Trump a new Nebuchednezzar

 

 

‘Wherever the sons of men or beasts of the field or birds of the air dwell,

He has given them into your hand and has made you ruler over them all.

You are that head of gold’.

Daniel 2:38

 

Trump vs Nebuchadnezzar

 Trump vs Nebuchadnezzar – The Bible Study (2026)

 

Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by a flurry of vindictive and destabilizing actions, raising alarms both within and beyond U.S. borders. By threatening the rule of law, undermining democratic institutions, and alienating allies worldwide, Trump appears intent on bending every institution to his will. In looking for historical or scriptural parallels, many observers have pointed to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon—another towering figure whose hubris and might led him down a path of self-exaltation and harsh rule before his pride met its downfall.

 

Nebuchadnezzar the Conqueror

 

Nebuchadnezzar … the historical king of Babylon (circa 605–562 BCE), was renowned for his conquests, monumental building projects, and wealth. Yet the Bible depicts him as the epitome of arrogance. In the Book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar was warned about his overweening pride, his disdain for human dignity, and his failure to acknowledge any higher authority than himself. He destroyed Jerusalem, exiled its inhabitants, and forcibly remade society according to his own desires. When he surveyed the magnificence of Babylon, he boasted, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30). That kind of self-glorification, the Scriptures say, led to his dramatic fall and a humbling period in which his power was stripped away.

 

Trump’s Parallel Arrogance

 

It’s hard to miss parallels between Nebuchadnezzar’s self-aggrandizement and Trump’s daily outpourings. Since retaking the White House, Trump’s rhetoric and executive orders have signaled that he deems himself above conventional checks and balances. He has weaponized the Department of Justice, pardoned convicted Capitol Hill rioters, and continues to threaten  political opponents with legal reprisal. Such actions reflect a leader who sees the machinery of government primarily as an extension of his personal will, mirroring Nebuchadnezzar’s ancient drive to remake everything in Babylon according to his own image and interests.

 

In biblical terms, Nebuchadnezzar eventually discovered that no ruler stands invincible before moral order. Trump, with his relentless focus on personal revenge, seems similarly unmoored from constitutional or ethical guardrails. He has singled out “deep state” elements, ex-presidents, and civil servants, all portrayed as enemies to be purged. Recent moves—enlisting billionaire Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency,” mass firings, and the systematic dismantling of agencies like USAid—reveal a mindset convinced of personal infallibility and committed to reshaping the nation’s fabric without regard for legal or human consequences.

 

Disregard for the Vulnerable

 

One hallmark of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign was his capacity for destroying cities and exiling populations, a form of imperial might that left suffering in its wake. Similarly, Trump’s threat to forcibly remove or “clean out” two million Palestinians in Gaza, turning their homeland into a U.S.-owned real estate project, reflects the same brazen disregard for vulnerable populations. The parallels are stark: Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon sacked Jerusalem, exiled its residents, and boasted of triumph; Trump’s policies threaten to uproot civilians for real estate profit and strategic advantage.

Likewise, the mass defunding of USAid evokes a chilling resonance. Babylon’s conquests profoundly disrupted the economic and social stability of conquered peoples. In Trump’s present-day administration, axing foreign aid on such a massive scale consigns millions—already caught in fragile circumstances—to renewed suffering. The unilateral severing of these lifelines further illustrates a leader convinced of his own righteousness, despite global outcry.

 

Hubris and the Fall

 

The story of Nebuchadnezzar offers a cautionary note about ultimate accountability. In the biblical narrative, he reaches the pinnacle of arrogance before God humbles him dramatically. Bereft of reason, the king roams like an animal until he finally acknowledges a higher sovereignty. This episode underscores a universal moral law: unchecked pride often prefaces a fall.

 

Trump’s behavior—disregarding the rule of law, ignoring international norms, and assaulting democratic values—has sparked widespread alarm. In the U.S., courts and portions of civil society have begun pushing back. Globally, former allies such as Britain have expressed shock and dismay, as Trump embarks on “tariff wars,” severs ties with international bodies like the World Health Organization, and diminishes America’s role in the global humanitarian sphere. If Nebuchadnezzar’s lesson holds, a moment of reckoning eventually arrives for leaders who place themselves above moral or legal limits.

