Obama, Emanuel, and the Israeli Lobby

Anyone who wants to know where Obama stands on the Israeli war on Palestinians needs to do just one thing: read the entry on Obama’s chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel

Here are some excerpts from that entry: “His father, Benjamin M. Emanuel, a Jerusalem-born pediatrician, was a member of the Irgun [...] Emanuel’s first name, Rahm (רם) – high or lofty in Hebrew – is the namesake of one Rahamim (surname unknown), which means mercy in Hebrew, killed in the 1940s fighting for the outlawed Zionist group Lehi. The surname Emanuel (עמנואל), adopted by the family in honor of his father’s brother Emanuel Auerbach, killed in Jerusalem during a skirmish with Arabs, means God is with us. Sources conflict as to whether the family changed its name from Auerbach in 1933 or 1938. [...] When the family lived in Chicago, Emanuel attended Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, a Conservative Jewish day school. After his family moved to Wilmette, he attended public schools: Romona School, Wilmette Junior High School, and New Trier West High School.He and his brothers attended summer camp in Israel, including just after the 1967 Six Day War. [...] Emanuel’s wife, Amy Rule, converted to Judaism shortly before their wedding. They are members of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Chicago. They have a son and two daughters; the older two attend the same Conservative day school Emanuel himself attended as a child.[...] Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation is quoted as saying: “It’s a very involved Jewish family”; “Amy was one of the teachers for a class for children during the High Holidays two years ago.” Emanuel has said of his Judaism: “I am proud of my heritage and treasure the values it has taught me.” [...] Emanuel is known for his “take-no-prisoners attitude” that has earned him the nickname “Rahm-bo.” Emanuel is said to have “mailed a rotten fish to a former coworker after the two parted ways.” On the night after the 1996 election, “Emanuel was so angry at the president’s enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting ‘Dead! … Dead! … Dead!’ and plunging the knife into the table after every name.” However, by 2007 his close friends were saying that he has “mellowed out.” Stories of his personal style have entered the popular culture, inspiring articles and websites that chronicle these and other quotes and incidents.”

“During his original 2002 campaign, Emanuel “indicated his support of President Bush’s position on Iraq, but said he believed the president needed to better articulate his position to the American people.”

“In June 2007, Emanuel condemned an outbreak of Palestinian violence in the Gaza Strip and criticized Arab countries for not applying the same kind of pressure on the Palestinians as they have on Israel. At a 2003 pro-Israel rally in Chicago, Emanuel told the marchers Israel was ready for peace but would not get there until Palestinians “turn away from the path of terror”.”

This man’s biography, and of course Obama’s own comments at the 2008 AIPAC—Obama’s first public intervention after beating Clinton—show how foolish journalists are to think that the U.S. will pursue anything other than a hard right-wing political agenda in the Middle East, if not beyond over the years to come. The rest of the Wikipedia entry also makes it clear that Emanuel is a neoliberal when it comes to the political economic aspects of government.

Obama’s choice of chief-of-staff—arguably the single most important presidential lieutenant—shows up the folly of believing that Israel is waging war on the Palestianians in Gaza ‘while it still can’, i.e. before Bush goes. Israel is waging war on the Palestinians—waging a form of state terror—because it has its own elections coming up. Once this war is over, and once the Obamuel team is established, we will see business as usual in Washington D.C. The difference is that this time there will be a president who is dead clever, and who is supported by a team of zealots who, unlike Bush’s men, know the true art of hegemonic manipulation.

After the first wave of relief following Obama’s election, there is now good reason to believe that a democratic U.S. is a thing of the past. Indeed, every speech that Obama gives from now on, and which invokes the images of hope and change, will be flatly contradicted by the fact that Obama has surrounded himself with some of the very people who were at the heart of the corruption and increasingly right-wing caracter of the Bush administration, and of the Clinton government before it.

Nota bene: in case you didn’t know, the Irgun was one of the Zionist ‘terrorist’ groups that evicted Palestinians from Palestine in 1948.

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~ by crocwatch on 7 January 2009.