In the month of Adar, revenge reached the children of the long-slain Haman. Ten of his children were hanged. More precisely, first his children were executed. But this was not enough for Esther: she asked to hang their corpses on a tree. Here, perhaps, it is worth quoting this biblical text in full:

"In the twelfth month, that is, in the month of Adar, on the thirteenth day thereof, the Jews gathered together in their cities in all the provinces of king Ahasuerus, to lay their hand on their ill-wishers; and no one could stand before them, because the fear of them fell upon all the nations. And all the princes in the provinces, and the satraps, and the governors, and the executors of the king's affairs, supported the Jews, because the fear of Mordecai had come upon them. And the Jews smote all their enemies, slaying them with the sword, killing them, and destroying them, and dealt with their enemies according to their will. In Shushan, the throne city, the Jews slew and killed five hundred people; and they slew the ten sons of Haman. On the same day they reported to the king the number of those who had been killed in Shusani, the throne city. And the king said to Esther the queen, In Shushan, the throne city, the Jews slew and slew five hundred men, and the ten sons of Haman. What did they do in the other provinces of the king? What is your wish? and it will be satisfied. And what other request is yours? it will be fulfilled."

Well, it would seem that this is it! But you know when the appetite comes.

"And Esther said, If it pleases the king, let it be lawful for the Jews who are in Shushan to do the same tomorrow as today, and let the ten sons of Haman be hanged on a tree. And the king commanded them to do so; and a decree was given to this effect in Shushan, and the ten sons of Haman were hanged. And the Jews who were in Shushan gathered together also on the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and slew three hundred men in Shushan And the rest of the Jews who were in the kingdoms gathered together to defend their lives, and to be at rest from their enemies, and slew seventy-five thousand of their enemies" (Est. 9:1-16).

Who are these 75,000 exterminated Persians? It is unlikely that these were peasants - those Jews who voluntarily stayed in Mesopotamia, probably not for the sake of farming and digging irrigation ditches, neglected to return to their homeland. If the Jews were better off in the Persian Empire than in Palestine, then they had infiltrated the imperial state and trade elites. This means that they had competitors and enemies there. And, therefore, the country's elite was also massacred. Everyone who could be competitors[249]. The fate of the Persian Empire was sealed – in just a hundred years, it would be powerless in the face of Alexander the Great.

Purim's apologists say, "Vengeance is cruel. But did not the king and the Psalmist say of the wicked, "He dug a pit, and dug it, and fell into the pit which he had prepared"? (Psalm 7:16). And on the night of the Judas betrayal, was it not the Savior Himself who said: "All who take up the sword shall perish by the sword"? (Matt. 26:52)"[250].

Would these same "liberals" approve if the Moscow Patriarchate openly and noisily celebrated the storming of Kazan by the troops of Ivan the Terrible every year, while stressing that it sees in him a model for dealing with all the enemies of Holy Russia? Wouldn't they call such behavior insane and fraught with the shedding of new blood? But then their reaction to the celebration of the "merry holiday of Purim" should be just as negative.

As for "those who took up the sword"... This is the special flavor of Purim – that the sword had not yet been taken by the Persians. The crime was planned, but was not carried out. Imagine that in the early 1930s, the European powers managed to put pressure on German President Hindenburg and he outlawed the Nazi Party. And for two days, everyone was allowed to kill anyone they suspected of sympathizing with Hitler... It is not "vengeance" that takes place on Purim. But a "preventive strike". Nowhere in these biblical texts do we see that crowds of pogromists first gathered, then they rushed to the Jewish quarters, and then the Jewish self-defense units fulfilled their duty... On the contrary: "the Jews gathered together to lay their hand on their ill-wishers" (Est. 9:2). Very precisely: a hand on the "wishers", death for an intention...

For the sake of revenge on Haman, it was enough to execute him. What do tens of thousands of people have to do with it? Yes, the people have the right to protection and even to revenge on guilty criminals. But why continue the murders after the elimination of the really guilty?

Imagine that the Soviet army, having already defeated Nazism, scheduled a total roundup of Germans who collaborated with the previous regime on one of the winter days of 1946... The German Communists were issued a letter of protection, under the guise of which they could shoot on the spot for two days without trial or investigation anyone who annoyed them in the old days. And as a result, 75 thousand already disarmed Germans were executed... Could it be that this pogrom would also be considered morally irreproachable?

Good: let revenge, let retribution... But what do children have to do with it? The children did not take a sword in their hands and did not dig a ditch... I have no doubt that Alexander Nezhny in other situations is not averse to talking about "the tear of an innocently tortured child". But how is it that he does not want to stay away from those who have been dancing joyfully for the 25th century in a row, remembering the murder of children (Est. 8:11)?

How can you celebrate the murder of 75,000 people (including children) every year?

It is good that today Jewish publicists are trying to pretend that children were not killed on Purim. "Mr. Kuraev considers Purim "a memory of a successful pogrom." In proving this thesis of his, Mr. Kuraev is lying, and unpretentiously, hoping, presumably, that no one will convict a clergyman of lying. Meanwhile, in the Book of Esther there is not a single word about the murder of women and children by the Jews – this is an invention of the deacon Kuraev. And what about the murder of Haman's children – and 9 months after the execution of their father (Est. 9:10)? And Est. 8:11 — "to destroy all the mighty in the people and in the region who are at enmity with them, children and women"?

There is a good feature in this brazen denial of the murder of children: it means that the conscience of modern Jews condemns the infanticide of the goyim. But there is also an alarming feature: these journalists allow themselves to lie for the sake of embellishing their national history.