Anti- Semitism, Terrorism and Organized Crime

ANTI-SEMITISM, TERORISM AND ORGANIZED CRIME

Ist Part

The Ethics of Esther and the victim-offender scheme

By Thomas Albert Gilly

Abstract: The book of Esther is not only highly relevant for an investigation of the origins of anti-Semitic crime and of terrorism, It also constitutes a uniquely, original insight into the process that replaces the quality of the victim with that of the criminal. The book addresses the nature of that process and critiques the process’ ethical roots and implications. Contrary to the ethical contingency and the behaviorist conception, Esther advocates the primacy of values’ non-equivication of value.

Prologue

Allow me to introduce this essay with the following question:

What has anti-Semitism to do with terrorism? AT first glance - nothing. Common observations conclude that these two issues differ in nature.

A Contrary position holds that terrorism is sometimes associated with anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, this remark does not contradict the previous observation simply because the association of each of both issues with the other and even the confusion between each of both can be a pure coincidence.

But what if this association demonstrates a historical continuity? This is obviously the case: The first source that documents such an association is dated from the 5th century BC. From that century to the present day, history is replete with examples that witness anti-Semitism’s association with terrorism.

Given that such an association is not necessarily an eloquent and convincing demonstration of the common nature of both issues, the problem that is involved in our initial question is not really solved.

This problem is an epistemological problem. It consists of the possibility of comparing things that are apparently different in nature. This possibility enables one to compare different issues and draw analogies between them. The comparison requires general theories or concepts which can be successfully applied to issues of different nature and which serve as reference points for comparison.

For instance, organizational theory is such a general theory. It is currently applied to the study of organized crime. But it is also applied to the study of other social phenomena that involve processes of organization or entities which function as organizations. Organized crime research points to forms of organization and processes of rationalization that are common to the criminal and the legal spectrum of social life. Without the help of organizational theory the study of organized crime could never provide for such results.

It follows that the first answer to our initial question; what has anti-Semitism to do with terrorism is as following: They have to do with each other in this that they are organized and function in a similar way.

The concept of structure allows linkages and comparisons among issues and to compare issues that are apparently different in nature.

Structure is involved in the concept of organized crime when considered as the intersection between the bipolar structure of legality and illegality.

It follows that the second answer to our initial question is: Terrorism and anti-Semitism can be thought OF as organized crime.

Instead of focusing on structure or organization – or even nature, it is possible to offer a phenomenal approach to the comparison of the various concrete expressions of anti-Semitism and of terrorism and the establishment of phenomenal convergence.

Given the circumstance that terrorism and anti-Semitism are characteristic of a great number of various and often similar phenomenon, such an analytical scope promises to be fruitful. So as anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic crime and propaganda is to be thought of as various syndromes – religion, ethnicity, politics, economics, culture, individual / collective or State organized, left/ right wing etc, terrorism is either individual or state terrorism, left/ right wing terrorism, ethic, religious or political terrorism.

None of these scopes can be neglected in an in-depth-study of this issue. But this is not the place TO engage in the debate about the syndrome character of anti-Semitism and of terrorism or is it TO question the relevance of organizational theory or to think and analyze both issues as organized crime.

Given the importance of the issue, it is to be studied separately and in a second time. Such analysis is central to the second part of this essay to be published in our upcoming issues.

Instead I will focus, in this first part of my essay, on the book of Esther. Why?

First, because the book of Esther is the first literary source which documents the association between terrorism and anti-Semitism. Second, the book of Esther provides for a unique demonstration of the relevance of the victim-offender scheme’s relationships to terrorism and anti-Semitism. Third, because this construction is observable at three different discourse levels: the original narrative (Esther), anti-Semitism’s and terrorism’s ideology and self-construction; the scientific discourse of victimology and of criminology. Fourth, because the book of Esther is the original witness of a process that is relevant for the understanding of ideological constructions and for the explanation of convergence regarding the quality and the nature of criminology’s and of victimology’s concern about this issue. This process substitutes the offender for the victim and the inverse way...

Introduction

Criminology’s and Victimology’s concern

We begin by drawing an analogy between victimology’s concern about anti-Semitism and terrorism, on the one hand, and between criminology’s concerns about each of both issues on the other hand.

In a previous essay that has been published in our journal I have already pointed at criminology’s embarrassment with terrorism. Such an embarrassment explains the circumstance that criminology, in comparison with other disciplines of social sciences, has shown relative little concern about this issue, and relatively lately.

Note that we observe a similar situation when focusing on victimology. So as criminology has shown relatively little concern both with regards to terrorism and to anti-Semitism, the history of penal victimology offers no significant examples OF the discipline’s involvement in the study of terrorism and of anti-Semitism. Given that the pioneers of this disciplines worked altogether either in the field of criminology or in the criminal justice area, considering that this branch of victimology, analogically to traditional criminology, defines its subject with reference to the criminal act, this observation comes not really as a surprise.

