At the end of this week’s parasha, Ki Teitzei, the Torah issues one of its most disturbing commands:

“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you came out of Egypt… how he attacked you on the way and struck down all who were weak at your rear… Therefore… you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; do not forget” (Deuteronomy 25:17–19).

The obvious question is: Why Amalek?

The Jewish people had many enemies. Pharaoh enslaved us and murdered our children. Edom refused Israel passage through its territory, and Moab, fearful of Israel’s approach, sought through Balak and Balaam to thwart them. Yet it is Amalek alone whose memory we are commanded to eradicate. What made Amalek different?

Perhaps the answer lies not simply in the cruelty of Amalek’s attack, but in the nature of the conflict itself. Many of Israel’s other enemies, however brutal, acted within some recognizable political or territorial framework. Edom and Moab feared a large nation approaching their borders. Nations go to war over territory, sovereignty, resources, security, and power.

Amalek was different. Amalek was not defending a city Israel had attacked. Israel was not attempting to conquer Amalekite territory. Indeed, Amalek appears in the Torah as a mobile desert people rather than as a settled kingdom defending defined borders.

Israel had only just emerged from Egypt, exhausted and vulnerable, when Amalek attacked. And whom did they attack? They struck those straggling behind: the weak, the weary, and the defenseless.

There was no territorial dispute to resolve. No border to negotiate. No resource to divide. Amalek attacked Israel because Israel was Israel.

Perhaps this is why the Torah treats Amalek differently. Amalek is not merely another enemy nation. Amalek represents a phenomenon. We might call it “Amalekism.”

Amalekism is what happens when hostility toward the Jewish people ceases to be a means toward some political end and becomes an end in itself. It is no longer: You possess something that I want. It is: Your very existence is intolerable to me.

An echo of this “Amalekism” can be heard today in what Dr. Einat Wilf has termed “Palestinianism.”

Wilf was once a committed supporter of Oslo and of the two-state solution. She accepted the conventional understanding of the conflict: two peoples claimed the same land, and therefore peace required partition. Give Palestinians a state of their own, she believed, and the conflict could finally end.

But over time, the evidence led her to question that assumption. Israel withdrew from territory and repeatedly entertained proposals for Palestinian statehood, yet the conflict did not move toward resolution. Particularly significant for Wilf was the continued insistence on a Palestinian “right of return” for refugees and their descendants not merely to a future Palestinian state, but to Israel itself.

That forced her to ask a basic question: if the goal is Palestinian self-determination, why would the establishment of a Palestinian state not satisfy it? Why insist, even afterward, on a claim that could ultimately undo the Jewish character of Israel?

Wilf gradually concluded that she had misunderstood the heart of the conflict. The central issue, in her analysis, was not simply the absence of Palestinian sovereignty. It was the continued existence of Jewish sovereignty.

Religious and ideological currents, she argues, have helped make opposition to Jewish sovereignty itself a central element of Palestinian national consciousness. Terrorism, therefore, is not the essence of the phenomenon, but only one instrument among many. Political pressure, diplomacy, education, international campaigns, the perpetuation of the refugee question, and military violence are all directed toward the same ultimate purpose: the end of the Jewish state.

This is what Wilf calls “Palestinianism.”

The distinction is crucial. Palestinian nationalism need not be Palestinianism. A Palestinian national movement that seeks independence alongside a permanent Jewish state could, in principle, become a partner for peace. Palestinianism, as Wilf defines it, is something altogether different: the conviction that Palestinian liberation can be achieved only through the negation of Jewish sovereignty.

In that sense, Palestinianism bears a disturbing resemblance to Amalekism.

This comparison is not between Amalek and the Palestinian people. It is between two ideological phenomena. Amalek did not object to a particular Israelite policy. It did not dispute a specific border. Its hostility was directed at Israel itself. So too, Palestinianism, as defined here, is not ultimately a dispute over whether Israel should withdraw from this territory or that one. It is opposition to the very idea that the Jewish people have a right to sovereignty anywhere in their ancestral homeland.

And this brings us back to the Torah’s uncompromising command: “You shall blot out the memory of Amalek.”

A conflict over borders can be negotiated. A conflict over resources can be compromised. Even competing national aspirations can, at least in principle, be reconciled.

But an ideology whose ultimate objective is the elimination of the other people’s sovereignty cannot simply be accommodated, because every concession can become merely another stage toward that larger goal. Such an ideology must be defeated—intellectually, politically, culturally and, when it expresses itself through violence, militarily.

Only when Palestinian nationalism ceases to define its success through the negation of Jewish sovereignty can Israelis and Palestinians truly begin to negotiate—not over whether Israel will exist, but over how two peoples can live alongside one another in peace.

Shabbat Shalom.

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For an abridged video version

 https://youtube.com/shorts/x7y_zSC5_-0?feature=share

For more insights on the parasha and current events in Israel, visit
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