#1,070: Pain and Pleasure, Peril and Purim

Netanyahu, Trump and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

As I begin typing this blog, it is nearly 7:30, the evening of Saturday, February 28, 2026. The Jewish sabbath has just concluded; a new week begins. This past shabbat was named Shabbat Zachor, the “Sabbath of Remembrance.” It always comes just before the Jewish holiday Purim, a celebration which, when all is said and done, is the most uniquely, lightheartedly enjoyable - and slightly bizarre - of all Jewish observances. It’s uniqueness stems largely from the fact that on this holiday we read (or chant) the book of Esther . . . the only book in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible or Old Testament) that does not explicitly mention G-d by name; it is lighthearted, because one of the few commandments associated with the holiday is that one must become intoxicated enough so as to be unable to distinguish between Barukh Mordechai (“Blessed be Mordechai . . . the hero of the story) and Arur Haman . . . “(Cursed be Haman” . . . the wicked villain of the tale). It is also quite bizarre, for reasons which shall soon come into focus.

This year. there is an extreme irony attached to the celebration.

Without going into great detail, the story of Purim takes place in the kingdom of Shushan, (Persia) Its king, Achashverosh, likely the historic Xerxes I (“Artaxerxes”) a fairly simple-minded, slightly arrogant leader, gave over the running of his kingdom to his prime minister, one Haman, an Agagite (meaning either a literal descendant of the biblical “Agag” [King of the brutal Amalekites) or a symbolic term for an extreme antisemite), and about as wicked a fellow as ever lived . . . either in reality or world literature. As with most ancient myths, the thoroughly wicked Haman, at story’s end, is hung . . . along with his 10 sons. It is, of course, a chilling aural coincidence that the name of the modern-day version of a Persian (Iranian) madman who was “taken out” just 48 hours prior to Purim, should have been named Khamenei, sounding oh-so-similar to Haman. (The meanings are totally different: Khamenei, in Farsi, means, simply “from Khamene”, which is a village in the East-Iranian province of Azerbaijan, while Haman is an ancient Hebrew word meaning, quite correctly, either “noise,” “tumult” or “destruction.”

The hero and heroine of the Purim tale are the Jewish Mordechai (possibly a stand-in for the mythic Babylonian Marduk), and his cousin/adopted daughter Estayr, whose Jewish name is Hadassah (Hebrew for “Myrtle”). Estayr is likely a takeoff on “Aphrodite”, the Greek goddess of love. Estayr becomes King Achashverosh’s queen; unbeknownst to him, she is Jewish. Then all hell breaks out; Haman ha-Rasha (“The wicked Haman”) seeks to kill all the Jews. But in the end, everything works out well: Haman and his 10 sons are hanged and they all live happily ever after . . . And indeed, in the centuries following the establishment of the Persian Empire and King Cyrus the Great’s rule, Jews lived there for more than 2,700 years. It was a time marked both by sporadic expulsions, forced conversions to Islam and pogroms against the Jewish community, as well as by long periods of peaceful coexistence. (The best, most readable book I know on the subject is Rabbi Raphael Harris’ History of the Jews of Persia; it makes a great read.)

The bomb blast that took the lives of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many of Iran’s top leaders should cause both feelings of joy and relief. I am sure we all remember how we felt when we saw those pictures of President Barack Obama and members of his team sitting hunched over a computer screen watching the assassination of Osama bin Laden at bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 1, 2011. It felt like a gigantic MISSION ACCOMPLISHED for Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike; the end of a wicked life and hopefully the beginning of something far less fraught with danger and destruction. But of course, politics being what was and still is, that feeling didn’t last too long. Within 7 months, then reality TV star Donald Trump was back to attacking Barack Obama . . . the man he’d spent the previous several years proclaiming was a native Kenyan - and therefore illegally occupying the office of the presidency.:

“In order to get elected, Barack Obama will start a war with Iran.” Donald Trump, Nov. 29, 2011.
“Barack Obama will attack Iran to get re-elected”, Donald Trump, Jan. 7, 2012.
“Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin - watch for him to launch a strike on Libya or Iran. He is desperate.” Donald Trump, Oct. 9, 2012.
“I predict President Obama will at some point start a war with Iran in order to save face!” Donald Trump, Sept. 16, 2013.
“Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly - not skilled.” Donald Trump, Nov. 11, 2013.

This, coming from a man who launched an airstrike - along with Israel - against Iran when his approval rating was somewhere between 34% and 40%, and that of P.M. Netanyahu’s most recent numbers show that 44% of the total sample supports direct military involvement in a potential US attack on Iran, while 50% support participating only if Israel is first attacked by Iran. Are we are supposed to believe that neither man had anything other than what’s best for their respective countries, the Middle East, Europe and the rest of the world in launching “Operation Epic Fury?” Just how gullible do they think we are?

