Going back as early as the 1960s, seemingly mainstream Islamic groups in the U.S.—e.g., the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)—were established in close coordination with the Muslim Brotherhood, and with backing from such figures as the notorious Qatar-based anti-American and anti-Semitic cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. As Yehudit Barsky and Ehud Rosen show in a meticulous study, these groups, along with a host of other jihadist organizations and ideological tendencies—some of which are sponsored by Iran—have played a crucial role in rising anti-Semitism. Barsky and Rosen write:

In recent years, U.S. Islamist groups and leaders have increasingly sought common cause with progressive left-wing groups that promote minority rights and intersectionality among racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in their efforts to build coalitions around common interests. In doing so, the Islamist groups and the progressive left-wing organizations have formed a red-green alliance, a coalition that crosses ideological lines between the far left (red) and the Islamists (green). Such coalitions are built both by forming a narrative of  the victimhood of U.S. Muslims, and by utilizing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, portraying it as an anti-colonial struggle. This has already brought about the formation of a new type of hybrid group that brings together under one roof activists of various fringe backgrounds.

While the FBI hate-crime statistics showed that the number of anti-Islamic incidents in 2020 and 2021 were among the lowest in a decade (110 and 152 incidents, respectively), U.S. Islamists have been labelling any criticism of Islam and Muslims as well as of themselves and their ideologies as “Islamophobia.” For example, the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, [which praised Qaradawi after his death], has attempted to utilize public discourse at a time when anti-Semitic attacks on American Jews have been at their highest in four decades to suggest that anti-Semitism is minimal in comparison to Islamophobia. . . .

The use of anti-Semitism to undermine [Jews’] political and societal standing is often not considered a calculated threat. Viewed over time, however, it can be understood as part of a larger process of societal erosion in which extremist and anti-Semitic beliefs previously thought to exist on the fringes of society become legitimized as part of the mainstream and normative public discourse. . . . These developments should not be ignored. . . . To this end, the process of choosing allies from the Muslim community should be made much more carefully, and proper due diligence is required.

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.