Many of the respondents see Gaza as a modern reincarnation of Amalek, and believe “the commandment to wipe out the memory of Amalek” applies today.
reposted from The Cradle, May 23, 2025
NOTE: Forced transfer of a people group is a crime against humanity.
A new poll conducted by Penn State University found that 82 percent of Israelis support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, coinciding with an ongoing effort by Tel Aviv to forcibly displace and relocate the strip’s population.
The poll was conducted in March and published by Haaretz on 22 May, surveying 1,005 Jewish Israelis. [Editor’s note: the article appears only in Hebrew; translation of several paragraphs appears below.]
In response to a question on whether the Israeli army should act in accordance with the biblical story of the Israelites and their eradication of all of Jericho’s inhabitants during the conquest of the city, 47 percent of Israelis responded “Yes.”
Sixty-five percent of the respondents also believe that there is a “contemporary incarnation of Amalek.” Ninety-three percent of the 65 percent that “the commandment to wipe out the memory of Amalek is also relevant to that modern-day Amalek.”
At the start of the war in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Tel Aviv’s campaign a holy war reminiscent of the biblical war against the Amalekites – a people the ancient Israelites were ordered to wipe out in the Hebrew Bible.
“Eighty-two percent of those surveyed expressed support for the forced expulsion of residents of the Gaza Strip, and 56 percent supported the forced expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel,” Haaretz cites the poll as saying, marking a sharp rise from a poll asking the same questions 20 years ago.
The publishing of the poll coincides with a brutal new Israeli military operation in Gaza – dubbed Gideon’s Chariots. The operation aims to bring the entirety of Gaza under Israeli control and will see the army displace the whole population and confine it to a small area in the southern region of the strip.
Netanyahu said in a speech on 21 May that his condition for ending the war in Gaza is the implementation of an initiative proposed by US President Donald Trump earlier this year, which calls for the expulsion of the strip’s population to other countries and a US takeover of Gaza.
Sources who spoke with NBC News one week ago said Trump is working on a plan to “permanently relocate” as many as one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya.
US security contractors are already in the strip to oversee a new Israeli aid distribution plan, which the UN and other international organizations have strongly condemned, given that it relies on a mechanism that will further displace Gaza’s population.
Twenty years ago, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, the spiritual father of the Hilltop Youth, outlined a vision for the elimination of democratic institutions and the establishment of Jewish supremacy. After October 7, it seems that this vision is coming true precisely before our eyes.
Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg delivered a sermon in the Rose Garden next to the Knesset. Ginsburg, the head of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in Yitzhar, published the essay “Bless the Man” in honor of Baruch Goldstein [American and Israeli physician and religious extremist who, in 1994, murdered 29 Palestinians as they prayed in Hebron], who was in administrative detention after Rabin’s assassination, and later also wrote a book that condoned the killing of women and children from among the gentiles.
Then, in January 2005, he outlined to his supporters in Jerusalem a vision that essentially gave a kiss of death to the founding and naive idea of secular Zionism, a “Jewish and democratic state.”…
To the question, “Do you support the claim that the IDF, in conquering an enemy city, should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites did when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, i.e., to kill all its inhabitants?” 47% of all respondents answered in the affirmative. Sixty-five percent of those surveyed answered that there is a current incarnation of Amalek, and of these, 93% responded that the mitzva (commandment) to erase the memory of Amalek is also relevant to that contemporary Amalek.
82% of those surveyed expressed support for the forced deportation of residents of the Gaza Strip, and 56% supported the forced deportation of Arab citizens of Israel. In a 2003 survey, the positive answers to these questions were “only” 45% and 31%, respectively.
Researchers in the education system point to a sharp shift toward ethnocentric nationalism in the curriculum since the second intifada, and this process has led to high support for expulsion and extermination, especially among those who have completed their studies in the past 20 years. Sixty-six percent of those aged 40 and under support the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel, and 58% want to see the IDF do what Joshua did in Jericho.
Only 9% of men under the age of 40, the main group from which those serving in Gaza in the regular army and in the reserves come from, rejected all the ideas of deportation and extermination that were presented to them.
FURTHER READING ON JEWISH SUPREMACISM IN ISRAEL:
- A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid
- Is Trump orbit rolling out red carpet for Israeli extremist Ben Gvir?
-
Israel Passes Controversial Jewish Nation-state Bill After Stormy Debate
-
“Yes, we are racists,” “Come, be my slave” — teaching by Israeli rabbi
