In Israel, as in much of the West, there is a general assumption that diplomacy and military force constitute opposite approaches to foreign-policy problems. In reality, difficult situations usually require both. Eran Lerman explains how Israel, in its dealings with both Hamas and Iran, has succeeded at combining a measured application of military might with diplomatic efforts via third parties—Egypt and Russia, respectively.

Some feel that only diplomatic moves accompanied by major gestures of goodwill can prevent an additional slide toward a military solution. . . . [T]here are many [others] who view any efforts to arrive at a settlement to be a sign of cowardly denial of the need for an unambiguous military victory. The long-running political discourse in Israeli society has hindered the effort to have it both ways—to use military power in order to convey a political message and at the same time to manage diplomatic efforts in a way that will not tie Israel’s hands in its use of force. . . .

[In Syria], Russia will not force Bashar al-Assad into removing the Iranians from all the territory he controls, because in exchange he would demand the direct intervention of ground forces, which the Russians have no intention of offering. Nonetheless, the Russian fear of an all-out confrontation between Israel and the Assad regime can be exploited to ensure that [Iran’s] Revolutionary Guard and Hizballah do not get a foothold in the areas bordering on Israel and, no less importantly, the areas bordering on Jordan.

In the case of Gaza, total demilitarization has always been a non-starter. A more realistic objective, namely a kind of long-term truce (tahdiya), is apparently achievable. This requires the correct mix of determined Egyptian messages, a big Israeli stick, and small economic carrots from regional and international players. . . .

There is indeed a price to be paid for [this] strategy. It requires a measure of restraint in the opening moves and precision in choosing the degree of escalation. The IDF’s actions must be sufficiently determined to broadcast a willingness to “go all the way” (which the Egyptians know how to communicate in blunt terms to [Hamas]) and yet sufficiently restrained to leave room for mediation. This is not an easy task and even harder to explain to the public, whose patience is wearing thin—and justifiably so—in view of the prolonged period of provocations, the material damage, and the damage to nature in the Gaza periphery. But for those who do not want to see a reoccupation of Gaza and a renewal of Jewish settlement there, an agreement achieved with Egyptian mediation—which restores deterrence, even temporarily—is still preferable to a military victory and a long-term occupation.

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.