From Archetype to Libel: The Misinterpretation of Amalek in Genocide Accusations

The claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is among the most significant antisemitic calumnies of modern times. As Holocaust scholar Norman Goda explains, the genocide accusation serves several purposes. It plays on antisemitic tropes of Jews as xenophobic, hateful, and thirsting for vengeance. The genocide libel is frequently paired with the charge that Israelis are “baby killers,” which references historical blood libels and ignores the tragic reality that children are often killed in wartime. The accusation aims to invert the Holocaust, casting today’s Jews as the new Nazis. Finally, the accusation paints Jews (“Zionists”) worldwide as complicit in the genocide and thus deserving of ostracism, punishment, or violence.¹

Among the centerpieces of the genocide libel lies a statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu several weeks after the October 7 massacre. On October 28, 2023, Netanyahu gave a press conference in which he said: “Remember what Amalek did to you.”² As South Africa stated in its application before the International Court of Justice, the reference to Amalek demonstrates Israel’s genocidal intent, as a different verse in the Book of Samuel commands: “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.”³ This accusation has since been repeated countless times.⁴

The Amalek reference recently formed the core claim of an article by Abed Azzam in the influential German journal Analyse & Kritik.⁵ For Azzam, Israel’s supposed refusal to recognize the Palestinians culminates in genocide against them. Azzam plays into the deadly imagery of blood libels as he writes, “the eternal name of Amalek hangs above the severed heads of Palestinian children, while the ghost of Samson lingers as a looming possibility in the skies over Gaza.” For Azzam, “Zionists” have traditionally associated the Palestinians with Amalek, who must be annihilated. In truth, this analysis suffers from significant methodological flaws, leading to an unsupported conclusion about the intent and nature of the Israeli operation.

Azzam fails to consider internal Jewish interpretive traditions about the Amalek archetype. Additionally, the piece omits credible critical sources and fails to provide a detailed analysis of the genocide claims it discusses. Azzam’s article is an example of the closed nature of the anti-Zionist academic echo chamber, in which the same scholars quote each other ad nauseum while failing to consider alternate viewpoints. Azzam invokes a non-existent “scholarly consensus” on the supposed genocide, while ignoring the myriad of genocide scholars who reject the charges against Israel. The use of incomplete quotations worsens this interpretative mistake. By taking quotes from Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant out of their surrounding context, the article misrepresents the targets of the military operation targeted, who were consistently identified as Hamas, not Gazan civilians.

Intentionally Truncated Quotations

On October 28, 2023, only three weeks after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a joint statement, along with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister without portfolio Benny Gantz, in which he said:

“They [the IDF] are longing to recompense the murderers for the horrific acts they perpetrated on our children, our women, our parents and our friends. They are committed to eradicating this evil from the world, for our existence, and I add, for the good of all humanity. The entire people, and the leadership of the people, embrace them and believe in them. ‘Remember what Amalek did to you’ (Deuteronomy 25:17). We remember and we fight.

Our brave soldiers who are now in Gaza, around Gaza and in the other sectors throughout the country, join a chain of heroes of Israel that has continued for over 3,000 years, from Joshua, Judah Maccabee and Bar Kochba, and up to the heroes of 1948, the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War and Israel’s other wars. Our heroic soldiers have one supreme goal: To destroy the murderous enemy and ensure our existence in our land. We have always said ‘Never again.’ ‘Never again’ is now.”⁶

It must be stressed that October 7, 2023, was the bloodiest day in Israeli history and the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, Israelis were plunged into existential grief, fear, and anger. However, nowhere in Netanyahu’s remarks is there an indication that the target is the people of Gaza as opposed to Hamas.

Similarly, Azzam misquotes Gallant as calling Gazans “human animals” and President Herzog as collectively blaming all Palestinians. Galant’s quote is deliberately trimmed, while the full context shows that he was instead referring to Hamas:

“I have released all restraints … You saw what we are fighting against. We are fighting human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza. This is what we are fighting against … Gaza won’t return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week, it will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.”⁷

Similarly, Herzog stressed that “there is no excuse to murdering innocent civilians in any way in any context. And believe me, Israel will operate and always operate according to the international rules. And we do the same in this battle, too.”⁸ Herzog’s earlier remarks regarding Palestinian responsibility for the October 7 attack, as quoted in South Africa’s application, referred to the widespread support that Hamas enjoys in Palestinian society, including support for its October 7 attack, as documented by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.⁹

While Azzam presents a “scholarly consensus” on the supposed Israeli genocide, no such consensus exists.¹⁰ In September 2025, more than 500 distinguished legal, history, antisemitism, Holocaust, and genocide scholars signed an open letter rejecting the claims of genocide. They included former special prosecutors of Nazi and other war criminals, including Eli M. Rosenbaum and Jeffrey Mausner; Dr. Isaac Amon, a former ISIS War Crimes Legal Analyst; Jan Grabowski, a Holocaust historian; and former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler.

