Obama supporters in Israel (from the Gush Shalom site).
More Rahm Stuff–Ketubah, and a Joke My Mother Tells Better Than I Can is the full title of this story from Philip Weiss at Mondoweiss, and it relates a tongue in cheek interpretation of Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff. Strange how this once proClinton politician moved almost unnoticed to the Obama camp, once it became evident that Hillary’s campaign was going down the tubes, especially so since Hillary was probably the most antiPalestinian, proAIPAC Democrat in the field. Her and Bill’s friendly meeting with Israel’s most notorious racist, Avigdor Lieberman, at the Saban Center a few years ago still reverberates in the minds of pro-peace activists.
Listen to Philip Weiss’ mother for insight.
First two names on New Republic’s (TNR) Obama’s power list are David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel who supported Hillary till June 4, the AIPAC convention, then jumped, and obviously suffered no consequences. Some guys have all the fun. TNR points out that Axelrod signed Emanuel’s ketubah, the Jewish wedding document (when he intermarried and she converted). I.e., they’re tight, nothing’s going wrong here, boychick. First 3 of 6 on the list are Jewish. You’d think that maybe Mr. Obama could sign up David Frum as a speechwriter? That would be nice.
My friend Rupa Shah sent me this piece from Wayne Madsen’s website (for subscribers only so link not provided): Madsen says that Obama may face a security issue with Emanuel since “informed U.S. intelligence sources [say] that prospective Barack Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has an active FBI counter-intelligence file maintained on him… Questions about Emanuel’s links to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, were allegedly so great that President Bill Clinton was forced to dismiss Emanuel from the White House staff in 1998.”
I never go in for the Mossad stuff because the dual loyalty stuff is so much in plain sight that looking for the secret connection is a little pointless. There’s an old Jewish joke about a rich kid who’s carried up to a Catskills hotel on a pillow by a servant–my mother will say I’m telling this wrong–and a yenta says, “Oh my, the poor boy can’t walk.” The rich kid’s mother overhears it and says, “Thank god he doesn’t have to.” That’s like Emanuel being a Mossad agent. Why would he have to?
The question of dual loyalty is perhaps not so much in question as the question of loyalty to what? The right wing Zionists are suspiciously quiet about this appointment, which should make everyone else suspicious.
Uri Avnery, the founder of the Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, doesn’t know what to make of Rahm Emanuel’s appointment either. But he is hopeful. Still, when wasn’t Uri Avnery hopeful. This time his hopes are on Obama as the photo above depicts. Will Obama, like the Clintons, disappoint?
Yes. But he will disspoint only if you have the wrong expectations. Obama has given no reason to think he would do otherwise. When it comes to the Middle East, he’s as American as apple pie, in spite of his two Arabic names which the rightwingers ironically tried to use as evidence of Arab sympathies, that is, less than enthusiastic support for Israel no matter what.
The issue is not Arab sympathies but lack of Palestinian sympathy, the feeling that since 1948 the Israelis have been justified in ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from the lands that have been their home for over a thousand years. And the ethnic cleansing has continued since 1967, and continues today in the remaining Palestinian territories.
How can support for Israel be enthusiastic under these circumstances?
Yes, of course, a (considerable?) number of USAians thought he would be an Arab or pro-Arab because of his name and, by extension, would not be enthusiastic enough about Israel no matter what. You write:
How can support for Israel be enthusiastic under these circumstances?
Well, it is still flourishing as much as ever in the U.S. where the issue is presented as an us-or-them situation. I know it’s pathetic, unfair and disgusting. But no one can deny that the attitude towards Israel and the Palestinians in the U.S. has shifted one fraction of an inch towards the Palestinians. Racism anyone?
Above read: NOT shifted!
The Emanuel appointment is looking more gloomy by the day. The more I read the more concerned I am for the Palestinians. Obama has said nothing that would give the Palestinian people hope.
If Obama is serious about his Iraq timeline he may have use for Emanuel to keep AIPAC at bay while we withdraw. Israel would love 150,000 US troops in Iraq until the end of time. Our only hope is he is using the former Hillary supporter more then the guy realizes. After withdrawal Obama pushs a peace deal and a realistic two state solution.
I believe Obama wants to be a peacemaker and I know he is a very smart and politically savvy man. Maybe just maybe Emanuel’s appointment will look better as the new president’s foreign policy unfolds. Then again maybe Obama is exactly what he says he is, a blind supporter of Israeli policy.
A letter writing campaign may be in order after the inauguration. Something that lets the new administration know that the Palestinian suffering is not going unnoticed here in the states.
Obama is quiet about the plight of the Palestinians, while vocal about America’s undying support of Israel. It may all be political as attested to by the Bush push for peace in the last year of his presidency, when he had nothing to lose, but there is no indication that Obama will take the ball Bush punted to him on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We can only hope that this is a different president. However, if he does not act quickly after the inauguration, he will end up in Bush’b boots, too little too late. He will end up playing Israel’s game, which Jeff Halper correctly described as “managed conflict” while Israel continues its slow but inexorable colonialism.
