This week's Torah portion -- which I will cover on Saturday -- happens to be the one in which the nation of Amalek attacks the Children of Israel as they are having Egypt. Jewish tradition holds that the Amalekites targeted children and the elderly.
That is the background for the commandment later, in Deuteronomy 25, that the children of Israel are to "remember" Amalek. It is that commandment that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited in several early speeches about the war to both soldiers and civilians.
A Jewish audience would recognize the reference. The story of Amalek -- from Exodus and Deuteronomy -- is told every year, with the reading of the relevant Torah portions. "Amalek" is a catch-all for anti-Jewish villains throughout history. It is interpreted as an injunction to remember, and to fight, evil -- never to mass murder.
But a clumsy translation, amplified by anti-Israel and anti-war voices on social media, claimed (falsely) that Netanyahu was calling for "holy war" and citing a different passage entirely, in I Samuel 15:3.
In that case, King Saul is commanded to wipe out Amalek entirely, from the king down to the children and animals. (Saul balks at this task, and as a result he is stripped of his kingship.) But Netanyahu's quote was specifically a reference to Deuteronomy, word-for-word.
At The Hague this month, South Africa's lawyers, who have probably never cracked open a Bible in their entire lives in that lawless country, used the Samuel citation in claiming that Netanyahu's reference to Deuteronomy was proof of intent to commit genocide.
Ironically, one of the South African lawyers making this absurd claim is also the lawyer for firebrand black nationalist Julius Malema, who likes a song called "Shoot the Boer." This same lawyer has argued that the song's inciting phrases are not meant to be taken literally.
At first I blamed laziness and ignorance for the misquote. I imagined that some anti-Israel activist did a word search on the Internet for "Amalek" and came up with the reference from Samuel. But my friend James Myburgh did some digging and found another source.
It turns out that Nazi propagandists were quite enamored of the Samuel quote and used it to accuse Jews of plotting the murder of all Germans. This, they said, justified killing Jews. Those are the roots of South Africa's case, which had other antisemitic features.
How fitting that today's Amalek -- Hamas and its collaborators, including the wicked South African government -- would seek to accuse others of what they themselves are guilty of: namely, the seeking of genocide. That is pure Amalek, and it must be stopped.
https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/hitlerism-returns-to-the-hague
The story of Noah is familiar; the details, less so.
Noah is often seen as an ambivalent figure. He was righteous -- but only for his generation. What was his deficiency?
One answer suggests itself: knowing that the world was about to be flooded, he built an Ark for the animals and for his own family -- but did not try to save anyone else or to convince them to repent and change their ways (the prophet Jonah, later, would share that reluctance).
Abraham, later, would set himself apart by arguing with God -- with the Lord Himself! -- against the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying that they should be saved if there were enough righteous people to be found (there were not).
Still, Noah was good enough -- and sometimes, that really is sufficient to save the world. We don't need heroes every time -- just ordinary decency.
Hi all -- as I noted last month, I'm going to be closing down my Locals page, at least for tips and subscriptions -- I may keep the page up and the posts as well, but I'm no longer going to be accepting any kind of payment.
Look for cancelation in the very near future. Thank you for your support!
An interesting weekend -- one of the last of Daylight Savings Time -- in which there is much to celebrate, much to contemplate, and a bit to worry about.
The Gaza peace deal is shaky, but holding, after the living hostages returned; the shutdown is still going on, with no end in sight; the China trade war is heating up; and the confrontation with Venezuela continues to escalate.
The "No Kings" protest was a dud, despite the media's attempt to inflate it. What I find fascinating is that the Democrats have basically stolen the rhetoric and the imagery of the Tea Party protests, circa 2009. They claim they are defending the Constitution -- just like the Tea Party did.
On the one hand, this is good. How wonderful to have a political system in which both sides, bitterly opposed though they are, articulate differences through the Constitution -- and not, as in so many other countries, outside it.
On the other, this is sheer hypocrisy for the Democrats. Not only did they malign the Tea Party as ...