The situation is not the same regarding general victimology. General victimology, according to Mendelsohn (1956) who was among the pioneers of victimology and who first developed that second main stream, is genuinely aimed to a general study of what he called the “victimity.” The study’s goal is to reduce situations of victimity and to develop and provide specific assistance and care to victims. Mendelsohn advocated that this branch be considered independently from penal victimology and to be developed as an autonomous discipline that does not limit its scope on TO victims of criminal acts.

General victimology has shown and continues to show a substantial concern about terrorism and about anti-Semitism. For argument’s sake, Mendelsohn was himself a victim and the creation and development of this branch is to be considered against the background of the Holocaust and the human disasters of World War II

1. Esther and Modern Law and Justice: Against the ethics of contingency

The question that is to be raised then is: why penal victimology and criminology have shown little or even no concern at all about anti-Semitism and terrorism, whereas general victimology has shown a major concern regarding these two issues?

Instead of replying directly to this question, it is preferable to engage in the debate about this problem by introducing it with a think-piece.

The first massive anti- Semitic crime enterprise is documented in the book of Esther (5^th Century BC). This assumes that the history of anti-Semitic violence and crime goes back to the 5^th Century BC. According to W. Laqueur (1979:11-29) the origins of terrorism go back to the activities of the Sicari and Zealots during the 1st century. According to current concepts and definitions of terrorism, the notion covers state sponsored terrorism and governmental terror. Insofar the origins of terrorism are prior to the 1^st century. This assumes that the book of Esther documents both the origin of terrorism and the first massive organization of anti-Semitic crime (5th Century BC).

On this account the book of Esther is to be considered as a source that is highly relevant to the instigation of the historical origins of terrorism and of anti-Semitism. The first observation that is to be made consists of a sort of discrepancy: Esther is currently quoted and commented in history of anti-Semitism. The same source, in terrorism literature and terrorism history, is neither commented, nor is it mentioned at some point.

A first explanation consists of the observation that points at the historically controversial nature regarding the authenticity of the source[i]. But this argument – however powerful it may be, is of very little interest in regards to the explanation of the issue. Documents that are scientifically controversial can hardly be considered as sources. The controversial nature of a document affects its quality and manner of consideration and yet it never affects its heuristic value. Otherwise other documents which, such as for example the protocols of Zion which lack authenticity, could never have received the consideration in anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism study.

A second explanation points at individual terrorism as a privileged focal center of terrorism’s historical study. The long-term focus spotlights terrorist acts committed by individuals or a group of individuals, not State sponsored terrorism or governmental terror.

This second explanation – however plausible it may be is somewhat contradicted by the circumstance that, in the historical literature, the French Regime of the “Terreur” (1793/94) is traditionally considered the origin of modern terrorism. Given the governmental nature of this original form of modern terrorism (Furet & Linier & Raynaud 1985; Furet: 1978; Dispot: 1978; Alexander & Finger: 1977; Singh, 1977:517; Friedlander, 1977: 209-169); Fromkin, 1975: 694-685; Laqueur, 1973), it is somewhat amazing to acknowledge that the terrorist enterprise of King Ahasuerus has never received the consideration that it should have; after all it is to be thought as of the origin of terrorism.

The third explanation points to the normative nature of governmental or State terror. From the viewpoint of legal positivism (being considered in the most strict sense of the word), such type of terrorism is per definition legal terror, not a criminal enterprise.

Could it not be that the history of terrorism, as currently documented in the literature, is the tributary of the legal concept of terrorism that, to a large degree, prevents historians from showing concern about that particular form of terrorism and that, in the final analysis, explains a historical narrative that deliberately or unconsciously ignores the book of Esther?

If this is so, why do the same historians refer to comment on the regime of the French Terror? At first glance, the problem’s solution consists of the idea that the French Terror regime is quoted in the literature because of the Terror regime’s criminal nature as it is defined by law; that, in turn, Esther is not quoted through lack of the legal (criminal) signifier of King Ahasuerus’ terrorist enterprise.

What is important here to say is that within the history of the French Revolution, the critical French historical school that has been represented by Jaures, Matthiez and Soboul and which is the tributary of Marx’s interpretation of the Terror regime interprets the post-Thermidorian reaction against the Terror regimes as a reactionary reversal in regards to the revolutionary process of which the Terror is the expression. Consequently the notion of terrorism and the original use of the word, for this school that has been for a long time mainstream, have a negative and reactionary connotation that holds for the criminalization of the revolutionary process. It follows that the interpretation that is currently used in mainstream history of terrorism and that consists of the equation – French Terror = original form of modern terrorism is a highly controversial think-piece[ii]

At first glance, the situation as narrowed in “Esther” is quite similar to the establishment of the criminal nature of King Ahasuerus’ terror enterprise. Change is required for criminalization and punishment. In fact the situation is quite different.

