The pasuk tell us:
וְלֹא תַחֲנִיפוּ אֶת הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַתֶּם בָּהּ כִּי הַדָּם הוּא יַחֲנִיף אֶת הָאָרֶץ וְלָאָרֶץ לֹא יְכֻפַּר לַדָּם אֲשֶׁר שֻׁפַּךְ בָּהּ כִּי אִם בְּדַם שֹׁפְכוֹ – And you shall not deceive the land in which you live, for the blood corrupts the land, and the blood which is shed in the land cannot be atoned for except through the blood of the one who shed it. (35:34)
The word חניפה means flattery/deception/corruption/obfuscation. The expression seems highly odd in the context of the land.
R’ Moshe Feinstein draws a major distinction between the conventional wisdom of the world, and Jewish law. The world worries about peace and rights – if someone disturbs peace or rights, since the goal is peace, the person destroying it is therefore a target, as they are destroying the world as they see it. Countless wars are fought, with countless dead, because one nation has a claim to repairing and saving the world, or some other ideal.
For Jews, the Torah tells us “Do not murder.” – regardless of who – one may not kill another human being. Even someone who destroys the world is still taken care of by this.
What results from this is that someone who murders or wages war to ostensibly “save the world”, is יַחֲנִיף אֶת הָאָרֶץ – wherein the land takes precedence over a man. He is being murdered for the sake of preservation of the land, for peace!
The Torah tells us that the land is always secondary to the person – all land is worthless if the people on it aren’t upstanding individuals. חניפה is the disconnect between reality and an ideal – we must always know that we have to be real with ourselves, always trying to improve. This is what the pasuk means when it says וְלֹא תַחֲנִיפוּ אֶת הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַתֶּם בָּהּ.