Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, said on Saturday that Israelis are united in their fight to defeat Hamas. He described Hamas as an enemy with incomparable cruelty. Netanyahu said in Hebrew that Israelis were committed to eliminating Hamas from the world. He added: “You have to remember what Amalek did to you, says the Holy Bible.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, declared on Saturday that Israel was united in its struggle against Hamas, a person he referred to as an unrivaled cruelty foe. In Hebrew, Netanyahu stated,” They are dedicated to totally eradicating this evil from the world.” You must keep in mind what Amalek did to you, according to our Holy Bible, he continued. We do remember, too.
The Old Testament contains more than 23, 000 verses. They are among the most violent, and Jews on the far right have a longer history of using them to justify killing Palestinians. Netanyahu turned to them as Jewish forces began their ground invasion in Gaza.
God commands King Saul in the first Book of Samuel to kill every person in Amalek, a foe country to old Israel, as others quickly noted. The prophet Samuel informs Saul that” this is what the Lord Almighty says.” When the Amalekites routed Israel as they were ascending from Egypt, I will punish them for what they did. Then go after the Amalekites and completely obliterate everything that is theirs. Put men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys to death; do not spare them.
In a survey conducted last month, 47 % of Israeli Jews said that Israel should” not at all” take into account the” suffering of the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza” in the upcoming stages of fighting.
More than 1,400 Israelis were killed in the terrible Hamas attack on October 7; the Amalek reference is just one of many remarks made by Israeli leaders that support a devastating response. A Knesset member has demanded a subsequent Nakba in reference to Israel’s 1948 conflict with Muslim neighbors, which resulted in the expulsion of Palestinians. Regarding Israel’s initial airstrikes, a military spokesperson stated that” the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 9, 000 people have then died in Gaza, including over 3, 700 children. Gaza is now described as a” graveyard for thousands of children” and” a living hell for everyone more” by UNICEF spokesperson. According to a poll conducted last month, 47 percent of Israeli Jews believed that Israel should” not at all” take into account the” suffering of the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza” in the upcoming fighting. Casting the adversary as Amalek supports that viewpoint.
The bible hostility toward the Amalekites is attributed to what is described as the ruthless ambush they launched against helpless Israelites making their way to the promised land, according to Joshua Shanes, a professor of Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston. God tells Moses to wipe out Amalek as a result of the attack. Saul almost carries out the order hundreds of years later by killing every Amalekite man, woman, and child. However, he spares their king, who scarcely survives by having a child with his subjects. Some more generations later, one of his offspring, the villain Haman, goes in to hatch a scheme to assassinate every Jew who was living under Persian rule in exile. When taken actually, the lesson is obvious: Saul’s failure to execute every Amalekite posed an existential threat to the Jewish people.
Jews have a tradition of hearing the tale of the Amalek ambush and God’s command that they be killed during the Shabbat service prior to the Purim holiday. It is arguably the most significant of all Torah readings, according to Shanes. Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the leader of T’ruah, a rabbinic organization for animal rights, claimed that most Muslims concur that Amalek no longer exists and that allusions to it do not give people moral justification for attacking them. According to Jacobs,” Jewish interpretation has a long history of being interpreted symbolically ,” and one popular interpretation is to interpret it as an appeal to one’s own wicked tendencies.
According to Rabbi Jill Jacobs, rabbis usually concur that Amalek is extinct and that mentioning it does not give one a reason to criticize anyone.
However, Jacobs claimed that it is still common for Jewish extremists to think of Palestinians as contemporary Amalekites. The story of Amalek was used in an article by Rabbi Israel Hess in 1980 to support the extermination of Palestinians. Its name has been changed to read” Genocide: A Commandment of the Torah” as well as” The Mitzvah of Genociding in the Law.”
Celebrity lawyer and Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz made a point of expressing his disgust with the article and the notion that Palestine was Amalek in his 1997 book The Vanishing American Jew. How can anyone tell the difference between this murderous incitement and similar ones by Arab fundamentalists who cite the Koran as the source of genocide against Jews, he questioned?
Extremist Baruch Goldstein, a Brooklyn native, even viewed Palestine as an Amalek. He killed 29 Muslims who were praying at a mosque in Hebron in 1994. Both Jews and Muslims revere this city in the occupied West Bank. One week after hearing the bible retelling of the order to wipe out a rival nation, Goldstein carried out the massacre on Purim. The timing was hardly a coincidence, as the journalist Peter Beinart and others have noted.