First in “Esther” the new situation is not the result of a governmental change; but it is due to the discovery of a criminal betrayal that implies that the King engages in a process of moral consciousness, recognizes the evil of his enterprise and condemns the instigator of the criminal betrayal of which he was the victim to death.

Even if the tale of Esther, by telling us that King Ahasuerus revokes the bill that provides the legal bases to the terrorist enterprise, demonstrates a concern about the legal implications of the process that brings the new situation, it remains that such a concern can never be thought as of an eloquent demonstration about legal change. Rather it is to be interpreted as the consecration, in law, of a process that restores an order of ethics that has been troubled by false commitment. Justice is restored: the process that substitutes good for evil (and inversely), because it is inherently part of evil, is definitively reversed. With this definitive reversal the contingency of good and evil, of justice, is definitively abandoned.

The ethical lesson of the tale consists precisely of the advocacy for an order of justice that precludes the contingent nature of good and evil and, finally, the disposition of each of both towards reciprocal substitution.

In contrast, the ethics of the French Terror can never provide for such a lesson. Not only because the ethics that are involved in this particular event and in the reaction against it are to be determined with reference to a change in law that goes hand in hand with social and political change. More importantly, the ethics involved in this particular period of the French Revolution are the ethics of the contingent nature of justice, the inherent ethics of legal positivism. The historical controversy about Thermidor is the prolongation or the reproduction, at the level of terrorism’s history, of the ethics of contingent justice.

The question: what is terrorism – is it the Terror Regime or is it the post-Thermidorian reaction, because of its controversial nature, always requires an answer that necessarily varies as a function of contingency. The circumstance that the controversy persists and that the question has not been answered yet in history comes as a support.

“Legal today, criminal tomorrow and vice versa” – the slogan that resumes the contingent nature of law, of legality and illegality, of modern justice has a double: “Hero today, terrorist tomorrow”. A matching twin is easily discovered in the literature of terrorism:

“What we do is counter terrorism, what the others do is terrorism” (Ferracuti, F. 1982: 131). The variant is: “Terrorist for one, hero for the other”.

These slogans have been for a long time very prominent in academic literature, namely sociology and psychology; they continue to exercise a strong influence upon sociological mainstream research on terrorism and – however controversial, meet a large consensus in public opinion and mass-media (Cottee, S., 2006:149-162; Cottee, S., 2004). The observation that no government of the world, even the most democratic state, is willing to tolerate terrorist threats against its institutions, constitution and citizen, and, in turn, that Governments, even and foremost governments of democratic states, despite formal condemnation of terrorist threats, are likely to support those who fight for their independence and against oppression comes as an empirical support. The contingency of the illegal and criminal nature of behavior, of violence that is used as a means to reach political goal is demonstrated by the circumstance that violence looses its illegal and criminal nature once the goal is reached, once it is institutionalized.

In regard to criminology’s embarrassment with State terror and of the absolute primacy of individual terrorism upon governmental or State sponsored terrorism, this is nothing but another variation of the ethics of contingence in law and justice. (Sack, F., 1993: 271-280; 416-420)

We have reached here a point in our debate that allows us to explore our initial question:

Criminology and penal victimology have shown relative little concern about terrorism, because terrorism, more than any other issue, is the most graphic and eloquent example of the ethics of contingency as manifested in modern law and justice.

The same observation applies to criminology’s and penal victimology’s little concern about anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic violence.

So as governmental terror, from a strict legal positivist viewpoint, can hardly be considered as crime, anti-Semitic propaganda and anti-Semitic crime has often been and continues to be a state enterprise. The circumstance surrounding anti-Semitic propaganda and violence has not been sanctioned by law being put aside.

Contemporary criminology’s crime definition holds for the legal definition of crime, not for the material one. This observation comes as support for this third explanation. Penal victimology proceeds in the same way. Despite the fact that terrorism and anti-Semitic propaganda and violence are currently defined as crime and sanctioned by law, modern justice’s contingency of legality and illegality reaches its highest peak and ID expressed in the most compact manner in terrorism and anti-Semitism. Consequently, in terrorism and anti-Semitism, legality’s fragility and frailty is at its peak. The circumstance explains the somehow not normal and unusual – the deviant attitude of criminology and penal victimology toward terrorism and toward anti-Semitism. This deviant attitude consists of a quasi natural predilection towards the material signifier of crime.

