[ad_1]
By Jeremy Salt
Centuries later, this battle order is being adopted up in Gaza, the place the dying and destruction additionally embrace the deliberate killing of women and men, kids and infants, by means of hunger and illness.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s use of Amalek as a Biblical metaphor for the destruction of Gaza attracted worldwide condemnation. It was a prescription for genocide, which, wanting again on the previous 5 months, Israel has “plausibly” been finishing up, within the judgment of the Worldwide Court docket of Justice (ICJ).
Residing within the desert on the outskirts of the land of Canaan, the Amalekites (the followers of Amalek, a tribal or clan chief of historic Biblical lineage) had been the primary enemies of the Israelites.
They had been defeated below the command of Joshua bin Nun. Thus threatened on the outset, the destruction of the Amalekites served because the template for the ruthless extirpation of all of Israel’s enemies within the land of Canaan, the Philistines amongst them.
The Israelites had been commanded by God to wipe all of them off the face of the earth, to “completely destroy all that belongs to them … don’t spare them; put to dying women and men, kids and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
Centuries later, this battle order is being adopted up in Gaza, the place the dying and destruction additionally embrace the deliberate killing of women and men, kids and infants, by means of hunger and illness.
The Bible is perhaps a lifeless textual content to the non-religious, a guide of fantasy, not historical past, with no relevance to their each day lives, however for the non secular it’s residing historical past and, for the messianic-minded, a blueprint for the current and the longer term. The connection is very vital within the US, the place a strong Christian Zionist foyer watches over Israel’s pursuits 12 months after 12 months.
Whereas the roots of Christian Zionism could be traced again to the 16th century, solely within the 19th century did it collect pressure as a non secular, social, humanitarian, and political pressure. Based mostly on the success of Biblical reality, the place to begin is the return of Jews to their ‘historic homeland’ and the endpoint the conversion of all Jews to Christianity and the return of the Messiah.
The perverse cause Christian Zionists assist Israel in every thing it does, together with the “believable” genocide it’s committing in Gaza, is the evangelical perception that in ‘finish occasions’ Jews will not be Jews however will convert to Christianity. Wrapped up in non secular fervor, that is certainly the acme of anti-semitism.
A paradox right here is that non secular perception is extra extensively unfold within the US than in Israel. A 2021 Gallup ballot confirmed that 70 % of People recognized with a selected non secular religion, 69 % with Christianity, Protestant or Catholic, whereas 21 % stated that they had no non secular perception.
Against this, polling in Israel the identical 12 months confirmed that 45 % of respondents stated they weren’t non secular in any respect, in opposition to 33 % who outlined themselves as historically non secular. Nonetheless, it’s the small non secular Zionist political events who’re the deal-makers and breakers within the present political local weather.
Netanyahu holds energy solely with their assist. Whereas he has talked of the Palestinians as Amalek, his coalition companions are much more brutally open of their insistence on the destruction of Gaza and the ethnic cleaning of its folks.
Netanyahu himself is a cultural Jew. Formal non secular observance performs no extra a component in his life than it did for Herzl, Weizmann or Ben-Gurion however faith and its symbols served their ends.
As a mode of operation within the marketing campaign to seize Palestine, secular Zionists turned to the previous as described within the Bible. They knew that the ‘Arabs’ wouldn’t give up their land. It must be taken from them. There may very well be no midway measures: if the Zionist forces couldn’t conquer the land without delay, they might bide their time and take the remainder when the chance arose or may very well be created however the object from the start was the entire ‘land of Israel’ and never simply a part of it.
It’s at this level that the fashionable reference to Joshua bin Nun takes centre stage. Following Moses’ dying, it was Joshua who, after the defeat of the Amalekites, led the Israelite tribes into Canaan, which God had described as “a land flowing with milk and honey” and which, as one of many 12 spies despatched into the ‘promised land,’ Joshua had already seen.
The injunction in Exodus to obliterate the Amalekites was handed on by means of Moses: “Then the Lord stated to Moses ‘Write this in a guide as a memorial and recite it to Joshua, that I’ll totally blot out Amalek from below heaven’. ” The message is repeated in Deuteronomy: ”You shall blot out the reminiscence of Amalek from below heaven, you need to not overlook.”
