PHILOLOGOS has a column this week in the Forward on the din rodef. Excerpts:

Pursuing the 'Rodef'
July 16, 2004

The rabbinic concept of din rodef is � unfortunately � back in the news. It last made the front pages at the time of the Yitzhak Rabin assassination. Two weeks ago it resurfaced � this time, in connection with the declaration of Avigdor Nebenzahl, the learned and respected rabbi of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City: "Anyone ceding parts of the Land of Israel to gentiles is, from a halakhic point of view, subject to din rodef." Although Rabbi Nebenzahl then qualified this statement with the assurance that by his reading of Halakha or rabbinic law, din rodef is not applicable in the state of Israel today, his words set alarm bells ringing. It was din rodef, after all, that Yigal Amir and his sympathizers cited as a religious justification for the murder of Rabin.

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This is no doubt about why Nebenzahl, albeit convolutedly, ruled that din rodef was not applicable to Israeli politics, just as it is not applicable to many other things. Although "the right of self-defense" is a valid principle, the minute this principle escapes the bounds of clear and immediately life-threatening situations, it becomes a license for general mayhem. When rabbinic law cannot possibly lead to workable conclusions, even those who seek to live by it should acknowledge that other standards are preferable, such as those of the democratic political process. Whether or not Israel withdraws from part or all of the "territories" should be decided by a majority vote of the Knesset, not by the imperatives of rabbinic law. Those who should be saying this most loudly are Israel's rabbis themselves.