As modern day Israel prepared to celebrate Purim, a Palestinian gunman was preparing to slaughter Israeli people in the same way that Haman attempted to do in the time of Esther. Purim is the annual celebration of the great deliverance of the Jewish people in the days of Queen Hadassah (Esther):
These holy days are observed to honour the defeat of the enemies of GOD’S people. Purim commemorates the downfall of Haman (means: tumult), the enemy of the Jewish people in the Persian Empire. As such, Haman is a type of Satan, the “accuser” – the one who has throughout history, sought to eliminate the Hebrew race. Haman had the king’s servants cast lots (purim) to determine the date on which the Jews would be destroyed, but his wicked plan was thwarted because of GOD’S great mercy and the obedience of Hadassah (Queen Esther).
“Purim” (casting of lots) is explained like this: Haman, having been warned that all enemies of the Jews had in the past met with frustration, being superstitious, decided to cast lots to determine the most favourable day for the slaughter.
But it turned out that Haman was hanged on the same gallows which he had previously prepared for Mordecai, and all the Jews escaped a terrible massacre. The next day, the 14th of Adar, the victory was joyously celebrated.
After the Persian royal advisor, Haman’s genocidal plot to rid the world of the Jewish people was foiled, “V’nahafoch Hu!” (roughly interpreted: “and the tables were turned!”) became the rallying cry of the Jewish people during the month of Adar. Today the Talmudic sages advise [Tractate Ta’anit 29a] Jews throughout history to seek to schedule critical events, in which Divine assistance is desired, during the month of Adar:
On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, the king’s decree was supposed to be executed. The enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower the Jews that day, but the plot was overturned, and the Jews overpowered their enemies.
Throughout King Achashvairosh’s provinces the Jews gathered in their cities to defend themselves against those who tried to hurt them. No one could withstand them, because everyone was afraid of them.
Even the provincial ministers, the satraps, the governors, and the king’s pages, supported the Jews, because they were afraid of Mordechai.
You see, Mordechai had become very influential in the king’s household, and his reputation was known throughout the empire; as a result, Mordechai was becoming more and more powerful.
The Jews struck at all their opponents with the sword, killing and destroying them, and they defeated all their enemies.
In Shushan Capital the Jews killed and destroyed five hundred men.
They also killed Parshandasa, Dalfon,Aspasa, Porasa, Adalya, Aridasa, Parmashta, Arisei, Aridei and Vayizoso, the ten sons of Haman, the son of Hamdoso, persecutor of the Jews. But they did not pillage their property.
They notified the king of the death toll in Shushan Capital the same day it occurred.
The king said to Queen Esther, “In Shushan Capital the Jews killed and destroyed five hundred men, as well as the ten sons of Haman. Who knows what they did in the more distant provinces of the empire? Whatever you want, you will be given; whatever your request, it will be done.”
Esther replied, “If it pleases the king, may the Jews of Shushan have tomorrow also, with the same rules as today? And also, could the ten sons of Haman be hanged on the gallows?”
The king ordered these things to be done. The decree was announced in Shushan, and also the ten sons of Haman were hanged on the gallows.
So the Jews of Shushan gathered again on the fourteenth day of Adar, and they killed another three hundred men in Shushan, but they did not pillage their property.
The Jews in the rest of the empire also gathered to defend themselves and get peace from their enemies, and they killed a total of seventy-five thousand, but they did not pillage their property.
They fought their battle on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, and they rested on the fourteenth. So they made the fourteenth day of Adar a day of feasting and celebration.
The Scriptural explanations above are from a Messianic and Jewish teachers. Surprisingly, the Persian Emperor, deceived by Haman’s manipulation, issued an edict for the massacre of the Jewish people. Esther informed the Emperor-King of the deception and the only way that he could legally undo his own decree was to issue a new edict permitting the Jews to defend themselves. The decree had the same effect as the modern day Second Amendment. Although it was a temporary decree, genocidal killing was stopped as the Jews turned the table on those who would have killed and plundered them. The death toll was great but the Persians that were foolish enough to seek Jewish blood died instead.