The Ebook of Joshua tells us how faithfully Joshua prolonged the divine fee to all of the tribes and kings within the land of Canaan. It was not simply Jericho he destroyed however many cities, together with Ai, the archaeological web site of which is on the West Financial institution. Ai’s king was hanged, its 12,000 folks killed and Ai “burnt and made right into a heap, even a desolation unto right now.”
5 different kings – of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth (near Jerusalem) Lachish (near Gaza) and Eglon (additionally near Gaza, the positioning of the village of Iraq al Manshiyya, destroyed and ethnically cleansed in 1948) – joined forces to battle the Israelites.
God reassured Joshua: “Be not afraid due to them, for tomorrow about this time will I ship them up all slain earlier than Israel.” The 5 kings had been discovered hiding in a cave. Stones had been rolled over the doorway to imprison them till they had been taken out. Joshua then “smote them and slew them and hanged them on 5 timber.”
In all, the Israelites “smote” 31 kings and took their land, which was then divided up amongst the victors. Principally, all of the folks inside these kingdoms had been destroyed. Jericho was the mannequin: “each man and lady and younger and previous, and ox and sheep and ass with the sting of the sword.”
There have been events, nonetheless, when “all of the spoil of those cities and the cattle the youngsters of Israel took for a prey unto themselves; however each man they smote with the sting of the sword till that they had destroyed them, neither left they any to breathe.” There have been additionally cities that “stood nonetheless of their energy” and Israel burned none of them, “save Hazor solely; that did Joshua burn.”
Listening to of the destiny of the folks of Ai, the Gibeonites (current web site the village of Al Jib, near Jerusalem), made their peace with Joshua, provided that they continue to be hewers of wooden and drawers of water for the Israelites. The parallel with the subservient destiny assigned to the Palestinians within the ‘autonomous’ West Financial institution enclaves allotted to them within the Nineties ‘peace course of’ is unmistakable.
Joshua is not only a guide within the Previous Testomony however a cruel template for the current day, as we are actually seeing in Gaza. Following the Hamas navy assault of October 7, the West Financial institution settler chief and authorities finance minister Bezalel Smotrich had this to say:
“When Joshua bin Nun entered the land he despatched three messages to its inhabitants: those that need to settle for our rule will settle for, those that need to depart will depart, those that need to battle will battle. The premise of his technique was: we’re right here, we’ve come, that is ours. Now, too, three doorways will probably be open. There is no such thing as a fourth door. Those that need to depart – and there will probably be those that depart – I’ll assist them. After they haven’t any hope and no imaginative and prescient they’ll go. As they did in 1948.”
By way of bloodbath, hunger and homelessness, this can be a clear sufficient assertion of Israel’s intentions in Gaza and the West Financial institution. Smotrich has additionally been given authority over ‘civilian points’ on the West Financial institution, based mostly on settlement enlargement, regardless of US objections, and the persevering with strangulation of Palestinian life. He has referred to as all West Financial institution Palestinians Nazis, has defended settler violence and the burning of cities and as soon as advised a Palestinian member of the Knesset “It’s a mistake that Ben-Gurion didn’t end the job and throw you out in 1948.”
Joshua is not only the mannequin for Smotrich and the armed settlers and ‘hilltop youth’ of the West Financial institution. His clearance of the land of Canaan served as the precise inspiration for the primary ‘prime minister’ of the occupying energy, David Ben-Gurion, previously Gruen, a Polish settler from the small city of Plonsk.
For Ben-Gurion ‘the Arabs’ had been not more than an impediment to be eliminated. He was additionally deeply racist in the direction of the mizrahim – the ‘oriental jews’ – as properly, describing them as “primitive,” “refuse” and “substandard” Jews in comparison with Aszhkenazi Jews like himself who “got here right here as Europeans.”
Arriving in Palestine in 1906, Ben-Gurion – at the moment nonetheless Gruen – described ‘the Arabs’ rowing out to his boat off the coast of Jaffa to take passengers ashore as “human beasts” with predatory eyes and “fully feral visages,” additional proof that Yoav Gallant’s reference to the Palestinians as “human animals” didn’t come out of a vacuum any greater than did October 7.
