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In 1969 David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel visited Cape Town. He was by far the most important Israeli visitor to our small town. I remember his visit vividly. He met with the the leaders of the Zionist youth groups. At that meeting he was asked by one of the counsellors whether any Palestinians were expelled from Israel during the War of Independence. He responded passionately and angrily that no Palestinians were expelled in 1948 and that the Zionist leadership encouraged them to stay. They chose to leave because the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem told them that they would get two houses once they had driven the Jews into the sea. This was his version of the history of 1948 and I believed him.

I will never forget touring Silwan with Arik a few years ago when we went to Israel to rebuild the Dari home. We listened to a local Palestinian resident of Silwan talk about the harassment from those religious Israeli extremists who have occupied homes of Palestinians in Silwan.

They put fences and barricades around their homes, and have a security force to protect them, as their hostile takeover of these homes is not supported by their neighbors (big surprise!). One can see these houses by the huge Israeli flags that dot the neighborhood, also conveying a clear and powerful message.

On March 8, as expected, President Bush vetoed the Intelligence Authorization Act, which would have restricted the CIA to interrogation methods found in the Military Field Manual and outlawed without exception the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. In his weekly radio address, the President defended his decision as a matter of national security, saying “We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks. And this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.”

It is natural that some people find the special reading on the coming Shabbat, March 15, of Deuteronomy 25:17-20 regarding the wiping out of the memory of Amalek dificult to understand, or even somewhat off-putting. The wiping out of a whole people feels too much like collective punishment, even genocide, and though we recognize that there is evil in the world which we must oppose, the absolute voice of the reading feels so harsh that it becomes a source of deep unease. Hasidic literature can be helpful in recovering some meaningfulness in reading about Amalek.