Over the past eight years, Israel has fought three wars in Gaza, each aimed at stopping Hamas from firing rockets into Israel, eroding its military capabilities, and ultimately deterring further attacks. In the first two, in 2009 and 2012, the IDF quickly struck at the most important accessible targets but, when that failed to compel Hamas to desist, had to switch to lower-intensity warfare and ground combat. This ultimately gave the impression that Israel chose to give up rather than get bogged down in a protracted conflict. In 2014, by contrast, the IDF pursued a strategy of gradual escalation. Moni Chorev explains the merits of such an approach:

Although [in 2014] the IDF had [a list of clearly identified military targets] for attack, the operation began with a low level of firepower, with a clear message relayed to Hamas that “quiet will be answered with quiet” and that it had the option of returning to a state of calm quickly and with little cost.

Once Hamas refused this option, attacks on targets in Gaza were stepped up. The idea of delaying the offensive climax in order to maintain an effective threat capability throughout the entire campaign requires a balanced distribution of attacks on targets over the operational timeline . . . and a continuous effort throughout the operation to identify new targets and prepare attacks on them. Steadily increasing levels of firepower intensity . . . makes clear to the enemy the cost incurred and the likely cost to be incurred further on, and causes it to appreciate the decreasing returns it can expect relative to its goals. It allows Israel to manage the operation while making optimal use of its combat resources, in line with the limited worth and importance of a localized campaign with temporary results against the backdrop of a larger, continued struggle. . . .

It is necessary to re-examine . . . the traditional aspiration to “shorten the period of combat,” that is, to attain a victory in the shortest possible time. . . . Deterrence operations are to a large extent directed at affecting the enemy mindset, and such effects take time to come to fruition. Seeking shortcuts can lead to the use of too much force at too early a stage.

In 1946, Julius Streicher, a high-ranking SS-officer and a chief Nazi propagandist, was sentenced to death at Nuremberg. Just before he was executed, he called out “Heil Hitler!” and the odd phrase “Purimfest, 1946!” It seems the his hanging alongside that of his fellow convicts put him in mind of the hanging of Haman and his ten sons described in the book of Esther. As Emmanuel Bloch and Zvi Ron wrote in 2022:

Julius Streicher, . . . founder and editor-in-chief of the weekly German newspaper Der Stürmer (“The Stormer”), featured a lengthy report on March 1934: “The Night of the Murder: The Secret of the Jewish Holiday of Purim is Unveiled.” On the day after Kristallnacht (November 10, 1938), Streicher gave a speech to more than 100,000 people in Nuremberg in which he justified the violence against the Jews with the claim that the Jews had murdered 75,000 Persians in one night, and that the Germans would have the same fate if the Jews had been able to accomplish their plan to institute a new murderous “Purim” in Germany.

In 1940, the best-known Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda film, Der Ewige Jude (“The Eternal Jew”), took up the same theme. Hitler even identified himself with the villains of the Esther story in a radio broadcast speech on January 30, 1944, where he stated that if the Nazis were defeated, the Jews “could celebrate the destruction of Europe in a second triumphant Purim festival.”

As we’ll see below, Jews really did celebrate the Nazi defeat on a subsequent Purim, although it was far from a joyous one. But the Nazis weren’t the first ones to see in the story of Esther—in which, to prevent their extermination, the Jews get permission from the king to slay those who would have them killed—an archetypal tale of Jewish vengefulness and bloodlust. Martin Luther, an anti-Semite himself, was so disturbed by the book that he wished he could remove it from the Bible altogether, although he decided he had no authority to do so.

More recently, a few Jews have taken up a similar argument, seeing in the Purim story, and the figure of 75,000 enemies slain by Persian Jews, a tale of the evils of vengeance, and tying it directly to what they imagine is the cruelty and vengefulness of Israel’s war against Hamas. The implication is that what’s wrong with Israel is something that’s wrong with Judaism itself. Jonathan Tobin comments on three such articles:

This group is right in one sense. In much the same way as the Jews of ancient Persia, Israelis have answered Hamas’s attempt at Jewish genocide with a counterattack aimed at eradicating the terrorists. The Palestinian invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7 was a trailer for what they wished to do to the rest of Israel. Thanks to the courage of those who fought back, they failed in that attempt, even though 1,200 men, women and children were murdered, and 250 were kidnapped and dragged back into captivity in Gaza.

Those Jews who have fetishized the powerlessness that led to 2,000 years of Jewish suffering and persecution don’t merely smear Israel. They reject the whole concept of Jews choosing not to be victims and instead take control of their destiny.