 

The Danger to Democracy

 

Perhaps the most haunting comparison lies in Trump’s attack on democratic institutions. Nebuchadnezzar’s power was absolute. He recognized no meaningful constraint on his authority. In the same spirit, Trump’s second-term vengeance spree—his “purging” of government agencies, his undermining of checks and balances, and the targeting of free press—amounts to an attempt at absolute rule. This is a modern re-enactment of ancient autocracy, with the difference being that it unfolds within what was once considered the world’s leading democracy.

 

Both Nebuchadnezzar and Trump highlight the vulnerability of political systems to ego-driven rule, where personal ambition overrides institutional norms. If history—and Scripture—teaches anything, it is that such rule inevitably faces its own undoing, often at great cost to the society involved.

 

Conclusion

 

Nebuchadnezzar’s example serves as both parallel and warning for Donald Trump’s presidency. The biblical monarch’s pride led him to subdue nations, oppress peoples, and exalt himself beyond measure—until his empire crumbled beneath the weight of his arrogance. Trump’s second term, marked by an ever-growing list of infractions against democratic governance and international cooperation, follows a disturbingly similar trajectory. The fundamental message from Nebuchadnezzar’s downfall is that no ruler, no matter how powerful, stands above truth, law, or moral principle. Whether Donald Trump will encounter a similar humbling remains to be seen. Yet the biblical admonition rings true across the ages: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

 

Christianity

 

In our time, the parallel must not be overlooked. America and the world watch as a modern leader treads an ancient path of unchecked ambition. The question is whether, unlike in Babylon, enough constitutional safeguards and courageous opposition remain to temper that ambition before it wreaks irreparable harm.

 

 

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Dark hour of history

 

 

“Pope Leo urged Catholics to reject comfort, power and domination and instead embrace a mission rooted in self-giving love, even when it requires risk, vulnerability and suffering”.

 

Taken from:

'In this dark hour of history,' do not shy away from your mission, pope says - Detroit Catholic

 

‘In this dark hour of history’, do not shy away from your mission, pope says

 

Carol Glatz and Josephine Peterson

Apr 2, 2026

….

 

ROME (CNS) -- God doesn't exist to grant victories or to be useful by providing wealth or power, Pope Leo XIV said.

 

Through Jesus, he serves humanity by offering himself in a way that transforms human hearts so that they may then be inspired to love others unconditionally, in turn, he said in his homily during Mass of the Lord's Supper in the Basilica of St. John Lateran.

 

"Jesus purifies not only our image of God -- from the idolatry and blasphemy that have distorted it -- but also our image of humanity," he said April 2, Holy Thursday. "For we tend to consider ourselves powerful when we dominate, victorious when we destroy our equals, great when we are feared."

 

However, he said, "Christ offers us the example of self-giving, service and love" so that humankind can learn how to love according to what true love is.

In fact, he said, learning to act like Jesus "is the work of a lifetime."

 

The Lord loves not because those he reaches out to are good or pure, Pope Leo said, but simply because "he loves us first."

"His love is not a reward for our acceptance of his mercy; instead, he loves us, and therefore cleanses us, thereby enabling us to respond to his love," he said. "He does not ask us to repay him, but to share his gift among ourselves."

"In him, God has given us an example -- not of how to dominate, but of how to liberate; not of how to destroy life, but of how to give it," Pope Leo said.

"As humanity is brought to its knees by so many acts of brutality, let us too kneel down as brothers and sisters alongside the oppressed," he said. "In this way, we seek to follow the Lord's example."

 

Pope Leo XIV washes the foot of a priest during the Mass of the Lord's Supper at the

Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome April 2, 2026. The foot-washing ritual reflects the call

to imitate Christ by serving one another. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

 

The pope's words came during a Mass that commemorates Jesus' institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood, and includes the traditional foot-washing ritual, which reflects the call to imitate Christ by serving one another.

