During the past few weeks, the Islamic Republic has brutally tried to crush mass demonstrations throughout its borders. In an in-depth study of Tehran’s strategies and tactics, Yossi Kuperwasser argues that such domestic repression is part of the same comprehensive strategy that includes its support for militias, guerrillas, and terrorist groups in the Middle East and further afield, as well as its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Each of these endeavors, writes Kuperwasser, serves the ayatollahs’ “aims of spreading Islam and reducing the influence of Western states.” The tactics vary:

Iran practices asymmetric warfare because, although it is far too weak militarily to defeat the United States, it can still have a significant impact upon America and its allies [while simultaneously] influencing other countries and exacting from the United States a high price for interfering in the pursuit of its goals. Undoubtedly, the most obvious example of this is Iran’s nuclear-weapons program; not only does it negate the disparity in military strength between Iran and the world’s primary superpower, it has also enabled Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s regime to strengthen its domestic position with the lifting of sanctions [following the 2015 nuclear deal].

Iran is [also] able to pose a more direct threat through its sponsorship of terrorism. This sponsorship has expanded significantly over time and involves proxies within the Middle East, as well as worldwide sleeper cells.

Tehran’s network stretches far beyond such groups as Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Hizballah in Lebanon, to include both terrorist sleeper cells and lucrative criminal activity in Latin America:

[Some Iranian] sleeper cells [not only threaten] U.S. allies and trading partners but have [also] moved into organized crime to fund themselves, to undermine further the countries in which they operate, and to gain recruits for their operations. The most notable example of this is in Brazil, in which [Iranian agents’] large-scale weapons smuggling has benefited local gangs and cartels. This, along with the recruitment, brainwashing, and training of local youths through “cultural” centers and Shiite mosques have provided Iran with a high number of armed and ideologically-driven youth, . . . ready to attack [targets in the U.S. and abroad] in the event of war with the United States.

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.