Rodef

A rodef (Hebrew: רודף, lit. "pursuer"; pl. רודפים, rodfim), in traditional Jewish law, is one who is "pursuing" another to murder him or her. According to Jewish law, such a person must be stopped—even killed—by any bystander after that pursuer has been warned and refuses to stop. A source for this law appears in the Babylonian Talmud:

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

The allowance to kill the rodef does not apply, however, in a case where lesser means would prevent the innocent's murder. Furthermore, according to Maimonides, killing a rodef who may have been stopped by lesser means constitutes murder, though the punishment for a murderer in this case is not dealt out by beit din.

In recent years, a number of rabbis^[who?] have allegedly suggested that various public figures could qualify as rodfim, arguably encouraging one to kill. Perhaps most notoriously, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was branded a rodef by some for the Oslo Accord, 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 Palestinian Authority would endanger Jewish lives.

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.

According to Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Yigal Amir's interpretation of din rodef is a gross distortion of Jewish law and tradition.

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

In 2009, Jewish historian Geoffrey Alderman engaged in another controversy when he argued that, according to Jewish religious law, every Palestinian in Gaza who voted for Hamas was a legitimate target. He articulated his position in a debate with rabbi David J. Goldberg in The Guardian's commentary section. He argues that according to the Halakha, "it is entirely legitimate to kill a rodef – that is to say, one who endangers the life of another – and this is true, incidentally, even if the rodef has not yet actually taken another life".

Furthermore, he argues that

• (in Imperial Aramaic), (in Hebrew) Full text of Sanhedrin Chapter 8
• (in English) Sanhedrin Chapter 8