War and Peace, Ruses and Deception

Is it ever right to mislead or deceive others?

Recent events in the Middle East involving ruses and deception are worth discussing and assessing. Some believers think that there can never be a place for such trickery, lies or deception of any sort. Therefore, when Israel or America engages in acts of deceiving the enemy, they will claim it is always wrong, and we must never go that way.

Before looking at some past and present examples of such ruses, let me mention that I have already written on this broad issue of the use of stratagems and deception to foil the enemy and so on. As I wrote four years ago on this matter:

[John] Frame, in his discussion, lists 16 such biblical cases “in which someone misleads an enemy, without incurring any condemnation, and sometimes even being commended.” He also cites Hodge and goes on to say this:

 

In Hodge’s view, we are not obligated to tell the truth in certain specifically defined relationships and situations. He mentions military strategy, for example, as one area in which there is no such obligation: we are not required to tell the truth to the enemy. Just as the sixth commandment does not rule out all killing, but forces us to look elsewhere in Scripture to find out what killing is legitimate, so the ninth commandment requires us to look elsewhere to determine when we are and are not obligated to tell the truth.

 

That is the line often used by theologians and ethicists when discussions about things like deceiving the Nazis are raised. In those sorts of situations people cease to have the right to the truth. It is argued that those with clearly evil aims and intentions (to take innocent life, eg.) have forfeited the right to receive truth. Thus when the Gestapo knocked on doors asking folks if they were harbouring Jews, people like ten Boom were not morally obliged to tell them. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2021/05/29/is-it-ever-right-to-deceive/  

Ruses in military history

As can be seen, in times of war especially the use of ruses to confuse and mislead the enemy is commonplace. One of the most obvious and famous examples of this of course is the Trojan Horse. The story from Greek mythology has to do with the Trojan War, in which a large wooden horse filled with soldiers was used by the Greeks to infiltrate the city of Troy, resulting in the war being won.

Numerous examples from WWII also can be mentioned. Often the Allies relied on such stratagems and ruses to win decisive battles over their German and Japanese enemies. For example, sometimes it involved things like creating a ghost army, or making wooden or inflatable sets of planes or tanks or ships to fool the enemy who flew overhead. One article on ghost armies said this:

The Ghost Army was “capable of impersonating one or two infantry or armored divisions—the equivalent of twenty to forty times their number.” The unit represented one of the Allies’ most audacious efforts to use deception in the war against Nazi Germany. It was, the authors write, “the first unit in the history of warfare that was dedicated solely to deception.” The detachment operated for nine months in France, Luxembourg, and Germany, from the Normandy Invasion in June 1944 until V-E Day in May 1945. “Their mission was to put on a show, with the German Army as the audience. . . They pulled off twenty-one different deceptions and are credited with saving thousands of lives through stagecraft and sleight of hand.” https://malwarwickonbooks.com/deception-in-world-war-ii/   

Misinformation campaigns, such as false and misleading radio broadcasts were routinely used to throw the enemy off. Simply keeping the enemy guessing about the whens and wheres of D-Day was another big example of the use of ruses and tricks.

That was labelled Operation Fortitude, seeking to trick the Germans into believing the invasion would be at Pas-de-Calais instead of Normandy. Another notable operation was Operation Mincemeat, where the Allies planted false invasion plans on a corpse to deceive the Germans into thinking an invasion would be in Greece and Sardinia, not in Sicily. These are just two examples of misinformation campaigns and deception tactics being used to confuse the enemy and gain a strategic advantage. 

The Middle East today

With current hostilities again at fever pitch in the Middle East, we have seen various examples of this. Recall last year how Israel managed to get a number of exploding pagers into the hands of Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. One news report at the time said this:

Thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies have blown up in the hands of Hezbollah fighters this week, leading the world to ask: What the heck is going on? In an extraordinary display of intelligence and tech prowess, Israeli security services are believed to have hit the Lebanon-based terrorist group by simultaneously triggering minute quantities of explosive hidden in thousands of hand-held devices.

 

The pagers began beeping just after 3:30 p.m. in Lebanon on Tuesday, tipping off Hezbollah operatives to a message from their leadership. But within seconds the devices sounding the alerts exploded, killing and injuring people in their vicinity across Lebanon. The following day, a second attack targeted walkie-talkies….

