Jews who don’t fight back don’t survive.

That's the lesson of Purim, a Jewish holiday celebrated this week to commemorate the saving of the Jews from genocide in ancient Persia.

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir (center) with two of his commanders (photo: IDF/X)

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This is a guest essay written by Elise Ronan, who writes the newsletter, “An Unimportant Woman.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Last week, the Israeli actress Gal Gadot gave a wonderful speech about standing up against antisemitism.

The interesting point she made was that, in the world today, it is considered radical to say you are Jewish.

I have been blogging for over a decade trying to get people to listen to the problem of antisemitism on college campuses and in the politics of the world. I wanted people to take seriously what was happening instead of making light of it as some kind of childhood nonsense that would go away.

Nobody with any kind of power listened, not to me, and not to the many others (some with some really big megaphones) out there trying to get this issue on the agenda of world Jewry. So we have now an explosion of antisemitism not seen since World War II.

Leaders in the Jewish-American community whine that the numbers of involved Jews are being depleted. Communal leadership points to study after study that shows our numbers are dwindling. These same so-called leaders wring their hands and try to figure out what is to be done. Guess what … in my house, we no longer care.

I am tired of all the complaining and the presupposition that somehow my family owes the greater Jewish-American community our attention simply because we are Jewish. I don’t want to be a part of your community. I don’t like what the majority of you stand for. I am tired of the fighting, the lies, the sycophantic praise for a political agenda and a party that I reject.

I am also tired of being pigeonholed into a particular branch of Judaism because of my politics. I am tired of the identity politics that has taken hold of the Jewish community.

Above all, I am tired of your hypocrisy. Making pronouncements about the survival of the Jewish People yet blindly following “progressive” politicians whose support for those that celebrate the murder Jewish children is undeniable. I am tired of the Jewish community not seeing the danger that exists in the world, dismissing it as if it’s happening to “those other Jews, the ones who make too much noise.”

And, yes, this is to cast aspersions. Sorry, but when you drop the ball, you deserve derision. Am I angry? Yes. Because I keep getting requests for money from the very people that didn’t do their job in the first place, but now I am supposed to give to these organizations because suddenly they figured out we are in trouble. Not gonna happen. Thanks, but no thanks.

This leads me to the Jewish holiday that is happening this week. It is the holiday of Purim. The story goes, that King Achashverosh (Xerxes to the historians among us), a misogynistic megalomaniacal pig, wanted his wife Vashti to dance naked in front of his friends. When she refused, he sent her away and began to look for a new wife. (There of course was a harem of hundreds of women at his disposal, but this is the story.) There was a nationwide contest and he chose the beautiful woman Esther.

Now Esther’s uncle Mordecai, someone of importance in elite circles, was not supplicant to the king’s advisor Haman. So Haman decided he was going to have all the Jews in the Persian kingdom slaughtered in one big genocide. (If you think collective punishment when it comes to Jews is new, think again.) Mordecai, upon hearing of this plot, went to Esther and begged her to intercede with the King. And eventually she did. The King had Haman and his sons hanged.

This is the epitome of the Jewish joke — what does every Jewish holiday mean? “They tried to kill us, we won, lets eat…” We also take time when reading the Book of Esther to drown out the name of Haman everytime it is said. It is Jewish tradition to say “Yamach shmo,” or to erase the name of someone who is evil. So Jewish children attempt to do just that on Purim with noise-makers.

But the part of the story that people like to forget is that this was not the end. Getting rid of the leaders did not end Jew-hatred or the desire to slaughter. There ended up being a huge battle between the Jews of Persia and Haman’s acolytes. The Book of Esther says that over 70,000 of Haman’s army were killed at the battle. But the Jews secured their future. There would be no Jewish genocide in Persia.

This would also not be the last time Jews were singled out for genocide. The short list: Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome, the Crusades, the Holy Roman Empire, tsarist Russia and Eastern European nations, various Islamic caliphates, Napoleon, World War II, the Soviet Union, and the Arab world since the 1920s.

