YOU CAN TELL a lot about Jews from their stories. Reading the Old Testament, I’m constantly struck by how many of its tales seem to glorify deceitfulness. This quality is found in even the greatest of the Jewish patriarchs. Abraham, for example, pimped his wife out to the Egyptian pharaoh by pretending she was his sister. Abraham’s son, Isaac, was conned by his wife and son Jacob into depriving his other son Esau (whom Jews regard as a symbol of Christians or goy in general) of his rightful inheritance.

A people’s epic literature normally glorifies the qualities it prizes most greatly. For most peoples, these qualities will be courage, honour, patriotism and skill in battle. For Jews, they are deceitfulness, manipulative skill and capacity to exploit sexual weakness.

The Book of Esther contains another of the Biblical stories that exalt these same qualities. This tale forms the basis of the bizarre Purim festival that Jews celebrated this week.

As I discussed in a previous article, the story the Book of Esther tells is one that has no historical foundation whatsoever. Like so much of Jewish “history”, it has just been made up out of whole cloth. And yet Jews continue to invest a strange intensity of emotion in it.

I won’t go over the historicity of it again here. Instead, let’s recall the basic contours of the story to get an idea of the qualities it is implicitly holding up for praise.

Haman “the Agagite” has achieved a position of power in the court of the Persian emperor, whom he serves as a kind of imperial administrator. The name “Agag” is associated with kings of the Amalekites, a made-up people whose name the Jews, even today, use as a symbol of wicked goyness that must be blotted out.

Haman is due respect as a high official but the Jew Mordecai refuses to offer him the customary signs of deference. No explanation for this is provided. Haman decides to exact revenge on all of the Jews and set in motion a plan to have them massacred. Mordecai has previously pimped his sister to the Persian emperor as a part of his harem. He told her to conceal the fact that she was a Jew. Once she has established herself as one of the emperor’s favourites, Mordecai tells her to use her influence to avert the threatened massacre of the Jews and bring Haman to ruin. This she does using trickery. Haman is executed, her brother Mordecai is appointed in his place; the enemies of the Jews are massacred and all other peoples learn to fear the power of the Jews.

Yes, like almost all Jewish festivals, this one celebrates a genocide committed against Gentiles.

But what qualities does this story hold up for admiration? Above all, cunning and skill in manipulation.

Jews have been holding Esther up as a role model in this respect.

Though the Purim story is considered miraculous, the name of God is not mentioned in the Megillah [Book of Esther]. Perhaps it’s because another sort of power — hidden soft power — becomes our secret weapon. ..One reading of soft power might see it as manipulative and surreptitious, but in the story of Esther it is truly the saving grace.

For centuries, counter-Semites have alleged that Jews manipulate powerful people into doing their bidding using lies, trickery and cunning. And for thousands of years, Jews have told stories that glorify exactly those qualities. Yet when those same qualities are returned to them as a reproach, they shriek “anti-Semitism!”.

Incidentally, when Mike Pompeo said recently that Trump may have been put in place to help the Jews, he was echoing the text of the Book of Esther. When Esther expresses doubts about trying to manipulate the emperor, her cousin Mordecai tells her that she may have been put in place to do exactly that.

Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king’s house, more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

Pompeo compares Trump to Esther, who has been pimped out as a whore to serve the needs of the Jews, which seems very fitting.

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Source: Diversity Macht Frei