In March 2019, a Jewish cemetery in France was vandalized. © Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images
Part 3: Amalek, Antisemitism, and Anti-Zionism
Devon Phillips
This article is the third and final installment of a Wire series on the varied factors of the global controversy and conflict with Israel, especially in light of the war with Gaza in May 2021. You can read the first installment here, and the second installment here.
An Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system, left, intercepts rockets, right, fired by Hamas militants toward southern Israel from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on May 14, 2021. (Anas Baba/AFP via Getty Images)
When rockets fly in the skies over the Gaza pocket and are intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, they burst in a strangely spectacular display. It is hard not to be mesmerized by the glow of the averted destruction. To some who see the explosions flash in the night sky, there is a sense of relief. To others, a sense of frustration. In the latest Gaza conflict of May 2021, that frustration was not only expressed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who were actively shooting the rockets, but by others from all over the globe. Politicians, academics, and activists wondered aloud if Iron Dome insulated Israel too much from the "consequences of its own actions."[1] Israel could conduct airstrikes on Gaza, but Gaza was essentially forced to watch 80-90%[2] of its launched arsenal go up in smoke without claiming many casualties. The existence of this defensive tool that allows civilians to go about their everyday lives with less disruption and destruction means that Israel doesn't have to deal with the more significant issues, such as Israel's oppression of Palestinians in Gaza. It just isn't fair, and it is prolonging the conflict by not forcing Israel to deal with the deeper issues.
Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib are Progressive American Congresswomen opposed to funding Iron Dome. (photo credit: ERIN SCOTT/REUTERS)
Such flawed reasoning even reached the halls of Congress when questions arose over the funding of the Iron Dome project.[3] When objections to budget allocations cropped up on the grounds of the "immoral nature" of the Jewish state, it was opposed with astonishment by those who saw the sinister heart of this objection. Were those asking to defund Iron Dome payments doing so by blatantly stating that more Israeli citizens should die? Were they seriously asking to dismantle a purely defensive program that would inevitably lead to civilian suffering and death? Had those that proposed defunding lost the plot?
Sadly, the reasoning behind these proposals of boycotts has deep roots that branch across history and geography, and the existence of such arguments would not be a surprise to a student of either discipline. However, those who do have this broader perspective rightly see these sentiments as alarming. Similar claims have been used to cover up and justify an ugly hatred for the Jewish people for almost as long as they have been a people.
In Part 1 of this series, we explored the immediate context of the May war between Israel and Gaza from the geopolitical realities of the Iran axis of power, to details of legal disputes in the West Bank, to controversies around the Al-Aqsa complex on the Temple Mount. In Part 2 of this series, we examined the formation of the Palestinian movement, the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the Oslo Accords, and the explored reasons for media bias. In Part 3, we will go deeper still in time and theology, where an ancient rage has manifested over millennia, setting the stage for two catalytic events of our century: the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel.
Nothing New Under the Sun
"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun." [4] This lament of King Solomon perfectly frames the story of the seemingly unending cycle of baseless hatred against the Jewish people. We first see this rage rear its ugly head in the Bible as soon as Israel is a distinct nation coming out of Egypt in the Exodus. Near a place called Rephidim, the Amalekites attacked the Israelites as they left Egyptian territory. Moses climbed up a nearby hill as the battle raged and interceded for Israelite victory with raised hands. While Moses lifted his hands, the Israelites prevailed. Aaron, his brother, and another named Hur supported Moses' arm to win the battle. Now, though we were not given the details regarding conduct during war or what provoked Amalek to attack Israel, God's response provides insight: "Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven." [5]
When the princes of Moab assembled later to wipe the people of Israel off the map, they hired a man named Balaam to curse the Israelites and weaken them before their attack. However, every time Balaam turned to curse Israel, he ended up speaking blessing and affirming God's covenant with the Israelites. At the end of his fourth oracle, Balaam uttered this prophecy: "Amalek was the first among the nations, but its end is utter destruction." [6] What could he have meant? Could he describe Amalek as the most powerful nation when they were all in the shadow of mighty Egypt? No, he must mean that Amalek was the first among the nations to attack the fledgling Israel, and because of this rage against the people and God's covenant, their "end would be utter destruction."
