Gideon: A Biblical Legend in the Service of Extermination

Amid the ongoing escalation and threats of a comprehensive military operation against the Gaza Strip, the military establishment is circulating a new name for the operation to expand its aggression against the Gaza Strip: "Gideon's Vehicles." At first glance, the name may seem like just another military term in the record of repeated aggression against Gaza. However, it actually carries intense symbolism, linking biblical texts with the colonial security doctrine that Tel Aviv has adopted for seventy-seven years.

In the biblical Book of Judges, Gideon appears as a leader from the tribe of Manasseh, who was entrusted with a divine mission to liberate the Israelites from their Midianite cousins. The story begins with thirty-two thousand fighters, with cowards excluded. They are then tested by drinking at the river, and only three hundred succeed. These are those who “lapped the water with their tongues like a dog,” meaning they drank from the water while standing alert. With this small number, and with a plan based on optical illusions, i.e., torches, and noise, i.e., trumpets, Gideon triumphs over an army superior in number and equipment, under the banner of “divine choice” and “moral superiority.” This story is not just a “religious myth” preserved in books, but has been transformed into a ready-made narrative structure that is reactivated politically and militarily whenever there is a need to give war the character of “holiness” and “divine merit.”

In a striking reflection, the story of Gideon intersects with the story of Saul and Goliath in the Holy Quran. In both stories, the Torah and the Quran, the river – the Jordan River – stands as a dividing line between the many and the elite, between obedience and hesitation, between those who trust in God and those who are defeated by instinct. Gideon and Saul, each in his own way, tested the multitudes until only a few remained with them. The same scene is almost repeated in the Quran in Surat Al-Baqarah, on the tongue of Saul: “God is testing you with a river. Whoever drinks from it is not of me, and whoever does not taste it is of me, except for he who scoops up a handful with his hand.” However, today Tel Aviv distorts this profound symbolism, summoning “Gideon’s chariots” not to lead a battle of liberation, but in a campaign against the children and women of Gaza. How ridiculous the scene seems when it is used to beautify the bombing of homes and the killing of innocents. It is an attempt to sanctify violence, dress colonialism in the garb of religion, and summon “God” to stand with the tank. Therefore, it does not only evoke the symbolism of the victorious elite. And the purifier, but rather employs religious texts to justify its violence, distorting the essence of the message from resisting injustice to practicing murder in the name of God or holiness.

The use of the name Gideon in an Israeli military context was not a new precedent. During the Nakba, the Haganah terrorist gangs called their attempts to seize the Beit Shean area and forcibly displace its Palestinian inhabitants “Operation Gideon.” Today, the name returns in a geographically different, but essentially identical, context: the expulsion of the Palestinian population, the annihilation of those who remained, and the forced reshaping of the demographics, all of which was legitimized in the language of religious texts.

This repeated invocation of biblical myths in military operations is not accidental, but rather part of a colonial cognitive system that frames violence as an extension of a “divine desire,” and always places the Palestinian in the position of a “Canaanite” or “Midian” enemy who must be eradicated. When Tel Aviv gives a military operation a biblical name, it is not only choosing a catchy name, but is entering the battle into the realm of “sanctity,” making war and the extermination of Palestinians a “religious duty,” the Palestinian resistance “impure,” and the international community around us, as if participating in a collective prayer that “blessings” the slaughter. In this way, the religious text is transformed into an “ideological lever” that justifies the killing or abuse of civilians, the demolition of homes over the heads of their inhabitants, and keeping Gaza at the heart of aggression and the darkness of the siege. The irony is that this sanctification is not only practiced in synagogues, but is translated on the ground in operations rooms, targeting documents, and military statements. This happens at a time when the Arabs are striving to present religion as a set of rituals and rites that There is no life in it, it glorifies the ruler and urges the people to obey his command, even if he is tyrannical and disobedient.

But - in reality - the novel is not written from one side. In Gaza, where the aggression is barely "calming down", the language of intimidation no longer has its effect. Palestinian memory, extending from Bisan to Rafah, knows "Gideon" well, not as a prophet, leader, or savior, but as a new symbol of the colonial narrative that has fallen time and again before the steadfastness of resistance and the will to survive.

If, according to the narrative, Gideon's chariots triumphed with three hundred vigilant fighters, Gaza today relies not only on a miracle, but on an entire people standing vigilant in the face of the project of displacement and genocide, knowing that defeat is not measured by the number of martyrs, but by the extent of the capabilities of the owners of the land, who turn the bleeding into a statement and the rubble into a message of survival.

The occupation leaders may like to borrow the myth, and imagine themselves as new writers of the Torah, but Gaza, with its children and women, is writing its founding text, the story of survival, and their vehicles will be swallowed up as the sea swallowed Pharaoh, and it will not find a place for itself in the memory of peoples or the records of history.