The morality of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Have a good week Rabbi,
I wanted to ask about the issue of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 1945). On the one hand, the American decision led to the rapid surrender of Japan and the end of a war that claimed millions of lives; on the other hand, it was a deliberate bombing of a civilian population – an act that, by today’s accepted standards (for example, in relation to Iranian missile firing on population centers), is defined as a war crime.
- Do you think these bombings were moral?
- How do you reconcile a basic principle of distinguishing between combatants and civilians with the claim that the entire population was considered a “persecuted collective” because of its contribution to the war effort?
- Was there an exception to the rule “he could save him with one of his limbs” here?
- In today’s context: How does the justification put forward then differ from the justifications put forward today by regimes that deliberately harm citizens in order to achieve their political/strategic goals?
Thank you in advance for your consideration,
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If we take the recent war with Iran as a case study and try to judge the Iranians by their own standards, the Iranians fired on civilian concentrations to hit the Israeli rear in order to put pressure on the Israeli leadership to stop the fighting, assuming that hitting the Israeli rear would bring maximum pressure to bear on the leadership. Is such firing on civilians justified?
No, because their war is unjustified. What did we do to them? I said there are two conditions for harming civilians: that the war is justified (you are being unjustly threatened and need to defend yourself) and that harming civilians is necessary for victory.
I mean the Iranians' view that war is justified. Was their deliberate targeting of civilians justified?
According to the Nazis, killing Jews was justified. Obviously, according to those who think that x is justified, x is justified. The Iranians think that their war is justified and they also think that harming civilians is justified. So you're asking me what I think on assumption A without assumption B? What's the point of such a discussion?
There are two separate questions here: is the war justified, and even assuming that the war is justified, is it justified to fire missiles at civilians to get the other side to stop fighting?
I say it again. In my opinion, the war is certainly not justified, but in their opinion it is. But in their opinion there is also no problem with bombing enemy civilians, so what is the point of the discussion?!
Let's ask the opposite question: if in the future we are at war against an enemy who has military, technological, and intelligence superiority over us, would it be moral to bomb its citizens indiscriminately in order to put pressure on it to stop fighting against us?
If he is threatening us unjustly, and we have no other way to eliminate the threat, then yes. It is what I wrote.
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