In a moment laden with contradictions, on 17 May while the Iraqi capital Baghdad was hosting the 34th Arab Summit that featured echoing speeches of solidarity with the Palestinians and affirming the centrality of their cause, Israeli warplanes were raining down relentless bombardments on Gaza and launching a new military operation ominously named “Gideon’s Chariots.”
What stands out is not only the brutality of the first phase of this three-stage operation that is aimed at pressuring Hamas but also its calculated timing. It coincided with both US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Gulf states and the Arab Summit, a moment that was meant to symbolise unity.
Yet that symbolism evaporated under the roar of jets, as if the Summit itself was being used to provide a cover for a harsher campaign.
The name “Gideon’s Chariots” carries an extremist religious charge. In the Old Testament of the Bible, Gideon is one of the judges of Israel sent by God to lead his people in a war against the Midianites. His war was marked by military austerity, as he fought with only 300 soldiers.
The story has been appropriated by Zionist ideology as a symbol of divine victory, regardless of numerical disadvantage.
The “Chariots” refer to sacred instruments of war in the biblical texts and vehicles led by the chosen of God in battles.
Thus, “Gideon’s Chariots” is not merely a tactical label for the new Israeli campaign against Gaza, but also part of a full-blown theological doctrine that views Gaza as an “impure” land to be cleansed of outsiders.
The war, then, is not only against a resistance faction, but also against the Palestinians as a people and against their existence, memories, and right to life.
This biblical narrative is not new, as in 1948 it was repurposed during ethnic-cleansing campaigns in the city of Beisan, called “Operation Gideon” as part of a larger plan to displace the indigenous Palestinian population and erase their identity.
Today, under the same tragic name, Israel is enacting a new chapter of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, deploying the same strategies but with more advanced weapons.
The current plan is designed to unfold in three phases: forced displacement through intensive bombing; the purging of resistance fighters; and permanent occupation and the establishment of military settlements.
Launching this Operation under such a name and at such a moment sends a clear message to the world and especially to the Arabs.
Moreover, US President Donald Trump, who in his first term blessed the move of the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and the liquidation of the “two-state solution,” now finds the Arab World even more fragmented, the Palestinian cause more isolated, and despite his declared differences with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the field wide open for the return of “prophecies through fire.”
What is most heartbreaking is the Arab response. As the Summit repeated the usual phrases of “rejecting aggression,” “rejecting ethnic cleansing in Gaza,” “upholding the Arab Peace Initiative,” and “supporting a peaceful solution” at its meeting last week, Gaza was burning, children were being pulled from under the rubble, mothers were screaming amidst the ruins, and there was little distinction between day and night due to the ceaseless bombing.
This gap between rhetoric and action only deepens the divide and grants the occupier more room to kill.
The invocation of biblical stories has also grown more dominant in Israeli discourse, emboldened by the international silence and an Arab stance that hides behind lifeless statements.
For “Gideon’s Chariots” are not just tanks and fighter jets. They are part of a narrative that is rushing to transform Palestine into a “Promised Land” without its Arab people.
Unless this logic is dismantled, and unless the symbolic and religious cleansing is met with tools to combat it, the myth will continue to crush reality under its wheels.
The ongoing Arab and international silence in the face of such operations justified through the use of biblical stories and executed by a military machine that spares neither women nor children amounts to active complicity in such crimes through silence if not through weapons.
Condemnations are no longer enough, and calls for “restraint” no longer apply when Palestine becomes the symbolic battleground of occupation theology.
It is clear that the Nakba, whose memory we mark each year in May, is not merely a historical event but an ongoing project of erasure and extermination.
What is happening today in Gaza under the banner of “Gideon’s Chariots” is nothing less than a second Nakba, larger, deadlier, and more organised than the first.
This is why the response must rise to the level of the threat: urgent political action by the Arab League and the UN Security Council, severing ties with the occupying state, halting all forms of normalisation, the international prosecution of ongoing crimes, and confronting the extremist religious narrative used as a cover for killing.
It is time for the Arab Governments to understand that the Palestinian cause is not a bargaining chip or a tool for image management. It is a measure of existence and dignity.
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