Indeed, Israel's first king would lose his kingship and dynasty over lenience to God's command to wipe out Amalek entirely. The Amalekites, as descendants of Esau,[7] inherited disdain for the unique promises of God to the descendants of Jacob and represented an existential threat not only God's promises to Abraham regarding land and children but that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through Israel. After rebuking King Saul for his negligence and declaring Saul's kingship void, the prophet Samuel killed the surviving King Agag of the Amalekites, but some in his line still survived.[8]
One distant son of Agag was Haman, a court official that sought to kill all of the exiled Israelites living in Persia. Only through the intercession of Queen Esther, the faith of Mordecai, and God's zeal for his covenant were the sons of Benjamin and Judah living in the Persian empire saved. Haman was hung on the gallows he had meant for Jewish Mordecai, but the rage of Amalek lived on.[9]
After the prophet Samuel destroyed Agag and the Amalekite armies after they were defeated by King Saul, after the Simeonites killed the remainder of Amalek during the time of King Hezekiah, and after Haman and his sons were executed by royal decree, it seemed like Amalek as a people were indeed wiped out. This extinction seemed to tally with the prophecy of Balaam that Amalek's end would be utter destruction. But despite Amalek not posing a material threat anymore, this command of the LORD remains in effect: "You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget." [10] A strange command—erase, but don't forget. How can you blot out memory and simultaneously remember?
We cannot overstate the severe evil of trying to void the covenant of God with Israel. The LORD is zealous for His promises, and His judgment justly falls on those who despise His words. Amalek was the "first among the nations" to try and snuff out the people of covenant, but unfortunately, they would not be the last. Israel could not and should not forget that they have an ancient opposition that has sought their destruction at every turn, in the guise of many different peoples. This enemy is ultimately marked for utter destruction and will be blotted out by the God of Israel. But in the meanwhile, we must not forget what is at stake.
Never Forget
The kings of Persia eventually let the Jewish people in exile return to the land of Israel and rebuild the Temple. But these little people and their small territory were in the crossroads of empires, and it was not long before they were a conquered nation again. Subject to Greek, then Roman rule, the Jewish people suffered immensely at the hands of tyrants such as Antiochus Epiphanes, a Greek king of the Seleucid Empire who forbade Jewish rites such as circumcision and ordered the worship of Zeus as the supreme god. The Jews of Jerusalem refused, were subsequently slaughtered, and Jerusalem was sacked. Antiochus then profaned the Temple by offering pagan sacrifices. After such an attack on the heart of Israel, the Jewish people rallied under the Maccabees' leadership and were miraculously able to repel the Seleucid armies.
The Jewish people governed themselves in Israel for a brief time, but it wasn't to be long. Sixty or so years before the birth of Jesus, the Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem, and Israel became part of the Roman Empire. Tensions between the Roman rulers and their Jewish subjects led to a series of wars which culminated in the destruction of the Temple, the slaughter of over 1 million Jews, the selling of over 100,000 Jewish people into slavery, the scattering of the remnant of Jewish people across the Middle East and Mediterranean Basin, and Judaism no longer being recognized as a legal religion within the Roman Empire. Circumcision, reading the Torah, and eating unleavened bread at Passover were outlawed. A temple dedicated to the Roman god Jupiter was erected on the Temple Mount, and a temple dedicated to the goddess Venus was built on Golgotha.[11]
This instinct to destroy the people of Israel that began ultimately with the Amalekites and was continued by Ancient Greece and Rome would eventually manifest in areas later controlled by the Islamic caliphate and Christian Europe. Even, or perhaps especially, as a people in exile and without a nation, the Jewish diaspora was subject to the worst forms of discrimination and attempted genocide. The First Crusade of Christian Europe to liberate Jerusalem from Islamic control was launched in AD 1096. As the Crusaders traveled through Europe to the Middle East, Jews were their primary target. Over 12,000 Jewish people were killed in the Rhine Valley alone during the First Crusade. The persecution of Jewish people living in Europe during the Crusades was so bloody that historians sometimes refer to this as the "first holocaust." [12]
But if we thought that the Jewish populations under Islamic rule were living free of persecution, then the great Jewish sage Moses Maimonides would have to disagree: "The nation of Ishmael… persecute us severely and devise ways to harm us and to debase us… None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have." [13] Indeed, this is hardly surprising as one of the accomplishments of Mohammed was eliminating all Jewish presence from the Arabian Peninsula during his lifetime. Like Antiochus and Rome, who erected their temples on the Temple Mount, the Muslim conquerors of Jerusalem built the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque over the ruins of the Jewish Temple.