Furthermore, Israeli historians Danny Orbach, Yagil Henkin and others critically examined the genocide claims in a 300-page factual analysis of primary and secondary sources. Orbach’s research concludes that the allegations of genocide are factually unfounded and lack evidentiary basis. The study questions major accusations, arguing that there is no proof of a deliberate policy to target civilians or starve the Gazan population intentionally. It also criticizes the data used to support these claims. Specifically, the research shows that statistics on aid trucks and casualty ratios are often based on flawed or manipulated data from sources including the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry and certain humanitarian organizations.¹¹

Jewish Memory and Historical Archetypes

In imposing his “genocidal” interpretation of the Amalek metaphor, Azzam makes the critical error of failing to consult or understand internal Jewish interpretations.¹² As historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi explains in Zakhor, his seminal work on Jewish history and memory, Jewish ritual and recital keep the memory of the Jewish past alive: “For the rabbis, the Bible was not only a repository of past history, but a revealed pattern of the whole of history, and they had learned their scriptures well.”¹³

For this reason, Jews (religious and secular alike) reinterpret contemporary events in light of historical or biblical archetypes—enemies of Israel are constantly recast as the ancient foes of Pharaoh, Haman, and Antiochus.¹⁴ Gershom Scholem, the preeminent Kabbalah scholar, describes Jewish thought as viewing history as a recurring pattern of exile and persecution, punctuated by redemption.¹⁵ A famous Israeli song by singer Meir Ariel, released during the 1990 Gulf War, similarly notes: “We got through Pharaoh, we will get through this.”

For Israelis, the October 7 massacre was a world-shattering event for which they searched parallels in Jewish history. For example, the post-October 7 season of the satirical Israeli TV show, The Jews are Coming, opened with clips of actors retelling their “testimonies” of historical massacres of Jews, such as the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Crusades, the Kishinev pogrom, Kristallnacht, the 1941 Farhud pogrom in Iraq, and the October 2023 attack on Kfar Aza—drawing a direct line between them.¹⁶ Netanyahu’s October 28 statement echoes this theme, creating parallels between modern IDF soldiers and ancient Jewish warriors. His use of the term “Remember [zakhor] what Amalek did to you” is the same one that Yerushalmi uses to encapsulate Jewish memory and consciousness.

Amalek as the Symbol of Evil

Netanyahu’s statement was a reference to the Biblical command found in Deuteronomy:

“You shall remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you went out of Egypt, how he happened upon you on the way and cut off all the stragglers at your rear, when you were faint and weary, and he did not fear God. [Therefore,] it will be, when the Lord your God grants you respite from all your enemies around [you] in the land which the Lord, your God, gives to you as an inheritance to possess, that you shall obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the heavens. You shall not forget!”¹⁷

Already in ancient times, the Sages of the Babylonian Talmud ruled that the literal commandment to wipe out Amalek, as cited in South Africa’s application, was no longer applicable because the identity of the original nations was mixed up and lost.¹⁸ As Maimonides, the 12th century Jewish legal scholar, wrote in his Mishne Torah magnum opus:

“When Sennacherib, King of Assyria, ascended, he confounded all the nations and mixed them together, and he exiled them from their places. And thus, the Egyptians who are now in the Land of Egypt are other people. And likewise, the Edomites who are in the field of Edom.”¹⁹

Over time, Amalek simply became a symbol of eternal hatred and enmity toward the Jewish people. This finds support in the Jerusalem Talmud. The Book of Esther describes Haman, the genocidal foe of the Jews, as a descendant of Aggag, the king of Amalek. The Jerusalem Talmud implies that, while Haman was not literally an Amalekite, he was comparable in his hatred toward the Jews.²⁰ The Mechilta, a classic rabbinic work of legal and narrative exegesis on the Book of Exodus, adopts Amalek as the archetypal enemy of Israel:

“Let every person learn proper conduct from Amalek, who came to harm Israel and was destroyed by the Holy One, Blessed Be He, from the life of this world and from the life of the World to Come, as it is said, ‘for I will surely blot out [the remembrance of Amalek].’ … And likewise, every nation and kingdom that comes to harm Israel will be judged with this same judgment.”