 

Pope Leo returned to an earlier practice of washing the feet of 12 priests from the Diocese of Rome in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, which is the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome. The pope poured water from a golden pitcher onto the foot of each priest, wiped each foot dry with a towel and then gently kissed each foot.

 

Pope Francis had departed from the norm after his election in 2013 by celebrating the Mass in one of Rome's "peripheries," such as prisons or nursing homes, and by washing the feet of men, women and their infants, Muslims or people of no faith, as a sign of his dedication to serve everyone unconditionally.

 

Pope Francis' predecessors had always chosen either 12 priests, laymen or boys from the diocese for the ritual held either in the Basilicas of St. John Lateran or of St. Peter.

By choosing 12 priests, 11 of whom he ordained last year, Pope Leo highlighted the Mass' commemoration of the institution of the Eucharist and of holy orders.

"The intrinsic bond between these two sacraments reveals the perfect self-gift of Jesus, the high Priest and living, eternal Eucharist," he said in his homily.

"Beloved brothers in the priesthood, we are called to serve the people of God with our whole lives," he said.

 

Jesus' disciples were astonished by their master's gesture and, like Peter, "we too must 'learn repeatedly that God's greatness is different from our idea of greatness … because we systematically desire a God of success and not of the Passion,'" he said, quoting Pope Benedict XVI.

"We are always tempted to seek a God who 'serves' us, who grants us victory, who proves useful like wealth or power. Yet we fail to perceive that God does indeed serve us through the gratuitous and humble gesture of washing feet," he said. "This is the true omnipotence of God."

 

Earlier in the day, Pope Leo urged Catholics to reject comfort, power and domination and instead embrace a mission rooted in self-giving love, even when it requires risk, vulnerability and suffering.

 

During the chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, he called on the faithful in his homily to overcome fear and a sense of powerlessness in responding to the world’s crises.

"In this dark hour of history, it has pleased God to send us to spread the fragrance of Christ where the stench of death reigns," he said. "Let us renew our 'yes' to this mission that calls for unity and brings peace."

While grounding his remarks in the teaching of his predecessors, saints and clergy, the pope in this homily placed particular emphasis on the Church’s mission through his own eyes as a missionary.

The first step of accepting the Christian mission, he said, is to risk leaving behind what is familiar and certain, in order to venture into something new.

"Every mission begins with that kind of self-emptying in which everything is reborn," he said.

It is through this self-emptying that Christians encounter the love of Christ, the pope said.

 

Pope Leo XIV celebrates the Mass of the Lord's Supper at the Basilica of St. John Lateran

in Rome April 2, 2026. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

 

At the heart of his first Holy Thursday homily as pope, he reflected on the nature of Christian love, saying it is rooted not in power, but in self-giving.

"Jesus' journey reveals to us that the willingness to lose oneself, to empty oneself, is not an end in itself, but a condition for encounter and intimacy," Pope Leo said. "Love is true only when it is unguarded."

 

He said true peace is not found in remaining comfortable, but in embracing the risk and detachment that mission requires. Calling it a "fundamental secret of mission," the pope said "everything is restored and multiplied if it is first let go, without fear,” a process repeated “in every new beginning, in every new sending forth."

 

God calls upon the faithful to take risks, so "no place becomes a prison, no identity a hiding place," he said. Every mission requires reconciliation with the past, with the "gifts and limitations of the upbringing we have received," the pope said.

 

Once the faithful are able to detach from what is familiar and comfortable, Pope Leo said they must then "encounter" the other through selfless service and the sharing of life. This detachment, he said, creates the conditions for authentic encounter rather than control.

He emphasized that it is a priority that "neither in the pastoral sphere nor in the social and political spheres can good come from abuse of power."

 

He pointed to the example of missionaries, a role he held as an Augustinian in Peru, whose work must be rooted in service, dialogue and respect.

 

Rather than seeking to "reconquer" increasingly secular societies, the pope said Catholics must approach as guests, not to impose, but to listen and accompany.