But not only does Islam find a historical precedent to justify erasing the Jewish people, but there is eschatological reasoning as well. In a famous passage from the Hadith, the following prophecy is recounted: "Judgment Day will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews will hide behind the rocks and the trees, but the rocks and the trees will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him – except for the gharqad tree, which is one of the trees of the Jews." [14]
But though many Jews suffered horrifically under the rule of the Islamic Caliphate, the accounts of Jewish suffering under Christian Europe are often more severe and on a grander scale. Laws were passed forbidding the practice of the Jewish religion. Children were taken from their parents and put in Christian families. Jews were forcibly converted—baptism or death. Jewish doctors were forbidden from treating Christian patients. Jewish possessions were seized by their government. Jews were made to wear unique clothing that marked them as the despised minority. Entire Jewish populations were exiled from England, France, Portugal, and Spain. Cities with larger Jewish populations forced their Jewish neighbors to live in ghettos. Jews received the blame for spreading the Black Plague and being a source of disease and pestilence. Jews were burned alive inside synagogues. Other bizarre and hysterical accusations against the Jews spread, the most famous and persistent of which is known as the blood libel—that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make their unleavened bread for Passover.[15]
Suppose Jews thought that the source of their persecution might be the Roman Catholic Church, as it was the most potent super-national institution in Europe. In that case, they might have felt hope that a reformation of that organization would bring them relief. Unfortunately, such fathers of the Reformation as Martin Luther and John Calvin and their successors were as zealous in their persecution of Jews, promoting the burning of synagogues and Jewish prayer books.
For many contemporary Christians, these medieval persecutions seem unthinkable and utterly irreconcilable with the central values of Christianity. How could the church be so far from the heart of God for so long? What was the spirit at the bottom of such hatred? Indeed, the deeper the study of this period of history goes, the more profound the sorrow. Like Esau and the Amalekites, the church despised the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Such hatred is evident in statements such as this question posed by Martin Luther: "What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews?"[16] If God had rejected Israel utterly and His covenant with them is eternally and irreparably broken, then so should we deny these people and partner with God in punishing them. Such nonsensical Supersessionist reasoning flies in the face of many passages of Scripture, not the least was Paul's explanatory prophetic passage on God's faithfulness to his people Israel in Romans 9-11. Indeed this willful blindness to Scripture and cruel persecution would have significant repercussions in the future. As Catholic priest, teacher, and author Hans Küng remarked, "Nazi anti-Judaism was the work of godless, anti-Christian criminals. But it would not have been possible without the almost two thousand years' pre-history of 'Christian' anti-Judaism."[17]
Why Do the Nations Rage?