The following is a recent example of how Israel’s modern history contains many events that convey to an open minded observer that supernatural military events are still occurring. The modern Purim story of the Mercaz Harav seminary is also an example of what military strategists call swarming tactics where as soon as the enemy attacks or presents a target of opportunity, opposition coalesces spontaneously as a result of units that are prepared to react to random situations that are impossible to anticipate by means of conventional response planning:
From BBC News
Eight people have been killed and nine wounded by a Palestinian gunman who infiltrated a Jewish seminary in West Jerusalem, Israeli officials say. The gunman entered the school’s dining room and opened fire with an AK-47.
Witnesses said the gunman went into the library at the Mercaz Harav seminary in the city’s Kiryat Moshe quarter and opened fire.
The assailant, who Israeli police said was a resident of East Jerusalem, was shot dead by an Israeli army officer.
The attack is the worst of its kind in Israel for a number of years.
The White House has led international condemnation but the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas called the attack “heroic” while not claiming responsibility.
When we got in… we saw young, 15-, 16-year-old guys lying on the floor with their Bibles in their hands – all dead on the floor.
However, the 15-strong UN Security Council failed to agree on a resolution condemning the attack because of reservations from temporary member Libya, which sought to link it to Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.
A previously unknown group called the “Jalil Freedom Battalions – the Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh and Gaza” claims to have carried it out, according to Lebanese Hezbollah media.
The fact that the school is at the heart of the settler movement in the occupied West Bank may have been the reason why it was targeted, BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen reports.
Many of its students are on special courses that combine religious study with service in combat units in the Israeli army, he notes.
There will be an Israeli response to this attack, our Middle East editor adds – the question is how severe it will be.
‘Horrific’
The gunman entered the library at the Mercaz Harav seminary on Thursday evening, where about 80 students were gathered, and fired an AK-47 rifle for several minutes, witnesses say.
One of the students, Yitzhak Dadon, reportedly shot the gunman twice before he was finally killed by an off-duty Israeli army officer, who had gone to the school after hearing gunfire.
“I shot him twice in the head,” he told the Reuters news agency.
“We heard shooting and knew that something had happened,” recounted Yitzhak Dadon, 40, who studies at the yeshiva. Dadon said he cocked his handgun and went up to the roof of the yeshiva, where he saw the terrorist spraying gunfire indiscriminately at the crowd inside. Dadon said he fired two bullets at the terrorist, who began to stumble.
“He started to sway and then someone else with a rifle fired at him, and he died.”
Another man told the BBC that there had been “terrible scenes” inside the building afterwards.
“When we got in… we saw young, 15-, 16-year-old guys lying on the floor with their Bibles in their hands – all dead…” he said.
Jerusalem police commander Aharon Franco confirmed there had been only one gunman and said he had hidden his weapon in a cardboard box.
Celebratory gunfire reverberated throughout Gaza City, as groups of Hamas militants marched through the streets waving green flags and calling out over loudspeakers: “Allah gave us this victorious day, because we deserve our freedom.”
John Lott, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, provides the following analysis for comparison with the above referenced scenes in Jerusalem and the Middle East:
As Northern Illinois University restarts classes this week, one thing is clear: Six minutes proved too long.
It took six minutes before the police were able to enter the classroom that horrible Thursday, and in that short time five people were murdered, 16 wounded.
Six minutes is actually record-breaking speed for the police arriving at such an attack, but it was simply not fast enough. Still, the police were much faster than at the Virginia Tech attack last year.
12,000 people, including relatives of the Northern Illinois University students killed Feb. 14, attend a memorial Sunday in DeKalb, Ill. The previous Thursday, five people were killed in the city council chambers in Kirkwood, Mo. There was even a police officer already there when the attack occurred.
