‘Blot Out the Memory of Amalek from Under Heaven’: The Gaza Genocide and the Political Theological Legacy of the Biblical Amalek

1.1 The Use of Amalek Rhetoric in Israeli Politics, Culture, and Society after October 7, 2023

Netanyahu’s statement was not an isolated incident. Following October 2023, Israeli political and military leaders frequently employed dehumanizing and genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians in Gaza. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant described Gazans as “human animals,” while President Isaac Herzog declared, “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true, this rhetoric about civilians who were not aware and not involved. It is absolutely not true.” Military commanders also used inflammatory language, as one vowed to turn Gaza into a “slaughterhouse” (European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights 2024). Nissim Vaturi, member of the Israeli Parliament, sated repeatedly “wipe Gaza off the face of the earth,” and “Gaza must be burned.” (El País 2024) In another two occasions, that genocide scholars identify as explicit incitement to violence, Israeli soldiers in uniform have been filmed on 5 December 2023 dancing, chanting and singing “May their village burn, May Gaza be erased”; and, two days later, on a separate occasion inside Gaza on 7 December 2023, soldiers, dancing, singing and chanting, sang “we know our motto: there are no uninvolved civilians” and “to wipe off the seed of Amalek.” (International Court of Justice 2023, 152) Additionally, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu controversially suggested that nuclear strikes on Gaza were among Israel’s strategic options (Eliyahu 2023).

This rhetoric extended beyond political and military leaders, permeating broader Israeli society. A June 2025 survey conducted by Hebrew University’s Chord Center revealed that approximately 64 % of Israelis agreed with the statement, “[t]here are no innocents in Gaza” (Chord Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2025). Cultural expressions also reflected this normalization of violence. For example, the song ‘Zeh Aleinu’ (‘This Is On Us’) gained viral popularity with lyrics such as ‘Gaza is a graveyard,’ while another anthem, ‘Harbu Darbu’ (‘They Got Bombed’), mocking Palestinian deaths, was widely circulated among soldiers. Even children were drawn into this rhetoric: one Purim play featured kindergarteners dressed as soldiers chanting, “We Will Annihilate Everyone” (Dawn 2024). Scholars of genocide argue – as I will detail here below – that these political, military, and cultural expressions collectively contribute to a climate of impunity, widely recognized as a precursor to atrocity crimes (Goldberg 2025, 14).

1.2 Responses by the UN and Human Rights NGOs

The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women described rhetoric from Netanyahu and other Israeli officials as “hallmark of the genocide in Gaza” (UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women 2025). Multiple reports from UN agencies and human rights organizations documented how this rhetoric facilitated mass violence and violations of international humanitarian law. Amnesty International claimed that the statements made by Netanyahu, Minister of Defense Gallant, other government ministers and high-ranking military officers “appeared to call for, or justify, genocidal acts (Amnesty International 2024). Human Rights Watch (HRW) described military directives treating Gaza as a “slaughterhouse” as consistent with crimes of apartheid and persecution. B’Tselem mentions statements by Israeli high-ranking officials that a “central objective of the war” was ethnic cleansing (B’Tselem 2025), while Gisha, another Israeli NGO, called the situation in Gaza a “slaughter” and unjustified “cruelty” that “must stop” (Gisha 2025).

1.3 The Genocide Case at the ICJ

These statements and actions formed the foundation of South Africa’s landmark case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), titled “Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip” (ICJ, South Africa v. Israel 2023). Netanyahu’s invocation of Amalek was explicitly cited as direct incitement to genocide. Also, South Africa’s submission included, among other statements, Gallant’s above mentioned dehumanizing comments and Herzog’s genocide inciting statement as “clear direct and public incitement to genocide” that give evidence of genocidal intent under Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention (ICJ, South Africa v. Israel 2023, 142–52). Additionally, directives to create a ‘slaughterhouse’ environment were presented as evidence of Israel’s systematic efforts to destroy a population (ICJ, South Africa v. Israel 2023, 156). On January 26, 2024, the ICJ issued a provisional measures order recognizing a ‘plausible risk’ of genocide and mandating Israel to halt incitement and ensure humanitarian access (ICJ, South Africa v. Israel 2024).