What can I say? With Emanuel we’re getting what we see. This is not a magic show. Land is real. It even says so in the Jewish bible. It’s yours, it was said, so they grabbed it once and then twice. Only the second time the blowback created complications and here we are. But the basic premise is that the land has been promised: end of story.
As the Palestinian educator Hannnh Ashwari once put it, in not exact quotes, our God is a different God. Strange that a God, the only God, would favor the rights of one people over the rights of another. Is this really monotheism, and wasn’t this the one and only contribution of Jewish intellectualism until 30 BC?
shergald,
Despite all appearances to the contrary, Israel is not interested in religion. It is interested in land, houses, floors, ceilings, possessions. Orchards that produce wealth, nothing more. As long as the supporters of the Palestinians lose themselves in intellectual fantasies nothing will change. What I can’t understand is that the Palestinians, like the Israelis, one of the most political savvy group in the Middle East, can’t confront Israel in the arena of western public opinion. There are Palestinians who have more than enough money and (western) education to push the Palestinain cause. You won’t believe it, but the average USAian has no idea that Palestinians left their houses because of Zionist violence and were never allowed to return. Why not an advertising campaign in the US showing the people or their descendants and the houses and property they left behind out of fear for their lives. An advertisement in the NY Times stating how villages were destroyed and people purged (as in European pogrom), showing pictures. No, nothing. Do you think that people know this?
Quentin,
These guys are trying:
http://www.endtheoccupation.org/
Thanks for the link.
Here is just some material I can share with you that might respond to some of your questions. Palestinian-American constitute only a small minority of Arab-Americans, whose voice can only be heard through books and occasional news show appearances. By contrast, AIPAC is the second largest lobby group in the US, and it apparently has pull with the national media. But there is a wider effort going on to censor news in the US about the reality in Palestine, and when not censored, to present news in a proIsrael propagandized manner.
Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land (with Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Arik Ackerman, founder of Rabbis for Human Rights, and many others)
Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCL6WdnuNp4
Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo2HW4T7wK4
Read Jimmy Carter’s PALESTINE: PEACE NOT APARTHEID and understand the crux of US/AIPAC foreign policy. Carter has had an immense influence in turning around Americans perceptions of the conflict, in short, a truth bearing understanding.
See Off The Charts: Media Bias and Censorship in America.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5600677940569035557&q=Alternate+Focus
Like most Americans, Alison Weir, the editor of a small-town newspaper in California, knew very little about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, other than what she had gleaned from the evening news or newspaper headlines. As a journalist, her attention was on issues much closer to home. Neither a muslim nor a jew, she nevertheless became more curious about the topic of the Palestinian uprising. And as she researched it, she became increasingly suspicious that the American media were not telling us the whole story. Months later, she traveled to the occupied territories as an independent journalist to find out for herself what the U.S. media seemed to be omitting. Three months after returning from Palestine, Alison Weir quit her job and founded If Americans Knew, an organization dedicated to quantifying the ways in which the American media was misinforming the public about the conflict. Ms. Weir explains her group’s methodology, analyzes the data, and reports on the key findings.
If Americans Knew can be linked to here: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/sides.html
Here is her report about the suicide bombings during the second Intifada and what caused them, something most Americans are unaware of.
The first suicide bombing in the second intifadah was on Dec. 22 (no Israelis died in it). By that time, 86 Palestinian children had been killed by Israelis http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2000.html
The first Israeli child was killed on Jan. 17, 2001 http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2001.html By that time, at least 90 Palestinian children had been killed by Israelis.
Alison Weir, in her documentary Off the Charts, noted the following:
Before a single suicide bomber had entered Israel after the start of the Second Intifada, sometimes called, after Sharon’s provocative visit to the Temple Mount, the al Aqsa Intifada, during its first month, 27 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank and Gaza, the youngest only four months of age, and the majority due to gunshots to the head. Numerous children were also wounded. In the first three months alone, 159 children lost an eye presumably to rubber bullets shot from IDF rifles. Clearly the IDF were intentionally targeting these children, aiming at their heads with either rubber bullets or real bullets in the case of the child kills. We are talking here about a trained, mechanized army versus civilians, children participating in the intifada, the nonviolent resistance instituted by child and teenage Palestinian boys and girls. Oh, yes. Let’s be fair. We did hear that an Israeli soldier lost his eye from a rock thrown by a Palestinian boy from a pretty IDF spokeswoman, but it was the only such incident reported in three years.
In addition to these children, many more innocent adult civilians were killed, in the month before suicide bombings commenced. If terrorism is the intentional killing of civilians, then clearly, Israel’s armed forces were deep into terrorism, state sponsored terrorism, long before the Palestinians engaged in it to any degree. As a people fighting a military occupation, it would seem that the ultimate cause of all of these horrors on both sides rests with Israel and the purpose for which it continued its long occupation, the stealing of Palestinian lands.
See Alison Weir’s short documentary, Off The Charts: Media Bias and Censorship in America for the names, ages, places, and dates of the 26 child killings she documented.
There’s a lot of other material about why news about the military occupation and colonization of the Palestinian territories never reach American eyes and ears, and why Americans have a distorted view of the conflict (in addition to Peace, Propaganda, and The Promised Land).