Since 1979, Egypt has been a close ally of both Syria and the U.S, but, from the Obama administration on, Washington has sent Cairo mixed messages. That fact, combined with overlapping interests in Libya and Syria, has led President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to look increasingly to Russia. Ramy Aziz argues that the G7—the U.S., Japan, Canada, and the major European countries—can use the present situation in Ukraine to bring Egypt squarely back into their camp:

Russia is trying to influence Egyptians and portray them as supporting its attack on Ukraine. Russian officials and media sources are spreading false news about Russian actions, while using language claiming that Egypt is a past and present Russian ally in the region.

It is true that relations have grown between Russia and Egypt since Sisi came to power following the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. Sisi received unequivocal political support from Putin at a time when relations between Egypt and Washington as well as Brussels were turbulent. Moscow likewise does not bring issues of freedom and human rights into its dealings with Egypt, which is convenient for the Sisi regime. Putin has repeatedly attempted to exploit this relationship to establish Russian influence in Egypt and return it to Russia’s orbit, as it was in the days of the Soviet Union.

These ties help explain Egypt’s weak official position on the Russian attack on Ukraine. However, it is also important to recognize that Egypt’s equivocal stance on Russia’s brutal military campaign in Ukraine is shaped by a set of fears over the effect Russia can have on the country’s economic stability. While these fears have some foundation, further assurances from the G7 and Cairo’s own policy adjustments can ameliorate pressure Russia could exert on the Egyptian economy. This can allow Cairo to side with its strategic allies regarding a conflict where Russia has clearly demonstrated itself as the aggressor.

In choosing its next steps, Egypt must also remember that it needs Western political support on a number of sensitive issues, such as its ongoing concerns over water and the Renaissance Dam.

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.