According to Israeli philosopher Avi Sagi, the traditional Jewish idea of Amalek has shifted from a literal, historical nation to a symbol of metaphysical evil and unprovoked, groundless hatred, while the people of Israel remain a concrete entity representing metaphysical good. In this view, the conflict is seen as a cosmic struggle between these two essential spiritual forces. Because the identity of the concrete historical enemy is considered irrelevant and fluid, any unjustified attack or war motivated by a desire to destroy Israel symbolizes the ongoing, eternal metaphysical war between good and evil.²¹

In his influential essay Kol Dodi Dofek, which discusses the religious significance of the creation of the State of Israel, Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, who was the undisputed leader of American Modern Orthodox Jewry in the 20th century, wrote:

“The notion of ‘the Lord will have war against Amalek from generation ‎to ‎generation’ (Exodus 17:16) is not confined to a certain race, but includes a necessary attack ‎against ‎any nation or group infused with mad hatred that directs its enmity against the community ‎of ‎Israel. When a nation emblazons on its standard, ‘Come, let us cut them off from being a nation ‎so ‎that the name of Israel shall no longer be remembered’ (Psalms 83:5), it becomes Amalek. In ‎the ‎‎1930’s and 1940’s the Nazis, with Hitler at their helm, filled this role. In this most recent period ‎they ‎were the Amalekites, the representatives of insane hate. Today, the throngs of Nasser and ‎the ‎Mufti have taken their place.”²²

Amalek has also come to be associated with antisemitism, the Nazis, and the Holocaust.²³ As Holocaust historian Alvin H. Rosenfeld notes, Hitler was explicitly identified as a new Haman/Amalek in sermons, literature, and political rhetoric. Using this archetype is a way that Jewish tradition seeks to maintain the moral and existential weight of the event by linking it to the highest possible form of evil in its theological system.²⁴ Thus, the Holocaust memorial in The Hague, ironically a short distance from the International Court of Justice, also bears the injunction to remember Amalek.²⁵

Weaponizing Scripture: The Enduring Antisemitic Tradition of the Genocide Libel

The genocide libel, according to Holocaust historian Norman Goda, serves several purposes in perpetuating antisemitic tropes and political aims. It links genocide directly to violent passages in the Hebrew Bible, capitalizing on themes of Jewish chosenness to claim that God and Judaism itself are genocidal. It also functions to whitewash the genocidal intent of groups such as Hamas by substituting the trope of an “outsized Jewish thirst for vengeance” in the form of Israel’s “disproportionate” response. The libel is further weaponized by coupling the genocide charge to the supposedly deliberate killing of children through the dissemination of decontextualized images of violence and suffering. Crucially, the most dangerous purpose is the association of all Jews worldwide with the crime, portraying them as dishonest lobbyists, Zionist enablers, or community leaders who “weaponize” antisemitism to silence criticism, which ultimately drives rage and attacks against Jews across the globe.²⁶

Intentionally or not, Azzam engages in the venerable antisemitic tradition of combing through Jewish Scriptures to demonstrate Jewish cruelty and harshness. This trope was already present among the ancient pagan writers. Josephus, responding to the anti-Jewish claims of Egyptian priest Apion in the first century, writes that “Apion also tells a false story when he mentions an oath of ours, as if we ‘swore by God, the Maker of the heaven, and earth, and sea, to bear no goodwill to any foreigner.’”²⁷ According to Tacitus:

“The Jews are extremely loyal toward one another, and always ready to show compassion, but toward every other people they feel only hate and enmity. They sit apart at meals, and they sleep apart, and although as a race, they are prone to lust, they abstain from intercourse with foreign women; yet among themselves nothing is unlawful. They adopted circumcision to distinguish themselves from other peoples by this difference.”²⁸

Similarly, the contrast between Jewish vengeance and Christian grace and forgiveness is among the main themes of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Shylock, representing Jewish legalism, swears “by our holy Sabbath … the pound of flesh … ‘tis mine, and I will have it.”²⁹ He demands his pound of flesh, whether or not Antonio lives. Portia, standing in for Christian mercy, intercedes:

“Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That, in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.”³⁰

In Nazi Germany, the Talmud was used to portray Jews as immoral. Julius Streicher, the editor of the antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer, considered himself an expert on the Talmud. An issue of Der Stürmer from 1936 depicts a stereotypical Jewish figure holding a Talmud and surveying a map of Europe. The caption reads “The Plan of the Talmud.” Likewise, Alfred Rosenberg published a booklet in 1920 (and again in the 1930s) titled “Lack of Morality in the Talmud,” supposedly illustrating Jewish hatred and hostility toward Gentiles. Working under Rosenberg was Dr. Johann Pohl, who was responsible for looting Jewish libraries in Eastern Europe. Pohl authored two books on the Talmud describing the Jews’ inferior nature and their hostility toward non-Jews.³¹