Within the years to come back the conversion of Palestinian human beings into human animals, Menahim Start’s “beasts on two legs” and even bugs, was to be a continuing chorus popping out of the mouths of Israeli politicians, military commanders and rabbis.
From the start, based on the author Ahad Ha’am, after visiting Palestine early within the 20th century, the Zionist settlers handled the indigenous folks with “hostility and cruelty” in addition to beating them with “shameful cruelty” after which bragging about it.
This was the way in which it needed to be: if the Zionists had been to take Palestine they might not deal with the Palestinians as human beings with equal rights, and even as human beings in any respect, an angle that has continued to the current day. Nothing else explains extra clearly the rationale for the remorseless cruelty inflicted on the Palestinians of Gaza.
On his desk Ben-Gurion saved a passage from Exodus: “I can’t drive them out earlier than you in a single 12 months lest the land turn out to be desolate and the wild beasts multiply to your detriment. I’ll drive them out earlier than you little by little till you may have elevated and possessed the land.”
Moshe Dayan, ‘defence’ minister throughout the 1967 assault on Egypt and Syria, as soon as described Ben-Gurion as Moses and himself as Joshua. Rachel Havrelock in ‘The Joshua technology: conquest and the Promised Land’ (Crucial Analysis on Faith, 3, 2013) has drawn out how Joshua served as Ben-Gurion’s inspiration and mannequin.
Havrelock writes that fashionable Israeli militarism “resonates” with Joshua, and informs the “lexicon of Jewish nationalism.” For the non secular settlers of the West Financial institution, specifically, the guide of Joshua is an “instruction handbook.”
In 1958, Ben-Gurion fashioned a Bible research group of which the political, navy and authorized elites had been half in addition to archaeologists and biblical students. His goal was to “promote nationwide unity by means of Biblical paradigms and collective id” with Joshua chosen by him as the primary topic.
As Professor Havrelock writes, “By way of the prism of Joshua, Israelis would perceive conquest and settlement by means of a re-enactment of the Biblical previous.” Ben-Gurion believed that no-one had higher interpreted Joshua than the IDF in 1948: troopers and civilians collectively had been residing “the parable of Joshua.” Ben-Gurion learn historical past, technique, conquest and settlement by means of the guide of Joshua.
What Joshua achieved was summed up by one of many research group, Yigael Yadin, archaeologist and a number one navy determine within the ethnic cleaning of Palestine in 1948, when referring particularly to town of Hazor, described within the guide of Joshua as “the pinnacle of all these kingdoms.”
In accordance with Yadin, “a cultured Canaanite metropolis, a fortified metropolis, a metropolis with sanctuaries – whether or not Lachish, Bethel or Hazor – ceases all of a sudden to point out indicators of life. It’s a conclusive reality from an archaeological viewpoint that each one Canaanite cities had been destroyed on the identical time. The cities had been destroyed, burnt down and their inhabitants by no means returned to rebuild them. If certainly one of them was destroyed it was solely in a poor and wretched method.” The conclusion putting any reader is that he might have been speaking concerning the nakba in 1948.
The conquest of all of the lands bequeathed to the Israelites by means of Joshua was not full, nonetheless. Joshua’s ‘slaying of giants’ stopped quick in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod, the place the Amalekites remained.
Joshua is reprimanded by God, in the direction of the tip of his life: “You might be previous, previous your prime, and far of the land stays to be seized, particularly that of the 5 Philistine lords of Gaza, Ashdod, Askelon, Gath and Ekron.”
Professor Havrelock factors to the latter a part of the Ebook of Joshua as proof that Joshua had considerably softened in his angle to the conquered Canaanites. A remnant inhabitants remained however on the identical time, as a counter to Professor Havrelock’s thesis, the Israelites had been warned that in the event that they made marriages with the Canaanites and “go in unto them” they might stay “snares and traps unto you and scourges in your sides and thorns in your eyes till ye perish from off this good land which the Lord your God hath given you.” Thus, whereas tolerated, these Canaanites had been harmful and needs to be saved at a distance.
