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A poll by Penn State University has found that two thirds of Israelis support extermination of the Palestinians in accordance with God’s command from the Old Testament to kill every human and animal of the ancient tribe of Amalek.
In an address to the nation following the October 7th attack beyond the walls of Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used Amalek as a reference to the Palestinians, and during South Africa’s victory against Israel in the International Court of Justice concerning whether operations in Gaza constituted genocide, videos were shown of soldiers chanting and singing about the extermination of Amalek.
Now, Amalek has been used as a reference point again to gather information about the opinions of the Jewish state’s citizens regarding the Gazans.
In response to the question “should the IDF act in accordance with the biblical story of the Israelites and their eradication of all of Jericho’s inhabitants during the conquest of the city,” 47% out of 1,005 said yes. In response to the slightly less direct question of whether they believed there was a “contemporary incarnation of Amalek,” 67% said yes, and 95% of those said they agree with the statement “the commandment to wipe out the memory of Amalek is also relevant to that modern-day Amalek”.
The exact quote from the Bible is found in 1 Samuel 15:2-3, and reads “go and attack the Amalekites and devote to destruction all that belongs to them. Do not spare them, but put to death men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys”.
Tamir Sorek, a professor of Middle East History at Penn State university, commissioned the poll from the Israeli polling firm Geocartography, which The Dissenter substack cites has a history of accuracy when asking “more disturbing questions” to the Israeli public. It correctly foreshadowed the Likud Party’s rise in 2015 when it was otherwise considered unlikely.
Sorek wrote in April that even though it wasn’t unheard of 30 years ago to use genocidal statements like comparing enemies to Amalek or Jericho, a different city which in the Bible suffered a similar fate, it could land one in prison. Now though, it’s commonplace and unpunished even when emerging from political circles.
“During the Arab-Israeli war in 1948, Israeli army education officers distributed texts to soldiers that read, ‘In biblical times, Saul exterminated all of Amalek, men and women, youth and elderly, and even sheep and cattle,'” Sorek wrote, referencing the quote above from Samuel. “The materials also noted that ‘biblical Joshua was commanded to annihilate the nations of the land and was forbidden to make any treaties with them'”.
So not only is there broad support for a sort of “Amalekite solution” to the dangers of Hamas, there is also a historical precedence for using Amalek as a comparison.
The Dissenter cites a stomach churning array of statements to the same affect, from all levels of Jewish media and society, as well as a Pew Research poll from December of 2024 which “found that only 4% of Jewish Israelis thought the mass murder campaign in Gaza had ‘gone too far’ while 34% believed it had ‘not gone far enough’.
The Amalekite Solution
The poll comes as Tel Aviv is planning to occupy 75% of the Gaza Strip in two months time, displacing over 1 million people to a small area in the south where under US assistance, the IDF has set up an aid distribution point.
The IDF said the purpose of the offensive is to destroy Hamas infrastructure, although previous reports have said the plan is to destroy every remaining building in Gaza, Antiwar reports.
US security contractors are already in the strip to help control the aid center. Their presence reflects Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statement that the only way to end the military occupation is for Hamas to accept a peace proposal President Trump made last week in which he suggested the ethnic cleansing of the strip and the transfer of around 1 million people to Libya—a nation that is currently rife with tensions between two competing governments.
Although the international community has been strongly condemning Israel for blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza for almost 3 months, they’ve condemned the new plan for US-guarded aid centers as well since its distribution mechanism relies on mass displacement of Palestinians from the north of the strip.
In the Penn State poll, 4 out of 5 Israelis supported the ethnic cleansing of Gaza through “forced expulsion”. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: IDF troops move through the rubble of Gaza. PC: IDF Spokesmen
