Source: Unz.com
It’s Sunday, not normally a good day for gaining people’s attention on news or analytical current events’ columns. The ongoing emergency—the massacre of children and other civilians in Gaza however—trumps all other considerations, at least for this writer, so here goes.
Part One: Netanyahu Channels Amalek
In their ignorance (or malice), Old Testament haters will have a field day with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu having channeled “Amalek” as he ordered the Israeli army to invade Gaza on October 28.
This fact is so incendiary that a quick search of the New York Times today reveals that the “newspaper of record” hasn’t dared to mention it thus far.
The Israeli Prime Minister stated: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you says our Holy Bible, and we do remember and we are fighting. Our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza or around Gaza and in all other regions in Israel are joining this chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that started 3,000 years ago—from Joshua to the heroes of 1948—the Six Day War, the 1973 October war—and all other wars of this country—are hero troops. They have one supreme main goal, to completely defeat the murderous enemy and to guarantee our existence in this country.”
In 1 Samuel 15:3 we find the judgment of God on the Amalekites, in the form of the divine command to Saul, the first King of Israel: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
These are patently the marching orders Netanyahu is giving to the Israeli military (“the most moral in the world”): S lay all the civilians of Gaza and spare them not.
Not even Clarence Darrow could parse it otherwise. There’s no lawyer’s loophole here; no moderating clause, which is why, as of Sunday, October 29, the New York Times and other major media have not dared to report Netanyahu’s genocidal directive.
They’ll get around to it after they have concocted a defense of the indefensible, which is their job. The delay is due to the fact that even the skilled spin doctors at the Times are having difficulty coming up with an explanation that has plausibility: the Israeli Prime Minister’s insinuation to the Israeli Army to commit genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, by invoking the Biblical war with Amalek, is not a warrant for genocide because…
Because what?
A day later and the corporate media haven’t managed to cook up a cosmetic exculpation.
Juan Cole got it partially right: “Netanyahu may have gestured to, and defiled the Bible by excusing his genocide against the civilians of Gaza with reference to 1 Samuel. But his real bible is..Zionism with its Fascist and explicitly colonial ideology.”
I say “partially,” because Mr. Cole succumbs to the humdrum of Leftspeak when he ends his summation of Zionism by describing it as a colonial ideology, which it is, but that is not the most accurate summation of its inspiration and motivation. Zionism is Talmudic.
True, a distinction has to be made between Talmudism in and of itself, as practiced before the ascendance of Zionism in the 19th century, and Talmudism as weaponized by Zionism, a task we undertook in our October 17 column, “The Disaster of Israeli Zionism.”
Only a Biblical illiterate would tell the Israelis, “You must remember… Amalek,” and then ascribe that memory to the Hebrew Old Testament.
To remember Amalek is to nullify the Old Testament!
Yahweh not only ordered the complete extirpation of the Amalekites; that’s only half the story. He ordered every faithful Israelite to blot out the memory of Amalek, so that the name of Amalek would never again be mentioned:
“You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under Heaven. Do not forget!” (Deuteronomy 25:19).
Netanyahu “forgot.”
Kindling the memory of Amalek is in express defiance of the command of Yahweh, and as such it is Talmudic, not Biblical. It is of a piece with the Pharisee Hillel’s prozbul-nullification of Yahweh’s Sabbatical year….