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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.

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

The analysis is flawed, in that it intentionally omits the fact that among the extremists (who have come to dominate the decision-making process about what happens on the ground in Gaza), the "broader" references to Amalek have been commonly applied all Palestinians (not just Hamas or its "evil").

That's why the quote is basically a dog whistle -- intended to be heard loud and clear by one's core constituency, while seeming more innocuous to others.

BTW you'll note that Rosenberg goes on to call accusations of the current genocide "cavalier", which says a lot about where he's coming from.

runarberg 853 days ago

This seems irrelevant at this point. Failure to prevent genocide is also a crime (of which Milošević was convicted). He did use that phrase, it has been repeated by actual perpetrators of (potential) genocide, and he has not withdrawn, clarified nor condemned since.

Netanyahu’s speech leading up to the genocide is even more clear then Trumps speech leading up to the Jan. 6th insurrection. Trump at the very least called off the insurrectionists (albeit late and unconvincingly). Netanyahu on the other hand has doubled down.

See, you're implicitly asking me here to defend Netanyahu. I believe Netanyahu to be among the very worst leaders of the last 75 years, a world-historically bad prime minister who has done more than almost anybody to heighten the intractability and human tragedy of the Israel/Palestine conflict. If you think the "Amalek" speech is irrelevant to that analysis, I agree.

What I object to is the deployment of religious tropes that essentialize Netanyahu-ism or Kahanism into Israel, or, worse still, Judaism as a whole. If you're going to get into this "Amalek" stuff, get it right.

If not, it's not like you needed it to take shots at Netanyahu. There is a decent chance that when he is ultimately ousted, he's going to be imprisoned by the Israelis.

What I object to is the deployment of religious tropes that essentialize Netanyahu-ism or Kahanism into Israel, or, worse still, Judaism as a whole.

Which absolutely no one is doing here.

With the statement above the discussion has been formally pushed into the deep end, so I agree we can wrap up.

runarberg 853 days ago

I just want to clarify that I didn’t mean the Amalek speech is irrelevant, but rather whether he originally meant Hamas or the Palestinian people in this speech. Whichever he was originally referring to is irrelevant, if he meant Hamas, the term has grown to mean the Palestinian People, and is being used to pump up the genocide.

Likewise Trump also claims his speech didn’t mean to start an insurrection, however, it did to so, and whatever he originally meant became irrelevant as soon as the insurrectionists started, and he didn’t order them to back down.

enterprise_cog 853 days ago

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

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.

I don't know what you're trying to argue here.

That you are attempting to wiggle away from the plainly obvious nature of the quote, for some reason.

Nobody denies that an enormous number of civilians have been killed in the IDF's Gaza operation.

Except of course numerous Israeli government officials. (They don't deny that many civilians have been killed -- but they have continually attempted to dial down the proportion of civilian casualties, along with all the rhetoric about there being "no innocents" or "no uninvolved civilians" in Gaza to begin with).

In what way? You get that the Gaza offensive can be a long series of war crimes and unjustifiable civilian casualties and the quote can not mean what the parent comment said it meant, right? If you think the quote is an unimportant side detail, I think we can agree on that generally.

This is a thread about rhetoric, not a judgement of the whole conflict.

In what way?

In that it's plainly clear that the Amalek quote does mean what the parent commenter (and anyone else who understands the region) can easily see that it does. But you keep coming up with weird evasive arguments to claim that it doesn't. Like the above, for example.

If you think the quote is an unimportant side detail

Unfortunately and very tragically -- it is anything but.

You're not engaging with what I've said. You're looking at what's happening in Gaza and deriving axiomatically a new meaning for the quote. That's understandable, but it's not valid.

Or, at least, that's what I think. We're running towards the right margin of the site with this thread now, and we're not going to convince each other of anything, so we can also let it go.