Anti-Zionist Purim for Palestine
It’s coming up on Purim, the Semitic St. Paddy’s, Yiddishe Mardi Gras or Hebraic Halloweenof masquerade, storytelling (Purim shpiels), games, pranks, music, wine and a special Spring holiday dessert called “hamantaschen.” These triangular, fruit jelly-stuffed pastries are said to represent the pirate-style hat of the Purim story’s villain, that quintessential antisemite Haman the Agagite, Biblical cousins of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s favorite scriptural boogeymen, the Amalekites.
I love hats, but I’ve long felt that hamantaschen more closely resemble the female genitalia, as they are shaped like an open vulva with a fruit-filled vaginal hole in the middle. Perhaps that’s my sexologist’s dirty mind hard at work – or play – since both triangular treats are good to eat. In any case, because Purim is the only Hebrew holiday story starring a woman, Queen Esther, and hardly anybody but Ashkenazi Jews and Germans can pronounce hamantaschen, I call them “pussy cookies.”
The Biblical Queen Esther is a humble teenage beauty contest winner who uses her “Weapons of Mass Seduction” – her sex appeal, charm, diplomacy, teasing, humility, wit and wiles – to seduce the Persian King Ahasuerus (said to be a Biblical stand-in for Xerxes), saving her “people” (the Jewish people of the 5th century BCE Persian Empire) from the King’s chief minister Haman’s diabolical plan for genocide.
In a time when power was almost always gained through brute force and cold gold – a time much like our own – this was, and still is, a kind of human miracle, a bonoboësque triumph that I honor with joy almost every Spring.
I’ve grown up with Purim, since I was a little girl who didn’t know bonobos from bananas, but I knew I enjoyed pretending to be the strong but sweet Queen Esther in Hebrew SchoolPurim shpiels. Over the years, my Purim parties grew, deepened and blossomed into Commedia Erotica Purim Bacchanals (Warning: Click the following links at your own risk. These are not your Bubbe’s Purim Shpiels!) like my Erotic Purim Masquerade (2006), Porn ‘n’ Purim (2008), Vaginal Pastry Purim (2009) Purim Bacchanalia (2011), Purim Rising(2013), St. Paddy’s Purim (2015), Porny Purim, (2017), FemDom Purim (2019), Pussy Cookie Rush (2022), Pussy Cookie March Madness (2023), and the Purim parades have marched on, drunk up and twirled around year after year.
But this year is different. Instead of being saved from genocide, Israel is committing genocide.
Indeed, Israel is doing just what the villain Haman plots to do in the Purim story. Moreover, Israel’s bombing, starvation and demolition of Gaza is even worse than Haman’s most sadistic fantasies. Besides, Haman’s annihilation of the Jews was only in the plotting stages, while the Zionist annihilation of Palestine is actually happening, a heart-breaking holocaust unfolding in real time, right now before our traumatized eyes.
So, I can’t celebrate Purim with joy in 2024, or maybe ever again.
Certainly not while some of my fellow Jews – not just Haman Netanyahu, but the whole horrid Zionist branch of my Semitic *family* – are committing such atrocities.
However, a Queen can dream, and I do have a Purim fantasy for 2024. This Purim, I imagine a “Queen Esther for Palestine” arising to stop the current King Ahasuerus from supporting his Haman.
You might need to learn (or refresh your knowledge of) the basic Purim Story to appreciate this bizarre Midrash (Biblical interpretation) of mine in which King Ahasuerus’ role is played by none other than “Genocide Joe” Biden.
It fits because doddering Biden supports Netanyahu’s murderous regime by sending bombs and bullets to Israel, just as drunken King Ahasuerus supports Haman’s plot to slaughter the Jews of the Persian Empire in the Purim story.
The Queen Esther for Palestine I envision could be anyone; perhaps a Palestinian – if she could slip past the Secret Service – or a Palestine ally, an advisor, a special friend, a beloved son, a granddaughter, a cute ice cream server with nice-smelling hair, or even Joe’s beloved Dr. Jill Biden – whoever has the ear of the *King.*
Sure, the U.S. President isn’t as powerful as a Biblical King, but he can stop the flow of genocidal armaments to Israel. Yes, it’s a longshot that an ardent AIPAC-funded “Zionist” like Joe Biden will do that, but then again, Haman was King Ahasuerus’ favorite minister before Esther changed his mind, and hey, Canada just did it(!)… meaning it’s worth a try.
So, Dr. Jill, how about playing Queen Esther this Easter and whispering seductively into King Joe’s ear, “C’mon Joey, just stop sending weapons to Bibi, and I’ll lick your ice cream cone clean tonight.”
If Dr. Jill as Queen Esther actually gets King Joe to stop arming my genocidal lonsmen – who shame the entire *tribe* with their beyond-Biblical atrocities, absurd explanations and obnoxious celebrations – she may just work the miracle of turning Genocide Joe into Bonobo Joe.
Nothing can bring back the thousands of precious lives lost, but stopping the flow of armaments (now) could win Joe this next election, sparing us a Trumpocalypse, in addition to saving the Palestinian people – Esther-style – from the current Zionist rampage.
On a poignant note, the Mayor of Jericho, Palestine, Abdul Karim Sidr, has named a street in Jericho “Aaron Bushnell Street,” after the brave U.S. Airman who burned himself alive outside the Israeli Embassy to protest the genocide. Transforming himself from cannon fodder to canonized fighter, Aaron Bushnell became “The Burning Soldier” for Palestine.
May Airman Bushnell’s great sacrifice not be in vain, may we experience another bonoboësque human miracle, like Queen Esther’s on Purim, and may Palestine be free.
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