Since the mass immigration of European Jews to West Asia, the Israeli occupation regime has killed and maimed tens of thousands with impunity.
The Israeli regime has depended on a carefully crafted narrative in order to justify its wars, occupation, ethnic cleansing, and its position as a politically exempt entity that doesn't comply with existing international norms.
Central to Tel Aviv's composition is its strategic use of historical trauma and twisting religion, which, when blended, create a strong narrative that makes it difficult for others to question or intervene, or else they will be labeled as enemies of the Jews as a whole.
Israeli leaders, since the entity's forced inception, have invoked imagery of the Holocaust and religious symbolism not as a means to remind others of a shared troubled past, but to manufacture legitimacy and twist the humanity and spirituality of man to garner sympathy for the zionist military method.
The nazi holocaust is something that has floated off the tongues of Israeli officials when seeking to bring an emotional aspect to justify military attacks against neighbouring nations. Since the entity’s imposition on West Asia, Israeli officials have kept the Holocaust and genocide against the European Jews as a central diplomatic rhetorical point when facing the international community.
It should be mentioned before diving deeper into such a sensitive subject that this section is not here to deny the validity of historical ailments faced by those in Europe during the Second World War. The validity of the crimes the nazis committed against the communists, unionists, Slavs, jews, and others who didn’t fit into the nazi image of an “ideal” man will not be debated here.
By utilizing such a brutal moment of history as that of the Holocaust, the Israeli regime places itself in an existential war against the region, for they purposefully make it seem as though their existence as jews is being plotted against.
The reality is that no one in the region who knows the history of the land denies the presence of a Jewish population. The Abrahamic faiths began in West Asia and North Africa after all, not Switzerland.
Israeli politicians use the holocaust not as a reminder of the pain Jews and others went through during the Second World War, but they use it as a political tool to garner foreign support under a “never again, but only for us” policy.
The goal is to create a boogeyman, to make the entire region, if not the world, into a spook with the intent to make the zionist population seem targeted and helpless.
Politicians from David Ben-Gurion to Benjamin Netanyahu have used this tactic to great success, making international leaders turn their heads to Israeli military actions, allowing Zionist forces to mow down villages with impunity.
Some examples include Ben-Gurion's speech in 1949, which tied international abandonment during the Holocaust to justify defying UN plans and UK restrictions during the 1948 war, stating that the military actions against neighboring Arab states were essential to prevent another genocide.
“Had we not been able to withstand the aggressors (Arabs)... Jewish Jerusalem would have been wiped off the face of the earth, the Jewish population would have been eradicated, and the State of Israel would not have arisen,” the former Israeli head of state said.
Continued use of the holocaust was made whenever Israelis needed to reinforce their weakness in battle. Of course, this weakness is artificial as Tel Aviv is gifted support by the entire West economically, politically, and militarily.
Following the 1967 Israeli war of aggression against Arab states, holocaust memory was instrumentalized to justify not only military action, but settler expansion as well by once again invoking the line that Jews have been abandoned by the West. This is when Zionist politicians increased their use of the historic crime to frame critique over its expansionist nature as a moral betrayal of Jews.
Then, in 1973, Israeli politicians increased their rhetoric of neighboring nations being an existential threat, stating that sudden attacks could bring a catastrophe to the Zionist project. It was around this time that Abba Eban, then foreign minister of the Israeli regime, worked on tying anti-Israeli rhetoric to antisemitism in an attempt to blur the gap between reasonable critique with hate against the Jewish faith.
“One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all,” Eban wrote in an article for the journal of the American Jewish Congress in 1973.
Furthermore, during the second invasion of Lebanon in 1982, former Israeli PM Menachem Begin compared PLO members to Nazis to not only garner support for the invasion, but to twist the arms of the international community and domestic settler population against the Palestinian liberation group. Begin also continued to use Holocaust analogies when abroad in order to frame adversaries as successors to Nazi Germany.
Academic analysis of Israeli political rhetoric of this time emphasizes repeated attempts to picture the enemy as genocidal killers like the Nazis. Politicians would tie the words “never again” around any action taken in order to justify pre-emptive illegal wars of aggression and continued occupation. Scholarly work indicates that this framing of language was directed towards Western populations and elites to preserve a sympathetic feeling towards Israeli troops as a necessary force against an existential threat.
From the 90s onwards, holocaust rhetoric, especially during the rule of Benjamin Netanyahu, has been mostly centered around Iran’s civilian nuclear program. Holocaust memory would be something to frequent in Netanyahu’s speeches, as he is one of the most visible users of such a talking point. He would continue to relate resistance groups of the regions to Nazis, invoking them whenever dealing with an international audience in order to garner sympathetic support for indiscriminate bombing campaigns.
What these examples prove, without going into too intimate details regarding the speech Israeli politicians and settlers have when it comes to non-Jews, is the manufacturing of a politics of fear that surrounds Israeli foreign policy.
Israeli politicians utilize a false victim complex to steer more foreign support to the colonial regime, twisting the arms of Western governments and placing them in the corder of public pressure.
