Iran, The Bomb And The Purim Holiday

'The wheels of the bus go round and round...'

So goes the nursery rhyme, an allegory to the routines and cycles of life and to the lessons of unlearned history. Those allegorical school bus wheels were the same for all of us, an experience shared with our parents and our children. There are some things that do not change and in fact, there are other experiences that actually repeat themselves.

There is a Jewish Holiday, Purim, that commemorates the deliverance of Persian Jews from a great and evil oppressor, not unlike the evil current day oppressor and hater, in the same place and in the same land.

As recounted in the Book of Esther, in that time, the King appointed a regent, Haman, who publicly announced that he would eradicate the Jews.

The people, he said, would take up arms and would eliminate the Jews, once and for all. The Regent, Haman, believed that if he could intoxicate the people of Persia with hate for the Jews, they would not see the path of destruction the Kingdom was to unleash in the quest for more power and a greater empire. The peace of the nation would be shaken as they were led from a time of quiet into a time of upheaval.

There was to be a lottery that named the date and time of the persecution of the plot. This was no mere bureaucratic edict- Persia at the time was a military power and by virtue of her strength, had great influence on neighboring nations. In fact, Persian might was so feared that nations thousands of miles away feared antagonizing the Persians.

Drunk with power, the King and his court engaged in the most corrupt and immoral of activities. The King ordered his Queen to appear before him and his friends wearing no clothes, so as to satisfy his own lusts and to inflame the lusts of others who would never be sated by the desirable queen. He demanded that his Regent organize contests to find the most beautiful woman in land, as a prize for himself. For his efforts, the Regent was to be richly rewarded.

The King believed it was his God given right to have whatever it was he desired. His Royal Court and his religion were used to extort and appropriate whatever they wanted from the people they ruled. Does all this sound familiar yet?

Jewish history relates the emergence of two rather unlikely heroes of the legend- the winner of that beauty contest, Esther, and her rather elderly uncle, Mordecai.

As the story unfolds, Mordecai and Esther were to save the Jews. The story relates that there was no alternative but for the Jews to take up arms and defend themselves. They did, and they prevailed. Of course, the story is more complicated than that.

The wheels of the bus indeed go round and round and history is once more, repeating itself.

As in days of old, Iran is once more threatening the People and House of Israel. As back then, the threats are meant to mask a far more sinister aim- the imposition of Iran as lord and master over other nations, with the implied threat that if they are resisted, a terrible fate will befall those nations. They threaten those nations thousands of miles away, this time with rockets and missiles.

Great armies are no longer needed to foist destruction, ruination and despair on an enemy.

The Persian Royal Court of yore, like their current day incarnations in Iran and evil doers elsewhere, do not realize that by allowing for a license to hate, all are put in jeopardy. It is only a matter of time before another group is painted as evil, so as to facilitate an agenda or to direct attention away from a regime's own misdeeds.

Of course, in days of old, it was only Mordecai and Esther that saved the day. In those days, it was Mordecai and Esther alone, that were to stand up for freedom and tolerance. They stood against hate and evil and they prevailed. They saved not just the Jews, but rather, their stand was to save the Persians as well from the deceit and ruination an immoral Regent was to bring upon them.

Adolph Hitler once said that there would be 'no Mordecai and Esther to save the Jews.' His remarks were met with great laughter. He went on to say, in a speech delivered on January 30, 1944, that, if the Nazis went down in defeat, the Jews could celebrate 'a second Purim.'

His words turned out to be prophetic, because in the civilized world, every day is Purim, a holiday that celebrates the freedom of man and the renunciation of expressions of hate.

Nowadays, every single man and woman that stands for freedom and tolerance is a modern day Mordecai and Esther. Every man and woman that that takes a stand against evil and is willing to defend what is right and just, is a Mordecai and Esther.

The Iranian regime isn't just threatening the Jews and Israel. They are threatening all of us. In the same way that Mordecai and Esther delivered the not only the Jews, but all of Persia from oppression, so too must we, save ourselves and deliver the Iranian people from those who would oppress them. The vast majority of Iranians we see in the streets demonstrating derive benefit from a corrupt regime, much like that entire class of communist apparatchiks benefited by supporting the repressive regimes.

They do not speak for the Iranian people. They are as oppressed as the Jews in Persia once were. They are subject to the whims of the mullahs and the Almadinejad's of an evil repressive regime, masquerading as religious people. Real religious people do not oppress their co reliogionists. There is not much difference between the mullahs in Tehran and the GIA in Algeria, a group that oppressed, tortured and committed the most unspeakable of crimes. Like Saddam, they too oppress at will and for sport.

The clock is ticking. The possibility of a nuclear weapon in the hands of the corrupt and oppressive mullahs has brought the doomsday clock as close as it has ever been to midnight.