The Gods of War
opinionjournal.com
"Through history, holy days have often served as opportunities to attack."
BY PAUL JOHNSON
Monday, April 1, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST
That the murder of 22 Jews by a suicide
bomber last week took place on one of the
holiest days of the Jewish calendar was
certainly part of the terrorist calculation. So
was the Yom Kippur War launched without
warning by Egypt. Such timing gives the
surprise aggressor a marginal advantage,
for law-abiding and religious-minded
people still persist in believing that a
sacred day, whether the weekly day of rest
or a special feast, has its own penumbra of
peace and security, which gives them
protection.
Yet all the evidence of history shows such
a belief is an illusion. The spirit of war
nearly always overcomes religious taboos,
if the military advantage is significant
enough. Of the three great "religions of
the book," Islam alone accepts war without
qualms as a normal form of religious
activity to promote the faith. Judaism, as it
has evolved, and Christianity from the
start, have both contained pacifist
elements--sometimes strong
ones--usually overruled by the needs of
Realpolitik.
When I went to see David Ben-Gurion in
1957, just after his victorious Suez
campaign, he slapped the Bible on his
desk: "There is my guide to war." An
agnostic, he saw its historical record as
instructive. The Hebrews had no hesitation
in carrying the Ark of the Covenant with
them into the field of battle. Deuteronomy lays down the laws of war and distinguishes between
optional and permitted wars, and obligatory ones commanded by God--a concept from which
Muslims evolved their notion of the jihad, or holy war.
Jewish soldiers fighting their religious enemies were permitted to break the dietary laws and other
central injunctions of the Mosaic code. Times and feasts were superseded and God's war could
"take even the bridegroom from the chamber and the bride from her bridal canopy."
These war-laws were summed up by Maimonides, greatest of Jewish theologians, in the 12th
century, though by then Jews had long ceased to wage war. Indeed Yiddish and other Jewish
dialects are famous for not possessing the vocabulary of warfare, or even a word for "war" itself.
But the old laws, as interpreted by rabbinical scholars, allowed Jews to engage in war as
noncombatants. Thus Jewish commissaries were the most efficient in organizing war supplies,
especially horses, for the two sides, Protestant and Catholic, during the Thirty Years War. And the
Rothschilds' European network enabled Britain to finance the coalitions against Napoleon.
But until Vladimir Jabotinsky revived the idea of a Zionist army in the 20th century, the Jews had
not fought as a people for nearly two millennia, and despite the four wars Israel has fought and
won, Israelis still find it difficult to accept that the Holy Days are no longer sacred to peace.
In Christianity, the pacifist strain is much stronger and has always existed. Christ himself can be
presented as a pacifist, and the early church had to work out special provisions for Christians who
fought in the Roman legions. Fighting on holy days was regarded as an abomination. When the
church was desperately trying to civilize feudal Europe in the 11th century, it evolved the idea of
the Truce of God to interrupt hostilities at certain times. The Council of Elne in 1027 forbade,
under pain of damnation, any warfare between Saturday night and Monday morning. This Sabbath
peace was observed as recently as 1916 when the Easter Rising by Irish nationalists was delayed
until the morning of Monday, April 24--though, as Easter Monday was a public holiday, the
element of shock was still retained.
The seasons of Advent and Lent were later added to the forbidden periods for war, and in 1095
Pope Urban II proclaimed the Truce of God as a perpetual law of the church. He also preached the
First Crusade, both as a means to reverse the successes of the Seljuk Turks against Byzantium
and recover Jerusalem, and to give warlike young men in Western Europe the opportunity to fight
in a just war as opposed to their fellow Christians. To underline the point, these early expeditions
were called "pilgrimages"--the word crusade was a latter coinage.
They did not serve their purpose. The Crusaders learned the latest methods of scientific warfare in
the Middle East, and then employed them back home. The 13th-century castles Edward I of
England built to hold down the conquered Welsh embodied Byzantine and Saracen technology.
Warriors often rested on Sunday if they had the choice, but in general the Truce of God did not
work. The church's campaign to outlaw the crossbow as a sinful and unacceptable weapon failed
too. Nor could the church outlaw firearms. Christian kings made it unlawful for anyone but
themselves to possess cannons, but discharged them freely in the name of God, usually at each
other.
The history of Christian warfare gives little grounds for supposing that religious truces can ever be
successfully imposed. Clergy will always be found to sanction aggression when war is waged for
religious purposes. Some of the worst atrocities of the 16th-century wars of religion were
committed on holy days. It was the same in the 17th century during the Thirty Years War. Famous
bishops, like Fenelon, preached war sermons. In the 18th century, Haydn was one of numerous
composers who produced "A Mass in Time of War" for performance at solemn feasts of penitence
and thanksgiving. Sacramental war altars and memorials, war cemeteries with chapels and
crosses, became the common furniture of religion.
Anyone who studies the history of the American Civil War becomes aware that it was, in many
respects, a war fought for religious reasons on both sides, with the clergy among the most
belligerent, and Sunday just another killing day. One of the few modern examples known to
historians of a feast day halting hostilities occurred on Dec. 25, 1914, when German and British
troops stopped fighting each other on Christmas Day, and actually walked into No Man's Land to
shake hands and drink toasts. This was apparently a spontaneous gesture of the rank and file. It
was strongly condemned by the military higher-ups on both sides as subversive, forbidden on pain
of death, and it never occurred again.
The routine attitude of World War I was better illustrated from the dispatch sent to the British
Admiralty in 1915 during the Dardanelles campaign: "We shelled the Turks from 9 to 11; and
then, it being Sunday, had Divine Service."
World War II was the apogee of sacrilege. I remember as a child of 10 being shocked to hear on
the radio that Mussolini had invaded Albania over Easter. But that was routine in the age of
dictators. Hitler's most audacious moves usually took place over the weekend, especially on
Sunday. It should have come as no surprise to the White House that the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor was deliberately staged early on Sunday.
Yet it is evidence of the surprising strength of religious awe that some of the powers, at least, still
hesitate before ignoring holy prohibitions. During the operation in Afghanistan last year there was
anxious discussion among the Allies about the wisdom of fighting during Ramadan, though in
recent Afghan wars, to say nothing of the long struggle between Iraq and Iran, such taboos have
been brushed aside by Muslims of all sects.
We are still shocked when men, women and children are murdered by religious fanatics on the
Sabbath or a feast day, even though there have been several suicide bombings since. We are
right to be shocked. It shows we have not yet become totally hardened to the brutal logic of terror.
But we would be foolish not to assume it will happen again, and again. One man's Truce of God is
another man's opportunity for devilment.
Mr. Johnson is the author of numerous books, including "A History of Christianity" and "A History of the
Jews." |
