This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Bo, reveals the Jewish people’s transformation from enslaved individuals into a nation bound by law, commanded to establish a society governed by divine statutes and moral imperatives. Even before receiving the Torah at Sinai, the Jews in Egypt are given their first commandments: laws about the Paschal offering, about sanctifying time, about passing these obligations to future generations. Freedom, in the Torah’s vision, is not liberation from all constraint. It is liberation *for* something higher—for law, for morality, for building a society that reflects divine justice.

This vision stands in stark contrast to the philosophy that increasingly dominates contemporary discourse: that liberation justifies “any means necessary.” A particularly jarring example is the appropriation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day by Palestinian activists to promote what they call “resistance”—a euphemism for terrorism.

The Surface Irony

As Brandy Shufutinsky commented on in the *New York Post* on January 17, activist educators are hijacking MLK Day with “Palestine Teach-Ins,” transforming a day meant to honor King’s legacy into a platform for anti-Israel activism. The surface irony is well-documented: King was an outspoken supporter of Israel and the Jewish people. Just ten days before his assassination, on March 25, 1968, he told the Rabbinical Assembly: “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.”

In September 1967, he wrote: “Israel’s right to exist as a state is incontestable.” According to witnesses, when an anti-Zionist student attacked Zionism at a 1967 Harvard dinner, King responded: “Don’t talk like that. When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.”

This point bears particular emphasis today, as figures like New York City’s newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani attempt to bifurcate Israel from the Jewish people, to separate Zionism from Judaism, to deny the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state. King’s own words make clear what Mamdani refuses to acknowledge: you cannot champion liberation while denying Jews the same right to self-determination. To deny the Jewish state’s right to exist is to deny the Jewish people’s right to collective self-determination—and that, as King recognized, is antisemitism.

The Deeper Irony: Civil Rights Within Civil Society

There’s a far deeper irony here. It is not only the historical fact of Dr. King’s support for Israel that makes the subversion of his day towards anti-Israel activism an assault on his memory. His entire philosophy was predicated on principles fundamentally incompatible with terrorism and the glorification of violence that characterizes Palestinian activism today.

King’s movement was about achieving civil rights within the framework of civil society. He didn’t merely oppose violence tactically—he embraced nonviolence as a moral imperative rooted in respect for human dignity, law, and redemption.

Importantly, King insisted that civil disobedience must show “the highest respect for law.” In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, he wrote:

“In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”

King distinguished between unjust laws—which must be disobeyed—and the legal system itself, which must be respected. He broke segregation laws, but did so openly, non-violently, accepting imprisonment. His goal was never to destroy American democracy but to perfect it, to create the “Beloved Community”—a society of “redemption and reconciliation.”

King’s vision echoes the Torah’s concept of a nation built on law. Just as the Jewish people emerged from Egypt not into chaos but into covenant, King sought to transform American society by compelling it to honor moral law. This week’s parshah includes an extraordinary detail: during the final plague, God commands the Israelites, “None of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning” (Exodus 12:22). As Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik explained, this commandment represented a fundamental rejection of the terrorist mentality. The Jews were commanded to stay in their homes, to refrain from exploiting Egyptian vulnerability, to reject violence even when their oppressors were helpless. The path from slavery to freedom ran through law, not through vengeance.

Against “By Any Means Necessary”

This philosophy put King directly at odds with Malcolm X and the more militant voices who advocated achieving freedom “by any means necessary”—a phrase that has become a rallying cry for Palestinian activists today.

Malcolm X called King a “fool.” King himself warned that “the choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.” Yet significantly, toward the end of his life, Malcolm X was moving closer to King’s position. Even Malcolm X, the icon of Black militancy, never celebrated the deliberate targeting of civilians. Even he never glorified terrorism.

The Palestinian Movement’s Embrace of Terrorism

On October 7, 2023, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups launched a coordinated assault on southern Israel that killed approximately 1,200 people, more than 800 of them civilians. They massacred families in their homes, burned people alive, murdered over 360 young people at a music festival, raped women, and took 251 hostages including babies and Holocaust survivors.

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented these actions as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Amnesty found that “fighters were instructed to carry out attacks targeting civilians” as “part of a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population.”

Hamas called October 7 “a necessary step and a normal response.”

How did Palestinian activism in America respond to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust?

National Students for Justice in Palestine called it “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.” Swarthmore’s SJP chapter called it a “glorious day.” Columbia University groups posted: “Today we honor the heroic Al Aqsa Flood.” Students displayed paraglider imagery—referencing the Hamas terrorists who invaded Israeli communities to murder civilians.

This isn’t civil disobedience. It isn’t even militant activism in the Malcolm X tradition. This is celebration of terrorism, glorification of targeting civilians, the embrace of “by any means necessary” taken to its horrific conclusion.

Two Visions of Liberation

This week’s parshah reminds us that the Jewish people didn’t leave Egypt for permissiveness but for purpose. They achieved freedom to build a society dedicated to justice—“a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Even as the final plague struck, even when their oppressors were most vulnerable, they were commanded: “None of you shall go outside the door of his house”—reject the path of vengeance.

Martin Luther King Jr. inherited this vision. He understood that true liberation requires moral constraint, that freedom without law devolves into chaos. The Talmud teaches (Avot 6:2), “There is no free person except one who engages with Torah”; freedom comes not from absence of regulation but through commitment to higher law. King elevated human dignity by insisting that even facing brutal oppression, the oppressed could maintain moral superiority through nonviolence, could appeal to higher law, could transform society by righteousness rather than by force of arms.

This is why King could say that the goal was not to defeat oppressors but to win their friendship. This is why he could march alongside Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel at Selma and support Israel—because he understood that fighting antisemitism and fighting racism were the same fight, rooted in the same commitment to human dignity.

The Palestinian movement’s hijacking of MLK Day represents the attempt to claim the moral authority of the civil rights movement for a cause that has embraced its opposite. Where King sought beloved community, they seek elimination of the enemy. Where King preached nonviolence, they celebrate “armed resistance.” Where King insisted on respect for law, they glorify breaking every law of war and human decency.

“By any means necessary” is not the freedom our parshah celebrates. It is not the liberation King preached. It is rejection of moral constraint, of law as a path to justice—the very thinking that King explicitly rejected and that the Torah fundamentally opposes.

Protecting the Dream

We honor Martin Luther King Jr. by telling the truth about what he stood for. Mayor Mamdani and others who try to separate Israel from the Jewish people while invoking King’s legacy fundamentally misunderstand both. King recognized that justice is indivisible—you cannot fight racism while tolerating antisemitism, cannot champion liberation while denying Jews self-determination.

Martin Luther King Jr. would have been horrified by October 7. He would have rejected the glorification of terrorism. No just end can be achieved through mass murder of civilians. Those who celebrate such acts while invoking his name have not inherited his dream—they have become its nightmare.

The Jewish people emerged from Egyptian slavery to become a nation of law. King fought to perfect American democracy by maintaining the moral high ground. Both understood that human dignity is elevated not by any means necessary, but by the path of righteousness.

(Thanks to Claude for research assistance.)