THE EXTERMINATIONISM IS THE POINT:

There are more than 23,000 verses in the Old Testament. The ones Netanyahu turned to, as Israeli forces launched their ground invasion in Gaza, are among its most violent--and have a long history of being used by Jews on the far-right to justify killing Palestinians.

As others quickly pointed out, God commands King Saul in the first Book of Samuel to kill every person in Amalek, a rival nation to ancient Israel. "This is what the Lord Almighty says," the prophet Samuel tells Saul. "'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.'"

Forty-seven percent of Israeli Jews said in a poll conducted last month that Israel should "not at all" consider the "suffering of the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza" in the next phase of fighting.

The Amalek reference is one of many comments by Israeli leaders that serve to help justify a devastating response to the brutal Hamas attack on October 7 that took the lives of more than 1,400 people in Israel. A member of the Knesset has called for a second Nakba, in reference to the expulsion of Palestinians that Israel carried out in its 1948 war with Arab neighbors. A military spokesperson said about Israel's initial airstrikes that "the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy."

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