By Rabbi Shay Tahan

The horrifying experience surrounding the hijacking of a flight from Dubai raised a profound question in the Israeli security establishment: What should be done if the hijacked airplane is deliberately being flown toward a populated city, with the clear intention of causing the greatest possible loss of life?

The question is not merely theoretical. An airplane can itself become a weapon, capable of carrying hundreds of innocent passengers while being directed toward a densely populated area, as tragically occurred on 911. In such a scenario, the authorities may face an agonizing choice: allow the plane to continue toward its target, where it could kill a large number of people on the ground, or take action to bring it down before it reaches the populated area, knowing that the innocent passengers aboard the plane would be killed. The security decision in such a case was clear: if the airplane is being used as a weapon, it must be brought down beforehand, even though this would result in the deaths of the passengers on board, because doing so would prevent the deaths of a far greater number of people on the ground.

But this raises a fundamental halachic question: May one deliberately bring about the death of the passengers in order to save those who are about to be killed on the ground? Is this considered an act of killing one group in order to save another, or is it regarded as an act of rescue—stopping a deadly threat before it reaches its intended victims?

This question becomes especially compelling in light of the words of the Chazon Ish concerning a case in which an arrow is traveling toward a group of people and can be redirected toward a single individual. His discussion opens an important window into the distinction between killing and saving, and may shed light on the difficult question of a hijacked airplane being used as a weapon.

Giving One Person Over to Save Many

Let’s open with the Rambam’s ruling (Yesodei HaTorah 5:5): “if enemies say ‘Give us one of you and we will kill him; otherwise, we will kill all of you,’ they should all be killed rather than hand over a single Jewish soul.”

The reason is that we may not choose one Jewish life and kill that person in order to save the others. We do not say that the lives of the many override the life of the individual, because every person is a life in his own right, and we have no authority to commit an act of bloodshed against one person in order to save others.

The Chazon Ish: Redirecting the Arrow

On this basis, the Chazon Ish (Sanhedrin, siman 25) presents a fundamental inquiry. He writes: “One must consider the case of a person who sees an arrow heading toward a group of people and can divert it to another direction, where it will kill only one person, while those on the first side will be saved. If he does nothing, the many will be killed and the one will remain alive.”

The Chazon Ish considers whether this case can be compared to the well-known case of “Give us one of you,” in which the gentiles demand that the group hand over one person to be killed. He explains that the two cases may be fundamentally different.

When the group hands over one person to the gentiles, the action they are performing is itself the handing over of that person to his death. The fact that this will save the other members of the group does not change the nature of the act. Their action is not directly rescuing the others; rather, they are actively handing one person over to be killed which is a cruel act, and the survival of the others is the consequence that follows from that act. Therefore, it cannot be defined as an “act of rescue.” The essential nature of the action is the surrender of one person to his death, while the saving of the others is merely the result of that act.

The Chazon Ish, however, continues and introduces a distinction in the case of the arrow: “But diverting the arrow from one side to the other is primarily an act of rescue, and has no connection whatsoever to killing the individual on the other side; it is only that, by chance, there happens to be a Jewish life on the other side.”

The person is not standing before a particular individual and saying, “I will kill him in order to save the others.” Rather, he sees an existing danger that is already moving toward the many, and he takes action whose primary purpose is to remove the danger and save those people. The fact that another person happens to be located where the danger is redirected, and may therefore be killed, is not the objective of the action, but rather a consequence resulting from that person’s presence in the place toward which the danger was redirected.

Applying the Chazon Ish to a Hijacked Airplane

Accordingly, we must consider the case of an airplane that is about to crash into an area where many people are located, when there is an option to divert it to another location where only one person is present. At first glance, this closely resembles the case described by the Chazon Ish. The airplane is already in motion and itself constitutes the source of the danger; the person intervening does not create the danger, but rather attempts to redirect it from a place where it is about to strike many people to a place where it will strike one individual.

Still, there is a clear distinction between the Chazon Ish’s case and that of an airplane flying toward a large crowd. In the Chazon Ish’s case, the question is whether one may save several people by causing the death of one person. The death of that individual is the means by which the others are saved. In the case of the airplane, however, the passengers aboard the plane will die regardless of where the plane ultimately crashes. The choice is not between allowing the passengers to live or causing them to die. Their deaths are already inevitable. The only question is where the plane will crash: into a populated area, where it will kill many additional people, or in a deserted area, where those additional deaths can be prevented.

Accordingly, it would seem that there is a fundamental difference between the two cases. Bringing down the airplane before it reaches the populated area does not cause the passengers’ deaths; rather, it prevents the airplane from causing additional deaths on the ground. In this sense, the action can be viewed not as killing the passengers to save others, but as rescuing those on the ground from an imminent threat, while the deaths of the passengers are an unavoidable consequence that would occur in any event.

A Pursuer Using a Hostage as a Human Shield

Let’s see an example in which an armed person holds another person hostage and uses him as a human shield, thereby endangering the lives of other people. At times, the only way to neutralize the pursuer and save those in danger is to use a weapon, but doing so creates a real possibility that the hostage himself will be injured or even killed.

At first glance, this case resembles, to some extent, the Chazon Ish’s inquiry concerning a person who sees an arrow heading toward many people and can divert it to a place where one person will be killed. Here too, the danger already exists: it is the pursuer who has created the danger to the lives of the people, while the person intervening is not creating the danger itself. His sole objective is to neutralize the pursuer and save those being pursued, although the action required to remove the danger may, unintentionally, injure the hostage.

There is, however, an important distinction. In the case of the arrow discussed by the Chazon Ish, the person himself diverts the arrow toward the place where the individual is located, and the Chazon Ish therefore questions whether the action should be regarded as an act of rescue or as an act of killing. In contrast, when the pursuer himself is holding the hostage and endangering him, the danger was created by the pursuer. The person attempting to save the hostage or the other people does not seek to kill an innocent person; rather, he seeks to stop the pursuer. Nevertheless, at times there is no way to do so without creating a risk that the hostage will be injured.

The Ruling of Rabbi Elyashiv

Indeed, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv adopted this approach as a matter of halachah (Yeshurun, issue 13, p. 552), in connection with an incident that occurred in 2002 at a hotel in Netanya, where a conference of the Arachim organization was being held. Among the participants was a student from the Mir Yeshiva who had trained in providing first aid.

When he arrived at the scene of the attack to assist the wounded, the terrorists and Israeli security forces were engaged in a battle. The terrorists seized him and held him as a hostage, while the security forces mistakenly believed that he was also a terrorist and killed him together with the other terrorists. Rabbi Elyashiv ruled that it was permissible to kill the Jewish hostage together with the terrorists, because the action was considered an act of rescue.