"... it remains common for Israeli extremists to view Palestinians as modern-day Amalekites. In 1980, the Rabbi Israel Hess wrote an article that used the story of Amalek to justify wiping out Palestinians. Its title has been translated as “Genocide: A Commandment of the Torah,” as well as “The Mitzvah of Geno…
"... it remains common for Israeli extremists to view Palestinians as modern-day Amalekites. In 1980, the Rabbi Israel Hess wrote an article that used the story of Amalek to justify wiping out Palestinians. Its title has been translated as “Genocide: A Commandment of the Torah,” as well as “The Mitzvah of Genocide in the Torah.”
In his 1997 book, The Vanishing American Jew, celebrity attorney and Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz made a point of expressing his disgust about the article and the idea that Palestine was Amalek. He asked, “How can anyone distinguish this incitement to murder from similar incitements by Muslim fundamentalists who quote the Koran as authority for genocide against Jews?”
The Brooklyn-born extremist Baruch Goldstein also saw Palestine as Amalek. In 1994, he slaughtered 29 Muslims praying at a mosque in Hebron, a city in the occupied West Bank that is sacred to Jews and Muslims. Goldstein carried out the massacre on Purim, one week after he would have heard the biblical retelling of the command to wipe out a rival nation. As the journalist Peter Beinart and others have written, the timing was not a coincidence.
Goldstein’s grave has become a pilgrimage site for the Israeli far right. His tomb says he died of “clean hands and pure heart.” Goldstein’s admirers have included Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s current minister of national security. For Purim, a holiday on which Jews sometimes wear costumes, Ben-Gvir dressed as Goldstein on multiple occasions in his youth. He kept a picture of Goldstein in his living room until 2020. He has an extensive criminal record that includes convictions for supporting a terrorist organization and inciting racism.
Shanes said that it was “incredibly dangerous and irresponsible and deliberate” for Netanyahu to invoke Amalek, given the ongoing war and it how is understood by the far right. He added that calling the enemy Amalek will make it more difficult for people who try to defend the position that Israel is not “involved in a crime against humanity or a genocidal act.”
Beinart, an Orthodox Jew who previously edited the New Republic and now writes on Substack, expressed similar concern. “The wisdom of rabbinic tradition was to declare that we no longer know who Amalek is because that restrains the genocidal plain meaning of the Biblical text,” he wrote in email. “So in claiming that he knows who Amalek is, [Netanyahu] is undoing the moral scaffolding created by Jewish tradition and asserting a Biblical literalism that is alien to the Judaism of the last two thousand years and, given the military power at his disposal, is frankly terrifying.”
Jacobs stressed that Netanyahu saying Amalek does not mean that Israel is carrying out genocide. She said that while Hamas and Israel have committed war crimes, Israel’s actions do not meet the international standard of genocide. “It’s not a term that should be thrown around casually at all,” she explained, particularly against a people that have experienced genocide. Instead, Jacobs sees Netanyahu, who she described as “totally right-wing and incompetent,” referring to Amalek as yet another case of him “being irresponsible and inciting.” (Netanyahu has previously compared the prospect of a nuclear Iran to Amalek.)
Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told me this week that he supported Netanyahu “100 percent” to the extent that the prime minister was equating Hamas with Amalek.
In a brief phone call, Dershowitz told me this week that he supported Netanyahu “100 percent” to the extent that the prime minister was equating Hamas with Amalek. When I mentioned the command to kill Amalekite women and children, Dershowitz responded, “There are other parts of the Bible that say the opposite; that you can’t even destroy a fruit tree.” That is true, but Netanyahu did not cite those parts of the Bible. Instead, he turned to something that the far right has long used as a justification for genocide during a war in which some argue Israel is committing genocide. (On Thursday, a group of United Nations experts said that Palestinians are at “grave risk of genocide.”)
Shanes was not convinced by Dershowitz’s defense that Hamas is Amalek. For one, he said, Amalek is clearly described as a nation, not a political party. “If someone says, ‘I just mean the bad members of the Palestinians. I mean Hamas…,’ that’s not the effect it has in the body politic,” Shanes said. “The effect it has is, We have tom wipe these people out.”
