In “When Did Torah Values Become ‘Extreme’?” (Feb. 27, 2025), Rabbi Elie Mischel, advocating particular contemporary Israeli political positions, writes: “The Torah explicitly commands us regarding hostile populations that endanger Israel.” To support those positions, he cites passages in Shemot and Bamidbar that mandate expulsion of the inhabitants of the land in conjunction with its conquest.
Using these verses in this way is problematic. These sources refer to the expulsion of the Seven Nations from the Land of Israel in Biblical times and, as such, bear no halachic relevance to modern day Israel. Whatever one thinks the resolution to the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be, Palestinians do not fall under the halachic rubric of the Seven Nations whom the Torah commands to exterminate or expel from the Land of Israel. The laws regarding the Seven Nations apply only to specific ethnic groups which, as Rambam rules, kvar avad zichram, no longer exist. Citing these verses as a Torah command in a context to which they do not halachically apply is a distortion of the words of Torah.
Later in the article, Rabbi Mischel asserts that there is a “Torah mandate” that “God explicitly warns against giving away land.” The verse from Yoel that he cites to support his view says nothing of the sort. It speaks of divine judgment of biblical nations who oppressed the Jewish people and divided up the land amongst themselves.
This verse, too, has no halachic relevance to the State of Israel. The majority of gedolei Yisroel (including Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik) saw no halachic issues with ceding land in exchange for genuine peace; they certainly did not misread this verse. No one in our community believes that Israel should cede land if it won’t bring genuine peace. The conversation properly revolves only around the question of whether peace can be achieved in the long term.
Regardless of one’s personal political assessments, there is no place in this difficult and painful conversation for the distortion of Torah sources in the name of Torah values. Doing so is megaleh panim ba’Torah she’lo k’halacha.
