A holiday about self-defense: The inconvenient Zionism of Purim - comment

• Published date: 24 March 2024
• Author: MICHAEL STARR
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

This year there hasn't been much of a megillah of Purim-themed social media posts advocating on behalf of Palestinians and attacking Israel, likely because the holiday enshrines the right of self-defense, a tenet of Zionism that radical left wing Jews would like to deny to the Jewish state

Celebrating Purim while Israel is at war

For this reason, Purim 2024 has seen Jews who have taken a more antagonistic position on Israel, creating content attacking the holiday, revising it, and even downplaying how we should perceive the enemies of the Jews.

National Public Radio on Saturday published an article about the "darker chapter" in the Book of Esther, in which the Persian Jews fought back against Haman's pogromists and killed 75,000 of them.

The Washington Post also published on Purim eve a similar article about how some American Jews were "rethinking Purim celebrations" because this chapter was "particularly uncomfortable in light of the war."

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency also explored radicals bemoaning the "bloodiest chapter." Some of the subjects in the articles, such as The Shalom Center's Chapter 9 Project, even sought to rewrite the over 2000-year-old religious text with new fan fiction endings.

"This year the resonances of Israel-Gaza are too strong to ignore," rabbi Arthur Waskow wrote in the introduction of the Chapter 9 Project.

In the Purim narrative, Persian vizier Haman hated prominent Jew Mordechai and his people because they did not bow before him, and had laws "different from those of any other people." Haman obtained permission from king Ahasuerus to perform a genocide of the Jewish people, "to destroy, massacre, and exterminate all the Jews, young and old, children and women, on a single day," as he put it, and cast a lot for the fateful date of the mass pogrom.

The command went out across the land, and Haman's men prepared themselves for this dirty deed.

Meanwhile, Mordechai told his niece and crypto-Jew queen Esther, who curried favor with Ahasuerus, to execute Haman and to give permission to the Jews to fight back.

A war of self-defense

On October 7, backed by a Persian regime, Hamas launched a massive pogrom in Israel, murdering, raping, and torturing 1200 people, most of them civilians. Hundreds more were taken into captivity. Israel fought and pushed the pogromists back, and then almost a month later launched a ground invasion to destroy the terrorist organization – an endeavor still ongoing as the 2024 Purim celebrations were held.

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