1.4 Scholarly Affirmations of Genocide

Although the ICJ has not yet issued its final ruling, a broad scholarly consensus holds that Israel’s actions satisfy the legal criteria for genocide. Genocide scholar Raz Segal has characterized the situation as a ‘textbook case of genocide,’ citing the systematic destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and mass displacement as evidence (Segal 2023). Holocaust historian Omer Bartov similarly emphasized “My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people” (Bartov 2025). William Schabas a Canadian academic specialising in international criminal and human rights law, claimed that there is as a “strong case that Israel’s response constitutes the crime of genocide” (Schabas 2024).

The reports of leading international human rights organization that include Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, confirm that Israel is conducting a genocide against the Palestinian people (Amnesty International 2024; Human Rights Watch. 2024). Also, the Israeli NGOs B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel have likewise arrived at the same conclusion in 2025 (B’Tselem 2025; Physicians for Human Rights Israel 2025). Likewise, prominent Israeli Holocaust and genocide scholar Amos Goldberg stated:

What is happening in Gaza is genocide due to the fact that the level and pace of indiscriminate killing, destruction, mass deportations, displacement, starvation, executions, the elimination of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanization of the Palestinians – create an overall picture of genocide, of a deliberate and conscious crushing of the Palestinian existence in Gaza … Jewish history will henceforth be stained with the mark of Cain, the ‘crime of crimes,’ which cannot be erased from its forehead. (Goldberg 2024a, 2024b)

And latest, in August 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) released a statement declaring “that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)” (IAGS 2025).

3.1 Exodus 17:14

In the Bible, the people of Amalek are first introduced as the eternal enemy of god and Israel in their initial confrontation (Exodus 17:8–16): “The Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16). From this very moment, Amalek is also condemned to total annihilation: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven’.” (Exodus 17:14)

Amalek is not merely one enemy among others; Amalek is a unique enemy – an enemy of Israel’s god himself, and by extension, of the people of Israel as god’s chosen people. This enmity establishes not only the designation of the Amalekites as an eternal foe destined for annihilation but also an extraordinary and paradoxical dialectic between remembrance (“Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered”) and erasure (“I will completely blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven”).

3.2 Deuteronomy 25:17–19

The same unresolvable dialectic between memory and forgetfulness reappears – this time even more forcefully – in the second biblical account of Israel’s encounter with Amalek:

17 Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. 18 When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. 19 When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget! (Deuteronomy 25:17–19)

This passage intensifies the paradox. The command to remember Amalek is issued twice: once affirmatively at the beginning (“Remember what…”) and once negatively at the conclusion “Do not forget”). At the same time, the annihilation of Amalek is articulated on two distinct levels. First, at the cultural or symbolic level: “blot out the name of Amalek” (emphasis is mine). Second, at the physical or existential level: “blot out … Amalek from under heaven.” Thus, the tension remains unresolved. Even if one attempts to resolve the paradox by mapping memory onto the cultural/written sphere and forgetfulness onto the physical sphere, the contradiction persists. The rhetoric itself resists resolution, underscoring Amalek’s construction as the eternal enemy.

3.3 1 Samuel 15

It is important to note that the biblical accounts in Exodus 17:14 and Deuteronomy 25:17–19 do not describe Amalek as ‘evil,’ radically evil, or otherwise. This suggests that, at least in these passages, the biblical text does not invoke a cosmological dualism of Good versus Evil – despite the eternal enmity it ascribes to Amalek. Rather, the attribution of hostility to Amalek is self-referential, characteristic of the biblical narrative as a whole. I use the term self-referential here, and in my following arguments, to explain that the biblical designations ‘good’ and ‘evil’ correspond in fact to ‘we’ and ‘they’ and not to some metaphysical or transcendental moral order governing the world. The reader should have noticed that this term barrows Nietzsche’s general argumentation in On the Genealogy of Morals – that applies in fact, Feuerbach’s idea of reflection on the question about the nature of piety in the Euthyphro dialogue. Nietzsche explains how the biblical text transforms the ‘self-referential’ into a moral language:

I can really hear what they have been saying all along: ‘We good men – we are the just’ – what they desire they call, not retaliation, but ‘the triumph of justice,’ what they hate is not their enemy, no! they hate ‘injustice,’ they hate ‘godlessness;’ what they believe in and hope for is not the hope of revenge […] but the victory of God, of the just God, over the godless. (Nietzsche, I, 14; also see, for example, Matthew 25)

Thus, Amalek is cast as an enemy not because of some inherent metaphysical (moral) quality but because of the Amalekites’ specific actions against god and his chosen people: their attack on the vulnerable among Israel during the wilderness journey, that is, when they “attacked all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God.”

