By Avi Davis
February 25, 2002
To the modern sensibility, there are few stories that rival the Book of Esther for sheer political incorrectness. Here, after-all, is enough misogyny, sexual harassment, bigamy, sleight of hand and racism to fill several issues of the National Inquirer, if not Vanity Fair. Indeed, the litigious material is so plentiful that it could keep lawyers busy for years. If Haman was alive today it is conceivable that the ACLU or Rabbis for (Persian) Rights would be rallying to his defense, declaring his plans for genocide to be based on hearsay and defending his constitutional right to free speech. More than likely, the Jews' slaying of Haman's supporters, in which close to 80,000 Persians die, would be revisited as an 'atrocity' for which the perpetrators would be called to account in a latter-day Belgian court.
If would-be Haman apologists adopted such an approach they would have interesting company. For centuries anti-Semites have looked upon the destruction of the Agagites as the augury of a Jewish-led pogrom. Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher used the Purim story to great effect when regaling Germans about the malevolence simmering just below the surface of Jewish consciousness. The fate of the Agagites, he warned, could be the fate of Germans, if the Jews were given any latitude.
Even a perfunctory reading of the Megilla however, reveals the flaws of such an interpretation. Mordechai's decree, which was merely the exact reversal of Haman's earlier edict, calls for both liquidation of all Haman's followers - including their women and children, and the seizure of their property. Yet the words of the Megilla imply that only men, and then again only those assembled to slaughter the Jews, were killed. No mention is made of their dependents - and it can be assumed they were untouched. Moreover, the Jews' refusal to abscond with their enemies' property is referred to no less than three times - an indication of the moral constraints under which this hastily assembled Jewish militia operated.
The humanity exhibited by the Jews in the face of evil bears comparison with the actions of another Jewish army in the field, hundreds of years later. Soon after the Six Day War, kibbutzniks who fought on the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian fronts were interviewed to examine their new attitudes to war. Their ruminations were collected in a book translated into English as The Seventh Day. In it there is an overwhelming preoccupation with the moral dimension of war - the fear of its brutalizing affects and the danger of losing "the semblance of man."
One of the more poignant passages was related by a soldier identified only as Shimon: "When we came down from the Syrian Heights, our CO ordered any loot returned. Within two or three minutes everyone brought it all in and it turned out they had only taken little souvenirs - handbooks issued to privates in the Syrian army, cigarette holders and other worthless things - not enough to fill even an orange crate. The CO found some paraffin from a lamp and poured it over the items and set it alight. Somehow we felt that the act cleansed us, that it completely removed us from the sin of looting."
In another passage a soldier describes the capture of Nablus: "The battalion CO got on the field telephone to my company and said "Don't touch the civilians?don't fire until you're fired at. You've been warned. Their blood will be on your heads." The boys in the company kept talking about it afterwards and I heard it from everyone of them, right down to the drivers. They kept repeating the words 'their blood will be on your heads.' It almost became a mantra."
Thirty-five years later another Jewish army finds itself accused of trigger-happy adventurism, condemned by the world for its immoral retaliation against defenseless civilians. Yet U.S. military personnel, who are in a position to appreciate the full retaliatory capacity of the IDF, have been stunned by the restraint exhibited by the Israelis. Meanwhile, the President of the United States, his vice-president and many members of his administration have agreed that Israeli retaliatory measures are justifiable and should not be challenged. This legitimacy is even vouchsafed further by Benny Morris, intellectual darling of the left wing, who recently described targeted killings as an "eminently moral form of reprisal, deterrence and prevention."
According to many media reports and commentators, Israeli reprisals are no different in quality than acts of Palestinian terrorism. Any astute observer might then ponder why there are no reports of Israeli civilian execution squads seeking non-combatant targets in Arab villages? Why are there no Jewish posters calling for liquidation of the Palestinians or Israeli children's television programs displaying the means for killing an Arab? Why have the human rights organizations, for all their investigative skill, been unable to uncover even one credible instance of the IDF planning a massacre on the scale of last year's Dolphinarium or Sbarro attacks?
The answers to these questions lie squarely in the Jewish people's moral code, which has at its source the belief in G-d and an ineradicable respect for human life. Embedded in our consciousness is the instinct to preserve and protect life, an impulse that forms the very bedrock of our humanity. This should never be confused with cowardice or lack of resolve. Nor should we pretend that it will ever be easy to reconcile with the needs of self-defense. Yet even if it is an obstacle in our desperate struggle with terrorism, it remains a vital source of our strength, an inextinguishable flame burning intensely within us. It is the bond that ties the Jews of Ancient Persia inextricably to the kibbutzniks of the Six Day War. May that flame blaze just as fiercely on this Purim and shine forth to illuminate both ours and the world's moral future.
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