The material signifier has a powerful cognitive supporter. When people are facing terrorism, when they are confronted with terrorist threats, they are likely to feel that the degree of violence and its brutality is always contradicted by the contingent nature of a legal reaction that obviously and necessarily is disproportional with regards to the degree and nature of violence. It is unimaginable that such violence is susceptible to illegality today and legalization tomorrow. And it is unimaginable to consider that the same act that is criminal today has been legal yesterday. The most important consequence is that the legal reaction, in collective consciousness, is increasingly thought as of an extremely relative and frail nature of the legal reaction. This is hardly conceivable given the importance of the disaster, requires for an explanation that is necessarily rooted in the political outworker of the law.

These observations aside, we must consider idea that the book of Esther isn’t quoted in the historical literature on terrorism because it provides for a critique of contingency and an ethic that precludes the contingency of justice as materialized in the most eloquent and compact manner in terrorism is to be seriously considered. The observation that the history of terrorism, by demonstrating any consideration for “Esther” and by commenting the French Terror in this or that sense and by virtue of this or that interpretation scheme, demonstrates its implication in the tributary of contingency in law and justice. After all the controversy about the French Terror, in history, is nothing but the historical matching piece of the contingency in law and justice as materialized in terrorism. As Luhmann (1973:131-67) has pointed, contingent justice is the result of the process of secularization (Sack, F;, 1993: 416-21)

2 Esther and the Contingency of the Victim – Offender scheme. Against the Ethics of Reciprocal Substitution

The history of anti-Semitism teaches that the concept of the victim has been used and continues to be applied as a means to legitimize anti-Semitic propaganda, violence and crime. For argument’s sake, the myths of the Jewish conspiracy and the “blood accusation” that is rooted in the myth of ritual murder perpetrated by Jews against young Christian children – both being inherent parts in anti-Semitic ideology and propaganda – operate the criminal transfiguration of the Jewish victim. The myth of the Jewish conspiracy is a powerful fundamental of classical religious anti-Semitism, modern anti-Semitism and “post-modern” anti-Semitism. Even if the “blood accusation” is genuinely part of Christian, namely Christian Medieval anti-Semitism, the history of modern, namely 19th century anti-Semitism provides for an eloquent demonstration of the myth’s longevity and attraction. “Zionist imperialism” and “Zionist warship” is an issue that came rapidly to the fore of the public debate. Given the highly controversial nature of this issue, the question whether and to which degree this issue holds for the post-modern version of the myth of the Jewish conspiracy is at the heart of a think-piece that is to be seriously considered.

So as anti-Semites are likely to consider themselves as victims of the Jewish conspirator or offender, the substitution of the victim for the offender and vice versa is a process that is manifested in the field of terrorism.

The inherent rationale of intellectually styled apologizes for terrorism, highly prominent in the Western world, consists of the – however deplorable – think piece; “Of course we condemn, but in fact what happened ought to happen”. Such a rationale can not be seen independently from the one that is inherent in the ethics of substitution. In the final analysis it is to be thought as of rationalization as defined and developed by Bertand Russell in his Learning/ Knowledge Theory. The scheme operates rationalization in this that it produces superficial reasons that attempt to justify and legitimate that what is ethically inadmissible and therefore cannot be justified. Rationalization operates the substitution of an artificial cause-effect relation for ethically inadmissible behavior. The process holds for the attempts made by human beings reason to domesticate that what, given its terrific and scandalous nature, escapes imagination. By promoting the ideology that consists of the absolute opposition between reason and axiology, provides human being with the comfortable and in fact illusionary conviction that ethically revolting issues can be domesticated by the process that consists of thinking, identifying and finally denoting – with an explanatory goal that what given its horrific and monstrous nature always resists against its conceptualization. However comfortable it may be, the attempt to dissolve the reality of the monstrosity into its conceptual and its rational identity is an illusionary taming of the ugly and the revolt and fear it involves. All can be explained. But the application of the cause – effect scheme to axiological issues – however desirable and necessary can neither be the supporter for intellectual apologizes of monstrosity.

The process that supplants the victim by the offender and vice versa has its roots in the contingent nature of modern law and justice. It is favored by the invasion of legality by the material signifier of crime as eloquently demonstrated in terrorism and anti-Semitism.

In comparison, the book of Esther advocates the ethics of the victim’s and of the offender’s irreversibility. The originality consists of the cognitive component of both the process of substitution and the restoration of authenticity that holds for the victory of non-contingent justice upon contingency.

The book of Esther tells us that King Ahasuerus decision to organize the genocide of the Jewish people is rooted in Haman’s anger about Mordecai’s behavior; the former does not support the latter’s refusal to prostrate himself before him. He is revolted, angry and considers himself a victim of a behavior that demonstrates undue lack in respect.

And when Haman saw that Mordecai would neither kneel nor prostrate himself before him, Haman became full of wrath.

But it seemed contemptible to him to lay hands on Mordecai alone, for they had told him Mordecai's nationality, and Haman sought to destroy all the Jews who were throughout Ahasuerus's entire kingdom, Mordecai's people.