But, as happens time after time in these attacks when uniformed police are there, the killers either wait for the police to leave the area or they are the first people killed. In Kirkwood, the police officer was killed immediately when the attack started.
People cowered or were reduced to futilely throwing chairs at the killer. In attacks last year at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb., the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City and the recent attack at the Tinley Park Mall in Illinois, or all the public school attacks, they had one thing in common: They took place in “gun-free zones,” where private citizens were not allowed to carry their guns with them.
The malls in Omaha and Salt Lake City were in states that let people carry concealed handguns, but private property owners are allowed to post signs that ban guns; those malls were among the few places in their states that chose such a ban.
In the Trolley Square attack, an off-duty police officer fortunately violated the ban and stopped the attack. The attack at Virginia Tech or the other public school attacks occur in some of the few areas within their states that people are not allowed to
carry concealed handguns.
It is not just recent killings that are occurring in these gun-free zones. The Columbine High School shooting left 13 murdered in 1999; Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, had 23 who were fatally shot by a deranged man in 1991; and a McDonald’s in Southern California had 21 people shot dead in 1984.
Nor are these horrible incidents limited to just gun-free zones in the U.S. In 1996, Martin Bryant killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Australia. In the last half-dozen years, European countries — including France, Germany and Switzerland — have experienced multiple-victim shootings. The worst in Germany resulted in seventeen deaths; in Switzerland, one attack claimed the lives of 14 regional legislators.
At some point you would think the media would notice that something is going on here, that these murderers aren’t just picking their targets at random. And this pattern isn’t really too surprising. Most people understand that guns deter criminals.
If a killer were stalking your family, would you feel safer putting a sign out front announcing, “This home is a gun-free zone”? But that is what all these places did.
Even when attacks occur, having civilians with permitted concealed handguns limits the damage. A major factor in determining how many people are harmed by these killers is the time that elapses between when the attack starts and someone is able to arrive on the scene with a gun.
In cases from the Colorado Springs church shooting last December, in which a parishioner who was given permission by the minister to carry her concealed gun into the church quickly stopped the murder, to an attack last year in Memphis to the Appalachian Law School to high schools in such places as Pearl, Miss., concealed handgun permit holders have stopped attacks well before uniformed police could possibly have arrived. Just a few weeks ago, Israeli teachers stopped a terrorist attack at a school in their country.
Indeed, despite the fears being discussed about the risks of concealed handgun permit holders, I haven’t found one of these multiple-victim public shootings where a permit holder has accidentally shot a bystander.
With about 5 million Americans currently with concealed handgun permits in the U.S., and with states starting to have right-to- carry laws for as long as 80 years, we have a lot of experience with these laws and one thing is very clear: Concealed handgun permit holders are extremely law-abiding. Those who lose their permits for any gun-related violation are measured in the hundredths of a percentage point.
We also have a lot of experience with permitted concealed handguns in schools. Prior to the 1995 Safe School Zone Act, states with right-to-carry laws let teachers or others carry concealed handguns at school. There is not a single instance that I or others have found where this produced a single problem.
Though in a minority, a number of universities — from large public schools such as Colorado State and the University of Utah to small private schools such as Hamline in Minnesota — let students carry concealed handguns on school property. Many more schools, from Dartmouth College to Boise State University, let professors carry concealed handguns. Again, with no
evidence of problems.
Few know that Dylan Klebold, one of the two Columbine killers, was closely following Colorado legislation that would have let citizens carry a concealed handgun. Klebold strongly opposed the legislation
and openly talked about it.
No wonder, as the bill being debated would have allowed permitted guns to be carried on school property. He attacked Columbine High School the very day the legislature was scheduled to vote on the bill. With all the media coverage of the types of guns used & how the criminal obtained the gun, at some point the news media might begin to mention the one common feature of these attacks: They keep occurring in gun-free zones.
Gun-free zones are a magnet for these attacks.
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