What Are the Charedi Thoughts on Hamas and Other Terrorists? Is Physically Wiping Them Out the Solution?

For decades, Jews in Eretz Yisrael have faced the vicious terror of Hamas, Hezbollah, and their allies. Rockets fall on cities. Tunnels are dug beneath communities. Innocent lives are stolen in moments of horror. The natural reaction — the human, decent, visceral reaction — is wipe them out. Use whatever force is necessary. Eliminate the evil at its source.

We understand that reaction. We feel it. Anyone with a Jewish heart feels it. But the Torah's response to this question is more carefully constructed, more theologically anchored, and more spiritually demanding than the natural reaction allows. The authentic Charedi position is not pacifism — bnei Torah daven for soldiers, support Hatzalah and Zaka, and recognize the absolute mitzvah of pikuach nefesh to defend Jewish life when immediate danger demands it. But on the deeper question — is military force, on its own, the solution to terror? — the Torah's answer, anchored in primary sources every reader can verify, is clear.

We set it out below.

I. Who Actually Runs the World?

The first Charedi premise — and it is a halachic premise, not a sentimental one — is that every event in human history is orchestrated by the Ribbono Shel Olam. Terrorists are not free agents. They are not the source of their own power. They operate, like every other actor on the world stage, within the providence of Hashem.

The Gemara in Chullin 7b records the foundational principle:

"אין אדם נוקף אצבעו מלמטה אלא אם כן מכריזין עליו מלמעלה" — "A person does not stub his finger below unless it has been decreed about him from above."

This is not a homily. It is a halachic principle that informs the entire Torah view of historical causation. Nothing in the human world — including a terrorist's attack — operates outside the framework of divine decree. The Rambam codifies this throughout Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah and Hilchos Teshuvah: the world is run by Hashem's will, mediated through human choice but never escaping His ultimate sovereignty.

The Torah itself confirms this in the most direct possible language. In Shemos 15:3, after the splitting of the sea and the drowning of Pharaoh's army, the Torah declares:

"ה' אִישׁ מִלְחָמָה, ה' שְׁמוֹ" — "Hashem is a Man of war, Hashem is His Name."

This is the Torah's account of what just happened. The victory at the sea was not won by Jewish military prowess. There were no Jewish soldiers. There were no Jewish weapons. The Egyptian army was destroyed by Hashem alone — and the Torah names Him as ish milchamah, the One who actually wages war. Every military victory the Jewish people ever had — from the sea, through Yehoshua, through David HaMelech, through every salvation in our history — operates within this principle.

If Hashem is the One who wages war, then the question of how to defeat enemies is not, fundamentally, a military question. It is a question about how to align ourselves with the Ish Milchamah Himself.

II. The Torah's Account of Why Enemies Rise

The Torah does not pretend enemies are random. In Parashas Bechukosai and Parashas Ki Savo, Hashem lays out the conditional structure of Klal Yisrael's relationship to enemies. When Klal Yisrael keeps the Torah:

"וְרָדְפוּ מִכֶּם חֲמִשָּׁה מֵאָה, וּמֵאָה מִכֶּם רְבָבָה יִרְדֹּפוּ, וְנָפְלוּ אֹיְבֵיכֶם לִפְנֵיכֶם לֶחָרֶב" — "Five of you shall pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you shall pursue ten thousand, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword" (Vayikra 26:8).

When Klal Yisrael abandons it:

"וְנַסְתֶּם וְאֵין רֹדֵף אֶתְכֶם" — "You shall flee when no one pursues you" (Vayikra 26:17).

These are not military observations. They are spiritual patterns established by Hashem in the Torah itself. The same army, the same weapons, the same generals — under one set of spiritual conditions wins against impossible odds, and under another set of spiritual conditions flees from no pursuer. The variable is not military. The variable is Klal Yisrael's connection to Hashem and His Torah.

The Gemara in Yevamos 63a — cited explicitly by Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt"l and Rav Gershon Edelstein zt"l in a published letter during a contemporary national crisis — adds the operative principle:

"אין הפורענות באה לעולם אלא בשביל ישראל" — "Calamities only come to the world in order that Klal Yisrael strengthen themselves."

The published letter, available through Yeshiva World News, applied this Gemara directly to a contemporary crisis: "Certainly, it is our obligation to awaken ourselves to the Fear of Heaven and to do Teshuvah… and no man is stricken by a calamity if it was not decreed from Above."

This is the documented Charedi framework for understanding terror. Hamas is not a sovereign actor that Hashem cannot control. Hamas is a vehicle — among many vehicles Hashem has used across history to deliver messages to Klal Yisrael — through which the conditional clauses of the Torah's covenant operate in the present.

