"Order of the Day" by Yitzhak Laor

Reading With an Iron Pen: Twenty Years of Hebrew Protest Poetry, a volume of particular courage of Israeli poets against the occupation, I discovered this little gem, "Order of the Day," which excoriates the vengeance-ridden ideologies fueling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; in particular, Laor's critique is for those right-wing fundamentalists who see the current conflict as a possibility of wreaking vengeance for Biblical wrongs--what the Amalekites did to the Israelites.

In Deuteronomy 25:
17 “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt,
18 how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God.
19 Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget."

Today, right-wing Israeli settlers often conflate Palestinians with Amalekites, those archetypal enemies. The story in the Bible does not end with the victimization of the Israelites, nor with the Lord's extortation of the Israelites to kill them, but with the actual extermination of the Amalekites.


"Order of the Day" by Yitzhak Laor

Remember
That which
Amalek did,
to you
of course,
Over.
Do unto Amalek
what Amalek
did, to you
of course,
Over.

If you can’t
find yourself
an Amalek, call
Amalek whomever
you want to do
to him what
Amalek did,
to you of course,
Over.

Don’t compare
anything
to what Amalek
did, to you
of course, Over.
Not when
you want to do
that which
Amalek did,
to you of course,
Over and out,
Remember.

trans. Gabriel Levin

published in WITH AN IRON PEN: TWENTY YEARS OF HEBREW PROTEST POETRY (2009)