After establishing the identity—agreed upon by the majority of scholars—between King Ahasuerus in the book of Esther and the Persian ruler known to the Greeks as Xerxes (both variants of the original Persian Khshayarsha), Mitchell First seeks extra-biblical evidence of the book’s other characters:

The Greek historians Herodotus and Ctesias refer to Xerxes’ wife as Amestris. Although some slight linguistic connection between the name Amestris and the name Vashti . . . seems possible, a stronger connection exists between the Greek Amestris and the Hebrew Esther.

The -is at the end [of Amestris] is just a Greek suffix added to turn the foreign name into a proper Greek [feminine noun]. The name . . . is based around the consonants m, s t, and r; the name as recorded in the Megillah is based around the consonants s, t, and r. Very likely, this is not coincidence; perhaps her Persian name was composed of the consonants m, s t, and r and the m was not preserved in the Hebrew. . . .

[Both] Herodotus and Ctesias depict Amestris as cruel. It should be noted, however, that many scholars today doubt the stories told by the Greek historians about their enemies, the Persians; those concerning royal Persian women are particularly suspect.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.