The Orlando attack
Hello Rabbi Michi, I wanted to ask, did the attacker do a good deed? After all, this club is against the will of God, and probably the culture and ideology behind it as well. Beyond the other acts of ISIS, is this specific act positive?
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0 Answers
First, even if people commit an act that requires the death penalty (such as having sex with a man), it requires evidence (two witnesses) and a decision by a qualified court. A private individual cannot make a judgment on their own. Second, such actions that aim to have a social impact should be examined according to their results. It is clear that such an act will only have bad results even in terms of the matter itself (preventing the crime), and therefore there is no justification for doing it.
In many cases, the act is done out of hot blood and not to achieve the desired benefit. When it is done recklessly and it is clear that it will not achieve its goal, these are indications that the act was not done with discretion. Murder without discretion is never a good deed. In my understanding, even the law “zealous people harm him” was not stated in a way that would be done without thought (Phinchas asked Moshe before deciding to do the deed).
In short, an evil act in every respect. Is it conceivable that anyone who we believe acts against the will of God, and even if he truly acts against His will, should be murdered? Murder is also against the will of God.
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Asker (another):
Following this question,
You wrote: “Murder not out of discretion is never a good deed.” In the post about the soldier who shot you, you said that one should separate the act itself from the motives for it. For example: If someone had murdered Hitler not out of discretion, and even out of bad intentions (say, greed for money), would that make the act of murder a bad deed? (The same applies to Yael and Sisera).
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Rabbi:
definitely. It was a bad act with good results. A moral act is always an act done out of consideration and not as an instinct. Instinct is an animal response. See the fourth notebook, part three.
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Asks:
In the comments to the post about the shooting soldier, you seem to have said otherwise, below is a quote:
“This is similar to a court that sentences a person to death, and the executioner kills him because he hates him. Is the executioner’s act wrong? In my opinion, no. Perhaps his motives are wrong, but not his actions. It is a flaw in personality but not a crime in action. This is similar to what some recent scholars (the Netziv and the Rai) wrote, that a crime in its own right is permissible only where the perpetrator’s intention is to fulfill a mitzvah. I completely disagree with them. The question is whether the act is justified, not what his intention was. If the act is justified in the circumstances, even if he did it for another reason, the act is right and permissible and desirable to do.”
“The soldier is judged for his actions and not his intentions. Only the opposite is true, that if he committed a criminal act with non-criminal intentions, he is not criminally guilty. But there is no room for accusation of the crime of a correct act with criminal intent.”
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Rabbi:
When the executioner kills a person because he hates him, he is doing the right thing and with permission, but on the other hand there is hatred in his heart. Here we are talking about an act that, even if it is right, is done without permission and without a decision.
And even if this act is positive (assuming for the sake of discussion that it is indeed positive. I don’t think so) it was done with criminal intent (because killing without an informed decision is murder), exactly the opposite of a negative act without criminal intent.
In the discussion about the soldier, the assumption is that he decided to kill the terrorist intentionally and did not do it out of the warmth of his heart. Still, on a legal level, he did it without authority and there is no legal protection for him here, but such an act, in my opinion, is definitely moral.
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