LEV503 During recent decades military forces were deployed in some cases of humanitarian intervention that involved combat. Usually such wars cannot be portrayed as wars of self-defense. Are they justifiable? Although there is no official Jewish view of such interventions, a starting point can be offered. It is the biblical precept "you shall not… stand against the blood of your neighbor" [this verse]. That verse is usually interpreted as pertaining to proper interactions between individuals--that, for example, one must seek to rescue a person who is drowning or accosted by highway robbers (B. Sanhedrin 73a)--but it can and should serve as grounds for a conception of proper humanitarian intervention in telling us that we as a society may, and maybe even should, engage in such wars if there is no alternative to protecting innocent lives. (By Asa Kasher, "Jewish Ethics and War")