Some of us remember that back on June 25 of last year, the White House issued an official release which quoted the Fondeling Father saying “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term! The devastating US strike on Fordo [one of Iran’s major nuclear facilities] destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable. We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program, has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” And yet, just prior to this newest attack, POTUS, in an 8-minute video shared on Truth Social, justified the bombing raid by warning that the Iranians were just a few days away from having the ability to shoot and land nuclear missiles at the United States. Just last week (February 23) ITs special envoy (and fellow billionaire real estate developer) Steve Witkoff told writers at The Hill that Iran “. . . is a week away” from developing nuclear bomb making material through uranium enrichment. He told the journalists that Iran’s enrichment level “has reached 60%.”

The White House has also declared that the reason for airstrikes was to get rid of the terrorist regime that has inflicted so much pain, torture and murder upon its civilian population. In other words, even if the regime wasn’t that close to restarting their nuclear bomb-making program, we would go after them in order to take them out, so as to give everyday Iranians the ability to take to the streets and effect regime change. Some of us remember back to November 1956 when the Eisenhower Administration, working in tandem with Radio Free Europe, urged the Hungarian people to rise up and rebel against the Soviets. It took Russia precisely one week to put down that rebellion. One wonders what will happen in Iran. Remember: regime change is as rare and difficult as an unassisted triple-play in baseball (there have been precisely 15 in all MLB history, making it even rarer than a perfect game). There is also the unofficial “Pottery Barn Rule” with regards to one country (or coalition) seeking regime change in another country: “You break it, you buy it.”

There are those who believe (I am one of them) that the reason for the current airstrike is neither getting rid of Iran’s nuclear arsenal, nor freeing the Irani people from the iron-gloved theocracy that has held them in thrall for close to a half-century; rather, its purpose is likely to unglue American voters’ attention (and indeed the rest of the civilized planet’s) from the Epstein Files . . . which could easily make Watergate and the Teapot Dome scandals look like mere fraternity pranks by comparison. Then too, the White House is scared witless about the upcoming midterm elections; when weighed against current polling, they could lose their political shirt . . . and socks, shoes and britches . . . thus creating a situation in which the Democrats control the gavels, subpoenas. and debates over future Supreme Court nominees. And don’t rule out the fact that war always brings tremendous profits to weapons’ manufacturers . . . most of whom are heavy contributors to 47 and his fellow Maga-ites.

As glad as I am that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (as well as Ali Shamkhani [Secretary of Iran’s Defense Council], Abdolrahim Mousavi [chief of staff or Iran’s armed forces], Aziz Nasirzadeh [Iran’s minister of defense] and Mohammad Pakpour (commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps [IRGCL]) were all taken out in a massive blast on Khamenei’s compound, I cannot – and will not – praise the American regime for its strategic brilliance or long-term objective. We are, I fear, about to enter another ‘endless war’ ala Iraq, Afghanistan or Viet Nam. I will not suddenly believe that IT has, overnight, become the best friend Israel has ever had or that he loves the Jews more than life itself. Where and what is the endgame? Is this war nothing more, nothing less than a case of “Wag the Dog”? And why oh why didn’t a single member of the regime show up on a single one of yesterday’s Sunday talk shows to discuss this historic event?

An afterthought that may well become an entire blog essay one of these days:

On this issue, like so many, many others, it seems incomprehensible how some people (most frequently MAGA-ites) generally proclaim absolute knowledge and fealty about and towards anything and everything POTUS does or says (despite their limited level of education or understanding), while another faction (frequently more progressive and generally better educated) are on the other side of the fence. There is a possible answer for this which emanates from the world of Political Psychology (a field which has fascinated me for more than a half century) which attempts to explain this phenomenon. It is called the Dunning Kruger Effect. Originally researched by political psychologists David Dunning, PhD, and Justin Kruger, PhD at Cornell in 1999, it explains what is called cognitive bias, an umbrella term used to describe a reasoning error or flaw in judgement. It holds that people with limited knowledge or competence in a specific domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence, while experts underestimate theirs. That is why writers/academics like me are often taken to task by people who get their news from conservative social media, who accuse me of not knowing thing one about politics, history, economics or anything beyond a few verses of the Hebrew Bible. It also explains why a person like me, who has immersed himself into such varied fields as history, political science, practice and psychology, as well as medicine, ancient languages and world literature, often feels inadequate.

To be perfectly honest ITs taking us into war took me by surprise. I thought he and his herd paid more attention to polling numbers . . . especially those showing that less than 24 hours ago, just one in four Americans support the regime’s ongoing strikes on Iran . . . this according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released yesterday. Perhaps he was talked into it by Bibi Netanyahu, who, unlike POTUS, has read the Book of Esther, and wants to make a lot of noise, inflict a lot of pain and celebrate Purim with a bang.

I’m sure Def. Sec. Pete Hegseth will be delighted with the drinking part of the celebration . . .