ESTHER 3: 5,6

King Ahasuerus’ final decision is based on Haman’s advice:

And Haman said to King Ahasuerus, "There is a certain people scattered and separate among the peoples throughout all the provinces of your kingdom, and their laws differ from [those of] every people, and they do not keep the king's laws; it is [therefore] of no use for the king to let them be.

ESTHER 3; 8

As a result the King, by making a bill, provides the terrorist enterprise with a legal basis.

. And letters shall be sent by the hand of the couriers to all the king's provinces, to destroy, kill, and cause to perish all the Jews, both young and old, little children and women, on one day, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and their spoils to be taken as plunder.

ESTHER 3:13

At first glance, the focus is shifted from the concept of the victim to that of cultural difference. Cultural difference, in this context, holds for scatter, cultural separation, if not incompatibility with regards to dominant culture and it holds for a natural predisposition towards the transgression of law. In fact, the victimological rationale is neither abandoned, nor is it dissolved into that of cultural difference. Rather it is veiled utilitarian. There is no use to let them alive, says Haman. And according to this rationale, there is no use because the Jewish people, given their cultural exception and specificity, present an actual and permanent danger for the kingdom and necessarily damage the kingdom if they were not killed.

Modern victimological jargon translates the scheme by the notion of the “victimological risk situation”. According to the inherent rationale in Haman’s discourse, this risk is actual and permanent.

The book of Esther is an eloquent lesson about the construction of an artificial cultural identity that is operated with reference to the concept of the victim. The construction’s rationale is the process that supplants the emotional or affective concept of the victim by that of a utilitarian and rationalist. As the result, the original individual and emotional faceted victimological scheme is successfully generalized and granted with objective and empirical “evidence”. It is that “objectivity” and “general nature” that provides legitimization to the anti-Semitic crime enterprise.

The anti-Semitic Terror enterprise is dissolved into the legitimate enterprise by which the victim reacts against the “Jewish crime”.

The tale has a happy end: Haman’s conspiracy is discovered, the King condemns him to death, Esther and Ahasuerus marry and, from now on, the Jewish people can live in liberty and under the protection of the King.

Esther’s end is happy not only in regards to the book’s narrative; much more important is the happy end that it provides to the inadmissible confusion between the victim and the offender:

The alienated victim-offender scheme is entirely restored to its original.

To better understand the return of the original it is worth to consider the nature and the roots of the discovery.

The discovery is not the result of investigation; it is not the tributary of a rationalist process. Rather it results from the combination of several factors that play together and occur in a way that could neither be expected nor predicted. Today we would say it is fate. In fact fate is an issue that plays very little role in Esther. Apart from the passage that tells us that the King, in a sleepless night, decided that the national archive were read to him and that the part that was read concerned Mordecai, fate is nowhere involved in the whole book.

And even in this particular case fate’s relevance is to be discussed. What is important here is not the information that the King is sleepless and that Kings like many other people who cannot sleep want other people to read them good night stories. Rather it is the witness of that particular part of the records. As recorded, Mordecai, some times before, has discovered and revealed to the Queen a plot against the King’s life instigated by two of his chamberlains.

At a first glance the witness consists of Mordecai’s service towards the King; he has saved his life. More important here is that Mordecai, by revealing the plot to the Queen, demonstrated his loyalty towards the King. Insofar he is respectful of the King.

To better understand the relevance of this observation for the ethics of Esther, it is useful to draw an analogy between this part’s message and Haman’s assertion that Jewish people do not respect the King’s law.

At a first glance Mordecai’s respect towards the King, as pointed in the previous observation, is contradicted by Haman’s assertion. After all, one may argue, people who demonstrate their respect to the King are likely to be respectful of his laws. In fact the contradiction depends upon the think piece that consists of the complete assimilation of each of both issues.

The problem that is raised then is to be resumed in the following question: How is it possible to think behavior that is respectful of the King regardless from the legal dimension that is necessarily involved in such respect?

The only possible answer that can be given is that the respect towards the King is not rooted in a person’s kingship or in a society’s political government. Instead it is rooted in the duty to respect human being and to do no evil. If Mordecai had not revealed the plot against the King’s life, he would have behaved in a way that lacks in respect both with regards to the human being that is incarnated in the King (as in any other individual) and with regards to the precept to do not evil.

Such a duty, through lack of the possibility to define it with reference to the Kingdom’s laws, is necessarily rooted in and commanded by a code of ethics of which Mordecai is respectful.

As Mordecai is a Jew, it is very likely that he behaved as Jewish people customarily behave – in conformity with Jewish ethics.