By continuously bringing up tales of annihilation of the jews in Europe, Zionist officials make it seem as though they are under a constant threat of a second Holocaust from people belonging to a completely different historical context, scilicet Arabs. This ties the nature of Israeli military strategy of “peace by force” to a global moral compass wherein if one criticizes F-35 jets firing bunker-buster shells on tent cities, they are subject to being labeled as antisemitic and blacklisted from the public eye, only to be replaced by someone more tolerant.
Furthermore, by formulating a shared nationalist Jewish historical vision between largely distinct groups of jews with different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, it prevents any serious strife or schism from happening within the occupied lands. The more propaganda is spread about the imminent or the monstrosity of the enemy, the closer settlers hold their political Zionism to be their core ideology.
Alongside twisting the moral arm of the international community, Israeli politicians and advocates also seek to target the spiritual and psychological nature of man by going after his religious faith.
Since the Israeli regime's forced inception, Zionist leaders projected the entity through a Biblical framework, stating that the return to the Levant region and military victories as a sacred religious proof, with many even claiming aggression to be a part of a holy war, despite most of its founders being self-proclaimed atheists.
Most Zionists don’t believe that God exists but they do believe that He promised them Palestine.
Ilan Pappé
Examining Israeli military indoctrination tactics, their propaganda tactics are laid out by comparing modern wars to those of historic biblical battles, utilizing language that states God will smite whoever attacks "Israel."
What Israelis do is frame their imposed existence onto the region as part of a continuation of historic battles against those who oppressed the followers of Moses.
During the Nakba, the Israeli military's objective was to ethnically cleanse Palestinian villages under the guise of reclaiming a biblical inheritance, invoking the verses of Genesis 15:18-21, which reads:
*QUOTE BLOCK* “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi (river) of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”*QUOTE BLOCK*
While cleansing villages like Deir Yassin, Zionist militia leaders drew on verses from Deuteronomy 20, the rules of warfare, to vindicate their use of military violence as part of a Holy War against the unarmed population.
As Jewish religious texts do not explicitly forbid the initiation of war, if battle is framed with the language of religion, then the soldiers who commit such acts as the Israeli army has, in the soldiers’ and political authority’s view, are morally justified.
Prior to delving into the verses, we must make note that in order for the Israeli colonial regime to move forward with its claims of vengeance against a historic enemy, it must first label the enemy.
Given that they came from Europe and abroad as refugees to a land unfamiliar to generations, Zionist figures used scripture to solidify a drive within the militias so they may act with a perceived justification for their actions.
Researcher Shay Hazkani notes that Ben-Gurion and others within the religious Zionist leadership painted their ethnic cleansing campaign of Palestine as that of biblical wars of extermination; however, they flipped the script into Arabs seeking to exterminate a people (European jews) who had, until then, resided outside of the land for the most part.
Israeli forces' indoctrination pamphlets were sent out to recruits instructing them that God “demands a revenge of extermination without mercy to whoever tries to hurt us for no reason.”
“When you are about to go into battle, the priest shall come forward and address the army. He shall say: “Hear, Israel: Today you are going into battle against your enemies. Do not be fainthearted or afraid; do not panic or be terrified by them. For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory.” Deuteronomy 20:2-4
The use of Deuteronomy 20 has been a continuous spiritual backing to Israeli actions in the region.
The verses showcase how we can see through the promises of Israeli policy; for example, the verses of Deuteronomy 20:10-12:
“When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city”
This breaks the image of peaceful negotiations the Israelis promise to follow, which, by all intents and purposes, has never been followed since its inception. Israeli politicians and religious figures use the verses in Deuteronomy as a means to other and alienize their neighbours as an existential threat.
“As for the women, the children, the livestock, and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.”
Fast forward to the 1967 war of aggression, politicians and religious authorities increased their religious invocations, blending historical events with the then-modern-day battle.
The Israeli occupation of Al-quds's old city was boasted as a fulfillment of Isaiah 52:1-2, which states:
“Awake, awake, Zion,
clothe yourself with strength!
Put on your garments of splendor,
Jerusalem, the holy city.
The uncircumcised and defiled
will not enter you again.
2 Shake off your dust;
rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem.”
First head of the Military Rabbinate corps in the Israeli occupation forces, following the occupation of the old city and in following the scripture mentioned, blew a ram’s horn at the western wall to symbolize a divine victory.
The invocation of scripture to justify their military operations only increased by the time the 1973 fourth Arab-Israeli War happened. By this time, the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was comparing the Arabs to the biblical Amalekites, rationalizing their eradication via religious language.
“17 Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. 18 When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. 19 When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!” Deuteronomy 25:17-19
Israeli politicians once again used the framework of a weak Jewish population against a greater enemy that is fighting them for their religion rather than their forced occupation of land by foreign colonists.
Judges 10:11-13 also states that the Amalekites are among the oppressors of the Biblical Israel.
The religionization of the Israeli occupation force was honed further during this war, with Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, founder of Gush Emunim, advising politicians like former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to view any territorial gains made as a fulfillment of messianic prophecies.