If this seems uncomfortable, examine the navi. Yeshayahu calls Assyria "shevet api" — the rod of My anger (Yeshayahu 10:5). Yirmiyahu calls Nevuchadnezzar "avdi" — My servant (Yirmiyahu 25:9). The pattern is consistent across the prophetic record: the nations that attack Klal Yisrael, however evil their intent, function as instruments within a divine framework. The Torah does not assign them sovereign moral agency outside of Hashem's plan.

III. The Kohen Mashuach Milchamah

The Torah's own framework for what Jewish soldiers should be told before going into battle is recorded in Devarim 20:1-4. The Torah commands that a special kohen — the Kohen Mashuach Milchamah, anointed with the shemen ha'mishchah for the specific purpose of addressing soldiers — speak to them before battle.

His speech, recorded word-for-word in the Torah, is striking:

"שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל, אַתֶּם קְרֵבִים הַיּוֹם לַמִּלְחָמָה עַל אֹיְבֵיכֶם, אַל יֵרַךְ לְבַבְכֶם, אַל תִּירְאוּ וְאַל תַּחְפְּזוּ, וְאַל תַּעַרְצוּ מִפְּנֵיהֶם. כִּי ה' אֱלֹקֵיכֶם הַהֹלֵךְ עִמָּכֶם, לְהִלָּחֵם לָכֶם עִם אֹיְבֵיכֶם, לְהוֹשִׁיעַ אֶתְכֶם" — "Hear, O Israel: today you draw near to do battle against your enemies. Let your hearts not be faint; do not fear, do not panic, and do not be terrified before them. For Hashem your God is the One who walks with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you" (Devarim 20:3-4).

Read those words carefully. The Torah's command, codified by the Rambam in Hilchos Melachim 7:2, is that the soldiers be told — by Torah authority, in Hebrew, before they engage — that they are not, fundamentally, the ones fighting. Hashem is fighting. They are participants in an action whose actual operating mechanism is divine.

The Ramban on Devarim 20:4 makes the point explicit. The Kohen's speech serves to ensure that the soldiers not trust in their own might, not think "we are mighty soldiers of war," but rather turn their hearts to Hashem and recognize that the victory is His. The Ramban quotes Tehillim 147:10: "Hashem does not desire the strength of the horse; nor does He favor the legs of man. Hashem favors those who fear Him, those who hope for His kindness."

This is the Torah's prescription for how Jewish soldiers should understand themselves. Not as the operating cause of the victory. As participants in a process whose actual cause is Hashem. The Torah's own warfare framework starts with a kohen telling the soldiers exactly this.

IV. Yehoshua at Yericho — The Model of Torah-Led Warfare

The first war the Jewish people ever fought in Eretz Yisrael was the conquest of Yericho. Before the battle, in one of the most famous incidents in the entire Tanach, Yehoshua bin Nun encountered a figure with a drawn sword in his hand (Yehoshua 5:13-15). Yehoshua asked: "Are you for us or for our enemies?" The figure answered: "No — I am the commander of the army of Hashem. Now I have come."

Yehoshua fell on his face. He was told to remove his shoes, because the place where he stood was holy.

Notice the sequence. The first Jewish war in the Land does not begin with a military briefing. It begins with the Jewish commander prostrating himself before an angel of Hashem and acknowledging that Hashem has His own army, of which Yehoshua's army is at best a participant. The wall of Yericho fell, in the next chapter, not from military assault but from the kohanim circling with the Aron HaKodesh and blowing shofros. The conquest of Yericho was, structurally, a halachic ceremony with military consequences — not the other way around.

This is the model of milchamah Toras Yisrael. The framework is religious. The cause is divine. The military action is the form through which the divine action is expressed, not the source of the victory itself.

V. Trust in Hashem, Not in Human Strength

The Charedi position on what actually wins wars is anchored in the most quoted Tehillim in the Jewish liturgical tradition.

"אֵלֶּה בָרֶכֶב וְאֵלֶּה בַסּוּסִים, וַאֲנַחְנוּ בְּשֵׁם ה' אֱלֹקֵינוּ נַזְכִּיר" — "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we call upon the Name of Hashem our God" (Tehillim 20:8).

This passuk is recited daily in tefillas Shacharis. It is sung at Brisos. It is the foundational text on the Jewish framework for victory. Some — the nations of the world — trust in chariots and horses, in tanks and air forces, in human strength. We — Klal Yisrael — call upon the Name of Hashem. The very next pasuk: "They have bent down and fallen; but we have risen and stood firm." The Tehillim is establishing a structural contrast: human strength fails, divine assistance succeeds.

"כִּי לֹא בְחַרְבָּם יָרְשׁוּ אָרֶץ, וּזְרוֹעָם לֹא הוֹשִׁיעָה לָּמוֹ, כִּי יְמִינְךָ וּזְרוֹעֲךָ וְאוֹר פָּנֶיךָ, כִּי רְצִיתָם" — "For not with their sword did they conquer the land, and their arm did not save them; rather, Your right hand and Your arm and the light of Your countenance — because You favored them" (Tehillim 44:4).