The identity of Mordecai, his Jewish identity, derives from the absolute respect of these ethics. It follow that there is no possibility of transgression. The respect of the ethical rules is due in any situation and independently from the circumstances. The observation that Mordecai does not only reveal the plot against the King’s life, but also, by refusing obedience to Haman, refuses in fact to bow to the image of an idol, and therefore demonstrates his obedience to Jewish ethics comes as support. The same observation applies to Esther: she intends to make her petition and she saves the Jews’ lifes – she behaves in a way that puts her own life at very high risk. She keeps silence even under heavy provocation and she remains true to the precepts of her religious ethics, she does not eat forbidden food, preferring a diet of vegetables and observes the laws. By requesting all Jews that have already eaten food to observe a rigid feast, despite of Passover, she even remains true to the precepts of the Megillat Ta’anit forbidding feast during this period. And she refuses to accept the presents of the King, preferring to continue her decent way of life, to be true to her own rather than to adopt the habit and customs OF a future sovereignty is expected to adopt

“Regardless of circumstances and situations - remain true to your ethics to be true to yourself” – this is somewhat the quintessence of Jewish ethics.

As this sort of ethics implicates that behavior remains always true to itself, to its ethical essence, it precludes the contingency that is naturally inherent in behavior as it varies as a function of different situations and circumstances.

Esther stages the victory of that ethical precept against the ethics of contingency. This victory holds for the discovery of Haman’s betrayal. The records are read during the night before Esther reveals to the King that Haman is the enemy of the Jewish people. Haman’s betrayal is to be thought as the materialization, on the behaviorist level, of behavior that is contingent in nature, because it varies as a function of circumstances.

If Haman were not Ahasuerus’ Prime Minister, he would never felt as a victim. And the Jews would have never become the victims of the terrorist and criminal enterprise. In contrast, Esther behaves in a way that is always uniform and true to her ethics, to herself, regardless of the circumstances.

The discovery as it is narrowed in Esther is to be analyzed as the heuristically highly relevant process that provides an insight view of the process that supplants the ethical essence of behavior by that of a behaviorist conception of behavior.

That what is discovered is the substitution of behaviorist ethics that vary as a function of behavior for behavior that, because of its ethical roots and ethical determinism does not vary. A behavioral conception of ethics holds for ethical relativism[iii]

As ethics are historically and genuinely rooted in behavior, the notion “behaviorist ethics” requires for clarification[iv].

The behavioral scheme implies that people interact. The nature of interaction is never affected by the circumstance; what is affected by the environmental change is the quality of the parties who interact and finally their position in the relationship.

The most ancient and archaic figure of interaction is to be thoughts of as force and weakness. In the struggle for power and self-esteem that opposes two individuals there is always a winner and a looser. The winner, who has successfully and by the means of force and violence subjected the other, holds for the prototype of the offender; the other for the prototype of the victim. The inherent structure of the scheme is always the same; change consists of quality exchange: “A” who is today the offender, is tomorrow in the shoes of “B”, and the inverse way.

The rationale of the scheme implies that “A” is potentially “B”; it provides for the reciprocal substitution of “A’s quality for that of “B”.

The ethical matching-piece of this scheme – ethical or moral relativism – consists of the reciprocal substitution of "A" who is doing evil for "B" who is doing well – of good and evil. The normative version – relativism in law and justice – consists of the reciprocal substitution of criminal behavior for legal behavior. The A – B scheme is always relevant, at the only difference that the inter-individual relation between two people, due to its generalization, has developed into the relationships between the members of a given society.

So as the behaviorist conception of behavior (as opposed to the ethical version) implies that ethics vary as a function of behavior, the scheme, at the normative level of law, implies that law and justice vary as a function of collective behavior and finally of collective behavior’s political institutionalization.

The intelligence of the victim-offender scheme’s heuristic value – the scheme’s relevance for the understanding of its ethical rationale and its ethical background - is, to the amazement of all, documented in a Jewish source that dates from the 4^th Century BC.

The heuristic aspect of the discovery must translate, at the level of the narrative, as a happy end. By revoking the edict that provides the legal basis to the terrorist enterprise against the Jews, the King recognizes that Haman was doing evil, that his edict was due to a false commitment and that the Jewish people were the victims of a betrayal. In turn, the edict’s revocation supports the victory of ethics over ethics’ behaviorist determinism, the victory of substantial difference between good and evil upon ethical contingency.

Even if the tale tells little about the nature and the historical outcome of the legal provision that grants civil rights and protection to the Jewish people, given the rationale of the tale, it is legitimate to argue that the new legal provision, despite its normative and therefore contingent nature, is to be thought as of a universal regarding validity and application. Insofar it holds for the anticipation of our contemporary notion of “crime against humanity”.

Haman is hanged and these are the provisions of the new edict:

. And the king's scribes were summoned at that time, in the third month-that is the month of Sivan-on the twenty-third day thereof, and it was written according to all that Mordecai commanded, to the Jews and to the satraps and the governors, and the princes of the provinces from Hodu to Cush, a hundred and twenty-seven provinces, every province according to its script and every nationality according to its tongue, and to the Jews according to their script and according to their tongue.

