Q&A: To commit suicide or be killed in order to protect existential state secrets
To commit suicide or be killed in order to protect existential state secrets.
Question
Someone serving in a highly classified position involving secrets that are existential for the state.
There is a (remote) concern of falling captive and revealing secrets due to torture
or impairment of the ability to think and exercise judgment through drugs and the like.
Is it permitted / appropriate / obligatory to commit suicide?
Or at the moment of being taken captive, if someone resists she will probably be shot by the enemy terrorists — is it appropriate to resist (though sometimes by resisting one can be saved)?
The question is also one of Jewish law, values, and morality.
And what, as a father, am I supposed to tell her in advance as advice?
Answer
If there is concern for danger to other people’s lives, it seems to me that suicide is permitted, and perhaps even appropriate. Resisting capture while risking death is certainly permitted, and indeed very appropriate.