An Early Response to the Israel-US War on Iran
© Alok Mukherjee, March 1, 2026
I began writing this piece around 1:00 a.m. today when the Israel-US war against Iran was barely a day old. It is now night of March 1 in Toronto – second day of the war – and much has happened in the regional war unfolding in West Asia. Purim, a very important annual festival for members of the Jewish faith, is set to begin in less than twenty-four hours. This year the two-day event starts at sundown on Monday, March 2.
Purim is a celebration of deliverance – “We won, let us eat” – for observant Jews who follow the Talmud.
Over the two days, there is eating, drinking, merry making, carnival and, through masquerades, celebrating the successful defence against Haman, the villainous descendant of King Agag of the Amalekite tribe. This nomadic tribe that traced its name from Amalek, son of Esau’s son Eliphaz, is believed to have attacked the Israelites in the Sinai desert.
When, after their deliverance from Egypt, Israelites prepared to enter the Promised Land, Moses admonished them to remember and never forget the Amalekites. According to Deuteronomy 25:17-19, this is the instruction they received:
“Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey after you left Egypt and how, unmoved by fear of God, Amalek surprised you on the march. And when you were famished and weary, Amalek cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you in the land that He is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”
In other words, the Israelites’ God issued two injunctions: never forget what the Amalekites did to you and take action to blot them out. The prescribed action is striking: “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven,” that is leave no trace that they ever existed. A very precise description of how to achieve this was given by Prophet Samuel to King Saul: “‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ (1Samuel: 15.3)”
Purim is the occasion of remembrance, besides merry making. For observant Jews who celebrate Purim, remembrance requires study of what the Amalekite did to the Israelites to remember what Jews are instructed to do. In an article in The Jerusalem Post on the eve of last year’s Purim, Dvora Waysman, an Israeli writer, recounted all the Amalekites that have endangered and threatened Jews over time. She says:
Amalek has appeared in many forms … as Antiochus; Roman Emperor Hadrian; King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain; Bohdan Chmielnicki, the leader of the Cossacks in Russia; Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany; Yasser Arafat in Gaza; Ahmadinejad, the evil ruler of Iran; and undeniably Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the proxies of Syria, Iran, and Iraq. (Jerusalem Post, March 8, 2025)
This year, it seems, it is not the proxies of Iran but Iran itself that has been identified as the descendant of the Amalekite who must be “blotted out.”
Two years ago, the Palestinians were called Amalekites by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other Jewish politicians of Israel. In one of two blogs published on December 27, 2023, I had talked about its implications:
“Prime Minister Netanyahu provided a Biblical justification for the dance of death and devastation unleashed on Gazans. He said to Israelis: ‘You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.’
Netanyahu was referring to the message from ‘the Lord Almighty’ that the prophet Samuel brought to king Saul. If Netanyahu is being literal in his invocation of the Hebrew Bible, his goal must be the total annihilation of a people, or, to put it bluntly, a genocide.
Another Israeli politician, Moshe Feiglin, a former Knesset member, has declared that Israel must be ‘revenged in a biblical way’ for what the Hamas did on October 7.
If the use of these biblical justifications expresses belief in the biblical injunction to destroy the Amalekite, whether truly held or not, Netanyahu must also know the fate that befell Saul, the king of Israelites charged to lead them out of Egypt, for failing to carry out the direction of the Lord Almighty to the letter. Instead of totally destroying the Amalekites and their possessions as directed, he allowed his soldiers to take the cattle. Angered by his disobedience, the Lord Almighty ordered Samuel to replace Saul as king and anoint David instead. Eventually, Saul fell on his sword and committed suicide.
A great destruction awaits Palestinians at the hands of Netanyahu, a modern-day Saul, especially if he wishes to escape the Lord Almighty’s wrath and avoid Saul’s fate.”
This time, in the context of the divine injunction to Israelites, the assault on Iran takes on a special significance because of the date it started, February 28. That is just two days before Purim.
A survey of Purim related services shows that many preachers are providing theological justification for the assault being launched on this date. According to the message they are giving to their congregations, happening so close to Purim, this illegal war was ordained by the God of the Israelites.
And, of course, there are Israeli extremist, racist politicians like Itmar Ben-Gvir, who have rushed to designate Iran as the new Amalekite. We know that a large section of Jews worldwide. does not subscribe to this use of the biblical story in today’s world, and many have stood up in opposition to the use to which it has been put by the likes of Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir. At the same time, I suspect that this justification for Israeli-US military action in Iran is fine with many followers of the Jewish faith and their Christian Zionist comrades.
