Words Matter

In Facebook posts, on Instagram, in opinion articles online, and even in written rabbinic communications both in Israel and in the USA, It has become increasingly popular lately to refer to Hamas and militant Palestinians as ‘Amalek.’

The Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 25: 17-19,  commands us to “…eradicate the memory of Amalek off the face of the earth.” Not surprisingly, our sages have wrestled with this statement over the millennia. Luminaries from the Talmudic period through the Middle Ages and the Hasidic period, and up until this very day, have cautioned us that this instruction is to be taken only metaphorically.  We are taught that the point is to remove hatred and wickedness from our hearts and minds – not to annihilate human beings.

 To begin with, we have no idea who Amalek is, other than terse Biblical accounts, from Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and, mostly in the Book of Samuel, where Amalek appears to be a periodically troublesome nomadic tribe in southern Israel. A tribe with no significant effect on the Israelites, certainly nothing remotely compared with the Philistines or the Ammonites.

The Palestinians of today are an amalgam of the Canaanite tribes: the Hivites, Hittites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites, as well as former Jews and Samaritans, all encountered by the conquering Muslims in the 8th century. The Muslim Arabs brought with them Yemenites, Nubians, Syrians, Iraqis, Bedouins, and a host of other ethnic groups. All of these ended up comprising what we today refer to as ‘Palestinians.’

Whoever the Palestinians are – Amalek they are not.

Assigning  the name of Amalek to Hamas because of the atrocities they have committed is regrettable. Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, and Lithuanians, have murdered, raped, and tormented Jews for centuries on end in numbers that make the Hamas activities seem trivial in comparison. Where are the cries to extinguish those people? The Nazis’ mass-murder campaign against our people is unprecedented in scope and horror. Where are the cries to extinguish the Germans and the Austrians?

This revenge-soaked pathos is not only hollow – it is dangerous. The Rabbis have taught us that the way to look at the destruction of both Temples is through introspection. What have we done to bring about this devastation? This is the question the Rabbis offered us as a means to deal with the unspeakable tragedy we had experienced. As a means of preventing it from ever happening again.

Bibi and his government have rekindled the flame of Amalek when referring to Hamas. This talk has now permeated the Jewish world. It would behoove all of us to note that Bibi and his government have failed Israel in every way possible: from neglecting and abandoning the peripheries for years – both in the north and in the south – to pitting Israelis against each other, to letting loose mobs of violent settlers on the West Bank, to engaging in a revenge campaign in Gaza with no exit strategy, with no realistic geo-political goal in sight.

Hamas is evil. Hamas is murderous. We know this. We have always known this. Bibi knew it when he funneled money to them for years through Qatar so that they would serve as a thorn in the side of the Palestinian authority.

It is time to realize that in real terms, Hamas has achieved its goal in waging this horrific campaign. We have lost. We have not eliminated them, we have weakened our standing in the world, we have frayed our relationships with our major allies, we have alienated scores of young Jews in the diaspora, and our border towns and cities are even more abandoned and vulnerable that they were before October 7th.

It is time to stop using inflammatory phrases that do nothing more than bring anger and vengeance into broken hearts that need healing – not the fire of ancient hatreds.   The time now is for rabbis to stand up and call on the Israeli government to remember its commitment to its citizens and return all the hostages that still remain alive. The time now is for all Jewish leaders to stop giving cover to a corrupt, inept government that has lost its moral compass and has sown chaos and despair among its citizenry, and devastation among a civilian population in Gaza.

And it is time to stop invoking the language of eradicating Amalek. If we seek to refute the claims of genocide being leveled against us around the world – let us stop using genocidal language. Enough is enough.