Netanyahu and religious language in war: 'Kill them first'

Speaking at a Jewish conference in Jerusalem in June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined a shift in his country's security doctrine by quoting the ancient Hebrew saying: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” He then tersely translated it into English: “Kill them first.”

With this statement, Netanyahu signaled that Israel should strike before its enemies have a chance to act—a strategy last employed in the 1967 war against Arab nations. Military analysts note that traditional approaches have often avoided framing Israel's conflicts as an existential holy war, due to concerns over international criticism.

During a January 2024 hearing at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), South African lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi highlighted Netanyahu's order for soldiers in Gaza to “remember what Amalek did unto thee.” According to him, this is a biblical command from God to King Saul to take vengeance on an entire people—evidence of genocidal intent in Gaza, where more than 73,400 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023. In January 2026, the Arab Organization for Human Rights in the UK filed a request for the British government to impose financial sanctions and an entry ban on Netanyahu over this remark.

‘Human animals’

Other Israeli officials and commanders have used similar language to dehumanize Palestinians. Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, when announcing a complete siege on Gaza—cutting off electricity, food, and fuel—said Israel was fighting “human animals.” Though not directly religious, this is dehumanizing language used by Israeli leaders to describe Palestinians.

Jewish religious figures have issued decrees to the military. In 2004, Rabbi Avraham Shapira warned soldiers that dismantling illegal settlements in the West Bank and Gaza was a grave sin, akin to eating pork. Since the Nakba of 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes during the establishment of the state of Israel, the country's leaders have also employed religious discourse during wartime.

A 2025 study by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) showed that Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, despite being a secular Zionist, used more biblical and rabbinic quotations than Netanyahu in his wartime speeches.

Many Israelis use the Bible to justify the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician, is among those who believe settlers have a religious right to the West Bank, referring to the area by its biblical names Judea and Samaria. The Israeli government recently allocated unprecedented funds in a $271 billion budget to consolidate the occupation of the West Bank, where about 700,000 settlers live, amid rising violence with over 3,700 attacks on Palestinians there in the past two years.

Professor Ibrahim Abusharif of Northwestern University in Qatar said framing the conflict through biblical imagery turns complex politics into a moral drama. “The war is not theological but geopolitical, yet the language around it is increasingly based on sacred imagery and civilizational narratives,” he told Al Jazeera.

This political rhetoric has manifested on the front lines, exemplified by the actions of Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv—a reservist soldier and Jewish religious judge—who destroyed homes in Gaza and southern Lebanon. In January 2025, Zarbiv boasted on Israeli television about the devastation in Gaza, saying tens of thousands of Palestinian families have lost their homes and have no shelter. The Hind Rajab Foundation filed a complaint against him with the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Transportation Minister Miri Regev chose the rabbi to light a torch at Independence Day celebrations, a move condemned by the organization B'Tselem as a state-level endorsement of the systematic destruction of Palestinian livelihoods, sending the message that “genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes are the spirit of the nation.”