Rodef

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A rodef (Hebrew רודף, literally "pursuer"), in traditional Jewish law, is one who is "pursuing" another to murder him or her. According to Jewish law, such a person must be killed by any bystander after being warned to stop and refusing. The source for this law is the Tractate Sanhedrin in the Babylonian Talmud, page 73a, which begins:

And these are the ones whom one must save even with their lives [i.e., killing the wrongdoer]: one who pursues his fellow to kill him [rodef akhar khaveiro lehargo], and after a male or a bethrothed maiden [to rape them]; but one who pursues an animal, or desecrates the Sabbath, or commits idolatry are not saved with their lives.

This law, the din rodef ("law of the pursuer"), is significant as one of the few provisions in Jewish law permitting extrajudicial killings.

In recent years, a significant number of rabbis have suggested that various public figures could qualify as rodefim, arguably encouraging one to kill. Perhaps most notoriously, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was branded a rodef by some for the Oslo Accord,^[1] an agreement for which he was assassinated in 1995. The assassin, Yigal Amir, subsequently justified his actions partly on the basis of din rodef, under the assumption that making concessions to the Palestinians would endanger Jewish lives. ^[2]

The Oslo Accords were controversial within Israel and divided the population due to the extensive change in government policy regarding negotiations with then Israeli designated terrorist organizations, such as the PLO. ^[3]

Other instances have occurred. In 2005, for instance, prominent Israeli Rabbi Avigdor Neventzhal stated that "it should be known that anyone who wants to give away Israeli land is like a rodef",^[4] triggering an outcry and a special debate in the Knesset.^[5]