God’s bounty had certainly been nice: ”I’ve given you a land for which ye didn’t labor and cities which ye constructed not and ye dwell in them; of the vineyards and oliveyards which you planted not, do you eat.” Once more, the outline matches the cities, cities and villages constructed by others and the huge amount of agricultural land planted by others destroyed, constructed over or seized in 1948.
There are variations within the extent of the territory given to the Israelites. Within the guide of Joshua it stretched “from the wilderness and this Lebanon even the nice river, the river Euphrates, all of the land of the Hittites and unto the nice sea (the Mediterranean) in the direction of the taking place of the solar shall be your coast.” Because the Hittite empire included nearly all of Anatolia and the Aegean coast additional south than Byblos, this was a tall order even for Joshua. By the point he died the Israelites had conquered solely a small portion of the land promised by God.
It was not simply Ben-Gurion’s secular enemies within the Herut/Likud ‘revisionist’ camp however Ben-Gurion himself who took his lead from Joshua ben Nun’s “instruction handbook.” As Smotrich’s remarks point out, Joshua can be a mannequin for present day non secular Zionists aligned with Netanyahu.
Many websites have been urged because the burial place of Joshua. Jewish custom holds that he was buried at Timnath-sera, in what’s now the northern West Financial institution Palestinian village of Kifl Haris. The northern West Financial institution archaeological web site at Kirbat Tibneh is thought to be one other risk.
The location in Kifl Haris is now a Muslim maqam (shrine) courting again to the time of sultan Salah al Din Ayyoubi (‘Saladin’) within the 12th century, and devoted to Joshua and Salah al Din’s servant Jawhar bin Abdullah. Kifl Haris can be considered the burial place of Joshua’s father and Caleb, one of many spies despatched into the ‘promised land.’ Tens of hundreds of Jewish Israelis make pilgrimage to Kifl Haris each April to commemorate Joshua’s dying.
In late December final 12 months, the shrine was scribbled over with pro-Hamas graffiti. Yossi Dagan, head of the ‘Samaria regional council’ stood contained in the shrine a short while later and declared that “We’re within the tomb of Joshua bin Nun, the primary Jewish chief of workers from the nation of Israel. Listed below are our roots of holding on to the land of Israel, listed below are the roots on which the state of Israel was based and nowadays, once we are preventing a barbaric and merciless enemy who slaughters ladies and kids, it’s no marvel that the identical enemy who does this with one hand tries to break our holy websites with the opposite … we’re as one iron fist and we’ll defeat this barbaric enemy.”
For the report, within the gentle of Dagan’s remarks, aside from the persevering with bloodbath of civilians in Gaza, 113 non secular websites are verified as having been broken or destroyed within the present onslaught. They embrace a minimal of 70 mosques (greater than 300 based on Hamas) and three church buildings, together with St Porphyrius, one of many oldest church buildings on the earth, however partially destroyed final October in a missile strike that killed 16-18 Palestinians taking shelter.
The mosques embrace the Nice Omari Mosque, constructed within the 7th century on the positioning of a 5th century Byzantine church believed to have been constructed over the ruins of the Philistine temple to Dagon pulled down by Samson, based on the Bible. The mosque was completely destroyed in an Israeli missile strike final December. HamaS
If Israel strikes nearer in the direction of a fascistic theocracy by which non secular Zionists would have the higher hand, a literal studying of God’s instructions as transmitted by Moses and Joshua will play out much more within the political area.
The ‘Palestine query’ is not only Palestine however the nonetheless unredeemed ‘land of Israel’ as promised within the Bible. It reaches properly past Palestine.A lot of it’s unattainable however some (southern Lebanon, Syria and the opposite facet of the Jordan river, to begin with) is weak.
Refusing to outline boundaries – which Israel nonetheless refuses to do – Ben-Gurion all the time had his eye on the principle likelihood. As he as soon as declared, “our motion is maximalist. Even all of Palestine is just not our last objective.”
– Jeremy Salt taught on the College of Melbourne, at Bosporus College in Istanbul and Bilkent College in Ankara for a few years, specializing within the fashionable historical past of the Center East. Amongst his current publications is his 2008 guide, The Unmaking of the Center East. A Historical past of Western Dysfunction in Arab Lands (College of California Press). He contributed this text to The Palestine Chronicle.
[ad_2]
Source link
