Mark Washofsky

terrorist attack against human targets or possesses information about an impending attack as a rodef, a“pursuer” who poses an immediate threat of death to his intended victim. And“when one pursues another with intent to kill, every Jew is obligated to save the victim from the pursuer, even at the cost of the pursuer’s life.”*® To this, Warhaftig applies a kal vachomer(a forteriori) argument: if it is permitted to kill the rodef in order to save his victim, then we are certainly authorized to take other measures short of killing, including torture, to achieve that purpose.

2. Warhaftig concedes that the law of rodef, strictly speaking, applies only to the situation of the“ticking time bomb,” where the danger to life is certain and imminent. It does not apply to a case where it is uncertain that the suspect possesses information that will in fact lead to the prevention of a terrorist attack. We are permitted to kill the rodef, in other words, only when we know that this extreme act is the only way to save his intended victim(s). If this is so, then the warrant for torture of one who is suspected of being involved in or of having knowledge of a planned terrorist strike, which Warhaftig derives from the rodef principle, also falls. Nonetheless, we are still permitted to use torture, because“we are not dealing here with an innocent citizen” but with a silent participant in a planned act of terror, one who if he wished could spare himself the torture simply by revealing the information that in any case he is required to provide under the obligation to save life(pikuach nefesh) and to do justice(dinim).”’ And, as we shall see, Jewish law permits the coercion of individuals to force them to perform their obligations.

3. These are not normal times. We are at war against enemies who seek our destruction. And during a time of war(sha at milchamah), it is permitted to kill the enemy without concern for such niceties as standard criminal investigative procedure.

4. Jewish tradition commands us to respect the fundamental human dignity(kevod haberiyot) of all persons. Yet a terrorist, or for that matter a possible terrorist, possesses no“dignity” that we are charged to recognize. We are forbidden to trample upon the human dignity of the normal criminal suspect, who is under investigation for an act that he has already committed. This