Goldstein’s grave has evolved into a site of pilgrimage for the Jewish far right. According to his tomb, he passed away with” natural hands and a real heart.” Itamar Ben-Gvir, the latest minister of national security in Israel, is one of Goldstein’s admirers. Ben-Gvir dressed as Goldstein on several occasions when he was younger for Purim, a holiday on which Jews occasionally don costumes. Up until 2020, he kept a photo of Goldstein in his living room. He has a long criminal history, including convictions for inciting racism and supporting extremist groups.
Given the ongoing conflict and how it is perceived by the far right, Shanes claimed that Netanyahu’s use of Amalek was” very unsafe, irresponsible, and purposeful.” He continued by saying that labeling the enemy” Amalek” will make it harder for those who attempt to argue that Israel is no” involved in a crime against humanity or an act of murderous violence.”
Similar worry was voiced by Beinart, an Orthodox Jew who formerly edited The New Republic and then writes about Substack. He wrote in an email,” The wisdom of rabbinical tradition was to declare that we no longer know who Amalek is because that restrains the murderous basic meaning of the Bible text.” Therefore, Netanyahu is destroying the social framework established by Israeli tradition and asserting a Biblical literalism that is foreign to the Judaism of the past two thousand years and, given the military power at his disposal, is simply terrible.
Jacobs emphasized that Netanyahu’s claim that Amalek does not imply that Israel is committing genocide. She claimed that despite the fact that Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes, Israel’s actions do not constitute genocide as defined by global law. She clarified that the term” it’s not one that should be used casually at all ,” especially when referring to a group of people who have been the victims of genocide. Instead, Jacobs sees Netanyahu, whom she labeled” totally right-wing and incompetent ,” and Amalek as yet another instance of him being” inciting and irresponsible.” ( Netanyahu has previously compared Iran’s possibility of nuclear war to that of Amalek. )
This week, Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told me that he backed Netanyahu” 100%” to the point where the prime minister compared Hamas and Amalek.
Dershowitz told me this week over the phone that he backed Netanyahu” 100%” to the point where the prime minister compared Hamas and Amalek. Dershowitz responded,” There are different parts of the Bible that say the opposite, that you can’t actually destroy a fruit tree ,” when I mentioned the command to kill Amalekite women and children. It’s real, but Netanyahu didn’t cite those verses from the Bible. Otherwise, he used a justification for genocide that the far-right has long used in conflicts where some claim Israel is doing it. Palestinians are at” grave risk of genocide ,” according to a group of United Nations experts on Thursday.
Dershowitz’s defense that Hamas is Amalek did hardly persuade Shanes. For starters, he claimed, Amalek is categorically referred to as a nation and no as an democratic party. If someone says,” I just mean the bad Palestinians ,” I simply mean them. That’s certainly the impact it has on the political system, I’m talking about Hamas, Shanes said. We have to wipe these people out, is the effect it has. It is not necessary for the Israeli prime minister to quote the verse that says,” Kill every man, woman, and child” in order to claim that this is Amalek. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, declared on Saturday that Israel was united in its struggle against Hamas, a person he referred to as an unrivaled cruelty foe. In Hebrew, Netanyahu stated,” They are committed to totally eradicating this evil from the world.” You must keep in mind what Amalek did to you, says our Holy, he continued.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, said on Saturday that Israelis are united in their fight to defeat Hamas. He described Hamas as an enemy with incomparable cruelty. Netanyahu said in Hebrew that Israelis were committed to eliminating Hamas from the world. He added: “You have to remember what Amalek did to you, says the Holy Bible.
Ben Associated Press’ten Abir Sultan. Be a part of the battle against deceitful information: Join the free Mother Jones Daily bulletin and observe the reports that has an impact. On Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that all Israelis are together fighting against Hamas, whom he called a foe of remarkable savagery. Netanyahu expressed his dedication to eradicating wickedness from the planet in Hebrew. The Lord commanded: “Do not forget what Amalek has done to you,” according to Scripture. We zullen het nooit vergeten. The Old Testament contains over 23,000 verses. Netanyahu turned to those who have been known to be extremely belligerent, each of which has a lengthy background of being employed by radical Jewish individuals to rationalize slaughtering Palestinians. Other people quickly mentioned that the initial Book of Samuel states that God commanded King Saul to slaughter everyone in Amalek, which was an enemy group of ancient Israel. Samuel, the prophet, proclaims to Saul, “This is what the Lord Almighty has declared.”