 

The Hezbollah leadership had switched to analogue devices like landline phones and pagers earlier this year following the killing of senior commanders in targeted Israeli airstrikes, in a bid to foil their enemy’s sophisticated surveillance, Reuters reported. This week’s stunning bombing campaign appears to have both demoralized and handicapped the terrorist group. https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-pagers-hezbollah-lebanon-health-ministry/

And the more recent Israeli strikes against Iran to eliminate or greatly lessen its nuclear weapons program have also involved examples of this. For example, several weeks ago we had this occurring:

Israel secret services used a fake phone call to trick the top commanders of Iran’s air force into gathering at a single location before taking them out in a targeted strike, an Israeli Channel 12 commentator has said. In a statement confirmed to the JC by Israeli sources, Amit Segal told the Call Me Back podcast on Monday: “What Israel did was create a fake phone call for 20 members of the air force senior staff in calling them to a specific bunker in Tehran.”

 

This meant there was no one to give the order to fire the initial salvo of 1,000 ballistic missiles as Iran had previously threatened to do, he added. According to sources familiar with the operation, Mossad initiated a targeted disinformation effort days before the strike.

 

Using falsified communications through Iranian channels, they triggered what appeared to be an emergency meeting.

The ruse successfully drew the entire senior leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, including Commander General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, his deputies, and key technical personnel, into a fortified bunker outside Tehran.

 

Moments before the strike began, that bunker was hit in a precision airstrike, eliminating Iran’s top missile command. Israeli officials say the goal was clear; prevent the launch of what was believed to be over 1,000 ballistic missiles aimed at Israeli territory. There was absolutely no one alive to give the command to strike back. Immediately afterwards, Israel launched a sweeping campaign across Tehran and other strategic areas, hitting missile sites, infrastructure, and air defences.

 

A senior Israeli security official told Fox News that Israel successfully eliminated most of the IRGC’s air force leadership in the strike on June 13. https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/israeli-secret-services-used-fake-phone-call-to-lure-irans-air-force-elite-to-their-deaths-ejqk7guy

And just a few days ago America had an elaborate decoy mission involving some bombers flying westward, while the actual operation to take out the nuclear sites involved a strike force heading east. As a part of “Operation Midnight Hammer,” some B-52s flew Pacific-bound to mask the 18-hour mission eastward that struck the sites. Iran was caught completely unaware.

Biblical considerations

As mentioned, the Bible does allow for times of deception for the greater good, and I cited the American theologian John Frame. In his very valuable 1100-page book, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, he devotes a number of pages to the Ninth Commandment and whether we must always tell the truth. He is worth quoting from further on this. He writes:

What, then, is a lie? I would say that a lie is a word or act that deceives a neighbor in order to hurt him. It is false witness against a neighbor. That excludes untruths that come from edifying devices, honest mistakes, honest factions, games, magic tricks, and, for the most part, jokes. In some of these cases, we describe the untruths as “little white lies,” but most of the time we don’t describe them as lies at all.

 

But then we must give some attention to the term neighbor. Is everybody a neighbor? If so, then the commandment would forbid us to mislead anybody in order to hurt that person. But scripture does not teach that everybody is our neighbour. (p. 835)

Frame goes on to look at the parable of the good Samaritan, and then he says this: “But even that parable does not universalize the concept of neighbor. Not everyone we meet on the road is a person in need of care. Some may be thieves and murderers – our enemies…”

As I also said above, he lists 16 biblical passages where someone is being misled or duped, but it is not condemned and may even be divinely affirmed and/or praised. Here are the first 8 that he lists:

1. Exodus 1:15-21—the Israelite midwives in Egypt.
2. Joshua 2:4-6; 6:17, 25; Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25—Rahab’s deception. Note that apart from what Rahab told her countrymen, even hiding the spies amounted to a deception.
3. Joshua 8:3-8—the ambush at Ai. As John Murray recognizes, God himself authorized this deception.
4. Judges 4:18-21; 5:24-27—Jael and Sisera.
5. 1 Samuel 16: 1-5—Samuel misleads Saul as to the reason for his mission.
6. 1 Samuel 19:12-17—Michal deceives her father’s troops.
7. 1 Samuel 20:6—David’s counsel to Jonathan.
8. 1 Samuel 21: 13—David feigns madness.

He goes on to say this: “In these passages, there is deceit, and that deceit brings harm. But the harm comes to an enemy, not to a neighbor…” (p. 836)

He continues:

It does appear that the passages listed above, which justify deception in certain cases, all have to do with the promotion of justice against the wicked, especially when they see innocent life….

 

I have questioned whether a neighborly relationship exists between a believer and someone who seeks to murder. At least, I doubt that those who misled others in the sixteen passages mentioned earlier were in a neighborly relationship with their opponents. Certainly those who deceived in those passages didn’t think so. And I think Scripture concurs in their judgment.

 

We have no obligation to tell the truth to people who, for example, seek innocent life… (p. 839)

More can be said about all this. The article I mentioned above should also be consulted. But clearly Scripture allows for some cases of using a ruse or not telling an enemy the full truth. And in times of war, especially when it can lead to preventing a great loss of life and the protection of the innocent, it has a valid role to play.

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