With the advent of the Enlightenment, national boundaries were shifting, and governments were reorganizing. It seemed, at last, there might be an equal place for Jews living in a more secular Europe. Many Jewish people began not only to assimilate but to prosper. One such Jewish man named Theodor Herzl resided in Vienna, Austria, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In many ways, he was not practicing any form of Judaism. He did not circumcise his son. To this educated Austrian and a respected journalist, Jewish persecution seemed a thing of the past, an embarrassment from an unenlightened age. However, whispers on the street of the "impolite Jew" soon grew to books that scientifically and enlightened-ly examined the warped nature and physiognomy of Jews. Many of the wealthy and thriving Jewish population marked down these disturbing trends as minor roadblocks to inevitable progress, Herzl included. The massacres of the Middle Ages could never happen in modern civilized Europe. Never again.
Theodor Herzl at the Zionist Congress in Switzerland in 1901. Central Zionist Archive/Simon Wiesenthal Center
Then something happened that shook Herzl to his core—he was sent as a journalist to cover an incident in Paris known as the Dreyfus Affair. An artillery officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was accused of treason. Evidence later came to light that exonerated Dreyfus, but public opinion held him guilty because he was a Jew. When Herzl heard a mob crying, "Mort aux juifs!" (Death to Jews!) as Dreyfus was stripped of rank and his sword broken, the security of living in a civilized age faded. Herzl realized that if Jews remained stateless, they would be forever tormented by this persecution. After the Dreyfus Affair, Herzl wrote a pamphlet entitled "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State) proposing political recognition of the Jewish homeland of Israel. He subsequently organized the First Zionist Congress and founded the World Zionist Organization, and the Modern Zionist Movement was born.
Herzl died in 1904 with the dream of a Jewish state in his heart. He could not have guessed that another Austrian named Adolph Hitler would soon answer the Jewish question the way other nations had responded to it throughout history, but with particular brutal efficiency. Herzl's own daughter would die in the concentration camps of Hitler.
While the Holocaust is a unique event in history, a black hole of evil and shame for Europe that allowed it to happen, it also mirrored many historical elements taken from all the previous manifestations of Jew-hatred. From yellow markers on clothing to book burnings to massacres seeking to end the Jewish people—all these echo the spirit of Amalek. There is nothing new under the sun.
This mirror of the Holocaust held up to the face of Europe humbled them, and in the wake of World War II, the state of Israel as the Jewish homeland was officially recognized by the United Nations. A little over half of the world's Jewish population had lived in Europe in 1939. Still, in the wake of the Holocaust, where two-thirds of the European Jewish people were killed, the remaining third immigrated to Israel in droves. In 1949, more than 249,000 Jewish refugees moved to Israel from Europe, and many hundreds of thousands more would join them from North Africa and the Middle East.[18]
Though formed in the wake of massive waves of antisemitism in both European and Islamic contexts, the new existence of a Jewish state became a provocation for both Arab and European nations. Though initially getting support and recognition from the United Nations in its formation, Israel barely had time to catch its breath before the neighboring countries poured out their rage in simultaneously declaring war.
Indeed, as a young nation, Israel was and is not perfect, and some accusations of war crimes and terrorism are accurate and justified while bearing in mind that Israel is also a victim of terrorism and war crimes. What became increasingly evident, especially as Israel has won war after war and viewed as successful and dominant, was that Israel seemed to be simultaneously held to impossible standards of conduct. At the same time, Israeli motivations are simultaneously assumed to be universally malicious. Many of the old accusations of the Middle Ages, like "Child killer!" have again reared their heads. But this time, the allegations were not against a minority people living in exile. The exact charges were wrapped up in something much more acceptable: the "justice framework" of anti-Zionism. Just as Austria in the 1800s and 1900s had covered its simmering antisemitism with the pseudo-science of the Enlightenment era, so now the west can project its Jew-hatred through the pseudo-justice lens of the Information Age and give its antisemitism a more palatable name: anti-Zionism.
How can we thus distinguish legitimate criticism of the modern state of Israel from antisemitism or anti-Zionism? When Israel's actions are blown out of proportion with statements like, "Palestinian refugee camps are the new Auschwitz," this is antisemitism. When the United Nations singles out the Jewish state of Israel for "human rights abuses" while ignoring egregious abuses in places like Syria, this is antisemitism. When western wrongdoings in the form of apartheid or colonialism are projected onto entirely different scenarios, when one state is scapegoated for all the regional ills, this is antisemitism. When Israel's right to exist as a nation is dismissed, this is antisemitism. (Anti-Zionism, by directly challenging the existence of the Jewish state, is by definition antisemitism.)
