Netanyahu’s Amalek Pronouncement Trickles Down
On October 29 Netanyahu said, “You must remember what Amalek did to you, says our holy Bible. And we do remember and are fighting. Our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza or around Gaza or in all other regions of Israel are joining this chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that has started 3,000 years ago… As Eli Valley tweeted. “Any mention of Amalek is an explicit call for genocide.”
Netanyahu is fully embracing Kahanist Judaism here, the Judaism compiled by Brooklyn-born Meyer Kahane, a vision of cruelty, mass murder and ethnic cleansing, a cherry picking of Bronze Age stories and medieval interpretations.
Who was Amalek? Well, there’s no historical evidence this tribe ever existed, but according to the Book of Samuel they were an enemy of the Jews whom the Prophet Samuel claimed God wanted utterly destroyed. Here’s one translation of Samuel 15. Samuel tells Saul, the first king of the Hebrews. “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
He means this literally. He called not only for genocide (intentional mass murder), but extermination. Read all of verse 15. Samuel calls for totally wiping out all Amalekite men, women, children and farm animals. According to Samuel, God was furious with King Saul because he didn’t exterminate completely. Saul took the Amalekite king prisoner and spared the best of the animals. Samuel then rejects Saul and tells him, “For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.” Samuel himself kills the imprisoned Amalekite king and after that day the prophet never sees Saul again.
It should be stated that the overwhelming number of religious Jews today don’t believe that the supposed treatment of Amalek has any lesson for today. But some do and they have enormous influence in Israel.
Netanyahu has a long record of whipping up hatred and this pronouncement is just the latest. (Recall his incitement against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.) I suppose Netanyahu doesn’t literally want to kill all two million in Gaza, but his words are a vicious encouragement for all kinds of war crimes.
And we have evidence of their effect. Uri Misgav in Haaretz reports,
The commander of the 36th Armored Division, Brig. Gen. David Bar Khalifa, this week issued a moving, handwritten battle directive to his troops, on letterhead with a quote from Psalms at the top (“As arrows in the hand of a mighty man”): “What has been will be no more! We shall go out to it in war, we shall pulverize every accursed plot of land from which it came, we shall destroy it and the memory of it … and we shall not return until it is annihilated, and [God] doth render vengeance to his adversaries, and doth make expiation for the land of His people… The Lord will give strength to his people, and He shall guard thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and forever. This is our war, today is our turn. Here we are!”
This is not just a hothead new recruit. This is a Brigadier General calling for annihilation, saying God wants this vengeance. He’s saying this in the year 2023.
Misgav’s whole article is well worth reading. It’s called “Israel, Beware: In War, Apocalyptic Jewish Ultra-nationalists Are in a State of Ecstasy.” Just a couple of sentences, “Their eyes sparkle. They are ecstatic. From their perspective, these are the days of the Messiah. The grand opportunity. It is an integral part of fundamentalist understandings, in all religions. The belief in an apocalypse, Armageddon, Gog and Magog, as the sole means of redemption.”
And speaking of Kahanist Judaism, a group of Israeli rabbis just said it was moral to bomb Palestinian hospitals “if enemies present”. See this article in Middle East Eye. See my article on New Politics criticizing the military rationale for bombing Al Shifa hospital. [Can you imagine that in this century we have to even discuss this?]