's will tends toward the majority and since the majority wishes to surrender, we must too?' Then there came to him a prophet and quoted the verse: 'Do not recognize as a band, all that which the people call a band; neither fear ye their fear nor be afraid.' (Isaiah 8:12) Meaning, this is a band of wicked people, and a band of wicked people is not counted"

A majority of those who go against the law of the Jewish people is not a majority and, indeed, it is they who have broken the law when they decide to oppose the law of the Jewish people to forbid that which is obligatory and oblige that which is forbidden. It is they who defy the law, it is they who break down order. It is they who create a jungle of anarchy and it is they who bring down disaster and Divine punishment on the Jewish people. It is not a question of Jews disobeying a government that defies the law but it certainly is a question of Jews who wish to obey the law, defying a government that violates the law while attempting to prevent Jews from obeying the law. It is a question of Jews demanding that the government, if it will not itself do what it should, allow, at least, individuals to do so.

It is a question of disregarding a majority that is not a majority, that is not counted, for it emerges from 'the band of wicked people.'

The Jewish concept of government is clear: The government exists to serve the state. The state exists to serve the people. The people exist to serve G~d. The moment that the people fail in their obligation, law and order breaks down and Divine punishment must follow. The moment that government opposes the law it creates anarchy and loses all moral and legal right to demand obedience from the citizen who desires to be law-abiding. When the government demands that a Jew disobey a law, he must disregard the illegal order.

When the government refuses to allow a Jew to obey a legal obligation, he must defy the illegal attempt.

Yes, this is halacha, and Israel is, unfortunately not a state of halacha, but much closer to a state of anarchy.

What emerges, however, is that despite the basic difference between Judaism and the secular concept of government, both are agreed upon upon one basic axiom:

Government is obligated to protect the lives and property of Jews who are threatened, and failure to do so is a basic breach of that obligation. Both Judaism and liberal, democratic western thought agree that the individual, in order to protect himself, may disregard a government that refuses to protect him, and that-worse-prevents him from saving himself.

The government must be prepared to expect individuals to raise these issues, and it must have answers for them.


10 Just and Unjust Laws


From time immemorial, men have defied the law of men, the Authority of their time, in the name of a higher Law, a higher Authority: and examples abound of civil disobedience to authority, based on conscience or a sense of injustice.

In ancient Greece, it was Antigone who is depicted as having defied an edict by the ruler, Creon, to forbid the burial of a Greek. For her, that decree meant a continued torture of the spirit, and so she consciously violated the rule. And throughout the ages, civil disobedience has raised its head and banner as 'the deliberate violation of law for a vital social purpose," (Howard Zinn, "DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY").

We have made Judaism's view of disobedience to temporal authority abundantly clear. Human authority that goes against the Law of G~d, is illegitimate. It is more than an unjust law, it is not a law at all.

Non-Jewish thinkers, in various ways, have agreed. Aquinas said flatly "an unjust law is no law at all." His words were echoed by Martin Luther King in his "LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL":

"One may well ask: 'How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would he the first to advocate obeying just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'"

It is certainly clear that an unjust law is not only not a law but that there is a moral right and, indeed, obligation, to stand up against it. And surely, there is not a decent human being who does not praise those Germans who rose against the legally elected Nazi government and all the others who defied totalitarian regimes no matter how "legal" they may have been in terms of their support on the part of the majority population.

Nor is the fact that a society is nominally democratic," i.e. that it has a framework that allows for change, any necessary bar to defiance of unjust laws or policy. Certainly the United States of the nineteenth century had the political system to outlaw slavery, and nevertheless John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry and the citizen who aided slaves to escape their legal masters showed that many American5 had no patience with the theoretical opportunity to effect legal, ordered, political change, when injustice thrived at that moment.

It is certainly true that the United States had the framework for electoral and political change during the era of civil disobedience that was the hallmark of both the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam demonstrations, and indeed, it certainly was argued that change could and should have been made through the electoral process. Nevertheless, the advocates of civil disobedience pointed out that riot only was the reality of the political system one that gave the establishment a terribly unfair advantage over those who sought change; not only was it terribly unjust to have people continue to suffer injustice while the mills of the politicians ground slowly but there was something far more fundamental involved here:

Unjust laws were not simply the target of change through the political process. For those who defied them, they did not exist. By definition, they were not laws, hence, in opposing them one was not violating anything.