But at the core, this is how we know that something is Anti Semitic: does it despise the covenant of God and the people of the covenant? Because that spirit of Amalek makes no distinction between Israel and Jewish people. That is why we have seen in recent times huge spikes of hate crimes against Jews in the west ostensibly in response to an objectionable Israeli action. As western rage again flares against Israel, the Jews living in the western world often pay the price. During the war in May 2021 between Gaza and Israel, not only were synagogues defaced and Jewish people attacked in the streets in London and New York, not only were ancient antisemitic chants such as "Khybar, Khybar, ya Yahood," [19] brandished at protests in Paris and Chicago, but hashtags such as #HitlerwasRight received tens of thousands of retweets on social media platforms.[20]
He Who Sits in Heaven Laughs
In light of such widespread, hateful actions and rhetoric, the command from Deuteronomy 25 to "never forget" the hostility of Amalek is easy to keep. Even so, we also know that that spirit of antisemitism's end will be utter destruction. When King David posed the question, "Why do the nations rage?" in Psalm 2, he saw in his mind's eye the response of God to this rage: laughter. "He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, 'As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.'" [21]
While we must not be lulled into a false sense of security, we must also never forget that a battle for covenant fulfillment shapes perceptions and prejudices. We can rest in the sovereignty of God, knowing that He will set His King on Zion's hill. This King of the Jews will rule and reign out of Jerusalem and keep every promise ever made between Him and Israel eternally, including the blessing of all nations.
Amen. Maranatha.
[1] Objections that Iron Dome perpetuates the Israel-Palestinian conflict are relatively common. See "Why Iron Dome Might be Bad for Israel." by Max Fisher in The Washington Post, or "The Costly Success of Israel's Iron Dome." by Anshel Pfeffer in The Atlantic.
[2] "How Israel's Iron Dome missile shield works." BBC News.
[3] "House approves $1 billion for the Iron Dome as Democrats feud over Israel." The New York Times.
[4] Ecclesiastes 1:9
[5] Exodus 17:14
[6] Numbers 24:20
[7] Genesis 36:12; 1 Chronicles 1:36
[8] 1 Samuel 15
[9] Esther 9
[10] Deuteronomy 25:19
[11] "Two millennia of Jewish persecution, Anti-Judaism: 70 TO 1200 CE." Religious Tolerance.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Moses Maimonides, Letter to Yemen, in Andrew G. Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2008), 11.
[14] Sahih Muslim, bk. 41, no. 6985.
[15] I generalized here because to exhaustively list all incitements to violence from the church fathers and all the sins committed against Jews in Europe would far exceed the scope of this article. Many of these generalized events, such as forced conversion or mass slaughter or expulsion, happened several times over centuries and millennia and in many different countries. What I hope is evident from this list is that (1) a pervasive spirit of antisemitism led to the perpetuation of mass crimes against the Jewish people and (2) that the horrors of the Holocaust had clear precedent and roots in earlier European history. You can read about these incidents in greater detail in Joel Richardson's book "When a Jew Rules the World" in the section "Two Thousand Years of Supersessionism and Jew Hatred."
[16] Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies, in Luther’s Works, vol. 47, trans. Martin H. Bertram (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971).
[17] Hans Küng, "On Being a Christian," Doubleday, Garden City NY, (1976), Page 169.
[18] "Zionism." History.com.
[19] This chant in Arabic means, "Jews, remember Khybar, the army of Muhammad is returning." For more history about these references, see "Roots of Rage: Part II."
[20] "Officials Say Hate Crimes Against Jews Are Growing In The Aftermath Of Gaza Violence." NPR.
[21] Psalm 2:4-6
