Over the past decade, America has withdrawn from the Middle East, states have collapsed, governments have been overthrown, Iran has rapidly expanded its influence, and a significant détente has come into being between Israel and the Sunni Arab states. But, writes Michael Singh, much more remains unchanged and could be changed for the better:

The economic and political stagnation that birthed the 2011 uprisings has, if anything, worsened. . . . Those countries that were doing reasonably well in 2008—for example, Jordan, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates—are today continuing to prosper despite the region’s turbulence, due to sound leadership and patient, low-key U.S. and international cooperation. The biggest change in the region has arguably come from the outside, starting with the role of the United States. There is no American alliance in the region that stands stronger in 2017 than it was in 2009. . . .

It is tempting to see Middle East policy in terms of “solving” Syria, Iraq, or the Israel-Palestinian dispute, but such solutionism tends not only to fail but to crowd out attention and resources for endeavors that are just as important in the long run but less high-profile.

Thus, as vital as the fight against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq will continue to be, there are three other changes to U.S. policy in the region that President Trump could make that would serve our interests well over time. First, he should act firmly to counter Iran. Doing so would not only help to . . . end the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere, but would [also] put the U.S. back on the same page . . . as our allies, who consider Tehran’s regional ambitions to be their top threat. Second, he should seek to rebuild U.S. alliances in the region, focusing not merely on improving bilateral ties but on forging a more capable and useful multilateral grouping of likeminded regional partners.

Finally, he should help our [Arab] allies, where they are willing, to engage in economic, security, and political reforms. The objective should not be to remake them in our own image, but to help them take actions that benefit our mutual interests by making them more resilient to regional threats and responsive to their own populations.

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.