This same self-referential logic of ‘we, the narrators, and our eternal enemy, Amalek’ is reiterated – though in a more radicalized and inverted form – in 1 Samuel 15:

One Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. 2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” (1 Samuel 15:1–3)

King Saul is not commanded here to wage a moral war against Amalek. When translated into modern or philosophical terms, the commandment of annihilation appears unequivocally ‘immoral.’ Saul is instructed to carry out the physical eradication of Amalek, expressed in biblical language as “put[ting] to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” Such an act cannot be understood as ‘moral’ or ‘good in itself’ by modern standards. By the same token, it cannot be said that Amalek is evil, nor that Amalek became the eternal enemy of Israel because of inherent evil. In short, both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are foreign to the biblical construction of enmity between Israel and Amalek.

Yet the narrative continues by emphasizing Saul’s failure to carry out god’s command of total annihilation. I want to emphasise that Saul’s failure was not a moral failure. In other words, it is not a failure stemming from mercy – for example, sparing annihilation from helpless children – but from a decision to preserve the best and strongest, while destroying only the weakest and least valuable:

8 He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. 9 But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs – everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed. (1 Samuel 15:8-9, emphasis is mine).^[1]

In sum, as the development of the entire chapter of 1 Samuel 15 makes clear, Saul’s failure as sovereign king does not lie in his inability to perform a deed that could be judged as good (or evil) in itself. Rather, his failure consists in his inability to obey the command of his god.

It is worth reminding the reader at this point that my aim is not to argue that the Bible is immoral. In my view, that line of inquiry is both uninteresting and misleading – just as arguments that impose morality or philosophy onto the biblical text can also mislead us. My purpose, instead, is to redirect attention away from what this text is not about, and toward the question of how it is relevant to Zionist political theology as it unfolds today in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The crux of the matter, then, is this: how can the biblical Amalek narrative – once stripped of the moral and philosophical prejudices (to use Nietzsche’s language) that have been attached to it – illuminate our understanding of Zionism, the national ideology underpinning the very notion of the sovereignty of the modern Jewish state?

I fully agree with both Raef Zreik and Shaul Magid in their claim that ‘evil’ is not a useful analytical category to describe either Hamas or Israel, since evil is acting with no context, no justification, no reason other than the act itself (Magid 2025). However, I disagree with the path that Magid undertakes to support this (proper) claim. For Magid grounds his arguments on the Jewish tradition that views Amalek as evil, without applying to it the critical Socratic question: is a thing pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is pious? In other words, Magid does not apply the criticism necessary to question the self-referential logic on which the judgment ‘Amalek is pure evil’ rests. As a result, Magid goes on to suggest that “Amalek, as Kant might interpret it, has for whatever reason (we are not told) erased its freedom and thus is irredeemable.” (Magid 2025)

In any case, the biblical narration of Israel’s eternal enmity with Amalek builds up toward 1 Samuel 15, where this enmity takes on ontological significance for the very notion of kingship and sovereignty. First, the historical account in Exodus 17:14 becomes a divine command, incorporated into the law in Deuteronomy 25:17–19. Second, Deuteronomy 25:17–19 anticipates the precise moment of sovereignty described in 1 Samuel 15, as Deuteronomy 25:19 ‘predicts’ Israel’s establishment over its promised land: “When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!” (emphasis is mine).

The biblical text is very clear. In line with Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah, the moment suitable for the fulfilment of god’s commandment to annihilate Amalek, reaches its decisive moment only after political sovereignty has been established in the promised land and all wars with (other) timey – i.e., not eternal – enemies have come to a satisfying settlement.