 

The Church's mission, the pope said, is guided by the Holy Spirit, and the faithful must not try to control it but instead follow its lead, entering each culture with humility and "respecting the mystery that every person and every community carries within them."

 

In his third point, the pope explained that this mission is not a "heroic adventure" reserved only for a few, but rather the "living witness of a Body with many members," and every mission includes rejection and suffering.

 

He recalled that the people of Nazareth were filled with rage when they heard Jesus' words and drove him out of the town. Every Christian must "pass through" a trial just as Jesus did, the pope said.

 

"The cross is part of the mission: the sending becomes more bitter and frightening, but also more freeing and transformative," he said.

 

A successful mission is not about the results, but rather about the disciple's faithfulness and hope in God. Jesus embarked on a journey "in a world torn apart by the powers that ravage it," Pope Leo said.

"Within it arises a new people, not of victims, but of witnesses," he said.

 

 

Jerusalem cancels Palm Sunday procession

 

Pope condemns ‘scandal’ of war

as Jerusalem cancels Palm Sunday procession

 

Patrick Hudson, Aili Winstanley Channer 

23 March 2026, The Tablet 

 

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem designated 28 March to pray the Rosary ‘to implore the gift of peace and serenity, especially for those suffering because of the conflict’.

 

Pope Leo again voiced his “dismay” at the war in the Middle East as he appealed for a halt to violence around the world.

“We cannot remain silent in the face of the suffering of so many defenceless people who are victims of these conflicts,” he said after the Angelus on Sunday, deploring how the Middle Easy “like other regions of the world is torn apart by war and violence”.

“What hurts them hurts all of humanity. The death and pain caused by these wars is a scandal for the entire human family and a cry that rises to God,” the Pope said.

“I strongly renew my appeal to persevere in prayer, so that hostilities may cease and paths to peace may finally open, based on sincere dialogue and respect for the dignity of every human person.”

 

On Monday, in an address to a delegation from Italy’s national airline ITA Airways, Pope Leo condemned the use of aircraft for bombings, insisting that aeroplanes “should always be carriers of peace, never of war”.

“No one should be afraid that threats of death and destruction might come from the sky,” he said. “After the tragic experience of the twentieth century, aerial bombings should have been banned forever.”

 

He condemned the “regression” of technological development “being placed at the service of war”.

 

Israel continued to exchange strikes with Iran and its proxies last week, leading the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem to cancel its Palm Sunday procession from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem and to postpone the Chrism Mass for the diocese.

 

“The restrictions imposed by the conflict and the events of recent days do not bode well for any imminent improvement,” said the Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa in an announcement on Sunday confirming that large public liturgies would not take place.

“In constant dialogue with the competent authorities, together with the other Christian Churches, we are evaluating how, in the ways to be agreed upon, we can celebrate the central mystery of our salvation in the heart of our Churches.”

 

He said this was “a wound that adds to the many others inflicted by the conflict” but urged Catholics to continue to pray for peace, designating 28 March to pray the Rosary “to implore the gift of peace and serenity, especially for those suffering because of the conflict”.

 

The announcement followed reports that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre faces closure during Holy Week, which prompted Church leaders in Jerusalem to confirm that liturgies would continue even if the public could not attend.

 

On Saturday, the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land said in a statement: “The community of Franciscan friars present at the Holy Sepulchre has never ceased, day or night, to carry out the scheduled celebrations, the rites, the daily processions, and the liturgical prayers according to the provisions of the Status Quo [the agreement governing shared use of the church].

“Even during these days, although access to the basilica is restricted to the faithful for security reasons, prayer continues unceasingly in the Holy Places.”

 

On Tuesday, the Palestinian and Israeli women’s movements Women of the Sun and Women Wage Peace will together lead a barefoot walk through Rome to call for compassion, justice, and peace.  

 

In May 2024 Pope Francis signed their “Mothers’ Call” for a future of peace, freedom, equality, rights and security for children and the next generations.  

“For decades, mothers on both sides have borne the unbearable – grieving children lost to violence and fearing for those who remain,” the groups said in a statement. “From this shared pain comes an extraordinary act of courage: Palestinian and Israeli mothers walking together, barefoot, for peace.

