Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, head of the Yeshivat Hesder [in which students also serve in the army] in Petach Tikva, shared with Arutz-7 today his feelings about Thursday\'s death of five Arab boys in Gaza who were playing with an Israeli-placed mine:
\"By way of introduction, I will say that the Torah teaches us that not everything is permitted in wartime. We must always balance between our obligation to fight the enemy and at the same time not to endanger innocent people. The details of this particular incident are still unclear, but it appears that the army placed the bomb in a place where terrorists often fire mortar shells at Israel. The question is whether the army knew that children would be playing there. If the army did know this, then it would have been forbidden to place the bomb there - unless the enemy was using the children as a ploy, in which case it becomes a very delicate question... In the case at hand, where children were in fact killed, to my great sorrow, I believe that the army should not only apologize, but should also do something such as paying compensation in order to make clear the difference between us and our enemies and to show our clear obligation to ethics.\"
When asked to elaborate, Rabbi Cherlow said that if it was a simple choice between the safety of \"our children against that of the enemy\'s children, it is clear that we opt for the former... The operative assumption of the army must be not to endanger innocent people unless it is clear that there is no other choice... It is true that the entire situation is their fault, and from that point of view the other side does not deserve compensation. But I am not talking about whose fault it is, but rather whose responsibility it is. In this case, we killed five children as a result of an action that failed, and therefore I feel an obligation to do what we can to make up for this, even though it\'s not our \'fault.\' This is exactly the difference between our ethical values and theirs. It is a matter between us and G-d, not between us and the Arabs... This of course should not deter us from waging all-out war on our enemies, based on the above principle: safeguarding innocents unless there is no other choice.\"
\"By way of introduction, I will say that the Torah teaches us that not everything is permitted in wartime. We must always balance between our obligation to fight the enemy and at the same time not to endanger innocent people. The details of this particular incident are still unclear, but it appears that the army placed the bomb in a place where terrorists often fire mortar shells at Israel. The question is whether the army knew that children would be playing there. If the army did know this, then it would have been forbidden to place the bomb there - unless the enemy was using the children as a ploy, in which case it becomes a very delicate question... In the case at hand, where children were in fact killed, to my great sorrow, I believe that the army should not only apologize, but should also do something such as paying compensation in order to make clear the difference between us and our enemies and to show our clear obligation to ethics.\"
When asked to elaborate, Rabbi Cherlow said that if it was a simple choice between the safety of \"our children against that of the enemy\'s children, it is clear that we opt for the former... The operative assumption of the army must be not to endanger innocent people unless it is clear that there is no other choice... It is true that the entire situation is their fault, and from that point of view the other side does not deserve compensation. But I am not talking about whose fault it is, but rather whose responsibility it is. In this case, we killed five children as a result of an action that failed, and therefore I feel an obligation to do what we can to make up for this, even though it\'s not our \'fault.\' This is exactly the difference between our ethical values and theirs. It is a matter between us and G-d, not between us and the Arabs... This of course should not deter us from waging all-out war on our enemies, based on the above principle: safeguarding innocents unless there is no other choice.\"