Tehran Iran – In a couple of months, Jews around the world will celebrate Purim, marking the deliverance of the Jews of the Persian Empire from extinction 2,300 years ago. In Iran, the center of the ancient Persian Empire, the date will be marked with mourning and anger.
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For years already, Iran has been teaching schoolchildren that Purim marks the massacre of 75,000 Persians by the Jews under the command of Queen Esther. It is presented today as an ancient Iranian holocaust perpetrated by the Jews.
The Iranian version leaves out the part where Haman, the royal advisor, convinces the Persian king to sign a decree permitting the wholesale slaughter the Jews of the empire. When Esther reveals her Jewish background to the king and reveals that Haman was tricking him, the king issues a second decree, allowing the Jews to defend themselves. By God’s grace, the Jews are largely spared, while their enemies are slaughtered.
This year, Iran may go further than simply revising the biblical account. Iranian authorities have decided to downgrade the status of the “Tomb of Esther and Mordechai the Jews” in the city of Hamadan in central Iran. The tomb had previously enjoyed that status of an official pilgrimage site.
Following the downgrading, the Iranian news agency Fars began pushing the idea that Esther and her uncle Mordechai were responsible for a massacre of Iranians, and that their burial place had merely been tolerated until now.
The Iranian news agency MEHR reported that a couple of weeks ago, a group of 250 militant Iranian students gathered at the tomb and threatened to tear it down.
Not to worry. Iran is going in the right direction, they will end up the same that his great grandfather Haman. Achmadanadjin (whatever his name is) just continue in that direction and you’ll be good. (for us). שבכל דור ודור עומדים עלינו לכלותינו, והקב”ה מצילנו מידם
haha wow how dumb can a people get theese iranians have zero seihel brains they think that mindless hate will get others to have pity on them well it will have the opposite affect they are looked upon as mentally disturbed insane idiots those muhlas and their followers
Right they should be Sad and afraid! very afraid, because what Haman had coming on him the same will e coming soon on our Haman of today.
That’s the best Purim Torah I’ve heard in a long time.
LaYehudim hoyisa orah, vsimcha, vsason, vyekor!
sounds like a Purim joke.
unfortunately these clowns are serious.
sounds like afew meshugoim there don’t have any better to do
the problem is we take everlasting as a joke it isnt this is serious and could cause major problems down the road several years ago a group in Egypt wanted to sue for the valuables we took when we left
I didn’t have such good laugh in a long time. This new haman is expecting (afraid of) another Purim. HAHAHA!
Mordechai was Esther’s cousin, not uncle.
We should not be laughing when people threaten us, even if it sounds like a joke. If people are threatening us is because we are not being as good as we should. It is a sign from Hashem. Eventually we will win, but we don’t know how many of our people could suffer until then.
I’m wondering if the Egyptians have the same attitude towards Pesach. After all, Egypt lost hundreds of thousands of Hebrew slaves, which provided them with the benefits of free labor.
All this is true, I have first hand reports from Iran, and this is what they are teaching them. The Fars news agency, which is owned by the Revolutionary Guards – IRGC, also offered a new twist on the blood libel devised often in the past to justify the persecution of Jewish communities. It carried report noting that Jews were wont to add the blood of Muslim children to the “Ears of Haman”, a pastry traditionally baked on the Purim festival which falls this year on March 20.
First of all the egyptians of today r not descendants of the ancient egyptians, so all this talk is nonsense.
On the other hand the persians certainly r offspring of those from back then. I don’t believe this report to be true but if it were I would say it surprises me that someone who is denying living proof of the holocaust would not do the same to something that happened thousands of years ago…makes no sense
Iranian authorities have downgraded the status of the tomb of Esther and Mordechai, while an official state news agency has publicized the Purim story as a Jewish massacre of Iranians.
Officials recently removed the sign that identified the mausoleum of the biblical figures in the central Iranian city of Hamadan as an official pilgrimage site. The removal of the sign signifies that its status has been downgraded, according to reports.
The actions come about two weeks after a group of about 250 militant students surrounded the tomb and threatened to tear it down. Their threats were in response to alleged Israeli excavations under the Al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem.
The biblical Queen Esther was the second wife of Persian King Ahasuerus, identified as Xerxes I; Mordechai was her uncle, who also raised her.
The Iranian state news agency Fars has been reporting that Esther and Mordechai were responsible for the massacre of more than 75,000 Iranians, an event recorded in the Book of Esther, which is read on the Jewish festival of Purim.
The reports, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center citing Fars, also call the tomb an arm of Israeli imperialism that impugns Iranian sovereignty; report that its name must be wiped away in order to teach Iranian children to “beware of the crimes of the Jews”; call for the shrine’s return to the Iranian people; and say that the site must become “a Holocaust memorial” to the “Iranian victims of Esther and Mordechai” and be placed under the supervision of the state religious endowments authority.
In a letter to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Director-General Irina Bokova, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s director for international relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, urged UNESCO to “call upon the Iranian authorities to take appropriate measures to terminate this campaign of racism and desecration.”
“It is perhaps time for UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee to establish instruments for the universal protection of holy sites,” Samuels concluded.
? How many Persians were massacred defending their country during the Muslim conquest of Iran? And who is ruling over the Persian people today?