Remembering Amalek

Here we are again. A whole country is suffused with feelings of excruciating sorrow, anger, and impotence. Here I am again, writing that another “Palestinian” creature has brutally violated and murdered a beautiful young girl, a 19-year old who had a bright future, who now has none. Her mutilated body lies in the ground, and her family has only memories.

The perpetrator, a 29-year old named Arafat Irfaiya, “left his home in Hebron with a knife and made his way to the village of Beit Jala, walked to the forest, where he saw Ori [Ansbacher], attacked and murdered her,” according to the General Security Service (Shabak). The creature was arrested by the Israel Police’s YAMAM counter-terrorism unit in Ramallah two days after the murder.

The rapist-murderer-mutilator does have a future, unfortunately. If only he’d aimed a gun at the policemen who came to arrest him! But he was too smart for that. His house, or part of it, or none of it, may be demolished – that will depend on our Supreme Court – but he will receive a salary in prison, the Palestinian Authority will give his family a new house, and he will be a hero, honored by his community, candy passed out on his behalf. And some day he will be released from prison, maybe even on a day not so far off if there is some kind of deal or “prisoner exchange” (in other words, if he is freed in exchange for an Israeli held hostage).

The Prime Minister said that “…we will bring the matter to justice.” But we won’t. There would have been justice, perhaps, if the creature had been shot when he was caught, but that didn’t happen. We don’t have justice, we have what Tuvia Tenenbom called “a very complicated Talmudic thing, nobody knows, even the Jews cannot figure it out.”

The “Palestinians,” a nationality invented by the KGB in the 1960s and applied to the regional Arabs who claim the territory set aside for Israel by the international community as the Palestine Mandate after WWI, are the spiritual and practical descendants of the biblical tribe of Amalek, an enemy hated and feared by the people of Israel because of their penchant for attacking from the rear, killing the weakest and the slowest of the Israelites.

This has always been the strategy of the “Palestinians,” who especially seek out Jewish women and children to act out their perpetual rage upon (in a textbook case of psychological projection, they accuse the IDF of targeting “Palestinian” children).

The Jewish people are commanded (Deut. 25:19) “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget.” This is generally understood to mean to completely destroy the tribe (see also I Samuel 15:3), but the rabbis decided that because of the way the various nations were scattered in history, it is impossible to determine who, if anyone, is a blood descendant of Amalek today. Nevertheless that commandment still has meaning. I would not go as far as the prophet Samuel and insist that we are required to kill every living creature in Amalek’s camp, but I understand it to mean that when faced with an antisemitic enemy, we are required to achieve full victory over it, to obtain what was called unconditional surrender after WWII.

We have been trying to do the “complicated Talmudic thing” since 1967, perhaps since 1948, and it hasn’t worked. Today we know that there can’t be coexistence, that Jews and “Palestinians” can’t live together (the jury is still out about the Arab citizens of Israel). Yasser Arafat’s educational system, perpetuated by his successor Mahmoud Abbas, and the similar system in the Gaza Strip controlled by Hamas and paid for by the UN, have guaranteed that. They have bred possibly the first complete generations of youthful Jew-haters vicious enough to cut the heads off of three-month old babies and to stab 75-year old grandmothers in the street. First, almost from birth, they inculcate in them white-hot hatred against Jews, and then they provide financial and psychological incentives for them to act on their hatred.

Arafat Irfaiya is a perfect example of the new breed of terrorist made possible by this system. A “lone wolf” who (as far as we know) didn’t receive direct instructions from the terror groups, found a victim by chance and murdered her with extreme brutality. He was a robot, programmed for murder, and triggered by some seemingly insignificant event.

Perhaps decades ago we could have simply wiped out the PLO and reached some kind of understanding with traditional leaders among the Palestinian Arabs. Perhaps not. But today the “Palestinians” have taken on the mantle of Amalek. They must be defeated and disarmed, and those who see themselves as our enemies must be permanently expelled from the land of Israel. A policy to encourage Arabs to emigrate from the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean should be implemented. Jewish sovereignty should be imposed over all of Eretz Yisrael.

We are not moving in that direction. In today’s Jewish state, “Palestinians” have as many, or more, rights than Jews. Our Supreme Court grants them the ability to bring about the demolition of Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria, but in many cases prevents the IDF from demolishing homes of “Palestinian” murderers. Between 2012 and 2018, Israel has facilitated the transfer of over $1 billion from Qatar to the Amalekites of Hamas. Israel also provides Hamas with electricity and water, and allows Hamas to collect taxes on these.

Israel also collects import duties for the Palestinian Authority and transfers the money to it. At long last, the Knesset passed a law allowing Israel to deduct the amounts the PA pays to terrorists like Arafat Irfaiya from this sum (in 2017 and 2018, the PA’s budget for such payments was $320 million each year). The PM promises to enforce the law. We’ll see if he has the will to do so, and if the legal establishment will let him.

Instead of destroying our enemies, we are trying to make their lives better, in the hope that they will like us better. It strengthens them and makes them despise us more.

When King Shaul was ordered by Hashem (via the prophet Shmuel) to completely destroy Amalek and all his possessions, he waffled, leaving King Agag alive and keeping the best of Amalek’s animals. Because he disobeyed Hashem’s command, Shmuel ordered that his kingship should be taken away and given to someone “worthier than you.”

I am not suggesting that we are commanded to destroy all the “Palestinians” and their livestock, although terrorists like Arafat Irfaiya should be executed with all possible dispatch. But I do think that the decision to pay tribute to the Palestinian Amalek instead of defeating, disarming, and dispersing it contravenes reason, in both secular and religious forms.

Maybe the time has come to take away the “kingship” from our present leadership and give it to someone “worthier?”