In her native Syria, writes Hadeel Oueis, her fellow Christians tended to look favorably on the regime, brutal though it was. In their view, it at least provided them with a modicum of protection—which they could lose if they ever proved unfaithful. Oueis explains that this attitude is typical of Middle Eastern Christian communities, with one exception:

Palestinian Christians . . . publicly criticize Israel and advocate for the abolition of the Jewish state, despite the fact that if this were to occur, the Christians of Palestine would be the first to suffer. The Palestinian Christians, as most of the Christians in the region, are treated unequally and face many challenges posed by Islamists in the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority itself were responsible for many human-rights violations against Christians that included land theft, denial of employment, and economic boycotts. In Gaza and other cities controlled by the PA, Muslims who have converted to Christianity are at the greatest risk. They are often left defenseless against cruelty by radical Islamists who murdered some converts or indigenous Christians.

Despite this, many Palestinian Christian influencers and intellectuals continued to complain publicly about Israel’s treatment of them. . . . Much of Arabic-speaking Christian intellectuals’ strong hostility to Israel is motivated by the Islamic persecutions they endured. These Christians intended to demonstrate to Muslims that they shared an enemy.

Despite their efforts, however, Palestinian Christians have never been treated equally by organizations such as Hamas. . . . . Many Palestinian Muslims refused to mourn Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian deceased journalist who spent her life opposing Israel, because she’s not a Muslim.

The answer for improving the life of Christians in Israel is not to support the rhetoric of Islamist organizations and militias like Hamas or to collaborate with their sympathizers like the CAIR organization in the United States. . . . Fragile U.S. backing for Israel would only lead to another civil war in the Middle East, which could jeopardize the few Christians left in the region.

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.