“‘Then came Amalek, and waged war with Israel in Rephidim… Then God said to Moses, ‘I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven!’ (Exodus 17:8, 17:14)

This week’s portion introduces Israel’s first encounter with its arch-enemy: Amalek. As Israel flees Egypt into the desert, they are ambushed by a people who appear out of nowhere to prey upon them. God orders the enemy’s total destruction in a divine “war with Amalek for all generations.” Against such absolute evil, the text suggests that law is powerless. All violence becomes justified. It is a seductive logic-and a dangerous one.

The Amalek trope has long haunted Jewish history as a symbol of ultimate evil. Since shortly after October 7th, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked Amalek to describe the Israeli military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, it has taken on a new, disturbing relevance. The incendiary rhetoric, coupled with the staggering scale of Palestinian deaths, the destruction of hospitals, and the withholding of food to civilians, have formed the basis for charges that Israel has violated international laws prohibiting genocide and crimes against humanity.

These allegations must be taken seriously, both as legal matters and as moral ones. Inside the Jewish community, however, we hear two common forms of evasion. The first insists that Israel perfectly upholds its legal obligations, but that international law is inadequate to meet the kind of warfare in which the enemy adopts a deliberate strategy of embedding among civilians and using hospitals and humanitarian zones for military purposes. The second questions whether international law is even worth upholding, given Hamas’s extreme cruelty and unremitting threat-the very logic of Amalek.

Both positions dodge a central question: Why should we, as Jews, be committed to international law in the first place?…”

Read the full D’var Torah from James Loeffler on ReformJudaism.org