However, the weaponization of Jewish texts was not limited to the far right. In 1963, the Soviet Union published a virulently antisemitic book by Trofim Kichko, titled Judaism without Embellishments. As Soviet antisemitism scholar Izabella Tabarovsky explains, “it proposed that Judaism, with its concept of Jews as a chosen people, was an inherently racist religion and linked to American imperialism and Israeli colonialism. One of the cartoons showed a stereotypical Jewish capitalist licking a boot with a swastika painted on it.” It quickly became a common theme in Soviet propaganda that Judaism itself taught that the Jews were a “master race,” that non-Jews were inferior, and that Israel was allegedly motivated by Jewish scripture to engage in imperialism, racism, and even genocide.³²

The persistent misuse of Jewish scripture, exemplified by the misrepresentation of the Amalek archetype, thus aligns with a time-honored antisemitic tradition spanning from ancient pagan libel to Nazi propaganda, Soviet antisemitism, and modern political discourse. Just as Jewish Scripture was historically manipulated, contemporary critics exploit the Amalek reference to claim genocidal intent. This strategic weaponization functions not as a legitimate critique but as a mechanism to delegitimize Jewish self-defense by falsely linking it to a tradition of vengeful cruelty, thereby whitewashing the genocidal aims of groups such as Hamas and ultimately driving global antagonism against the entire Jewish community. This recurring pattern confirms that the purpose of the genocide libel is not factual analysis but the perpetuation of an ancient, malicious trope.

Conclusion: From Archetype to Libel

The controversy surrounding the modern invocation of Amalek in Israeli discourse, especially after the October 7 massacre, highlights a fundamental conflict between internal Jewish cultural memory and external political misinterpretation. In Jewish legal and historical tradition, the term has long been regarded as a symbolic command rather than a literal one. Amalek is thus viewed as a metaphysical archetype of unprovoked, existential evil and baseless hatred, which appears throughout history in figures like Haman and the Nazis. When Prime Minister Netanyahu used the term, he engaged in a profound act of typological memory (Zakhor), placing the unprecedented trauma of October 7 within the ongoing struggle between cosmic good and evil. By imposing this literalist, hostile interpretation, detractors are engaging in defamation of the Jewish state.

Post-Script: The Anti-Zionist Echo Chamber

The rejection of the present article by Analyse & Kritik, which published the original article by Azzam, serves as a sobering case study in the circular nature of modern anti-Zionist scholarship. Rather than engaging with the provided evidence, the peer-review process revealed a systemic refusal to permit any narrative that challenges the “genocide” label, treating the accusation not as a hypothesis to be tested but as an absolute truth. Central to this failure was the reviewers’ total omission of the vast body of internal Jewish interpretive traditions—sources that explicitly reject or spiritualize the Amalek archetype. By failing to engage with these central points, the reviewers maintained a closed system that dismissed dissenting data as “denial,” thereby precluding genuine academic exchange.

The review process appeared driven by a palpable ideological bias that favored political positioning over substantive analysis. For instance, one reviewer asserted, without providing a shred of evidence, that for “any Israeli ear,” the mention of Amalek carries an immediate association with complete annihilation. This claim was made while simultaneously ignoring the centuries of rabbinic legal tradition cited in the article—such as the rulings of the Sages and Maimonides—that explicitly state that the literal commandment against Amalek is inapplicable today. Furthermore, the use of charged, ad hominem language—specifically labeling the arguments as those of “Netanyahu apologists”—reveals a hostile environment where scholarship is judged by its political utility rather than its factual merit.

Ultimately, this experience highlights the intellectual “incest” inherent in much of the anti-Zionist academic ecosystem. The editor’s response, which took it for granted that Israel has committed “horrible” crimes and demanded that any publication must include “commenting on the destruction of Gaza,” functions as a form of gatekeeping. By dismissing the concept of “self-defense” as a “conventional cliché” and refusing to engage with the primary and secondary sources presented, the reviewers merely confirmed that their objective is not the pursuit of truth. Instead, they serve to protect an echo chamber in which the same scholars quote each other ad nauseam, effectively weaponizing the peer-review process to perpetuate the very libel this article seeks to expose.

Kindly note that the opinions expressed by the authors of ISGAP Flashpoint are their own and do not necessarily reflect or receive endorsement from ISGAP. ISGAP believes in providing a platform for diverse perspectives to encourage open dialogue on these important matters.

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ISGAP Flashpoint

ISGAP Flashpoint features articles designed to foster public debate about critical issues related to developments in global antisemitism, with a focus on the contemporary context.

From Archetype to Libel: The Misinterpretation of Amalek in Genocide Accusations

Avraham Russell Shalev