“When you go out to war against your enemies and Hashem your G-d will deliver them into your hand and you will take from them captives…”,(Deuteronomy 21:10).
Every week, the Jewish people read a parsha (section) of the Torah that corresponds with the Jewish Calendar. Last week’s parsha is ‘Ki Tetze’ or translated ‘when you depart’ and it discusses the challenges an Israelite may face when going to off to battle. Amongst them are a soldier’s instructions should he fall in love with a female prisoner of war.
The Torah portion also reminds the Jewish people to kill and destroy Amalek:
| “Remember what Amalek did to you on your way out of Egypt. When they encountered you on the way, and you were tired and exhausted, they cut off those lagging to your rear, and they did not fear God. Therefore… you must obliterate the memory of Amalek from under the heavens.” (Deut. 25:17-8) |
in case you didn’t get to that part of the Old Testament yet, Amalek is a nation of people who despise God and in an effort to erase God from the human conscious actively conspire to kill off his chosen people-the Jews. The Torah also teaches us that Amalekites exist in every generation. Even today. There is a direct commandment from God to the Jewish people to destroy and kill Amalek which means that in every generation, Amalek exists. But who is Amalek? This is a constant dilemma facing observant Jews as to whether or not we are able to identify the evil nation of amalek in 2014.
Surely radical muslims like Hamas and IS fit the profile of those who would cut off the weak links of the Jewish people while they are tired and exhausted. That is precisely what they have been doing throughout this past summer’s war in Gaza and pretty much ever since the state of Israel came into existence. But they are both monotheists and Arabs making them descendants of Ishmael and not Esau (who Amalek originally stemmed from).
This is also why there is a general consensus in the Jewish world that the Nazis were in fact Amalek.They fit the Amalekite profile like a glove. They’re Europeans which means they are descendants of Esau. They were agnostics who want to kill every last Jew. It doesn’t get more obvious than that.
A possible Amalekite nation are the Iranians. They could very well be today’s Amalekites. Like the Turks, they are not Arabs making them descendants of Esau and it is well known that Haman was an Amalekite and was situated in Persia (modern day Iran).
Which brings us back to our previous question. Can we consider the Muslims Amalek even though they believe in God? Especially when they are obsessed with dominating and killing God’s chosen people or anyone who worships God in a different language or building than they do?
Although the Muslims clearly believe in God, their actions demonstrate belief in a God whose decrees are the polar opposite of ours. Furthermore, if we look closely at the passage in the Tanakh it says “ they did not fear God.” It doesn’t say that Amalekites by definition don’t believe in God, just that they don’t fear him.
It’s hard to imagine that a community whose doctrine preaches executing other ‘fellow’ monotheists in cold blood is a religion that fears God. Its becoming more and more apparent to us Israeli Jews that the Muslims don’t fear much at all except for anything that is both violent and stronger than they are.
Then there’s the Talmud (jewish oral law) which argues that the aggression and ethnic cleansing of Sancherib, the king of Assyria and destroyer of Samaria, “mixed up the nations” over 2,500 years ago and therefore all identity of the biblical nations has been confused and lost (Berakhot 28a). This could imply that all commands of exterminating nations are obsolete and that labeling any contemporary nation as descendants of Amalek is irrelevant. Then again, it may not.
Although it’s possible that one or several individual nations might be Amalek, its also possible that Amalekites are scattered throughout various nations across the globe. If the latter is the case, these are a cunning people who crave power which means that if they are scattered, many of them may have climbed the political hierarchy to positions of power and are likely the leaders of today’s nation states.
Although controversy remains with regards to who exactly today’s Amalekites are, there’s one thing we can all agree on is that aggressive Muslim entities sure act like them.