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Rodef
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A rodef (Hebrew ????, lit. "pursuer"; pl. ??????, rodefim), in traditional Jewish law, is one who is "pursuing" another to murder him or her. According to Jewish law, such a person must be killed by any bystander after being warned to stop and refusing. The source for this law is the Tractate Sanhedrin in the Babylonian Talmud, page 73a, which begins:
And these are the ones whom one must save even with their lives [i.e., killing the wrongdoer]: one who pursues his fellow to kill him [rodef akhar khaveiro lehargo], and after a male or a bethrothed maiden [to rape them]; but one who pursues an animal, or desecrates the Sabbath, or commits idolatry are not saved with their lives.
This law, the din rodef ("law of the pursuer"), is significant as one of the few provisions in Jewish law permitting extrajudicial killings.
The allowance to kill the rodef does not apply, however, in a case where lesser means would prevent the innocent's murder.
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Encyclopedia
A rodef (Hebrew ????, lit. "pursuer"; pl. ??????, rodefim), in traditional Jewish law, is one who is "pursuing" another to murder him or her. According to Jewish law, such a person must be killed by any bystander after being warned to stop and refusing. The source for this law is the Tractate Sanhedrin in the Babylonian Talmud, page 73a, which begins:
And these are the ones whom one must save even with their lives [i.e., killing the wrongdoer]: one who pursues his fellow to kill him [rodef akhar khaveiro lehargo], and after a male or a bethrothed maiden [to rape them]; but one who pursues an animal, or desecrates the Sabbath, or commits idolatry are not saved with their lives.
This law, the din rodef ("law of the pursuer"), is significant as one of the few provisions in Jewish law permitting extrajudicial killings.
The allowance to kill the rodef does not apply, however, in a case where lesser means would prevent the innocent's murder. Furthermore, according to the Rambam, killing a rodef who may have been stopped by lesser means constitutes murder, though the punishment for a murderer in this case is not dealt out by Beit din.
Modern Controversy
Yitzhak Rabin
In recent years, a number of rabbis have allegedly suggested that various public figures could qualify as rodefim, arguably encouraging one to kill. Perhaps most notoriously, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was branded a rodef by some for the Oslo Accord, an agreement for which he was assassinated in 1995. The assassin, Yigal Amir, subsequently justified his actions partly on the basis of din rodef, under the assumption that making concessions to the Palestinians would endanger Jewish lives.
The Oslo Accords were controversial within Israel and divided the population due to the extensive change in government policy regarding negotiations with then Israeli designated terrorist organizations, such as the PLO.
Avigdor Neventzhal
Other instances have occurred. In 2005, for instance, prominent Israeli Rabbi Avigdor Neventzhal stated that "it should be known that anyone who wants to give away Israeli land is like a rodef", triggering an outcry and a special debate in the Knesset.
Geoffrey Alderman
In early 2009, Geoffrey Alderman engaged in another controversy, when he argued that according to Jewish religious law, every Palestinian in Gaza who voted for Hamas was a legitimate target. He articulated his position in a
debate with rabbi David J Goldberg in The Guardian's commentary section He argues that according to the Halaka "it is entirely legitimate to kill a rodef – that is to say, one who endangers the life of another – and this is true, incidentally, even if the rodef has not yet actually taken another life".
Furthermore, he argues that
It seems clear to me from a commonsense reading of this passage [Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, folio 73a] that the concept of a rodef encompasses those who advocate or incite the murder of Jews. Every Gazan citizen who voted for Hamas must – surely – come within this category, because Hamas as a movement is explicitly committed to the destruction, not simply of Israel, but of the Jewish people.
John Hagee
In his books, American pastor John Hagee claims that when Jeremiah prophesied in the Bible that "I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks," he was foreseeing The Holocaust. "The hunter is one who pursues his target with force and fear," Hagee writes. "No one could see the horror of the Holocaust coming, but the force and fear of Hitler's Nazis drove the Jewish people back to the only home that God ever intended for the Jews to have—Israel." He has made the same claim in a sermon..
Hagee's interpretation of the historical role of Hitler and the Holocaust in relation to the foundation of the state of Israel has also caused offense. Hagee interprets these passages as symbols of positive motivation (Herzl and Zionism) and negative motivation (Hitler and Nazism) respectively, both sent by God for the purpose of having Jews return to the land of Israel, even suggesting that the Holocaust was willed by God because most Jews ignored Hertzl's Zionist call.
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