[Avodah] Pikuach Nefesh

[Joseph Kaplan]

> Of course you are right, they were all doomed. But we only know that with certainty with 20/20 hindsight. Prior to these events we had no certainty that the passengers were all doomed. The air force might have talked the hijackers down or some passengers could possibly have survived the crash (not likely in hindsight but a possibility that could have been possible without the benefit of hindsight) or they could have missed their target (the inexperienced novice terrorist pilot was piloting the plane).

Or the hijackers might have done teshuvah.  They were not robots, they were
moral agents, fully responsible for their actions, and thus capable of
changing them.  Therefore nothing was inevitable.

*********************************
Both arguments are right; some passengers might have survived a crash and the terrorists might have decided not to crash the plane.  But based on hindsight we know that the odds are strongly against both those scenarios.  What if the the person making the decision has enough expertise to know that the odds are long that there will be any survivors on the plane no matter what happens and that the odds are short that if the plane isn't shot down there will be many deaths on the ground and all the passengers on the plane will also die.  He still has to make a decision.  What should he do?

Joseph Kaplan