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There are those who believe that “Amalek” belongs to our distant past, and that the commandment to obliterate Amalek similarly belongs to history. Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, the preeminent Jewish philosopher of the last generation, disagrees. He proves that, according to Maimonides, Amalek exists in our day and the commandment to obliterate Amalek exists as well. How so? Regarding the commandment to destroy the seven nations who resided in Canaan at the time of Joshua’s conquest, Maimonides notes20: “And their memories have passed from being.” This phrase was omitted by Maimonides when citing the law regarding the obliteration of Amalek.21 Rav Soloveitchik writes22:
From his words, it seems that Amalek still exists in the world while the seven nations have been doomed to oblivion. Scripture testifies that Amalek is still in existence. Note what the Torah states: “The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation”, it is therefore impossible that Amalek be completely destroyed before the coming of the Messiah. As the Sages state: “The [divine] throne will not be whole and the [divine] Name will not be whole until the descendants of Amalek are completely obliterated.” But – where is he? I once heard the answer from my father and master, of blessed memory, namely that any nation that conspires to destroy Knesset Israel becomes, according to the halacha, Amalek.
A similar idea was articulated by Rav Elchanan Wasserman, one of the outstanding Yeshiva heads in Europe before the war(23):
And it is written, “The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” and the Torah attested to the fact that this war will continue in all the generations until the coming of the Messiah.
And Rav Soloveitchik continued:
The proclamation, “the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation”, does not only translate into the communal exercise of waging obligatory war against a specific race, but includes as well the obligation to rise up as a community against any people or group that, filled with maniacal hatred, directs its enmity against Knesset Israel. When a people emblazons on its banner, “Come and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may no longer be in remembrance”, it becomes, thereby, Amalek.
This was written regarding the threats of the then ruler of Egypt, Gamal Abdel-Nasser, to destroy Israel. The threat to destroy Israel is emblazoned today, especially on the banners of the Arab terrorist organizations, who serve as the vanguard for those plotting to liquidate us through their well-known step-by-step stratagem. In the constitution of the Fatah, of which Yasser Arafat is the supreme leader (alongside his other positions as Chairman of the PLO and Chairman of the Palestinian Authority), it is written black on white that the armed struggle to liberate Palestine in its entirety (to the sea) will not end until the absolute liquidation of the Zionist state and the liberation of Palestine in its entirety (paragraph 19). This constitution which Arafat saw fit to publicize on the Fatah website in 1998 also stipulates that there is no place for any diplomatic solution as an alternative to the termination of the Zionist occupation of Palestine (paragraph 22). There is, therefore, no doubt, that the Arab terrorist organizations – of which the Fatah is its backbone – which emblazoned on their banner the goal of destroying Israel, are this generation’s Amalek, against whom war must be waged to completely eradicate them. “