A brilliant and infuriating article has appeared recently. It is in Commentary magazine, written by one of the great minds of our times, Yoram Hazony. It is about the lessons to learn from the holiday of Purim and the story of Queen Esther saving the Jews of ancient Persia. (Here is an accessible copy.)
First the infuriating part. The story of Esther in the Purim story that I was told all my life was about the part of her life where she saves the Jews of the ancient Persian kingdom through her influence on the King and her destruction of the 3rd Century BCE version of Hitler. This is actually only the first half of the story.
I was never told the most important second half of the story of Esther because I was part of the Reform Jewish, goody-goody-peace-and-love crap movement.
In the second half of the story Esther and her appointed advisor to the King, Mordecai, create an Army to protect the Jews of Persia in each part of the empire. They kill Hitler and his 10 sons, then hundreds of his Jew hating friends and neighbors. Finally they go throughout Persia and kill another 75,000 people who were part of the plot to kill Jews.
I didn’t know the second important part of the story. I didn’t know the King about whom the Esther story is told was Xerxes in Greek. We simpletons are told about King Ahasuerus. Nor did I know that Ahasuerus was the grandson of King Cyrus the greatest friend of the Jews in all human history.
The brilliant contribution of Yoram Hazony is to raise the point that killing our enemies wantonly was an effective antidote to Jew hatred.
I know that if Israel wantonly killed 10,000 Gazans in any of the previous wars, Gaza would never fire another missile into Israel, and would have become a productive little Arab enclave.
That is the lesson of Israel defeating four Arab armies in 1967 and again in 1973. Those Arabs haven’t dared attack Israel since then. It didn’t get rid of Jew hatred. But a serious attack that wipes out the government of Iran and Hezbollah would get rid of Jew hate in the Arab world. Arabs and Iranians, like most primates have a large reptilian part of their brains and they only respect power.
I’ve often thought that the peace movement wouldn’t survive one suicide bomber in the midst of a peace march. Nor would Jew hate on college campuses survive a few bombings of their demonstrations.
Yet, as part of the Jewish tradition of righteousness, Israel must always accept the pregnant and ill people of Gaza into Israeli hospitals; and always provide medical succor on the battlefield to friends and enemy alike.
Modern Jews don't know that we can do both. Kill enemies wantonly and provide succor.