digest
Short Summary
Main recommendation: Rabbi Daniel Rowe argues that Netanyahu's October 28th speech, which quoted the Amalek verse "Remember what Amalek did to you," was not a call for genocide, and that 1 Samuel 15 was a one-off, city-specific instruction rather than a command to destroy all Amalekites. He presents this as a rebuttal to Tucker Carlson's claim that the Bible and Netanyahu's words call for genocide against Palestinians.
Key Points
- Carlson's argument, as Rowe summarizes it, is that God commanded genocide against the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15 and that Netanyahu described Gaza's Palestinians as Amalek.
- Rowe says Amalek repeatedly attacked Israelites during the Exodus and through the book of Judges, which he uses as background for the 1 Samuel command.
- Rowe argues the 1 Samuel 15 instruction targeted the city of Amalek, a small royal and priestly fortress of about 40 to 50 people, not the whole population.
- Rowe says the speech's Deuteronomy 25 verse is used on Holocaust memorials, including Yad Vashem, and at the ICJ in The Hague, to commemorate Jewish suffering.
- Rowe notes that the same speech stated the war goals as destroying Hamas's military and governing capabilities and returning the captives, and urged civilians to move to southern Gaza.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: The transcript gives no step-by-step instructions, checklists, or actions for the viewer to take. Its only directive is to watch Rowe's longer video on the topic (linked in the description) for fuller sourcing.
- Rowe quotes Carlson's reading of 1 Samuel 15: "Kill the men, kill the women, kill the children, kill the infants, kill the donkeys, kill the camels, kill everything," with Saul sparing the king and animals and being punished for it.
- Rowe says the speech he discusses was on October 28th, about two weeks after October 7th, not November as Carlson said, and that Israel was about to enter its ground forces phase.
- Rowe says Netanyahu's own speech, a few sentences after the Amalek reference, states the IDF avoids harming non-combatants and calls on civilians to evacuate to southern Gaza.
- In the debate clip being reacted to, Huckabee states he does not believe most IDF soldiers want to kill innocents, while saying leadership decisions are a different question.
Bottom Line
The dispute turns on context: Rowe contends the Amalek language in both the Bible and Netanyahu's speech does not support a genocide reading, while acknowledging that critics may still object to Israel's conduct or leadership on other grounds.
