April 26, 2009

Israel's Divine Right to Slaughter Palestinians

I have copied Deuteronomy 20:1-20, a chapter titled in the NIV as "Going to War." I have substituted "Palestine" for "your enemies" and some other words to bring the passage more up to date.

"When you go to war against the Palestinians and see rocket propelled grenades and suicide bombers and an army, do not be afraid of them, because the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt, will be with you. When you are about to go into battle, the priest shall come forward and address the army. He shall say: 'Hear, o Israel, today you are going into battle against your enemies. Do not be fainthearted or afraid; do not be terrified or give way to panic before them. For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory.'...

"When you march up to attack Gaza, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock, and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

"However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them - the Arabs in Palestine - as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping Allah, and you will sin against the Lord your God.

"When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting and ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees of the field people, that you should besiege them? However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls."

Lots of other rules and decrees follow. Then Deuteronomy ends the long section in 31:9-13 which reads:

So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to the all the elders of Israel. Then Moses commanded them: "At the end of every seven years, in the year for canceling debts, during the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place he will choose, you shall read this law before them in their hearing. Assemble the people - men, women, and children, and the aliens living in your towns - so they can listen and learn to fear the Lord your God and follow carefully all the words of this law. Their children, who do not know this law, must hear it and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess."

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