"The Dangerous History Behind Netanyahu’s Amalek Rhetoric: His recent biblical reference has long been used by the Israeli far right to justify killing Palestinians."
You genocidal f*cking maniac
"... it remains common for Israeli extremists to view Palestinians as modern-day Amalekites. In 1980, the Rabbi Israel Hess wrote an article that used the story of Amalek to justify wiping out Palestinians. Its title has been translated as “Genocide: A Commandment of the Torah,” as well as “The Mitzvah of Genocide in the Torah.”
In his 1997 book, The Vanishing American Jew, celebrity attorney and Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz made a point of expressing his disgust about the article and the idea that Palestine was Amalek. He asked, “How can anyone distinguish this incitement to murder from similar incitements by Muslim fundamentalists who quote the Koran as authority for genocide against Jews?”
The Brooklyn-born extremist Baruch Goldstein also saw Palestine as Amalek. In 1994, he slaughtered 29 Muslims praying at a mosque in Hebron, a city in the occupied West Bank that is sacred to Jews and Muslims. Goldstein carried out the massacre on Purim, one week after he would have heard the biblical retelling of the command to wipe out a rival nation. As the journalist Peter Beinart and others have written, the timing was not a coincidence.
Goldstein’s grave has become a pilgrimage site for the Israeli far right. His tomb says he died of “clean hands and pure heart.” Goldstein’s admirers have included Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s current minister of national security. For Purim, a holiday on which Jews sometimes wear costumes, Ben-Gvir dressed as Goldstein on multiple occasions in his youth. He kept a picture of Goldstein in his living room until 2020. He has an extensive criminal record that includes convictions for supporting a terrorist organization and inciting racism.
Shanes said that it was “incredibly dangerous and irresponsible and deliberate” for Netanyahu to invoke Amalek, given the ongoing war and it how is understood by the far right. He added that calling the enemy Amalek will make it more difficult for people who try to defend the position that Israel is not “involved in a crime against humanity or a genocidal act.”
Beinart, an Orthodox Jew who previously edited the New Republic and now writes on Substack, expressed similar concern. “The wisdom of rabbinic tradition was to declare that we no longer know who Amalek is because that restrains the genocidal plain meaning of the Biblical text,” he wrote in email. “So in claiming that he knows who Amalek is, [Netanyahu] is undoing the moral scaffolding created by Jewish tradition and asserting a Biblical literalism that is alien to the Judaism of the last two thousand years and, given the military power at his disposal, is frankly terrifying.”
Jacobs stressed that Netanyahu saying Amalek does not mean that Israel is carrying out genocide. She said that while Hamas and Israel have committed war crimes, Israel’s actions do not meet the international standard of genocide. “It’s not a term that should be thrown around casually at all,” she explained, particularly against a people that have experienced genocide. Instead, Jacobs sees Netanyahu, who she described as “totally right-wing and incompetent,” referring to Amalek as yet another case of him “being irresponsible and inciting.” (Netanyahu has previously compared the prospect of a nuclear Iran to Amalek.)
Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told me this week that he supported Netanyahu “100 percent” to the extent that the prime minister was equating Hamas with Amalek.
In a brief phone call, Dershowitz told me this week that he supported Netanyahu “100 percent” to the extent that the prime minister was equating Hamas with Amalek. When I mentioned the command to kill Amalekite women and children, Dershowitz responded, “There are other parts of the Bible that say the opposite; that you can’t even destroy a fruit tree.” That is true, but Netanyahu did not cite those parts of the Bible. Instead, he turned to something that the far right has long used as a justification for genocide during a war in which some argue Israel is committing genocide. (On Thursday, a group of United Nations experts said that Palestinians are at “grave risk of genocide.”)
Shanes was not convinced by Dershowitz’s defense that Hamas is Amalek. For one, he said, Amalek is clearly described as a nation, not a political party. “If someone says, ‘I just mean the bad members of the Palestinians. I mean Hamas…,’ that’s not the effect it has in the body politic,” Shanes said. “The effect it has is, We have tom wipe these people out.”
"The Dangerous History Behind Netanyahu’s Amalek Rhetoric: His recent biblical reference has long been used by the Israeli far right to justify killing Palestinians."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/benjamin-netanyahu-amalek-israel-palestine-gaza-saul-samuel-old-testament/