Q&A: Permission to kill someone who tries to physically stop construction work on a railway line
Permission to kill someone who tries to physically stop construction work on a railway line
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Recently it was reported in the news that extremist Haredim are trying to physically stop the construction work on the Jerusalem light rail on certain streets. This includes getting under trucks, using babies and strollers to stop bulldozers, etc. In your opinion, is it permissible to continue the work knowing that the rioters will die as a side effect? And what about their babies? It reminds me of what you wrote about killing a thief even on the Sabbath—that if a person makes cynical use of Jewish law against you, Jewish law freezes itself in such a case.
Best regards,
Answer
I don’t think there is permission to kill them. But certainly to beat them properly and arrest them, put them on trial, and punish them according to the law.
If a person threatens me so that I’ll give him a shekel, I’m allowed to shoot him, because at the end of the day he is threatening my life. But if a person is merely pressuring me to give him a shekel, there is no permission to kill him.
If there is a significant public need and they place themselves under the trucks and there is no other way to carry it out, then there is certainly permission to continue as usual after a warning, and if they still place themselves under the truck, let them bear the consequences.
As a side note, the freezing I spoke about applies to prohibitions of Jewish law. But morally it is not proper to kill in such a situation (it is disproportionate).
Discussion on Answer
There is no fundamental problem with that. It is very advisable to warn him that you intend to continue. If he decides to commit suicide, that’s his problem.
That is both morally and halakhically. Legally, you need to ask jurists, and I assume it is forbidden.
Why is it considered proportionate here?
For some reason I had it in my head that we were talking about killing the demonstrators, and about that I wrote that it is disproportionate. Here we are not talking about proportionality but about continuing to drive after warning the demonstrator. If he insists on lying there, he is committing suicide and I did not kill him. Therefore here the consideration of proportionality is not the main one (though of course it also exists).
Beyond that, the state and public bodies have ways to restore order there by means of the police. So there, there is no justification for continuing to run them over. Here we are talking about a private individual.
But this is really a general answer to an overly general situation. It depends very much on the circumstances (how urgent it is for me, how much pain that person is in and how justified he is, how many other ways he has to express his pain and protest, whether I have other options, and so on).
“If he insists on lying there, he is committing suicide and I did not kill him.”
Did anyone understand that sentence?
By the way, sometimes there are road blockages. Suppose I’m the first car. Is it okay to press the gas little by little and push against a person so that he moves?