"Israelis are unified to eliminate this evil from the world,” said Prime Minister Netanyahu in November 2023. “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.” The point was not what Amalekites did to Israelites, but what Israel was told by God to do unto Amalek. “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."
The enemy is construed as one with whom those waging holy war cannot possibly live in peace. The First Crusade constructed the Muslim as such an enemy. That image was bequeathed to future generations and lives with us today.
Believing themselves to be authorized by a suprahuman authority, holy warriors deem their enemies subhuman and treat them with deliberate inhumanity.
The crime of crimes since the twentieth century is genocide, which is currently aided and abetted by elites in the collective West.
When Pope Francis called, in March 2024, for Ukraine to immediately open peace negotiations, he was vilified by the masters of war. Ceasefire had become a proscribed word. It was banned in relation to Gaza: the US State Department issued a memo in October 2023 banning diplomats from using the word “ceasefire” altogether.
Beyond the vague idea of eliminating the dehumanized enemy, neither the war in Ukraine nor the war in Gaza has a political strategy. So says the Israeli military itself.
Mainstream media narratives meanwhile, take these wars out of their historical and political contexts. Decontextualized, they are depoliticized.
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