Certainly, logic dictates that opposition to injustice and to threats to basic rights and life can take many forms, perhaps any form. In that sense the term "civil disobedience" is a wide one and has been so defined. "Among the forms civil disobedience has taken have been revolution, regicide, 'underground resistance,' riots, strikes, picketing, refusal to obey superior orders, boycotts of commodities, hunger strikes, freedom rides, marches, sit-ins, protest meetings, and simply non-compliance." (Mark R. MacGuigan, "Civil Disobedience and Natural Law," Catholic Lawyer 11(1965): 120).

Others such as Gandhi and King limit the concept to public non-violent violation of law. It is evident that there is more of practicality than logic to this latter definition. Surely, if injustice exists, and people suffer because of it, why should civil disobedience be limited to non violent violation of law? Indeed, violation of the law of the state is, itself, such a serious thing, such a threat to the stability of the political order, that one wonders what makes the addition of "violence," a thing that is verboten?

It is obvious that those who limited and limit civil disobedience to non-violent confrontation and disobedience understood that on the one hand it would be much more difficult for the state to take the kind of oppressive and brutal actions to crush it (that it would so like to use) and on the other hand the chances of gaining sympathy of large numbers of citizens are much greater when there is no violence involved. And that is what comes through from the words of Gandhi when he writes: "We must therefore give its full and therefore greater value to the adjective 'civil' than to "disobedience.' Disobedience without civility, discipline, discrimination, non-violence is certain destruction."

Pragmatism far more than morality or logic is clearly what lies at the basis of those who demand non-violence as the rationale for violating the law. Yet, no matter how one attempts to avoid the unpleasant implications, civil disobedience is defiance of authority, a violation of the law and a shaking of order, albeit as a form of resistance to the unlawful actions or policy of the state. Violence merely raises that action to a different plane, but whether accompanied by violence or not, defiance of authority and its law of any kind involves a shaking of the basis of society The question however is: Is society more important than justice? Does authority per se, stand higher than the laws and policy it imposes upon the people?

Henry David Thoreau became the symbol of civil disobedience in the United States in the nineteenth century opposing both the Mexican War and slavery. He refused to pay his poll tax to the State of Massachusetts and because of this spent a night in jail. Not perhaps the most dramatic of suffering or martyrdom but the point was made. Thoreau had deliberately defied the authority of the government.

It was part of a far wider defiance of the authority of the government of the United States. At an anti-slavery meeting in Framingham on July 4,1854, William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the Abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator burned the U.S. Constitution as "a covenant with death and hell." When the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 made it legally incumbent on Northerners to act as slave catchers, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "I will not obey it, by G~d" indeed, not only did American citizens refuse to obey the law of the land and catch the fugitive slaves, but a well organized "underground railway" was established to help the slaves flee to Canada. An entire section of the American population was knowingly and readily defying authority.

In October 1859, the abolitionist John Brown seized the U.S. Arsenal at Harper's Ferry in Virginia in an attempt to arm and free the slaves. He was captured and executed, but to the Abolitionists, this man and his act of sedition were the stuff of martyrdom, courage and the rising up against the injustice of the state.

It was Thoreau who laid the philosophical basis for defiance of government of his time, writing: 'Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are not good?" And again: "Let each inhabitant of the state dissolve his union with her so long as she delays to do her duty."

In his classic "ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE" Thoreau wrote:

"Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient."

Asking the question, "Must the citizen even for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?" He contemptuously described the citizens of the land in this way:

"The mass of men serve the state, not as men mainly, but as machines with their bodies... Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses or dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. A very few... serve the state with their consciences, also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it."

And then Thoreau touches on a vitally important historical point, one that is so often overlooked. So many great revolutions, including the American one, came into being for property rights. And noting this, Thoreau asks, if that is a reason to revolt, is there not an even greater reason to rise up for such moral issues as slavery in the United States and what he saw as an imperialist war against Mexico:

"All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its efficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think in the Revolution of '75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them. All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize."

