Shabbaticide: Hamas’ Deliberate Campaign to Desecrate the Sabbath

Since the start of the war, Israel has been accused not only of genocide, but also scholasticide, domicide, urbicide, politicide, ecocide, and culturcide, words that mean, according to Al Jazeera, killing a people, killing a home, killing a city, killing political representation, killing the environment, and killing “a sense of self.”

Aside from genocide, none of these words make much sense. The suffix “-cide” is more commonly found in words like homicide (killing a person); patricide (killing one’s father); or even herbicide (killing a plant), which is to say, it has always been used to refer to biologically living entities, which, definitionally, are the only entities that can be killed.

Any use of “-cide” to refer to the destruction of nonliving things is a recent invention, and is useful in making Israel’s war seem uniquely monstrous. A building destroyed by a bomb is no longer collateral damage. It is now a unique crime against humanity — the killing of knowledge itself, for instance.

In some cases, these terms were coined to condemn Israel. Scholasticide, for instance, was first used in 2009 by Palestinian scholar Dr. Karma Nabulsi, who stated that Palestinian education is something Israelis “cannot abide … and seek to destroy.”

In other cases, the words were not specifically invented to condemn Israel, but are nevertheless almost exclusively used for this purpose.

“Domicide” was nothing more than an obscure bit of academic jargon before it was taken up by the anti-Zionist movement. Now it’s close to being a household term. The same can certainly be said of the other cides as well. The Wikipedia articles for both Domicide and Ecocide call out Israel specifically and at length, without bothering to mention Hezbollah’s habit of firing anti-tank missiles at private homes in Israel with no military justification, or Hamas’ tactic of using flaming kites to ravage farmland in southern Israel. 

We can criticize the proliferation of these terms, or we can try and fight back in kind. We might point out, for instance, that the Palestinians are guilty of Shabbaticide — a word I just invented meaning “the killing of the Jewish Sabbath.” 

We might ask why Hamas has chosen Shabbat for its gruesome hostage release ceremonies. According to MK Amit Halevi, this is “a deliberate humiliation” and an attempt to make the State “desecrate Shabbat publicly” for a cheap propaganda win. 

The added benefit for Hamas is that Shabbat-observant Jews are prevented from bearing live witness to the return of our people and are forced to spend the holy day in anxiety.

The Oct. 7 massacre itself took place on Shabbat, and not just any Shabbat but Simchat Torah, an important holiday celebrating the giving of the Torah. 

But Hamas didn’t invent Shabbaticide. It has long been practiced by Israel’s enemies. Let’s not forget that Oct. 7 was the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war — when Israel was invaded on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, with many Jews at their most vulnerable, wrapped in tallitot and praying in shul. 

Hamas’ Shabbaticide campaign, cruel as it is, has backfired. Stories of Israeli hostages observing Shabbat in captivity have only strengthened our faith in the Sabbath. 

Agam Berger, who has been released, has discussed how she kept Shabbat in captivity. Her captors would force the young women to cook for them, but on Shabbat Agam would refuse to light a flame. Even when threatened by the terrorists, she didn’t back down from her commitment to this commandment. 

We have also heard from hostages that have been released that Omer Shem Tov, who has yet come home, has begun keeping Shabbat in captivity.

Some have asked how this is possible? Isn’t every day in captivity Shabbat? After all, there is no television or iPhone to turn off. This question confuses the essence Shabbat with its outward manifestations. There is nothing external that is needed to observe and keep the sabbath. 

With a piece of toilet paper on his head for a kippah, Omer reportedly recites the Kiddush blessing on Friday evenings. And though his captors gave him a flashlight to eat with at night, on Shabbat he eats in the dark.

This decades-long effort to desecrate Jewish holidays through invasions and massacres reveals something that people in the West fail to understand — the war against Israel is not an anti-colonialist struggle, but a religious war aimed at rooting the Jews out of Muslim land.  

This decades-long effort to desecrate Jewish holidays through invasions and massacres reveals something that people in the west fail to understand — the war against Israel is not an anti-colonialist struggle, but a religious war aimed at rooting the Jews out of Muslim land. 

In pursuit of this holy war, Hamas has transformed Gaza into a hotbed of extremism and hate. 

They rule the strip with an iron fist, appropriating all public funds for their war efforts, turning schools and hospitals into military installations, building terror tunnels underneath residential neighborhoods, sending burning kites over the border to torch the land they claim to love, using the facade of UNRWA to turn the school system into a factory of indoctrination, and invading Israel whenever possible with the aim of burning kibbutzim, throwing grenades into houses, and murdering every man, woman and child that they encounter — excepting those that they kidnap.

If one was so inclined to use them, there are some handy neologisms to describe all of these actions—scholasticide, urbicide, domicide, ecocide, culturecide, and yes, genocide. 

But we all know that these words are reserved for the special purpose of slandering the Jews alone.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.