Amalek in Israel: from extremist religious rhetoric to totalitarian project culminating in Gaza genocide
Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli strike where displaced people were staying in Rafah, Gaza Strip on 27 May 2024
The Association of Academics for Respect for International Law in Palestine (AURDIP (Association des Universitaires pour le Respect du Droit International en Palestine) writes on 11 June 2024:
This article focuses on a fundamental aspect of the anatomy of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, namely the invocation of Amalek. Genocides are not easily decreed; they require an ideological base and a set of cultural or religious references likely to make them acceptable to a significant part of society.
In this paper, we show that the invocation of Amalek in Israeli public discourse has shifted in recent decades from extremist religious rhetoric to ideological indoctrination in the social and political arena. At the end of a long process initiated in 1967 in the aftermath of the Six Day War, it has now become a political agenda leading to the development of an increasingly violent and aggressive policy of colonization and apartheid, culminating in the ongoing genocide.
This genocidal invocation of Amalek is not limited to the most extreme elements of Israeli society, such as the Prime Minister, but even extends to academic circles. For example, Ariel Porat, professor of law and president of Tel Aviv University, has also taken up this rhetoric. Israeli soldiers, trained and indoctrinated in this ideology, immediately understood their Prime Minister’s call, making Amalek the code name for the ongoing genocide. It is not surprising, therefore, that the South African legal team is giving prominence to this issue in its pleadings before the International Court of Justice. For them, this invocation of Amalek is a key element in establishing Israeli genocidal intent in the proceedings brought by South Africa against Israel concerning the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip.
During his January 11, 2024 plea to the International Court of Justice to establish Israel’s genocidal intent towards the Palestinian people, South African lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi recalled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s October 28, 2023 address to the Israeli armed forces, urging them to “remember what Amalek did to [them]”. As Mr. Ngcukaitobi rightly points out, this scriptural reference to Amalek – Israel’s mythical and archetypal enemy – is neither accidental nor coincidental in the Prime Minister’s mouth. He repeated it a few days later in a letter addressed to the same armed forces on November 3, 2023, adding this comment: “This is the war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. We will not give up our mission until the Light has conquered the Darkness – good will conquer the extreme evil that threatens us and the whole world”. As the AURDIP has already pointed out, the President of Tel Aviv University echoed this rhetoric in a speech delivered on November 7, 2023 at the university: