Memo to Fareed Zakaria: It's Not Bibi Who's a Messianist but Ahamadinejad Who's Chasing Armageddon

Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg was right to call out Fareed Zakaria, who in Newsweek magazine appears to cast Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and company as possibly driven by a Messianic vision -- not the cold, hard reality that the Mullahs in Tehran are on the verge of backing Ahmadinejad's genocidal rants with nuclear teeth.

Mr. Zakaria's misguided muse is based on the following quote attributed to one of Bibi's aides:

"One of Netanyahu's advisers said of Iran, 'Think Amalek.' The Bible says that the Amalekites were dedicated enemies of the Jewish people. In 1 Samuel 15, God says, "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."
Mr. Zakaria concludes: "Now, were the president of Iran and his advisers to have cited a religious text that gave divine sanction for the annihilation of an entire race, they would be called, well, messianic."

Mr. Zakaria -- you are dead wrong on this Biblical exegesis.

Actually, Amalekites aren't 'dedicated enemies of the Jewish people'. While almost everything about Amalek is shrouded in mystery, the Bible tells of a people -- of unknown origin -- who launched an unprovoked attack on bedraggled ex-slaves traveling through the wilderness without apparent cause, targeting the weakest among them. In rabbinic thought, Amalek was the archetype of hatred of good itself, who attacked Israel, not because of any strategic goals, but out of pure hatred and contempt.

To the scholars of the Talmud and those who had to distill the legal requirements implied by the Bible, Amalek was a quagmire of doubt. Some scholars believed that it was a people that had lived once and since disappeared. Another view had it that Amalek was not a people, but a cultural expression.

Without firm knowledge of who Amalek was, or how they were to be eliminated, Jews did not see destroying Amalek as a practical matter. Yet Amalek's existence and its periodic depredations of the Jews and humanity would remain a reality to contend with.

My colleague, Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, the Director of Interfaith Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, points out that even if Jews had the power to resist -- which was denied them for the last few millennia -- they could not chance violating the stricture against murder. So even when Jews were allowed by their Persian ruler to battle their enemies in the Book of Esther (whose villain, according to rabbinic tradition, was an Amalekite), they used the license only to wage a defensive war against those who attacked them -- not to slaughter indiscriminately.

But remembering Amalek is a Mitzvah, embedded in the Jewish consciousness. We are commanded to remember that the unthinkable can and does happen and that there are tyrants for whom hate trumps every other goal or conquest. We remember that even when the military conflict of World War II was still in doubt, Hitler insisted on pursuing his genocide against Jewish men, women and children -- dispatching trains across Europe to ship Jews to the gas chambers, diverting manpower and supplies needed on the fronts. For Adolf Hitler, eliminating the last Jew on earth was more important than winning the war.

So when Bibi's aide says : "Think Amalek", he means -- remember that we Jews have learned the hard way that unthinkable evil can quickly become a reality; that those who call for Israel's destruction have to be taken seriously. Israelis do not regard the Iranian people as Amalek, or entertain any notion of incinerating millions of innocents in a nuclear holocaust. But the once and future threat of Amalek won't let us forget that pure evil does exist -- and left unchallenged it can manifest in a scope greater than we can anticipate or are prepared to recognize.

So Fareed -- we all have reasons to lose sleep over a Middle East leader driven by a messianic vision -- but it ain't Bibi -- it's Ahmadinejad and those Mullahs who are chasing their fanatical vision of Armageddon

Comments

[Muslimhumanist]

And yet Mr. Netanyahu has come to the United States and embraced apocalyptic figures like the Reverend Hagee. More importantly he and his government have portrayed the Iranians in ways that deny their humanity and make it more likely to see their destruction as acceptable. We should be clear that other political voices in Iran, including those running against him in the surrent election have explicitly condemned his ugly and unacceptable denial of the Holocaust. Furthermore, Rabbi Cooper may well be right in his analysis of Fareed Zakari's misreading of Amalek. But he and Netanyahu seem to equally misread Twelver Shi'i understandings of eschatology. The question is: are the Iranian's rational? Does anyone really believe that Iran would launch nuclear weapons against Israel killing the Palestinians as well and bringing about their own inevitable destruction by U.S. and/or Israeli retaliation? Of course if they are apocalyptic fanatics that answer is simple. And defining the Iranians in that way is thus politically "rational" and effective. But it won't bring peace anymore than Ahmedinejad's inflammatory rhetoric.

[Baghooli]

Answer to Zakaria "Amalek" charge is; guilty with Extenuating Circumstances!

[GalenL]

You make good points about interpretation, however while I see the relationship between you rebuttal of Zakaria and your blanket statement about the Israeli government acting defensively I have a hard time considering it a supporting argument.