“Walking barefoot is a universal gesture of humility and humanity. It is also a way to reconnect with the land that has absorbed both blood and tears, to feel the pain that unites mothers everywhere and the earth that sustains us all.  Every step we take is a call for life, for safety, for the future every child deserves.”

….

Pope condemns ‘scandal’ of war as Jerusalem cancels Palm Sunday procession - The Tablet

 

Netanyahu likes to recall Amalek

 

“Jews traditionally hear the story of the Amalek ambush and God’s decree

that they be eliminated on the Shabbat service before the holiday of Purim.

[Professor] Shanes said it is perhaps the most important of all Torah readings”. 

 Noah Lanard

  

The Biblical story of Amalek evoked by Netanyahu - ABC listen

 

In one of the most controversial cases to come before the International Court of Justice, South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel strongly rejects the claim as a "blood libel."

 

In its argument, South Africa points to a violent story in the Hebrew Bible, in which God commands the Israelites to wipe out the people of Amalek. It’s a story Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has evoked since the attack by Hamas on October 7. Why is this ancient story powerful in modern Israel – and a key part of the court case? 

 

Professor Atalia Omer specialises in Jewish and Israeli history and politics at the University of Notre Dame in the US. 

 

Program: The Biblical story of Amalek evoked by Netanyahu

 

Source:ABC Radio National|Program:The Religion and Ethics Report

Wed 24 Jan 2024 at 4:00pmWednesday 24 Jan 2024 at 4:00pm

 

The Spirit of Amalek and the War on Israel - ICEJ

 

There is an ancient hatred – even a demonic spirit – at work which shares these exact aspirations. It manifested itself repeatedly through the descendants of Amalek, and eventually infected many other peoples as well. This vicious Spirit of Amalek arose once more on October 7^th. Rabbinic literature presents Amalek as the arch enemy of the Jewish people. Today, we call it violent antisemitism. 

 

Noah Lanard, for his part, will warn of (2023):

The Dangerous History Behind Netanyahu’s Amalek Rhetoric – Mother Jones

 

The Dangerous History Behind Netanyahu’s Amalek Rhetoric

 

His recent biblical reference has long been used by the Israeli far right to justify killing Palestinians.

 

On Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israelis were united in their fight against Hamas, whom he described as an enemy of incomparable cruelty. “They are committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world,”

 

Netanyahu said in Hebrew. He then added: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.”

 

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.”

 

More than 9,000 people in Gaza have now been killed, including more than 3,700 children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

 

“Saul’s failure to kill every Amalekite posed

an existential threat to the Jewish people”.

 

A spokesperson for UNICEF now says that Gaza is a “graveyard for thousands of children” and a “living hell for everyone else.” 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.

Casting the enemy as Amalek reinforces that attitude.

 

Joshua Shanes, a professor of Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston, explained that the biblical animosity toward the Amalekites stems from what is described as the merciless ambush they launched against vulnerable Israelites making their way to the promised land. The attack leads God to tell Moses to wipe out Amalek. Hundreds of years later, Saul nearly fulfills the command by killing all Amalekite men, women, and children. But he spares their king, who keeps his people barely alive by having a child. Many more generations later, one of his descendants, the villain Haman, goes on to develop a plot to kill all the Jews living in exile under a Persian ruler. The lesson, when read literally, is clear: Saul’s failure to kill every Amalekite posed an existential threat to the Jewish people.

 

Jews traditionally hear the story of the Amalek ambush and God’s decree that they be eliminated on the Shabbat service before the holiday of Purim. Shanes said it is perhaps the most important of all Torah readings. 

 

Rabbi Jill Jacobs—the head of T’ruah, a rabbinical human rights organziation—said that rabbis generally agree that Amalek no longer exists, and that references to it do not provide a morally acceptable justification for attacking anyone. “The overwhelming history of Jewish interpretation is to interpret it metaphorically,” Jacobs said, explaining that one common approach is to see it as a call to stamp out evil inclinations within ourselves.

