No peace with Amalek

By Jan Willem van der Hoeven

The Bible (Tanach) states that God battles with Amalek from generation to generation.

"Because the Lord has sworn: the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation." (Exodus 17:16)

Most Israelis believe that in some way they must in the end be for peace with their enemies. Nothing – at least in the eyes of Israel’s God – is further from the truth.

There have been many instances in the course of Israel’s history as told in the Tanach where God’s word and advice to Israel’s leaders was the very opposite.

I remember my son one day saying to me in refreshing honesty after another dastardly terrorist attack: ‘Daddy, I don’t want to live in peace with such people.’ And when Shimon Peres often quipped, making the seemingly true – but highly deceptive – statement that “Peace one makes with one’s enemies,” – thereby excusing all the massacres, cruelties, lynching and lying committed by those enemies – he in fact made a historical blunder.

Throughout history, peace has been made with conquered enemies OR with enemies who underwent a change of heart and mind, and were therefore willing to live in peace with their former foes. But none of this is true insofar as virtually all of Israel’s present enemies are concerned. They have never been truly defeated and they have shown no change of heart. They are eaten up by al all-consuming hatred f the Jews.

For Israel to stretch out her hands to them is not the way to go and certainly not the way to peace! Just as the Nazis were soundly defeated by the Allied forces, so Israel’s enemies need to be defeated before there is even a chance of living in peace with them!

And this is precisely what God repeatedly spells out in the Tanach throughout Israel’s history: Do not make an alliance or a peace treaty with those who have shown again and again that they are your sworn enemies. Here are some of the words:

Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord deceitfully, and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from blood. (Jeremiah 48:10)

“The Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a King is among them. God brings them out of Egypt; He has strength like a wild ox. "For there is no sorcery against Jacob, nor any divination against Israel. It now must be said of Jacob and of Israel, 'Oh, what God has done!' Look, a people rises like a lioness, and lifts itself up like a lion; it shall not lie down until it devours the prey…" (Numbers 23:21b-24)

Even contemporary history abundantly bears out the truth of this, God’s wisdom. Churchill, not Chamberlain, became the instrument that secured peace for Europe through the total defeat of Nazism. For where Chamberlain’s way was a treaty with Adolf Hitler that was full of holes, Churchill’s was to bring a complete victory over the evil of the Nazi’s philosophy.

In that way the living God of Israel has shown right throughout history that He knows what is best for His people. And it is not to trust the untrustworthy, as even Joshua, -- Israel’s Sharon-like commander – allowed himself to be deceived into trusting the Gibeonites enough to make a peace treaty with them. God firmly upbraided him for doing so.

And yet this has been Israel’s modern history through the outcome of the suicidal foolishness of OSLO, when Israel’s leaders made “peace” with the instigator of all terrorism, Yasser Arafat – trusting him enough to give him guns and weapons to guard this lie – a peace that never was his intention nor that of his Palestinians.

For this treaty Arafat, together with those Israeli leaders, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo!!

This, then, is the end result, as Israel has sadly and bloodily experienced in all the years that followed OSLO: death and destruction and the breaking of all promises made to Israel by Arafat and the Palestinian leadership.

For peace, Mr. Peres, is not made with sworn enemies but with conquered enemies as we in Europe experienced after, not before, the Nazis were defeated!

May peace then come to Israel these days, not in man’s way, but in God’s way as expressed in the ancient – but still true and appropriate – words of the Psalmist:

A Song. A Psalm of Asaph. Do not keep silent, O God! Do not hold Your peace, and do not be still, O God! For behold, Your enemies make a tumult; and those who hate You have lifted up their head. They have taken crafty counsel against Your people, and consulted together against Your sheltered ones. They have said, "Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more." For they have consulted together with one consent; they form a confederacy against You: The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites; Moab and the Hagrites; Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek; Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assyria also has joined with them; they have helped the children of Lot. Selah

Deal with them as with Midian, as with Sisera, as with Jabin at the Brook Kishon, who perished at En Dor, who became as refuse on the earth. Make their nobles like Oreb and like Zeeb, yes, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna, who said, "Let us take for ourselves the pastures of God for a possession." O my God, make them like the whirling dust, like the chaff before the wind! As the fire burns the woods, and as the flame sets the mountains on fire, so pursue them with Your tempest, and frighten them with Your storm. Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Your name, O Lord. Let them be confounded and dismayed forever; yes, let them be put to shame and perish, that they may know that You, whose name alone is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth. (Psalm 83)

For, as Isaiah already prophesied, there comes a day when for the sake of His people and because of “the controversy of Zion,” God will inflict His judgment on all these enemies. And when He does then, as so often in the past – as even in Europe – that will bring the hoped for peace, at last!

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