From the Liveblog of
Thursday, February 20, 2025
Right-wing lawmakers compare Hamas to animals, Nazis after return of four caskets apparently containing hostages’ remains
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Multiple right-wing lawmakers compare Hamas and Palestinians to animals, Nazis and the Biblical Amalek following the apparent return of the bodies of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas and Oded Lifshitz.
Otzma Yehudit chairman Itamar Ben Gvir calls to bring Hamas to “the gates of hell” following the return of the four caskets.
“Remember these moments. The sadness over the shedding of innocent blood. The jubilation of the beasts of prey. The thirst for blood. The clear knowledge that these Nazis must not continue to live. Our historical duty to our children is not to give up,” Ben Gvir states.
“The Nazis deserve no humanitarian aid. No fuel. No electricity. No caravans. No bulldozers. No ceasefire, no withdrawal. Only the gates of hell!”
Former heritage minister Amichai Eliyahu, a member of Ben Gvir’s far-right party, tweets a Biblical verse calling on the Israelites to ” blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens.”
Likud MK Avichay Buaron also compares those behind the murder of Israeli hostages to the Biblical Amalek, which the Bible commands the ancient Israelites to exterminate.
“Only a neo-Nazi-Shiite ideology of systematic murder of Jews, based on a brutal and sadistic culture, can give rise to such animalistic barbarity,” he tweets, charging that “if they could, they would murder us all and rape all our daughters.”
“This is the very nature of Amalek. His purpose. His whole essence, to hunt down the Jews and kill and destroy them,” he says.
Religious Zionism MK Ohad Tal compares Gaza to the Biblical city of Sodom, stating that a mother and her two children were murdered “and no one there in Gaza protested, no one in this Sodom condemned, no one tried to save them.”
“A collective of murder, and there is no righteous person in Sodom,” he tweets, also citing the Biblical verse on destroying the enemies of the Jewish people.
The Times of Israel Community.