 

Rabbi Jill Jacobs said that rabbis generally agree that Amalek no longer exists, and that references to it do not provide a justification for attacking anyone.

Nevertheless, Jacobs said that it remains common for Israeli extremists to view Palestinians as modern-day Amalekites. In 1980, the Rabbi Israel Hess wrote an article that used the story of Amalek to justify wiping out Palestinians. Its title has been translated as “Genocide: A Commandment of the Torah,” as well as “The Mitzvah of Genocide in the Torah.”

 

In his 1997 book, The Vanishing American Jew, celebrity attorney and Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz made a point of expressing his disgust about the article and the idea that Palestine was Amalek. He asked, “How can anyone distinguish this incitement to murder from similar incitements by Muslim fundamentalists who quote the Koran as authority for genocide against Jews?”

 

The Brooklyn-born extremist Baruch Goldstein also saw Palestine as Amalek. In 1994, he slaughtered 29 Muslims praying at a mosque in Hebron, a city in the occupied West Bank that is sacred to Jews and Muslims. Goldstein carried out the massacre on Purim, one week after he would have heard the biblical retelling of the command to wipe out a rival nation. As the journalist Peter Beinart and others have written, the timing was not a coincidence.   

 

Goldstein’s grave has become a pilgrimage site for the Israeli far right. His tomb says he died of “clean hands and pure heart.” Goldstein’s admirers have included Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s current minister of national security. For Purim, a holiday on which Jews sometimes wear costumes, Ben-Gvir dressed as Goldstein on multiple occasions in his youth. He kept a picture of Goldstein in his living room until 2020. He has an extensive criminal record that includes convictions for supporting a terrorist organization and inciting racism.

 

Shanes said that it was “incredibly dangerous and irresponsible and deliberate” for Netanyahu to invoke Amalek, given the ongoing war and [how it] is understood by the far right. He added that calling the enemy Amalek will make it more difficult for people who try to defend the position that Israel is not “involved in a crime against humanity or a genocidal act.”

 

Beinart, an Orthodox Jew who previously edited the New Republic and now writes on Substack, expressed similar concern.

 

“The wisdom of rabbinic tradition was to declare that we no longer know who Amalek is because that restrains the genocidal plain meaning of the Biblical text,” he wrote in email. “So in claiming that he knows who Amalek is, [Netanyahu] is undoing the moral scaffolding created by Jewish tradition and asserting a Biblical literalism that is alien to the Judaism of the last two thousand years and, given the military power at his disposal, is frankly terrifying.”

 

Jacobs stressed that Netanyahu saying Amalek does not mean that Israel is carrying out genocide. She said that while Hamas and Israel have committed war crimes, Israel’s actions do not meet the international standard of genocide. “It’s not a term that should be thrown around casually at all,” she explained, particularly against a people that have experienced genocide. Instead, Jacobs sees Netanyahu, who she described as “totally right-wing and incompetent,” referring to Amalek as yet another case of him “being irresponsible and inciting.” (Netanyahu has previously compared the prospect of a nuclear Iran to Amalek.)

 

Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told me this week that he supported Netanyahu “100 percent” to the extent that the prime minister was equating Hamas with Amalek.

 

In a brief phone call, Dershowitz told me this week that he supported Netanyahu “100 percent” to the extent that the prime minister was equating Hamas with Amalek. When I mentioned the command to kill Amalekite women and children, Dershowitz responded, “There are other parts of the Bible that say the opposite; that you can’t even destroy a fruit tree.” That is true, but Netanyahu did not cite those parts of the Bible. Instead, he turned to something that the far right has long used as a justification for genocide during a war in which some argue Israel is committing genocide. (On Thursday, a group of United Nations experts said that Palestinians are at “grave risk of genocide.”)

 

Shanes was not convinced by Dershowitz’s defense that Hamas is Amalek.

 

For one, he said, Amalek is clearly described as a nation, not a political party. “If someone says, ‘I just mean the bad members of the Palestinians. I mean Hamas…,’ that’s not the effect it has in the body politic,” Shanes said. “The effect it has is, We have to wipe these people out.”