torat hamelech

I regularly participate in a discussion group run by Habonim Dror for movement people around my age. One issue we discussed today was the book Torat Hamelech. I did not know about the book until I saw this article in the Forward, but its publication apparently got some news coverage a few months ago. Israeli officials arrested 10 settlers on January 18 from the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, which published Torat Hamelech, for burning a mosque in an Arab village in December.

My understanding is that Torat Hamelech presents itself as a halachic analysis of when it is acceptable to kill non-Jews. From the Forward:

Despite the precedent set by previous Israeli attorneys general in the last decade and a half to file criminal charges against settler rabbis who publish commentaries supporting violence against non-Jews, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has so far remained mum about "The King's Torah."

Why is Mazuz remaining mum?

Previous governments took a tougher stance against such publications, [Yair Sheleg] said, but "paradoxically, because the tension between the general settler population and the Israeli judicial system…is high now, the attorney general is careful not to heighten the tension."

Zohar, an Israeli who helps lead the discussion group, translated a few excerpts from Torat Hamelech. From what Zohar showed us, it looks like the first chapters establish a principle that killing non-Jews is justified in a variety of specific situations. The later chapters broaden the principle and essentially condone violence in many situations.

Here is one excerpt translated by Zohar that supports individual, rather than collective, decisions about when to attack non-Jewish communities:

There is no need for the nation to decide to allow the killing of a different nation, and individuals of the attacked nation can also hurt them; for Simeon and Levy are not the authority but individuals in the house of Jacob (that resist their acts), and yet it was allowed to kill the people of Shechem since a nation has hurt another nation, and it is not the official decision of the attacked nation that allows the attack on the offensive.

I have a gut feeling that this book is a distortion of halacha, but I am going to leave the argument about its halachic validity to others who know better.

Even if it is halachically valid, the laws of the state must be enforced, and Torat Hamelech violates them by inciting violence.