Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu has said the war against Gaza would continue until Israel had restored “overall security” control of Gaza. In the last week of October, Netanyahu said his responsibility was to guarantee the future of the country and lead Israel to an “overpowering victory”. “It is now a time to come together for one purpose, to storm ahead to achieve victory,” he said. Moreover, Netanyahu had “declared holy war against Gaza, citing the Bible”, that have highlighted that the text in the Hebrew Bible which addresses revenge on the Amalek constitutes a narrative of ‘genocide’”,
Jewish prophecies about the end times remain a force in the world today, shaping policy and impacting racial, religious, and cultural conflict. The question is how their beliefs impact the rest of the world. If genocide of innocent nation making them homeless is a way of their progress, would this act of violence be devoid of God’s anger? What if God would not be on the side of Netanyahu and all other policymakers who promote violence in the name of God?
Israel’s warplanes and tanks are circling around the Gaza Strip’s hospitals as health facilities increasingly come under attack. The assaults on hospital compounds affect not just thousands of patients but also many thousands Palestinians, estimated over 100,000 who were sheltering in those facilities during unrelenting bombing by Israel.
Hamas knew that an attack on Israel would invite retaliation and the deaths of thousands of its own people. Theirs is a cynical strategy to sacrifice their own people in hopes of others joining in a war against Israel. According to The New York Times, Hamas leaders have praised the attack, saying it was necessary to reinvigorate the armed struggle against Israel. “Hamas’s goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such,” said Mr. al-Hayya, the politburo member. “Hamas, the Qassam and the resistance woke the world up from its deep sleep and showed that this issue must remain on the table. This battle was not because we wanted fuel or labourers,” he added. “It did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza. This battle is to completely overthrow the situation.”
Yahya Sinwar, who helped create the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, took the helm of Hamas in Gaza in 2017. Due to allegations of killing Gazan civilians on suspicion of spying for Israel, Sinwar ascended through the ranks of the Hamas military wing. He ended up in prison in Israel for more than two decades, an experience he called educational. He learned Hebrew, giving him a deeper understanding of Israeli society. But what Sinwar did on October 7, was not in favor of Palestinians.
Moreover, Islamic law condemns killing and violence like Hamas waged war to revive the Palestine Cause. What did Hamas get from this war? Was Mr Sinwar really in favor of poor Palestinians who were already struggling for their rights for the last 75 years? What were the changes in Mr Sinwar’s personality in 20 years of jail in Israel? How did he take this step of revenge on October 7 knowing its disastrous result in shape of the worst genocide in decades?
Only in Gaza, approximately 5000 were children among 12,000 who were martyred. It looks as if the next generation in Gaza has been wiped out tactfully. It is another thing that what Hamas did cannot justify the war crimes and genocide committed by Israel.
According to a UN report published in September 2023, 181 citizens where 38 children were killed by Israeli forces. If someone wants to say that Israel committed these massacres because Hamas did it first, other people can argue that Israel did it first. There’s never a justification to commit genocide against civilians. The attack was immoral but not unprovoked.
The expulsion of over 700,000 Arab Palestinians in 1948 by Jewish terrorists starting with the unprovoked massacre at Deir Yessin of 107 innocent villagers by the Irgun and Lehi is also a clear example. Unfortunately Deir Yasin was just the tip of the iceberg. As has become clear now there was a policy of ethnic cleansing in 1948/49. Massacres like the one committed were used on a wide scale by the Zionist military forces, because it was the only way to uproot the rural peasant population from their villages.
The deliberate expulsion and atrocities impelling Palestinians to flee were authorized and sanctioned by the Jewish Agency leaders and Haganah command. And above all they even cruelly killed Palestinian civilians, who after the war tried to return to their villages. The 194-1949 ethnic cleansing by the nascent state of Israel will remain an indelible stain in the history of the Jewish state and it will haunt it.
The official refusal to allow Arabs to return to their homes is also an obvious provocation. Illegal settlements have been continuously built since Oslo. On the map of the West Bank, the small islands of Palestinian lands surrounded by Israeli settlements are seen. The Israelis were never going to give the Palestinians their own state. They continue to massacre Palestinians and drive them off their land. Nothing has changed. Palestinians will not forget the images of 5000-plus children who died or suffered unimaginable pain from their wounds, both physical and emotional. How would the world suggest Palestinian Arabs respond to these crimes?