The Tehillim is unmistakable. The conquest of Eretz Yisrael — the original Jewish military victory — is not credited to Jewish swords or Jewish arms. It is credited to Hashem's right hand and to His favor. The military activity happened. The victory was real. But the causation the Tehillim assigns to that victory is not human.

This Tehillim is not a Charedi composition. It is in the siddur every Jew uses. Every secular Jew who has ever davened with a machzor on Yamim Noraim has said it.

VI. We Fear Only Hashem

Do Charedim fear Hamas? No.

"ה' לִי לֹא אִירָא, מַה יַּעֲשֶׂה לִי אָדָם" — "Hashem is with me, I shall not fear — what can a person do to me?" (Tehillim 118:6).

This passuk, sung in Hallel on every yom tov, is the foundational expression of the Jewish attitude toward human enemies. The Jew who knows that Hashem is with him does not fear what a human being can do. The structural confidence comes not from military superiority but from the relationship with the Ish Milchamah.

"מִשְּׁמוּעָה רָעָה לֹא יִירָא, נָכוֹן לִבּוֹ בָּטֻחַ בַּה'" — "He shall not fear evil tidings, his heart is firm, trusting in Hashem" (Tehillim 112:7).

The Tehillim describes the yere Hashem — the one who fears Hashem — as a person whose heart is firm even when bad news arrives, because his trust is in Hashem rather than in human institutions. This is the documented Torah disposition toward terror. Not denial. Not pacifism. Fear of Hashem, not of man. That has been the Jewish posture for three thousand years, and it has carried us through every persecution.

VII. The Documented Charedi Position

The Charedi gedolim of the past century have applied this Torah framework consistently to contemporary terror and military threats:

• The Chazon Ish to David Ben-Gurion in October 1952, recorded by Yitzchak Navon: "In the merit of our Torah study, they live, work, and are protected… Torah is the tree of life, the elixir of life." This was the Chazon Ish's response to Ben-Gurion's own question about the source of Klal Yisrael's protection.
• The Brisker Rav (Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik zt"l), documented in Uvdos V'Hanhagos L'Beis Brisk Vol. 2 (siman 140) and Peninei Rabbeinu HaGriz (p. 148), maintained the position uncompromisingly: the State's military framework is not the operating mechanism of Klal Yisrael's protection.
• Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt"l and Rav Gershon Edelstein zt"l in their joint letter (published by Yeshiva World News during a national crisis): "It is our obligation to awaken ourselves to the Fear of Heaven and to do Teshuvah, in accordance with the saying of the sages (Yevamos 63a)… no man is stricken by a calamity if it was not decreed from Above."
• Rabbi Dov Lando shlita in the November 2024 letter of the assembled Lithuanian Charedi Roshei Yeshiva: "Beyond the personal tragedy that he brings upon himself and his household, others may, G-d forbid, be drawn after him, and his sin would be great to bear."

This is the documented Charedi mesorah, transmitted across four generations of gedolei haposkim. The position is unchanged because the underlying halachic and theological framework — Hashem runs history, Torah is the actual mechanism of national protection, military force is hishtadlus within a divine plan, and our trust must be in Hashem and not in human strength — is unchanged.

VIII. So Is Force the Solution?

The question the article opened with admits a precise Torah answer. Force, applied through genuine pikuach nefesh in cases of immediate danger, is a mitzvah binding on every Jew. The Charedi world has never disputed this. Mishmar ezrachi groups operate in Bnei Brak, Beitar, Elad, Modi'in Illit. Hatzalah and Zaka run toward every battlefield. The defense of immediate Jewish life is not the question.

Force as a standing strategy, divorced from the spiritual framework the Torah establishes, is not what the Torah prescribes. Even Yehoshua at Yericho operated inside the framework. Even the Kohen Mashuach Milchamah's speech in Devarim 20 begins with the recognition that Hashem is the one fighting. Even the conquest of Eretz Yisrael is credited in Tehillim 44 not to Jewish swords but to Hashem's right hand.

A Torah army, fighting under Torah authority, with Torah-observant commanders and Sanhedrin oversight, operates as the form through which Hashem's protection becomes visible. A secular army, divorced from the Torah framework, may save lives in specific cases — and where it does, those soldiers fulfill the mitzvah of pikuach nefesh — but it cannot, structurally, be the operating cause of Klal Yisrael's protection. That cause, according to every primary Torah source we have examined, is Torah, tefillah, and the favor of the Ribbono Shel Olam.

IX. Torah Is the True Iron Dome

Hamas is evil. Terror must be stopped. Jewish lives must be protected. But if we want real protection — not temporary ceasefires, not perpetual cycles of war and recovery, not the inevitable next round of terror that follows the current round — then the Torah framework must operate.

