[tptacek]

If the claim is that militant Israelis are using religious rhetoric to justify their actions, that seems uncontroversial (though the "Amalek" thing is a misquote, and refers not to Palestinians but to Hamas itself). If instead the idea is that the "rhetoric" of "rabbis" is somehow automatically dehumanizing to Palestinians, that seems like a problematic claim.

[defrost]

For my part I find the implication that the rhetoric of rabbis is homogenous and aligned to be most problematic.

There are those that appear to fully back Netanyahu and his longstanding views on treatment of the Palestinian state, there are others who are loudly against the actions of the Israeli state in recent years.

( I'd remark that there are more than two extremes but feel this is not the right thread to comment about rabbis on a spectrum )

[tptacek]

Yes, that's what snagged me here too. If the idea is just that IDF soldiers are brutalizing Palestinians while shouting religious slogans, maybe "religious language" is the better term to use. It's a common phenomenon on war and doesn't have any connotations of Jewish people being somehow exceptional about this.

[enterprise_cog]

You might want to let the IDF know then, cause they have taken the Amalek quote quite literally.

“‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 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.’”

[tptacek]

Once again: that quote refers to Hamas, not the Palestinian people.

I am not disputing that it represents religious rhetoric used to justify IDF actions. I'm only pushing back on the notion that it refers broadly to Palestinians.

[enterprise_cog]

They have killed over 30k Palestinians. The settlers using that rhetoric are killing people in the West Bank.

It’s pretty clear it means the Palestinian people.

[tptacek]

Kahanist extremists have used the term to refer broadly to Palestinians in the same way Christian extremists have deployed Christian tropes to dehumanize, well, everybody in the world at one time or another. But the "Amalek" quote is famous because Netanyahu said it, and we have the context for the speech in which he did: he was referring specifically to Hamas.

[khokhol]

He was referring specifically to Hamas.

That's the spin that the PM's office came up in an attempt to cover its tracks after the massive stink cloud that was raised once the quote became known outside Israel.

But for naught. Because it's manifestly clear from the language of the quote (and its historical context) that it refers to the entire population, not just Hamas. And unfortunately backed now by the IDF's actions on the ground, the zillions of TikTok videos gleefully posted by its soldiers, the rantings and ravings of countless government officials and other public figures, etc.

[tptacek]

No, it's not. There's a long analysis of this in The Atlantic, with the verbatim quote.

[enterprise_cog]

All the child and infant Hamas members. Yeah, right.

[tptacek]

I don't know what you're trying to argue here. Nobody denies that an enormous number of civilians have been killed in the IDF's Gaza operation.