The Palestinian Arabs are not descendants of the biblical Philistines, but they have adopted more than just their name. They’ve adopted the same mocking hatred for the God of Israel.
It was that mocking hatred more than anything else that compelled the shepherd boy David to take up his sling and challenge the Philistine giant Goliath.
“Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” (I Samuel 17:26)
David understood that the battle was more about spiritual than political matters. It was about whose god truly reigned supreme. Hamas also understands this.
Freed Israeli hostage Liri Albag, who was taken along with several other young IDF surveillance officers during the Oct. 7 assault on Nahal Oz, said her Gaza captors sought to discourage her by saying there was no point praying to the God of Israel.
“They would tell us, ‘Your God, don’t pray to Him. He is not with you. He is not listening to you,’” Albag recalled. “You could see the evil in their eyes. Hatred.”
“When people say nightmare, they don’t understand what a nightmare is.”
Liri Albag speaks about her 477 days in Hamas captivity pic.twitter.com/84KB664EDp
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) March 7, 2025
Albag said the Gazans who held her, including both Hamas terrorists and average Gaza families with whom many of the young captives were housed, believe the Holocaust was a hoax, but at the same time praise Hitler as a genius for trying to annihilate the Jews.
“They think Hitler was right and good, but [also] that he didn’t do it,” explained Albag, recounting also how Gazans, including children, would sing songs about “killing the filthy Jew.”
In short, Albag stressed that “there are no innocent bystanders in Gaza.”
“Erase the memory of Amalek”
In a separate media interview, the father of Shani Louk, the young Israeli-German woman slain on Oct. 7 and whose body was taken to Gaza, said the end result of the war must be that Gaza is no longer populated by hostile Arabs.
“No Arab should remain in Gaza. It is our job to blot out the memory of Amalek,” insisted Nissim Louk in an interview on Channel 14 News. “We can’t live with neighbors like these.”
The grieving father cited the biblical injunction to “erase the memory of Amalek,” an ancient people that first attacked the Israelites during their exodus from Egypt, and whose name became synonymous with all who sought throughout history to destroy the Jewish people.
Hamas is the new Amalek, and former cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir noted that this past Shabbat’s Bible readings included 1 Samuel chapter 15, in which God instructs Israel to finally put an end to the Amalekite threat. King Saul fails to fully obey the Lord in this matter, marking the beginning of the end of his reign, and allowing Amalek to live on, both physically and spiritually, as a threat to Israel.