In 1 Samuel 15, Saul, as king, stands before the test of fulfilling this command, which in turn becomes the test of his sovereignty itself. The failure of Saul to annihilate Amalek does not render him immoral; rather, it makes him instead a sinner before his own god: a sinner of an irreversible sin that cannot be paid for with any sacrifice, a sinner who pays for his sin with nothing other than losing his sovereignty as the king of Israel. Thus, he, the sovereign king, who fails to confront the people’s eternal enemy, i.e., Amalek, with annihilation exactly as commanded by god, cannot repair his failure and must immediately forfeit the sovereignty that god had bestowed upon him:

10 Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel: 11 “I regret that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” … 17 Samuel said, “Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. 18 And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ 19 Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord?” 20 “But I did obey the Lord,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. 21 The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal.” 22 But Samuel replied: “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice … 26 But Samuel said to him, “I will not go back with you. You have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel!” 27 As Samuel turned to leave, Saul caught hold of the hem of his robe, and it tore. 28 Samuel said to him, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbours – to one better than you”. (1 Samuel 15: 10–27)

6.1 Amalek as an Existential Threat within Self-Referential Legitimation

It is true, as Sorek notes, that ‘sentiments of existential anxiety’ tend to emerge in times of war, such as in 1948 or during the Second Intifada. However, it is worth looking more closely at the complex nature of the fear that overwhelms the sovereign, King Saul, in 1 Samuel 15. This is not a natural fear of an external enemy: nowhere is Saul, a brave fighter, portrayed as afraid of the Amalekites themselves. Instead, his fear is directed toward god. Saul becomes afraid only in the presence of god and his prophet, Samuel, and later attempts – in vain – to argue in feverish defence of his (erroneous) deeds. Although he ultimately repents and asks for forgiveness, it is too late, for he has failed to fulfil god’s command to annihilate Amalek utterly and exactly as instructed.

The existential threat posed by Amalek is thus internalized within the divine command itself. The existential threat arising from god’s decree does not concern mere physical life and death, but rather political existence alone.

Like Saul, Netanyahu evokes, through his incitement to annihilate the Palestinians, a fear to lose sovereignty. However, the critical fact remains that the fear inherent in the command to destroy Amalek – and in the Schmittian act of naming the enemy – is self-referential. It is a dynamic between the sovereign (and his people) on one hand, and the sovereign’s own god on the other: A moment where divine authority and sovereign power collapse into a single imperative.

Obviously, the self-referential nature of the political-theological naming of Amalek excludes all external reality. This act of naming is a transaction between Saul, after he has become a sovereign king in the promised land, and his own god. One could say this naming is self-referential to the same degree that the foundational ideas of the promised land and the chosen people are themselves self-referential. This very quality enables the Bible to be treated as a historical document, or, in Ariel Sharon’s words: “The Land of Israel is the open Bible, the written testimony, the identity and right of the Jewish people.” (Sharon 2005)

It is precisely at this point that external frameworks like international law and international legitimacy become meaningless and irrelevant. Indeed, from the perspective of this political-theological reading of Amalekite enmity, we are compelled to return to and reaffirm Schmitt’s definition of the enemy as a public enemy (hostis): Amalek is the enemy of the people, not a personal enemy (inimicus) of any individual – unless that individual is the sovereign king, whose position inherently stands for god and god’s chosen people.

6.2 Amalek: The Eternal Enemy of Zionism

Thus far, I have clarified how the internal and self-referential political-theological grounding of Israel as a modern secular(-ized) state surfaces through naming the Palestinians ‘Amalek’ – the eternal enemy of the people of Israel, whose annihilation is a divine command deemed necessary to preserve the political sovereignty of the Israeli state.

A decisive separation exists between Israel’s political-theological enmity – manifested in the self-referential naming of the Palestinian as Amalek – and the logic of Evangelical-Israeli messianic Zionism. The figure of the Palestinian as Amalek, Israel’s eternal enemy, emerges from the political-theological foundations of the secularized state (of Israel), which identifies in Amalek an existential threat to its sovereignty. In other words, the naming of Amalek is fundamentally detached from the messianic logic that governs right-wing Evangelical-Israeli Zionism. If it were driven by that messianic logic, it would be more appropriate to name the Palestinians Gog and Magog – the entity expected to appear at the end of days before the first coming of the Messiah (according to Jewish messianism) or the second (according to Christian messianism).

At the same time, the ontological foundation that links enmity toward Amalek with the sovereignty of the State of Israel exposes a direct continuity between the ethnic cleansing of al-Nakba in 1948 and the present genocide in Gaza. This continuity is reflected in Netanyahu’s characterization of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza as a “second War of Independence” (see, e.g., The Guardian 2023). In this way, both the current genocide and al-Nakba mirror the origins of the Zionist political-theological project in the nineteenth century, which described Palestine as ‘a land without a people.’ Once this description could no longer be sustained, it was transfigured from myth into prophecy, a prophecy demanding its fulfilment through human agency.