. And he wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus and sealed it with the king's ring, and he sent letters by the couriers on horseback, the riders of the king's steeds-the camels, bred of the dromedaries that the king had given to the Jews who are in every city, [the right] to assemble and to protect themselves, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish the entire host of every people and province that oppress them, small children and women, and to take their spoils for plunder.

Esther 8: 9-11

3 Esther and the Critics of the Category of Identity.

Against Totalitarian Ethics

As we have already seen, Mordecai is respectful of the King because he is true to himself and to the ethics that are shared and observed by the Jews. The opposite is Haman who feels angry about Mordecai’s disobedience and lacking respect. This assumes that Haman expects Mordecai to behave in a way that is respectful of him, not to the other who is incarnated in Mordecai, in a way that fits within Haman’s identity, not within Mordecai’s identity. By demonstrating his anger and finally his offended narcissism, Haman expects Mordecai to behave in the way that he believes convenient AND appropriate with regards to his identity and position. He wants him to act as Haman would himself behave. The psychological process consists of the projection, on the other, of his identity. He wants him to behave as if the other were himself.

Projections of that kind are current; they are characteristic of human relationship. The substitution of opposites may be viewed against the background of contingency. Such projection can not be viewed against another background. If you were me, then I am you.

Each of both figures is inherent in a tradition of philosophical thought that is genuinely the tributary of the category of identity.

The ethical implications and consequences of this philosophical tradition can be easily determined against the background of Esther.

Suppose that ethical relativism is a guideline for every day life and that the precept is shared by the majority of the people living in a given society. Given moral relativism’s impact upon contemporary moral philosophy and social life, the think-piece does not require an effort of imagination. Suppose furthermore that ethical relativism is the core-precept of the deal by which people convene to live and co-exist together. Imagine that such a deal has been relevant for the ancient and archaic figure of interaction that, as already mentioned before, is to be thought as of force and weakness.

The first question that is to be raised is as follows: Among the two parties that are involved in sharing the deal, who is the one who makes the proposal to share the deal. Obviously it is the winner, not the looser, the one who has successfully offended the other, not the victim.

It is very likely that the content of the deal consists of the following proposal:

The winner says to the loser:

“Look, today and in the struggle that opposed us you have lost. Of course, given the actual situation, you are completely right to see in me the one who has offended you, who has used force against you and you are again completely right to consider yourself as the victim of my offence. But note that our relation is neither specific to us, nor is it devoid of radical change and valid for ever. Rather it is as follows: What happens today to you, tomorrow it happens to me and this knowledge applies to everyone. In fact we are the same!”

“We are the same”, in this think piece, holds for potential consensus. The message is so clear and obvious that the winner does not need to provide a verbal support to it:

“If you get the idea that we are the same, then that idea is the base of our consensus and the rationale that governs the ethics of social life. Experience teaches that it fits quite well within reality – difficult to be in disagreement about empirical evidence;”

The loser /victim might agree or might disagree. In general he agrees, and, given ethical relativism’s influence upon modern society, he has given his agreement.

Suppose that he won't agree. Contra he might argue:

“Your reasoning is ok, but it is wrong both with regards to its premise and with regards to its generalization and its ethical implication. You were telling me that we are the same. You were telling me that we are the same – so why then it is you, the offender, and not me the victim who is telling this? Obviously it is because we are not the same. Otherwise it would be me who would have told you that we are the same. It follows that your ethical project is rooted in and derives from a relation that is based on physical force and which, because of its particular nature can never be generalized. As we are not the same we ought to be the same. And we can only be what we ought to be because of this original relation wherein you are the winner who has offended me, the victim. Because of the irreversible nature of this original relation, the ethics that is aimed to develop social consensus by means of reciprocal substitutions of me and you, by means of identity is always contradicted by the original non-identity of me and you.”

If we agree with the loser’s / victim’s reasoning, the ethical consequences, of a project designed to develop social consensus by means of behaviorist ethics or ethical contingency, is easily evaluated.

The development of social consensus through ethical contingency and the increase of such ethics are proportionate to the increase in the manifestation / re-production of the original relation. In concrete terms this means that the development of social consensus is proportionate to the development of the original offender-victim relation. The somewhat paradoxical consequence is that consensus reaches its peak when victimization is at its highest degree. In turn the more consensus is developed the better is manifest its origin and root in constraint and force. But this assumes that social consensus, according to this scheme, develops in proportion to the development or reproduction of the original relationship that demonstrates the illusionary nature of social consensus. The paradox culminates into society’s permanent aim at the complete annihilation of the synchrony. Applied to the original victim, the theory of the black sheep is the most prominent and popular supporter for the victim’s intellectual and physical elimination. As the process is aimed at the suppression of synchrony or, to say it in other words, at the suppression of its revelation (the illusionary nature of social consensus) – the maintenance and re-production of “real good social consensus”, the victim’s elimination is not a singular and historically determined or limited event; rather it necessarily takes the form of an historical program that is basically and genuinely rooted in the inherently ‘ahistorical’ myth of the “eternally cupid”.

