Netanyahu and Haman and Esther: Janet Tassel
“There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people….If it please Your Majesty, let an edict be drawn for their destruction….”
Every Jewish child recognizes that miserable request as the whiny voice of Haman, the voice of doom for Jewry were it not for Queen Esther, who, when told, said, “How can I behold the destruction of my people?” thus setting in motion instead the destruction of Haman—and giving us the festival of Purim.
Now, by fate or coincidence, on the day before Purim, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is scheduled to address the United States Congress. Like Esther, he will plead for Israel, threatened this time by the modern Haman in the modern Persia, busily assembling the very latest tools of destruction. For as an Iranian computer engineer said not long ago, according to YNet News, the Islamic Republic “could destroy the Jewish state in less than nine minutes.” Apprised of that potential, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, approvingly said, “The Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor and it will be removed.”
Last week Elie Wiesel noted the Purim connection, pleading for government leaders to join him at Netanyahu’s speech, “in hearing the case for keeping weapons from those who preach death to Israel and America.” The question is how many will indeed join Wiesel, in view of the fact that President Obama is overtly instructing Democrats to boycott the prime minister. This diktat should not be surprising, given Obama’s open hostility toward Netanyahu. Recall the president’s leaving Bibi to cool his heels in a White House meeting room while he, Obama, went upstairs to have dinner; recall Obama’s “anonymous” taunt of Netanyahu as a “coward” and “chickens-t.” Recall his crack to President Nicholas Sarkozy on a hot mike, “You’re fed up, but I have to deal with him [Netanyahu] every day.” And as we know, at this moment, Obama has his own campaign workers in Israel working against Netanyahu’s re-election.
Obama’s expressed reasons for his insulting order to boycott Bibi are transparently ludicrous. There is, first, the repeated use of the word “protocol,” implying that Bibi accepted John Boehner’s invitation without the White House being informed. This fabrication has been debunked; the White House was officially informed in advance. Second, there is Obama’s absurd claim that the speech to Congress is an election ploy by Bibi, coming so close to the Israeli elections in March. Except for the fact that Bibi, far from showing up to electioneer, was officially invited by John Boehner. And, as Richard Baehr writes in Israel Hayom,
The initial invitation date was February 11, five weeks before the Knesset elections (subsequently moved back to March 3 to coordinate with Netanyahu’s AIPAC visit). Former President Bill Clinton met with then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres in 1996, even closer to the date of the upcoming Israel elections.
But, as Netanyahu himself has said, the date that drives the speech is the fact that the “deadline for reaching an agreement with Iran is March 24. Now is the time for Israel to make its case.” This is a courageous statement, for it appears, according to many commentators, that Obama wants Netanyahu—and Congress and us citizens—kept in the dark, outside the loop of his negotiations with Iran.
Why the secrecy? What kind of deal is Obama hatching? Remember his State of the Union Address:
Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material. Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran, secures America and our allies—including Israel—while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict.
But as Joel Pollack notes at Breitbart.com, “we have not ‘halted the progress’ of Iran’s nuclear program….For example, Obama came to office promising to uphold previous international understandings that Iran would not be allowed to enrich uranium at all. He also told everyone the deal would cover ballistic missiles. Yet the interim agreement provides for enrichment and does not even cover missiles.” Pollack goes on to list “at least five ways in which Iran has explicitly violated the interim agreement—a ‘bad deal’ that has been extended twice but has failed to produce anything but more time for Iran”:
*Trying to buy equipment for plutonium reactor at Arak, breaking commitment to suspend work.
*Feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into a plant where it had agreed to suspend nuclear enrichment.
*Withholding camera footage of nuclear facilities, defying the International Atomic Energy Agency.
*Testing new IR-8 centrifuges, advancing its enrichment program and making cheating much easier.
*Exporting more energy than allowed under the interim agreement, blunting residual sanctions.
As if that were not enough, he continues, “Earlier this month the Tehran regime announced that it was building two new reactors, and is thought to be behind a suspected facility planned in Syria as well.” In other words, as Omni Ceren writes in Commentary, “Iran will be allowed to continue amassing the materials for a massive nuclear breakout, to happen on a day of its choosing.” It was Netanyahu himself who said, “A regime that openly calls for Israel’s destruction would thus have finally the means to realize its genocidal aims.” In less than nine minutes, he might have added.
It seems painfully clear that such a holocaust would leave our president unmoved. But is it not imperative that we and our representatives hear the ominous truth before it is too late? It was Queen Esther who, pleading for her people, said, “We have been sold, my people and I, to be destroyed, massacred, and exterminated.” But now there is Zionism, and there is Israel, and there is Netanyahu. These are his words:
I think the whole point of Zionism is that the Jewish people would no longer be spectators to the decision-making that determines our fate. Remember, we were once powerless. We were once voiceless. We couldn’t even speak on our behalf. Well, we can and we do now.
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