Genocide By Inches

And Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword....And the Lord said unto Moses, "Write this for a memorial in the book and tell it unto the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven..the LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation."- Exodus 17:14

That's the way the Big Boys talked in the old days,when conversations with the Lord were commonplace and Amalek and his pals were freely labeled as the rabid dogs they were for picking off stragglers and attacking and killing Jews out of hand just for the pure sport and profit of it as the Jews moved through the desert after leaving Pharaoh's Egypt. No illusions there...you have to defeat evil, not negotiate with it. G-d said so,and He most likely knew what He was talking about.In any event He'd been right enough times so that Moses, Aaron and Joshua weren't about to argue the point.They defeated Amalek utterly and then proceeded on their way in peace.

Nowadays, the UN would be thumping for a state for Amalek and shrugging off the murder of Jewish women and children as 'resistance'. For that matter,Condi Rice would be leading the charge for an Amalek-stan, and the Bush Administration would be giving them millions in foreign aid while warning the Jews against a 'disproportionate response.'

Note one thing about the above passage...it says there will be war with Amalek from generation to generation,and gives the Jews the responsibility of fighting in that war to defeat evil wherever it rears its ugly head.

The Jews commemorate one victory over a latter day manifestation of Amalek tommorow night, when they celebrate Purim, the victory of Queen Esther and Mordecai over the evil Haman, who tried to manipulate the King of Persia into signing on to the murder, enslavement and plunder of every Jew in Persia.

The Megillah, which is read in every synagogue in the world at Purim relates how Queen Esther,wife of the king could have reacted the way a great many people would have, by simply pretending that what was going on didn't concern her,and rationalizing it. Instead, she realized that a threat to her people was a threat to her, even as high up and removed as the King's palace. She took the commandment to battle Amalek to heart and risked her life and position to defeat Haman and his evil allies and, along with her brother Mordecai, lead her people to victory.

Among religious Jews, a different portion of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses is read and studied each week,starting with Beresheet (Genesis) in September or so at the New Year and continuing onwards through the year. It's sometimes eerie how closely the portions or parshas can relate to what's going on in the real world.

The verse above comes from the parsha read around the time eight young religious students, just kids really, were murdered in the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem by one of Amalek's minions.

Not only were these defenseless boys deliberately targeted and gunned down in cold blood, but the murderer's compatriots celebrated en masse and memorialized the murder and the murderer as something holy to be worshiped and emulated.

Amid the shock and grief, a number of people,myself included tried to figure out what all this meant.

I think I have an answer. Horrible as it was,it was G-d's way of trying to get our attention.

Let no one think that I believe G-d is 'punishing' the Jews by murdering children. That's not how things like this work in the great cosmic scheme of things. No, in the end, it's always a result of that two-edged sword of our own free will. What is happening in Israel today is merely the logical result of choices made by Israel's governments since the Oslo Accords.

Since Oslo, the Jews of Israel have been experiencing the same thing the Jews experienced in the desert on the way to the Holy Land - a war of attrition with Amalek, the deliberate murder of the straggler, the unwary and the defenseless, by people who almost overwhelmingly rejoice in slaughter and who have mostly divorced themselves from what we would consider civilized human norms.

It is genocide by inches. And with each horrific murder,each bloody deed certain people continue to attempt to rationalize new attempts to negotiate with Amalek, all common sense to the contrary, thinking that this time, the butcher's bill for 'peace' will be paid with just another retreat and a little more blood of the innocent.

It will never be paid.

You cannot negotiate with evil...you have to defeat it utterly, drive it away from you into the desert.

That's the message G-d gave Moses on how to deal with Amalek, and that's the message being sent with the massacre at the Yeshiva, I think, plain and simple. And yet some of the Jews of Israel- or at least the government in power - still avoid it. So do some Jews living outside of Israel.

Faced with the same choice that confronted Esther, they've chosen to pretend to temporize and to rationalize rather than to act. And until they do, I can't help but believe in my heart of hearts that the carnage will not only continue, but will get worse.

That isn't just limited to the Jews, by the way. They're merely the first to be assaulted. It applies to the people of the western democracies as well, no matter how divorced from the situation they might think they are.

When Esther was agitating over what to do about the impending massacre of the Jews in Persia, her brother Mordecai said to her, "Think not that thou shalt escape in the King's house, more than all the Jews."

As we've already seen, Israel was the testing ground for Islamist terrorism, and the methods first used there have reappeared elsewhere. If Israel is destroyed, then it will not be long before Amalek attacks us in our own house as well, with even greater fierceness and vigor.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, even if the player's names on the backs of the jerseys seem different sometimes.

For their part, the Jews of Israel have a clear choice. They can trust in the ancient message G-d gave them, destroy Amalek and risk the displeasure of the White King's House, or they can continue to suffer genocide by inches until they are finally overwhelmed and destroyed.

That choice becomes more and more apparent with every rocket that slams into Israel and with every bloody attack by Amalek on the innocent.

It's long past time to end this.

Soon come, soon come.