In the final analysis, the scheme requires the original victim’s perpetual accusation and it provides successfully for his/ her “natural” condition of cupidity. However deplorable and inadmissible the scheme, due to its psychological rationale, its impact is so powerful that the victim is likely to perceive him/herself as the cupid individual or group that is at the origin of the “evil”. The reason is that his/ her “fault”/ ”crime” which, according to its real significance, consists of the revelation that the consensus’ illusion and ugly hypocrisy is always underpinned by the victim’s anthropologically faceted looser complex rooted in the original experience of victimization.

The proto-type of that victim is the Jew. Esther provides for looser complex prevention by means of ethical relativism’s criticism. The book is the biblical anticipation of Zionism.

Zionism may be viewed against the background of the inherently ‘ahistorical’ myth of the “eternally cupid”. Zionism, therefore, symbolizes history’s revenge on the myth and against the historical program of victim suppression. As far as the book’s chronologically structured sequence of events can be considered as the historical process that culminates into restored justice, the book, here again, is to be considered as the biblical anticipation of history’s revenge.

Ethical relativism implies that value equivalence and exchange is substituted for value non-equivalence and value use. Ethical relativism holds for the substitution of value exchange for values and for the inherent commitment in values to use them. Such a commitment is anchored in the non-equivalence of values. When ethical relativism has reached its peak, good and evil, doing good and doing evil, practicing ethics have reached the end of the line.

“Esther”, in the 4^th century BC, has already precluded such ethics and a society built upon such ethics. By staging the victory of ethics upon ethical behaviorism and ethical contingency, the book demonstrates, in the most original and authentic manner, its commitment to achieving the victory of value use upon value exchange.

Haman’s projection holds for the achievement of identity between himself (subject) and Mordecai, the other (object). It consists of the object’s subjectification.

In Esther such an identity is staged negatively – contrary to Hegel.

And the discovery, in the final analysis, holds for the inherent and ethically inadmissible ethics that, by imposing violently identity upon the otherness of the other (object) and by suppressing radically its identity (genuine non identity), culminates, very practically, in totalitarian society – in the dissolution of human being into a thing – to be exchanged, substituted and, after destruction, substituted by others.

Fortunately the tale’s happy end precludes totalitarian ethics.

In this respect. the event that prompts the discovery consists of a short and apparently contingent, but highly eloquent and symbolical talk between Ahaserus and Haman.

The king asks Haman how to reward a man who has saved his life. Haman replies:

And Haman said to the King, "A man whom the king wishes to honor

. Let them bring the royal raiment that the king wore and the horse that the king rode upon, and the royal crown should be placed on his head.

And let the raiment and the horse be delivered into the hand of one of the king's most noble princes and let them dress the man whom the king wishes to honor, and let them parade him on the horse in the city square and announce before him, 'So shall be done to the man whom the king wishes to honor!' "

And the king said to Haman, "Hurry, take the raiment and the horse as you have spoken and do so to Mordecai the Jew, who sits in the king's gate; let nothing fail of all that you have spoken."

. And Haman took the raiment and the horse, and he dressed Mordecai and paraded him in the city square and announced before him, "So shall be done to the man whom the king wishes to honor!"

Esther 6:7-11

What is important here is that Haman ignores that the one who has saved the king’s life by revealing the plot against his life to the reign is Mordecai. If Haman would not have ignored the life saver’s identity, he would not have answered as he had. Analogically, the king would have never granted Haman the honor to dress Mordecai and to deliver the horse if he would not have ignored Haman’s real nature. Here again each of both behave as a function of the particular circumstance (that is rooted in reciprocal ignorance) As far as their behavior is rooted in a moral judgment both Haman and Ahasuerus act / talk according to the behaviorist conception of ethics. For argument’s sake Haman behaves as he does because the other is the king, not Mordecai. And the king honors his Prime Minister because he trusts him.

The discovery of Mordecai’s good deed symbolizes the return, or even more accurately, the victory of his identity; it is somewhat the restoration of his otherness that has been suppressed by Haman imposing his subjectivity upon Mordecai’s otherness. This otherness, because of its irreducible nature, escapes from contingency.

Unfortunately Esther’s lesson, in the history of human beings, has not been followed. The tales happy end is contradicted by the history of humanity. If Hegel was right in pointing to the notion’s truth consisting of its genesis, then there is hardly need– this time pro Hegel – to spotlight a state of ethics and of humanity where each of both is far away from its accomplishment.

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