Yet, here we are. The Jewish People.

So, what is the purpose of the story of Purim and what does it have to do with today?

I think it is the realistic understanding of how, even if you cut off the head of the snake, the body still lives. People need to stand up and be counted. Whether we like it or not, there are sides and we need to be on the right one. That evil doesn’t just disappear because you say “abracadabra.” Society needs to rid itself of the cancer of antisemitism (and yes that includes anti-Zionism).

Does ridding the world of virulent, violent antisemitism mean battles with death and destruction? Unfortunately, it does at times, not because those who love life want war, but because it is clear that, if there is no battle, then there will be no future for anyone who does love life. And for the battle that is to come we pray everyday for the protection of the innocents, the IDF soldiers (all soldiers of the Western world) and to rid the world of the scourge of Hamas and its ilk.

But more importantly we need to hold those responsible for the carnage — Hamas, Iran, Qatar, the Arab world leaders that promote Jew-hatred, Russia, China, and the enablers of Islamists in the Western world such as South Africa, Australia, Ireland, Spain, UK, and France (to name just a few). The deaths to come are all on them. But as yet, I do not see anyone powerful with backbone enough to say the truth and to stand and be counted.

The Jewish People do not need the world’s permission to live free in their indigenous homeland. The Jewish People do not need the world’s permission to live free in the diaspora. We are entitled to every right given to every other People on planet Earth.

Meanwhile, I wrote this essay on International Women’s Day, where the world talks about the human rights of females around the globe. Yet, not one major feminist or women’s group condemned the sexual violence against Jewish women on October 7th. It took the United Nations months to even acknowledge that something had happened to Jewish women on that day, despite all the video evidence made by the rapists and murderers.

So, while I feel extremely bad for the girls who have no life under the Taliban, that women are persecuted in Iran, that there is gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia, that female genital mutilation is practiced in Yemen and other parts of the Muslim world, that honor murder is rampant, that it is now legal to marry off 9-year-olds in Iraq, and that the most dangerous words in the world are “It’s a girl,” my first inclination is make sure that I and my sister Jewish women are safe in a world that cannot be bothered to acknowledge the atrocities that happened to us.

(The truly sad thing is that sexual violence is a hallmark of many wars, not the least of what is happening in Sudan and under Boko Haram, and no one is talking about that either.)

There is also another battle taking place — the battle of words. We see that continually on social media, where the antisemitism is ramped up to Nazi levels. We see the complicity of the news media and politicians. These are modern day Haman’s who seek to perpetuate lies about the Jewish People and promote genocide against the Jewish state.

Interestingly, the military expert Andrew Fox writes in one of his latest essays how Israel can combat the lies of genocide: show pictures of the plump, happy Palestinian children with their pearly white teeth, the supermarkets in Gaza full of food, the Ramadan dinner tables laden with food. We also saw those children, warm, well-fed, definitely no medical issues, jeering at the coffins of the strangled slaughtered Bibas boys.

Also the fact that those accusing Israel of genocide need to change the definition of genocide in order to apply it to Israel — and Israel alone — which seems to be indicative of duplicity and malicious intent.

Funny enough, I have yet to see any pictures of Jews who survived the Holocaust jeering at anyone, or the survivors of Srebrenica jeering at anyone, or the survivors of Pol Pot jeering at anyone, or the survivors of Rwanda jeering at anyone. What you see in survivors of an actual genocide are emaciated, vacant people lost in the world. That is the picture of the Israeli hostages being exchanged for murderers. The only ones starving in Gaza are the hostages.

So, what can we do in the face of relentless lies and hate?

Well, on Purim, we are commanded to get so drunk in celebration so that we cannot tell the difference between Mordecai and Haman. While there are many in the Jewish world who take that instruction seriously, I look at it as the need to remember how we survived — because we took it into our own hands to survive. We did not wait for someone else to save us. We saved ourselves, just like we need to save ourselves now.

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