“On the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho, the Lord said to Moses, 51 'Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you cross the Jordan into Canaan, 52 drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images and their cast idols, and demolish all their high places. 53 Take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess” Numbers 33:50-53
These verses allowed the Israeli occupation forces to go forth and justify ethnic cleansing and land grab campaigns from the occupied Golan Heights to the Sinai Desert. Kook’s teachings proved to be effective, adding to the layer of theological warfare that is present in Israeli society.
During the second invasion of Lebanon in 1982, during which almost 30,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians were killed, former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin blended scripture with the politics of fear and vengeance mentioned above.
Begin, in a letter addressed to US President Ronald Reagan, likened PLO leader Yasser Arafat to Adolf Hitler and the many Beirut-based Lebanese political parties fighting against Israeli occupation as Nazis, while further invoking the mention of Amalek to justify the sieges.
The brutal siege of Beirut was also likened to the siege on Ariha/Jericho, with rabbis blessing Israeli occupation troops once again with verses of Deuteronomy 20:2-4.
During the first Intifada, the Israeli occupation continued to feed verses of religious wars to the settlers and soldiers, viewing the enemy as one described by God and that they, the Israeli occupation forces, are the covenant which was divinely sent to eradicate those who fight against their "Jewish state".
2 See how your enemies growl,
how your foes rear their heads.
3 With cunning they conspire against your people;
they plot against those you cherish.
4 “Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation,
so that Israel’s name is remembered no more.”
Throughout the late 90s and post 9/11 years, the Israeli military system increased its use of religious doctrines, with the practice of using scripture to fulfil their operations showing itself to be more and more effective.
During the second intifada, Rabbi Dov Lior, someone who was claimed among the most learned scholars of the Torah, adding to the vengeance against those whom the Zionist religious authorities deemed Amalek, stated that “during warfare, killing non-Jewish civilians is permitted if it saves Jewish lives … a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”
Rabbinic commentaries have been sourced and used widely by religious Zionist scholars to justify actions carried out by the Israeli occupation military.
For example, in Sanhedrin 72a, it gives a religious backing to the preemptive strike campaigns Israelis utilized during the Nakba and future military endeavors.
Using the example of the example of a burglar, the section states that “There is a presumption that a person does not restrain himself when faced with losing his money, and therefore this burglar must have said to himself: If I go in and the owner sees me, he will rise against me and not allow me to steal from him, and if he rises against me, I will kill him. And the Torah stated a principle: If someone comes to kill you, rise and kill him first.”
This is where a lot of the strike him before he strikes you rhetoric comes from, like when Golda Meir stated, “When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
Other invocations of such a frame of thinking come whenever politicians, military personnel, and rabbis bring up killing their adversaries, while their innocent before they become tainted.
Books like The King’s Torah by rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur would later include such sayings as killing youths before they turn evil, with a stating that religious sages permit the killing of non-Jewish “children (the toddlers), if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us; and in such a situation — the harm should be directed specifically at them.”
This again adds to the section of fear above on how Israelis militarize fear. To continuously speak of an impending attack on the Jews as a whole, not on their colonial oppressive regime, Zionist politicians and religious authorities can twist the intentions of scripture to feed their own political greed.
To bring up modern examples of the Israeli war on Gaza from 2023 to the present day, we get cases of Jewish religious authorities giving a more bloody version of war lessons than the decades prior.
Rabbi Eliyahu Mali stated in 2024 that, “In our mitzvah (holy) war, in our situation in Gaza, according to what the law says, ‘Not every soul shall live,’ and the logic of this is very clear: if you do not kill them, they will kill you.”
“Whoever comes to kill you with this concept does not only include the young man aged 16, 18, 20, or 30 who is now pointing a weapon at you, but also the future generation (the children of Gaza), and those who produce the future generation (women of Gaza), because there is really no difference,” Mali said.
The Israeli entity also used verses from the Quran with the objective of continuing to taint the holy words of all Abrahamic religions' scriptures.
In 2024, IOF leaflets over the besieged Gaza strip twisted the verse of Ash-Shu'ara – “So We inspired Moses: “Strike the sea with your staff,” and the sea was split, each part was like a huge mountain. (63) We drew the pursuers to that place, (64) and delivered Moses and those with him all together. (65) Then We drowned the others. (66).” – into a threat against the majority Muslim enclave.
With all this said, this is but a sliver of the many times Israeli politicians, zionist religious authorities, and military personnel used scripture in order to push for military operations as part of some greater End Times ritual.
The use of emotional weight and historical victimhood, via a selective memory and religious armor that merges Holocaust trauma and religious theachings, as well as crafting an image that those who follow the teaching of Swiss Atheist Theodor Herzl are divinely appointed by God as the rightful rulers of the Abrahamic Holy Lands, has allowed the Israeli entity to act as it wills with no one to stand in its way.
By invoking imminent annihilation and a seemingly growing existential threat, Zionist officials have secured a strong support base while silencing debate through the weaponization of antisemitism allegations.
The religious framework of territorial conquest has provided a rationale for soldiers and settlers in their campaign of ethnic cleansing.
What comes out of this Zionist composition of history is a systemic architecture of fear and myth that shapes public consciousness and influences domestic and global policy. Understanding the ideology behind this militarized zionism is to understand how "Israel" functions as it does.