It would appear, then, that US President Donald Trump, a man with a befuddled brain, no morality and a history of illegal conduct, his exceptionally mediocre and illiterate administration, and a docile bipartisan Congress are the chosen instruments for the elimination of this latest incarnation of the Amalekite.
Will the God of the Israelites and His earthly mouthpieces condone the use of an instrument with a history of breaking and disregarding the law and of immoral conduct – a criminal, in short – as legitimate? I wonder.
Be that as it may. Donald Trump is helping Binyamin Netanyahu eliminate yet another Amalekite, so that the favourite boy of Zionist billionaires does not meet the fate of Saul. Or, is this a case of one favourite boy of Zionist billionaires helping out another? Whatever!
But, seriously, what does it mean when a metaphor becomes fact?
On the first day of the war, Israeli missiles destroyed an elementary school in the city of Minab in Hormozgan Province. It was a girls’ school, and the death toll has risen to 148. It may rise further. In any event, I believe this is the highest number of deaths from one bombing event so far.
It has also been confirmed that the US-Israel assault has taken the life of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, some members of his family and a good number of the country’s senior leaders. It has been said that rather than going into hiding like a scared, cowardly individual, the 86-year-old Supreme Leader opted to stay at home in Teheran, tending to the critical situation. In the Shia Islamic tradition, he chose the death of a martyr.
It has also been reported that today, a hospital in Tehran, named after Mahatma Gandhi, was bombed and severely damaged.
The Israeli-US playbook for this war is beginning to look sickeningly similar to what Israel did in Gaza and whom or what it targetted for destruction: children, senior leaders, helping establishments.
I have a few questions for those who accept this modern-day enactment of the Biblical story of Amalekites versus Israelites.
- The killing of these elementary school girls is, to me, virtually the high point of deaths from the violence being perpetrated against Iran. Women and children constituted an exceptionally high proportion of deaths from Israel’s genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza also. Does “blotting out” of Amalekites mean destroying the cycle of reproduction by deliberately killing women and girls? In which case, the genocide is not only the eradication of those who exist now but eliminating the possibility of future reproduction of their “tribe”?
- If the word of the Lord of Israelites as expressed in the Talmud guides action, what about the rules and laws enacted by us humans in the name of international law that supposedly applies to all countries and nations? Is it the case that anything done in the name of Israel’s “right to defend itself” is exempt from international law?
A long time ago, fresh to Canada, Arun and I were struck dumb when we found a high school textbook, which, citing the Hindu text the Gita, asked students if a people who believed in fate, karma or predestination could make independent judgements. We discussed this in a study we published in 1978. This came back to me as I thought about the current invocation of the Scripture by people like Netanyahu, the orthodox Jewish preachers and their followers.
Why is it that Hindus’ belief in their sacred texts, like the Gita, becomes the basis for asking about the rationality of their contemporary practice, but not the historical beliefs and practices of Jews and Christians in relation to their current actions, such as the pronouncements of Binyamin Netanyahu and the reaction of Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel?
On the contrary, in the pursuit of this project to slay the Amalekite, Netanyahu and his supporters have the enthusiastic backing of US President Donald Trump. As well, they have overwhelming bipartisan support from Republican and Democratic members of the US Congress. This is a reflection of the unshakeable backing for a Zionist Israel in the US, fuelled, in large measure, by the financial contributions of Zionist billionaires of US.
So,as the masquerades of Purim begin, we must confront the terrifying collision between ancient scriptural mandates and the modern world. We are witnessing a moment where “divine ordainment” is being used to systematically dismantle the very idea of a global, human-enacted legal order.
I am left with these sharp questions for our time:
- If you claim the “word of the Lord” guides your military hand, are you declaring yourself permanently exempt from the human made, enacted and enforced laws of international justice?
- How can a state claim the protections of international law when it suits their interests, yet bypass that same law entirely the moment they claim a scriptural mandate for mass murder?
- Does “religious fulfillment” grant a nation a license for genocide that secular, human-enacted law strictly forbids?
- Why do we demand secular legal accountability from some cultures while allowing others to hide behind the Bible to justify a “dance of death”?
Sadly, it appears that our rulers and leaders are not bothered by these questions. Even more regrettably, they have given Israel the license to continue its campaign of “blotting out” whomever it choses to designate the Amalekite. They back Israel’s actions, defend them and prevent any effort to hold its leaders accountable under international laws.
Thus, while the US actively participates in the war on Iran, others, like Canada, the UK and countries of Europe, defend, support and justify the dance of death that has just begun in Iran.
Alok Mukherjee, The Way I See It 
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