Thoreau moves on to touch upon the question of patiently using the system to amend and reform evil rather than turning to rebellion or civil disobedience:

"As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad, A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and un-conciliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserve it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death, which convulse the body.

"I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have a God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already."

It is an ironic thing, of course, that Thoreau supported a pro-posal to have Massachusetts secede from the United States over the existence of slavery while the whole South did secede over the attempt to limit and bar slavery Both used the argument that an unjust and tyrannical state could not impose its will on the cow science of citizens. Both said that there were certain inalienable rights of the individual that were inviolate. Thoreau spoke of the inviolability of freedom. The South spoke of the inviolability of property.

Thoreau became the guru for rebels with all manners of causes in the United States, and his clear sanction of revolt and civil disobedience became a very real thing in the turbulent years of the battle over Civil Rights and Vietnam that began In the latter half of the 1950's and continued through until past 1970. The United Slates authority was shaken in those years as never since the Civil War. Civil disobedience, whether in its non-violent form of Martin Luther King or in its very violent Chicago riots, defied the law, defied authority, and challenged the state and what it perceived as its immoral laws and policies.

Martin Luther King, a young Black minister from a pastoral family in Atlanta, became the apostle of non-violent civil disobedience as the battle for civil rights erupted in the United States in the 1950's. Again, while his adulators emphasize the non-violent aspect of his life, it should not be forgotten that what mattered more in terms of the success he achieved, was the civil disobe-dience, the breaking of laws considered to be immoral or unjust. King, himself was quite clear about this, saying:

"There is nothing that expressed massive civil disobedience any more than the Boston Tea Party and yet we give this to our young people and our students as a part of the great tradition of our nation. So I think we are in good company when we break unjust laws and I think those who are willing to do it and pay the penalty are those who are part of the saving of the nation."

The concept of mass civil disobedience was, for King, the most effective way to force government to change. Thus he wrote:

"Mass civil disobedience as a new stage of struggle can transmute the deep rage of the ghetto into a constructive and creative force. To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer, costly to the larger society but not wantonly destructive. Finally it is a device of social action that is more difficult for the government to quell by superior force."

By any other name, Martin Luther King was talking of rebellion against the unjust laws of government. For that he won a Nobel Peace Prize arid became only the second man in American history whose birthday became a national holiday. His name is fairly sacred in the halls of the liberal and humanist camps. And why? For defying the authority of the state in the name of freedom.

The defiance of American governmental authority that eventually led to such sweeping changes in American society began on December 1, 1955 with the breaking of the law by Mrs. Rosa Parks, a simple Black seamstress. The Montgomery, Alabama City Bus Lines required Blacks to sit and stand at the rear of the buses even if there were empty seats in the front section, reserved for Whites. Parks, sitting in the first row behind the section reserved for Whites, was ordered to get up and give her seat to a white man. She refused and was arrested. History was now about to be made as an unjust law was defied and broken.

King, who was pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, offered his church for a meeting of Black community leaders. There, a decision was made to break yet another law. It was decided to boycott the bus line unless it changed its segre-gated seating system. There was, of course, an anti-boycott law on the books of the state of Alabama, but again-a struggle for justice took precedence over the laws of an unjust authority King was jailed, tried and found guilty of violating the law. M. L. King, case number 7399, had ruled that defiance of illegal unjust authority was moral.

On October 29, 1960, Black students launched what they called "the Second Battle of Atlanta," invading segregated department stores and food counters. King was arrested for breaking the law.

In 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched what it called Freedom Rides across the South to challenge the segregation laws. Hundreds were arrested for challenging the authority of local and state governments.

In Albany Georgia, in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama; in Jackson, Mississippi, Black and White civil rights activists broke laws over and over again and were arrested. King was sentenced to five days in prison for contempt of court. Nine hundred Black children, some as young as seven and eight, marched in Birmingham without a permit and were arrested. The next day a larger march was attacked by police with water hoses. Blacks in anger threw bricks and bottles at the police who charged into the crowd, loosing vicious dogs.

Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights activists broke the law, disrupted law and order, challenged government and authority and King became an international hero. In response to the question, why not "wait' and change the law legally and peacefully, he said:

"For years now we have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings in the ear of the Negro with piercing familiarity. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say 'Wait.' But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness'-then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."

The argument for civil disobedience and the defying of govern-ment, law and authority was stated by King in terms of the right of people to demand freedom and justice in the face of injustice and inequality In three different writings he declared:

"It is time that we stopped our blithe lip service to the guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These fine sentiments are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, but that document was always a declaration of intent rather than of reality... Negro agitation is requiring America to reexamine its comforting myths and may yet catalyze the drastic reforms that will save us from social catastrophe.

"There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by oppression, There comes a time when people get tired of being plunged into the abyss of exploitation and bagging injustice. The story of Montgomery is the story of fifty thousand such Negroes who were willing to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery until the walls of segregation were finally battered by the forces of justice.

"Our freedom was not won a century ago, it is not won today; but some small part of it is in our hands, and we are marching no longer by ones and twos but in legions of thousands, convinced now it cannot be denied by any human force.

"Today the question is not whether we shall be free but by what course we will win. In the recent past our struggle has had two phases. The first phase began in the early 1950's when Negroes slammed the door shut on submission and subservience. Adapting nonviolent resistance to conditions in the United States, we swept into Southern streets to demand our citizenship and manhood. For the South, with its complex system of brutal segregation, we were inaugurating a rebellion. Merely to march in public streets was to rock the status quo to its roots. Boycotting buses in Montgomery; demonstrating in Birmingham, the citadel of segregation; and defying guns, dogs, and clubs in Selma, while maintaining disciplined nonviolence, totally confused the rulers of the South. Ii they let us march, they admitted their lie that the black man was content. If they shot us down, they told the world they were inhuman brutes."

The struggle in the United States over the Vietnam War led to a whole host of acts of civil disobedience ranging from the burning of draft cards, the refusal to serve in the army, the blocking of troop trains, the taking over of campus buildings (sometimes with deans and professors locked in) and, of course, real rioting and bitter violence as at the 968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. The Catonsville Nine destroyed draft records as did the so-called East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives. They claimed that they wished "to disrupt functioning of the machine of death and oppression."

One of the leaders of the anti-Vietnam War protests was William Sloane Coffin, Jr., who wrote:

"I think we must recognize that massive civil disobedience to the war would represent not only an effort to arouse a confused and inert public, but really a form of jiu-jitsu, an effort on the part of the minority to morally coerce the majority into a greater consciousness of the issues of the war."

One of King's most telling points was that "waiting" was ineffective because the Authority government does not wish to move swiftly to undo the injustice and change policy. Thus, in August, 1967 he declared: "Our real problem is that there is no disposition by the administration or Congress to seek fundamental remedies."

In light of this and all the above, Jews in the Jewish State have every reason to ask:

If the great thinkers who laid the groundwork for the relationship between government and individual agreed that man has the right to rise up against an Authority that robs him of his rightful property;

If the men democracies honor so-Locke and Rousseau and Jefferson and Thoreau and King-cried out the moral and natural right of people to defy government over freedom, equality, morality and property;

If the right to challenge, defy, disobey and fight against Authority is valid even in issues that do not involve a real threat to life and existence-

Is it not then certainly valid and just and obligatory to defy an Authority that lays down a policy that threatens the very lives of citizens!

Is it not legitimate to challenge an Authority which is either unable or unwilling to put an end to a terror that takes the lives of citizens and that threatens the very existence of the state?

Is not the most basic right the right to life and is not the essence of property the possession that is life?

Is not a government that endangers life through its inept policy and that then prevents the citizen from exerting all means at his command to insure that life, a government that has lost legitimacy and that must be challenged?

And if a law or laws can be a reason for defiance of government, what shall be the fate of an Authority whose entire policy threatens the lives of people?

Surely these are question that are legitimate, though, in the present State of Israel, they are more than capable of inviting arrest. What is important, however, at this point is to know that a challenge to official Authority in the Land of Israel in recent history is nothing new.