THE GHOSTS OF PURIM PAST

The ghost of Purim past (New York Times)
The Muslim Middle East today is a more plausible backdrop for the sort of anti-Jewish plot outlined in the Scroll of Esther than was the Persia of antiquity, a polytheist place where other religions were tolerated, Jeffrey Goldberg writes.

Three years ago, while visiting Tehran, I was introduced to a charmless man named Muhammad Ali Samadi, who, I was told, would parse for me the Iranian theocracy's peculiar understanding of Judaism and Zionism. Samadi said that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, held no brief for anti-Semitism.

Then, a moment later, he explained the role of Jews in history. "There are always infections and diseases in man," he said. "In the world there is an infection called international Jewry." A great many people, in Iran and beyond, believe that the Jewish state is a cancer, and it is foolish to believe that this is an idea without consequences. As one Islamic Jihad leader told me not long ago, "Everyone knows that the cure for cancer is radiation."