Israelis keep repeating the nonsense that God gave them this land, with absolutely no evidence except a scribe-written Book of Moses that has been debunked by archaeology. Netanyahu has previously quoted the Book of Isaiah in public speeches, telling the United Nations in 2017 that Israel is “a light unto the nations, bringing salvation to the ends of the earth”.
The West always remained on the side of Israel, taking it necessary for its own salvation. Over the past decade the West kept funding and supporting Netanyahu while his rightwing government was expanding settlements, increasing atrocities in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and shutting Gaza off from the World. The Great March of Return in 2018 was met with tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition.
Settler colonialism in the West Bank and Jerusalem and the siege in Gaza were leaving Palestinians with no hope for the future. In fact it is slow annexation with slow ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinian people.
Israel had no plan to even think about a Palestinian State i.e. two state solution. The West conspired against the Palestinians after World War II and they are achieving their target with ethnic cleansing and repeated hegemony. A war was started 75 years ago but not by the Palestinians. Where is emphasis in this war? Now if it is war for the revival of Cause or is it collective punishment of the people of Palestine, Emphasis is on damage not accuracy. It is absolutely a crime with the worst genocide.
Netanyahu specifically quoted Deuteronomy 25:17, not Samuel. It says, “Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; how he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God.” Netanyahu quotes another passage in which the prophet commands King Saul to wipe out the Amalek, reads, “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.” Firstly, there is no one like Amalek now and Netanyahu’s comparison with the weak nation of Palestine is absolutely wrong. Amalek represents those that prey upon the weak, those who do not believe in justice, and those who hate without reason. The way Israel behaves in the region looks more alike Amalek as it appears to advocate genocide, killing people because of their race.
Here it is not only Netanyahu who has misquoted the Torah for Israel’s own interest. In an article ‘Israel the Next Super Power’ published on 19 December 2014, I had discussed Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel’s words when he told a massive rally of Israeli settlers that the time to build in Jerusalem and the West Bank without restriction had come.
Speaking to the Israeli Kol Berama radio station run by the Jewish extremist movement Shas, Ariel said building the Jewish Temple is the paramount demand of the Torah as it is at the forefront of Jewish salvation. He called for a third Temple to be built on the site, which is today home to the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and is considered Judaism’s holiest site and Islam’s third holiest. The very words to focus on are ‘the time to build…has come’
Many American evangelical Christians see this war against Arabs as “part of a prophecy” linked to the Second Coming of Christ. For example, in the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah predicted that God ‘shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth’.”
According to their interpretation, the return of Christ would take place once the Jews from all over the world returned to Palestine. Eager to put God’s plan in motion, these Christian Zionists began to push their governments to take active steps to get Jews back to Palestine. Moreover, it is clear when you want a license to fire indiscriminately, call it a Holy War. However, Jews’ God or Muslims’ God, who is the same, never allow and promote violence.
Despite many theories and religious interpretations, the only thing that’s certain about the end of the world is that no one can know for sure what will happen. The most confusing thing is that Christ will be considered anti-Christ for some religions or even for some believers and vice versa. Then who would be the true saviour of this planet? And who will incite the nations to fight against their Creator God? When Christ returns to intervene and prevent nuclear mass suicide, will the nations be happy? Or will they actually be angry? The returning Christ will deal with rebellious nations. Miracles would occur but whose miracles would be divinely sourced, and whose would be merely demonic or magical. As Dodds put it, “The ancient debate on miracles was in the main a conflict not between believers and rationalists but between two sorts of believers.”
Jewish prophecies about the end times remain a force in the world today, shaping policy and impacting racial, religious, and cultural conflict. The question is how their beliefs impact the rest of the world. If genocide of innocent nation making them homeless is a way of their progress, would this act of violence be devoid of God’s anger? What if God would not be on the side of Netanyahu and all other policymakers who promote violence in the name of God?
