What Could Be More Murderous than Religious Fanaticism?

Originally published: May 12, 2026

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

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What Could Be More Murderous than Religious Fanaticism?

Dawkins, in his book ‘The God Delusion,’ especially in Chapter Seven, preaches (in a way that would put no priest to shame) on behalf of the common myth that religiosity is generally less moral than its alternative (and certainly not more so). He argues, like many others here, that throughout history many murders were committed on religious grounds. By contrast, humanistic-liberal atheism, in his view, is the most moral ideal, certainly on the practical plane.

Beyond the significant contradictions and various flaws in his remarks, I want to point to a different aspect that deserves attention. At least in our region, and perhaps in the world generally as well, the most dangerous killer is the combination of these two. When, on the one hand, there is fundamentalist Islam, and opposite it stands liberal, humanistic secularism, that is a proven recipe for mass murder. On both sides, incidentally. And our Sages already said of this: it takes two to tango (ibid., ibid.).

Many who aspire to peace and to preventing harm to innocent people try with all their might to prevent violent actions in general, and especially those involving harm to innocents. That was the case during the intifada; it was also the case in Operation ‘Defensive Shield,’ in which about twenty reservists were killed because the IDF did not bomb Jenin from the air but chose instead to enter it on the ground; and so too among the fringes of Israeli society with respect to Operation ‘Cast Lead.’

It is important to note that the broad Israeli (or, more precisely, Jewish) consensus surrounding this operation was generally based on the view that harm to innocent people is justified when it is carried out out of the necessity of self-defense. In order to save myself, I may sometimes harm another person, even if this involves harming the innocent people around him (not a simple claim, and on its face perhaps even mistaken as a matter of Jewish law).

Although I completely identify with the above (also from the standpoint of Jewish law, though this is not the place to elaborate), I want to try to persuade even those who do not agree. My claim is that harming innocents in such situations is justified, if only because this is the most effective way to save as many lives as possible—innocent and non-innocent alike, both theirs and ours.

A policy of restraint and self-restraint can exact a heavy price, and in fact it often does. A more forceful response to the intifada, without unnecessary restraints, would indeed have led to painful harm to more innocent people, but in the long run it is entirely plausible that it would have saved many lives, Palestinian and Israeli. When an intifada nearly broke out in Rafah, the Egyptians killed about fifty Palestinians, and it died out immediately. What would have happened if they had had a liberal left-wing force that prevented this? In all likelihood, over the years hundreds, perhaps thousands, would have been killed there as well—Egyptians and Palestinians alike—just as with us.

What would have happened if we had not shown restraint over the last eight years, and had not bottled up our anger and frustration at the rockets flying at us day in and day out? What would have happened if we had responded to the first rockets with immediate fury and killed a hundred Hamas operatives in a bombing, and along with them (if there had been no choice) a few dozen civilians as well? Everyone, of course, would have protested—in Israel and abroad—over the killing of innocents and the lack of proportionality. Anyone with a heart, here as anywhere else, would have been deeply pained by it. But is it not plausible that in this way we would have spared the deaths of seven hundred Palestinian civilians in Operation ‘Cast Lead,’ not to mention the dozens of casualties on both sides over those years?

And what if we had not killed Shehadeh because of the price of harming the civilians around him? Many on our side would likely have been harmed as a result of his ‘blessed’ actions, but no fewer on their side as well, as a result of our own equally ‘blessed’ retaliatory and preventive actions.

Thus, restraint and self-control are not always the right way to prevent harm to innocents. Sometimes one must desecrate one Sabbath in order to preserve many Sabbaths (Yoma 85b). This gives a different meaning to our Sages’ statement that one who is merciful to the cruel will in the end be cruel to the merciful (Midrash Tanhuma, Metzora 1). Here I do not mean a psychological process, but a physical outcome.

The ironic conclusion of my remarks is that there is only one thing more murderous than fanatical religiosity and than liberal atheism: the combination of the two. For Dawkins’s attention, and for all of ours…

Source (news1): https://m.news1.co.il/Archive/003-d-35055-00.html?AfterBan=1

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