[Freenation]

Cooper...I will still believe in Zakaria, he is far more diversed in opinions than you are...

[jhNY]

You may not lose sleep over the plans and doings of Bibi, but plenty of the rest of us will. One man's pre-emptive strike is another's unprovoked attack. I hope sincerely nobody has to wrestle with this irony for practical reasons either in Israel or Iran. Ever.

Perhaps if Israel made a concerted and obviously sincere effort to make a practical peace with the Palestinians, much of the heat and bluster of Ahmadinejad would dissipate. With Bibi in power, we'll never know.

[soral]

Rabbi Cooper, a couple of points.

- You cite the Newsweek writer, "Fareed Zakira". Fareed's name is "Zakaria".

- You are correct in pointing out the fallacies of Zakaria's biblical interpretation. Yet there is something tragic in attempting to dig into the gemorrah on a Huffington Post blog entry. It is not likely to be understood because most folks know nothing of it. In order to make your points valid to those who didn't attend Yeshiva University, please add some links that bring your textual analysis alive a bit more next time.

- "Israelis do not regard the Iranian people as Amalek, or entertain any notion of incinerating millions of innocents in a nuclear holocaust."

This was Jeffrey Goldberg's point in his post. Essentially, he argued that Israel has been threatening to bomb five or so nuclear installations in Iran, while Ahmadinejad has been calling for the removal of the entire state of Israel. Netanyahu's bellicose rhetoric, whether you consider it to be defensive in nature or offensive, is far, far narrower in scope than the open-ended destruction intimated by the leaders of Iran.

- But, just as Goldberg wrote elsewhere, a military strike by Israel against Iranian nuclear sites is still a poor option - stupid, as it were.

[arvay]

Hilarious.

A comically absurd attempt to obscure the clear reference in the Hebrew texts to a command from the Jewish god to kill a whole people. What we today call "genocide." Even their sheep.

Somehow, the good Rabbi twists and turns so that we arrive first at Adolph Hitler and then Iran.

It's the kind of intellectual dishonesty that gives the negative connotation to the term "Talmudic."

Just to make things clear, it doesn't really matter if the story is historical or not, the fact that a religious text speaks approvingly of genocide puts an indelible stamp on the religion in question.

[stavros]

Very well put!

[soral]

"...to kill a whole people. What we today call "genocide."

'Genocide' is a word created after the Holocaust, by a Polish Jew, because the phrase "mass murder" was not sufficient to describe what had happened (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rwanda/reports/dsetexhe.html). The word can't accurately be used to refer to the presumptive compulsion to tribal warfare during the bronze age. That meaning, besides, is the literal interpretation of a text which, in the thousands of years since it has been written, has never been interpreted in that way by its adherents, Jews.

This is what Rabbi Cooper means when he writers, "Without firm knowledge of who Amalek was, or how they were to be eliminated, Jews did not see destroying Amalek as a practical matter." The literal interpretation of this text has always been impracticable.

"It's the kind of intellectual dishonesty that gives the negative connotation to the term "Talmudic."

Is there one? I didn't know.

[Chris Trent]

"'Genocide'... can't accurately be used to refer to the presumptive compulsion to tribal warfare during the bronze age."

Of course it can. It's an anachronism, and should be identified as such, but a word is not incorrect simply because it was coined after the fact. The UN Genocide Convention states that "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide#Genocide_in_history).

[arvay]

Your answer defines "Talmudic."

Diverting the conversation into an intellectual maze, where the main point is soon forgotten.

Killing every member of a group, including their children, animals etc. is not genocide? Well, let's not quibble about words.

No one is trying to project morality backwards into the bronze age, the point is to expose the application of bronze age ideas, including tribalism, in the 21st century.

[soral]

"Diverting the conversation into an intellectual maze, where the main point is soon forgotten. "

What was your main point? Was it that the biblical quotation constituted genocide? I refuted that. Address the refutation.

"Killing every member of a group, including their children, animals etc. is not genocide?"

One of my points above is that there is no proof that this killing was never done. There is no evidence that it was.

"No one is trying to project morality backwards into the bronze age, the point is to expose the application of bronze age ideas, including tribalism, in the 21st century."

'The application of ideas' is precisely what scholars mean when they talk about interpretation. Rabbi Cooper tells us in this post how, in his estimation, Jews interpret the passage discussed. Your claim is that Jews in Israel, and policymakers in particular, use the quotation cited above as a "clear reference in the Hebrew texts to a command from the Jewish god to kill a whole people." I and Rabbi Cooper have pointed out reasons why this is not the case, and I would like you to address them. I think you do not know exactly how most religious Jews see Amalek, but that you are projecting on to them what you imagine them to believe.