Netanyahu exploits Passover for more biblical genocide propaganda

Tonight is the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover. As signs of an imminent Israeli invasion of Rafah grow in southern Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a Passover speech over the weekend in which he suggested that Hamas is playing the role of the Pharaoh in the biblical Exodus story; the existential threat to the Jewish people who stands at the heart of the holiday. 

Netanyahu:

“Instead of withdrawing from its extreme positions, the Hamas counts on internal divisions among us, it draws encouragement from the pressures that are turned against Israel’s government. Thus, it only toughens its terms for the release of our hostages. It hardens its heart, and refuses to let our people go. Therefore, we will land additional and painful plagues upon it – and this will happen soon. In the coming days we will increase the military and political pressure on Hamas, because this is the only way to release our hostages and achieve our victory”.

I have chosen to translate Netanyahu’s Hebrew “makot”, as “plagues”, rather than “hits,” because it is crystal clear that he is evoking a very specific biblical context, where the divine answer to Pharaoh’s “hardening of heart” is the ten plagues, “eser hamakot” in Hebrew. 

The “hardening of the heart” quote appears 19 times in the book of Exodus, and the refusal to “let the people go” eight times. 

Israel has been itching to attack Rafah in southern Gaza, an area to which the majority of the Gazan population has been pushed, creating a huge refugee encampment within the concentration camp that Gaza has long been. An area that normally housed just over a quarter of a million people, is now a refuge for 1.5 million, two-thirds of Gaza’s population. It has been opposed by the U.S., but recent events with Iran seem to have produced a possible quid-pro-quo: if Israel refrained from attacking Iran forcefully, the U.S. would get behind a Rafah invasion. The attack on this remaining refuge would mean unfathomable carnage and Netanyahu’s speech is laying the groundwork.

Evoking biblical embodiments of evil is a Netanyahu trademark, and he has applied this technique since the beginning of this genocide when he used the Amalek analogy – referring to another existential threat to the Jewish people from the bible who were to be eradicated down to their babies and animals. Now, he is calling Hamas, “Pharaoh” and calling for deadly plagues against them. Netanyahu himself, we are supposed to conclude, is Moses.

This type of advocacy goes straight into the veins of many Israelis, and the timing is crucial. Many Jewish Israelis are now going to celebrate the holiday of liberation, and the Israeli hostages/captives are portrayed as the embodiment of the biblical slaves in Egypt. 

The final and most painful plague in the bible story is the killing of firstborn Egyptians. It was actually a call beyond humans, it included the firstborn of cattle too: 

“And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.” (Exodus 12:29)

So this part of the Passover story describes a genocide that does not even spare animals – similar to the Amalek story. 

As Jews, we have unfortunately been inculcated to perceive such utter destruction as a mere necessary collateral for the liberation of our own. The Egyptians’ hearts are again hardened as they chase the Israelites at the Red Sea, and they are drowned en masse with their horses. This was the happy ending; the evildoers, akin to animals, are dead, and we are the surviving chosen ones. 

But I am sitting here, writing this awful story, asking myself whether we have progressed at all in the past 3,500 years. Whether we have at all been liberated, or whether we are still, this day today, in the desert, still seeking our historical revenge, forever living by the sword, as Netanyahu has once vowed.