By Jonah Mandel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a pointed gift for Barack Obama after several days in Washington this week: A copy of the Book of Esther, which tells of the genocidal plot against the Jewish people devised by Haman the Agagite.

It’s a familiar-sounding story: In Persia, an oppressive and vengeful leader seeks the total annihilation of the Jewish people. It sounds like a line from an Israeli speech, but it’s also the story of the Purim holiday that Jews mark this week, beginning Wednesday at sundown.

This year, however, the holiday has additional meaning for some, providing historical parallels as Israel’s leaders weigh their response to Iran’s nuclear program.

Netanyahu and others in Israel fear the program masks a weapons drive and argue that a nuclear-armed Iran would create a new Persian threat to the existence of the Jewish people.

The gift, then, sent a clear message, said Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi: “It helps Obama understand how Jews look at the world.”

Netanyahu also reportedly explicitly told Obama that Israel faced a modern-day Haman, and drew similar parallels in a speech to a U.S. pro-Israel lobby group.

“In every generation, there are those who wish to destroy the Jewish people,” he said. “In this generation, we are blessed to live in an age when there is a Jewish state capable of defending the Jewish people.”

In the same speech, he pledged that, “as prime minister of Israel, I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation.”

In Israel, others have made the connection, with senior ultra-Orthodox rabbi Ovadia Yosef warning last month: “There is now also a Haman in Persia.”

But while Netanyahu and his confidantes are said to be considering military action against Iran, Yosef noted that the Purim story teaches that salvation came through prayer.

“We do not need to attack Iran,” he said. “God will fight for us.”

Author Halevi said Netanyahu’s more activist reading of the Purim story was understandable.

“Tradition emphasizes that [the Book of Esther] is the only sacred text in the Hebrew Bible without God’s name in it, and that’s understood as an indication that this is a story that requires human initiative, that saving oneself requires human initiative, and that God’s help is implicit rather than overt,” he said.

“In that sense, Netanyahu is reading the Purim story correctly when he advocates active Israeli self defence against a perceived existential threat.”

But Micah Goodman, who teaches Jewish philosophy at Hebrew University, cautioned against reading too much into the parallels.

“History never repeats itself, and any attempt to learn from one time to another is always misleading,” he said.

“Purim is a symbol in the hearts and minds” of Jewish people, and “tapping into it is a way of getting people to listen.”

IRAN NUCLEAR TALKS

Israel is all but convinced that sanctions and diplomacy will not get Iran to rein in its nuclear drive and is speaking more stridently of resorting to military action.

The Jewish state on Wednesday cautiously welcomed the planned resumption of talks with Iran while insisting that any agreement must ensure Tehran does not refine uranium above the 5% level suitable for power plants.

“There will be no one happier than us, and the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] said this in his own voice, if it emerges that in these talks Iran will give up on its military nuclear capability,” the premier’s national security adviser Yaakov Amidror told Israel Radio.

Others were even less convinced.

France voiced skepticism on Wednesday that a planned revival of talks between six world powers and Iran would succeed, saying Tehran still did not seem sincerely willing to negotiate on the future of its contested nuclear program.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, who represents the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany in dealings with Iran, said on Tuesday they had accepted Iran’s offer to return to talks after a standstill of a year that has seen a drift towards conflict in the oil-rich Gulf.

The talks could dampen what U.S. President Barack Obama has called a rising drumbeat of war, alluding to talk of last-resort Israeli attacks on Iran that he and many others worry would kindle a wider Middle East war and hammer the global economy.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, however, raised doubt about what the talks could achieve. “I am a little skeptical … I think Iran continues to be two-faced,” Juppe told France’s i-Tele television.

“That’s why I think we have to continue to be extremely firm on sanctions (already imposed on Iran), which in my view are the best way to prevent a military option that would have unforeseeable consequences,” he said.

Iranian officials in Tehran were unavailable for comment.

Iran has pledged to float “new initiatives” at the talks, whose venue and date must be decided, but has not committed itself explicitly to discussing ways of guaranteeing that its nuclear advances will be solely peaceful, as the West demands.

Previous talks have foundered over Iran’s refusal to discuss what it deems its “inalienable” right to develop nuclear energy, and recent Iranian comments have not diverged from that line.

“With God’s help Iran’s nuclear course should continue firmly and seriously. No obstacles can stop our nuclear work,” clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said last month.

With files from Agence France-Presse and John Irish, Reuters