‘Blot Out the Memory of Amalek from Under Heaven’: The Gaza Genocide and the Political Theological Legacy of the Biblical Amalek by Abed Azzam

The biblical command ‘Blot out the memory of Amalek’ surfaced heavily in Israel after October 7, 2023. UN institutions, international and Israeli human rights NGOs and scholars of genocide studies classified the wide use of the Amalek rhetoric across Israeli politics and the military as a clear incitement to genocide. It is acknowledged that such scientific and legal subordination of the present Israeli Amalek rhetoric to the concept of genocide is indispensably important for the Palestinian just cause. However, this paper further singles out this rhetoric to examine it through the analytical lens of political theology. Thus, it first highlights the political-theological carriage of the biblical narrations of Amalek. Second, it situates Amalek as an archetype of Carl Schmitt’s concept of the enemy. Third, the paper traces a genealogy of the Zionist construction of the Palestinian as an Amalekite enemy. Finally, it concludes by showing how this political-theological genealogy culminates in the erasure of the Palestinian from the memory of Western ‘civilization.’