The Iron Dome of Pikuach Nefesh protects in specific moments. The Iron Dome of Torah magna u'matzla (Sotah 21a) protects continuously. The Iron Dome of atzem ha'shahut — the very presence of bnei Torah engaged in serious learning — operates as the active mechanism of national survival the Rambam codifies in Hilchos Talmud Torah 6:10.

If Klal Yisrael strengthens itself in Torah, in emunah, in tefillah, and in mitzvos, the terror will not be a permanent feature of Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael. Not because the terrorists will give up. Because Hashem will remove the divine permission that makes their violence operative.

This is not a Charedi opinion. This is the Torah's account of how Jewish national security actually works. The seforim are on the shelf. The Tehillim is in every siddur. The Chumash is read every Shabbos. Ki ה' Elokeicha ha'holech imachem, l'hilachem lachem im oyveichem, l'hoshia eschem — Hashem your God is the One who walks with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.

That is the Iron Dome that has actually carried us through three thousand years. We daven for the day, bimheirah b'yameinu, when Klal Yisrael fully internalizes this and the wars stop entirely. Until then, the framework remains what the Torah established at Sinai, what Yehoshua applied at Yericho, what the Kohen Mashuach Milchamah declares before every battle, and what the Tehillim records as the structural truth of Jewish history.

Eleh barechev v'eleh basusim. V'anachnu b'sheim Hashem Elokeinu nazkir.

Sources

Primary Tanach sources (all quotations verified against standard editions)

• Shemos 15:3 — "Hashem ish milchamah, Hashem shemo"
• Vayikra 26:7-8 — "Veradfu mikem chamishah me'ah…"
• Vayikra 26:17 — "Venastem v'ein rodef etchem"
• Devarim 20:1-4 — the Kohen Mashuach Milchamah's speech to soldiers
• Yehoshua 5:13-15 — Yehoshua's encounter with the sar tzeva Hashem
• Yehoshua 6 — the fall of Yericho through halachic ceremony
• Yeshayahu 10:5 — Assyria as "shevet api"
• Yirmiyahu 25:9 — Nevuchadnezzar as "avdi"
• Tehillim 20:7-8 — "Eleh barechev v'eleh basusim…"
• Tehillim 44:4 — "Ki lo b'charvam yarshu aretz… ki retzitam"
• Tehillim 112:1, 7 — "Yerei Hashem b'mitzvosav chafetz me'od… mi'shmua ra'ah lo yira"
• Tehillim 118:6 — "Hashem li lo ira, ma ya'aseh li adam"
• Tehillim 147:10 — "Lo b'gevuras hasus yechpatz, lo b'shokei ha'ish yirtzeh"

Talmudic and halachic sources

• Talmud Bavli, Chullin 7b — "Ein adam nokef etzba'o…"
• Talmud Bavli, Sotah 21a — Torah magna u'matzla
• Talmud Bavli, Yevamos 63a — "Calamities only come to the world in order that Klal Yisrael strengthen themselves"
• Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Melachim u'Milchamoseihem 7:2 — the law of the Kohen Mashuach Milchamah
• Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Talmud Torah 6:10 — Talmidei chachamim and conscription exemption
• Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah — divine providence
• Ramban on Devarim 20:4 — the soldiers' obligation not to trust in their own might

Documented Charedi position

• Chazon Ish, Orach Chaim, Hilchos Eiruvin, siman 114
• Kovetz Igros, Chazon Ish, Vol. 1, p. 97
• Uvdos V'Hanhagos L'Beis Brisk, Vol. 2, siman 140 — the Brisker Rav
• Peninei Rabbeinu HaGriz, p. 148
• Krayna D'Igarta, Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky zt"l (the Steipler Gaon)
• Emunah U'Bitachon, Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz zt"l (the Chazon Ish) — the classical Charedi treatment of trust in Hashem versus reliance on human strength

The Chazon Ish – Ben-Gurion meeting (October 20, 1952)

• Yitzchak Navon's recorded account, published in his memoirs
• World Mizrachi, "The Chazon Ish, Ben-Gurion and Rav Tzvi Yehudah" (March 2023)
• Yeshiva World News, "70 Yrs Ago Today" (October 2022)
• Jewish Action (Rabbi Aharon Feldman), citing MK Shlomo Lorincz, Digleinu Vol. 2 (110)

Contemporary documented Charedi response

• Yeshiva World News, "New Corona Health letter From Rav Chaim Kanievsky and Rav Gershon Edelstein" (March 2020) — published joint letter citing Yevamos 63a
• Israel National News, "Haredi leaders warn against Haredi IDF service tracks" (late 2024) — Rabbi Dov Lando shlita's signed letter from the emergency gathering of Lithuanian Roshei Yeshiva