| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 2:15 pm Post subject: |
| Obama assembles White House team
Barack Obama has started forming his administration by asking Rahm Emanuel, a former adviser to President Clinton, to be his chief-of-staff.
US President-elect Obama is next expected to appoint a treasury secretary to tackle the country's economic crisis.
He has until his inauguration on 20 January to select his senior officials.
Mr Obama was elected the first black US president on Tuesday with a resounding win over Republican rival John McCain.
Mr Obama's transition team is to be run by John Podesta, a former chief-of-staff to President Bill Clinton; Pete Rouse, who was Mr Obama's Senate chief-of-staff; and close friend Valerie Jarrett.
No briefings or announcements are expected on Thursday, but Mr Obama's staff said that he would address the media by the end of the week.
CIA briefings
Mr Emanuel is an Illinois congressman and tough Washington insider who has been strongly criticised by some Republicans for being too partisan, says the BBC's Jane O'Brien in Washington.
Although he has not formally accepted the job yet, if he does become chief-of-staff, he would be responsible for much of the internal management of the new administration.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
9 Dec : Deadline for states to resolve issues such as recounts or challenges
15 Dec : Electoral college electors meet in each state to formally cast their votes
6 Jan : Joint session of Congress to count electoral college votes
Before 20 Jan : Barack Obama and Joe Biden must resign from the Senate
20 Jan : Inauguration day
But critics say his appointment could accentuate party divides, rather than heal them, as Mr Obama has pledged to do.
With the country in the throes of an economic slowdown and part of the global financial crisis, the post of treasury secretary will be a key post.
Likely contenders reportedly include former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner, the current head of the New York Federal Reserve.
Current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has pledged to work with Mr Obama to ensure a smooth transition, and is said to have already set up desks and telephone lines at the department where Mr Obama's incoming team can work between now and the inauguration.
There has been speculation Mr Obama will ask Defence Secretary Robert Gates to remain in his post.
Mr Gates is broadly respected by both parties and would reflect a more bipartisan administration, our correspondent says.
With the business of preparing for government under way, Mr Obama will from Thursday start receiving the president's daily CIA briefings, which will include updates on covert operations.
In another sign of the changing of the guard, Michelle Obama spoke by telephone with First Lady Laura Bush, who invited her to visit the White House.
Projected results from Tuesday's election have yet to be announced for the states of North Carolina and Missouri, which are believed to be too close to call.
But with most precincts tallied, Mr Obama's share of the popular vote stands at 52.4%, compared with Mr McCain's 46.3%.
Turnout was reported to be extremely high - in some places "unprecedented" in what many Americans said they felt was a historic election.
The entire US House of Representatives and a third of US Senate seats were also contested in Tuesday's elections.
The Democrats increased their Senate majority by five seats to 56, including two independents, but fell short of the 60 needed to stop blocking tactics by Republicans. A further four seats are too close to call.
The Democrats also increased their majority in the House of Representatives, gaining 19 seats to give a total 254, leaving the Republicans with 173.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7712270.stm
Published: 2008/11/06 11:31:45 GMT | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 2:28 pm Post subject: |
| Nader On Obama's Subservience To AIPAC
11-5-8
Open Letter To Barack Obama
Uri Avnery described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning"...adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests (to Zionism)."
Between Hope And Reality
By Ralph Nader
Dear Senator Obama:
In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.
Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?
To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.
You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas--the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected news- paper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."
During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.
David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."
Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"
In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.
Israeli writer and peace advocate--Uri Avnery--described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future -- if and when he is elected president," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."
A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.
Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque."
None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans -- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.
Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former presidentJimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.
Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!
But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.
Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move follow-ing a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics--opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches) -- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.
Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
November 3, 2008 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 7:37 pm Post subject: |
| Emanuel accepts job as White House chief of staff
By LIZ SIDOTI and NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writers Liz Sidoti And Nedra Pickler, Associated Press Writers 29 mins ago
CHICAGO – Barack Obama's fellow Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel, the hard-charging No. 3 Democrat in the House, has accepted the job of White House chief of staff, Democratic officials said Thursday.One of Obama's first decisions as president-elect was to ask the Illinois congressman to run his White House staff. The selection of the fiery Democrat marked a shift in tone for Obama, who chose more low-key leadership for his presidential campaign.Emanuel, who served as a political and policy aide in the Clinton White House before running for Congress, weighed the family and political considerations before accepting. He will have to resign his seat, relinquish his position in the House Democratic leadership and put aside hopes of becoming House speaker.Democratic officials who disclosed Emanuel's acceptance did so on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering Obama's team; it had not planned to announce the chief of staff position on Thursday.In offering the White House post to Emanuel, Obama turned to a fellow Chicago politician with a far different style from his own, a man known for his bluntness as well as his single-minded determination.House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio called Emanuel "an ironic choice for a president-elect who has promised to change Washington, make politics more civil, and govern from the center."Before accepting the job, Emanuel told Chicago's WLS-TV that he was honored to be considered but needed to weigh the impact on his family."I have a lot to weigh: the basis of public service, which I've given my life to, a career choice. And most importantly, what I want to do as a parent," Emanuel said in an interview aired Wednesday. "And I know something about the White House. That, I assume, is one of the reasons that President-elect Obama would like me to serve. But I also know something about what it means to a family."As word of Emanuel's acceptance spread Thursday, Obama was meeting privately in Chicago with U.S. intelligence officials preparing him to be commander in chief and transition team leaders tasked with building his entire administration in 10 short weeks.The president-elect planned his first public appearances since his victory for Friday.Aides said he will meet with economic advisers to discuss the nation's financial woes — Americans listed the economy as their top concern on Election Day — and then talk to the news media. Aides also said that Obama and his wife, Michelle, will visit the White House on Monday at President Bush's invitation."Michelle and I look forward to meeting with President Bush and the first lady on Monday to begin the process of a smooth, effective transition," Obama said in a statement. "I thank him for reaching out in the spirit of bipartisanship that will be required to meet the many challenges we face as a nation."Obama advisers said he was selecting the leaders of the new government with a sense of care over speed, with no plans to announce Cabinet positions this week.Aside from Emanuel, several Obama aides said other White House officials were being lined up, including Robert Gibbs as the likely pick for press secretary. Gibbs has been Obama's longtime spokesman and confidant and was at Obama's side from his 2004 Senate campaign through the long days on the presidential campaign trail.Obama planned to stay home through the weekend, with a blackout on news announcements so that he and his staff can get some rest after a grueling campaign and the rush of their win Tuesday night. He is planning a trip to Hawaii in December to get away with his family before their move to the White House — and to honor his grandmother, who died Sunday at her home there.Obama began Thursday as he usually does, with a workout. Later, he planned to visit with the transition team he officially announced Wednesday but had been under way for weeks. Officials had kept deliberations under wraps to avoid the appearance of overconfidence in the weeks leading to Tuesday's election.He also spent time at the FBI office in Chicago, a secure location for him to receive his first president's daily brief. The document is mostly written by the Central Intelligence Agency and includes the most critical overnight intelligence. It is accompanied by a briefing from top intelligence officials that typically lasts 45 minutes to an hour, although Obama's first is expected to be longer.
___ Liz Sidoti reported from Washington.
Associated Press Special Correspondent David Espo in Washington and AP reporter Beth Fouhy in Chicago contributed to this report.
Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel @ AIPAC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_yA8J-oGQk | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 9:34 pm Post subject: |
| Forwarded:
'Rahm Emmanuel, the new chief of staff: Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois in
> 1959. His father, the Jerusalem-born Benjamin M. Emanuel, is a pediatrician and
> was a member of the Irgun, a militant Zionist group treated as a terrorist
> organization during British rule.'
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel#Personal_life
>
>
>
> Obama picks pro-Israel hardliner for top post
> Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 5 November 2008
>
> During the United States election campaign, racists and pro-Israel hardliners tried to make an issue out of President-elect Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein. Such people might take comfort in another middle name, that of Obama's pick for White House Chief of Staff: Rahm Israel Emanuel.
>
> Emanuel is Obama's first high-level appointment and it's one likely to disappointment those who hoped the president-elect would break with the George W. Bush Administration's pro-Israel policies. White House Chief of Staff is often considered the most powerful office in the executive branch, next to the president. Obama has offered Emanuel the position according to Democratic party sources cited by media including Reuters and The New York Times. While Emanuel is expected to accept the post, that had not been confirmed by Wednesday evening the day after the election.
>
> Rahm Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1959, the son of Benjamin Emanuel, a pediatrician who helped smuggle weapons to the Irgun, the Zionist militia of former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, in the 1940s. The Irgun carried out numerous terrorist attacks on Palestinian civilians including the bombing of Jerusalem's King David Hotel in 1946.
>
> Emanuel continued his father's tradition of active support for Israel; during the 1991 Gulf War he volunteered to help maintain Israeli army vehicles near the Lebanon border when southern Lebanon was still occupied by Israeli forces.
>
> As White House political director in the first Clinton administration, Emanuel orchestrated the famous 1993 signing ceremony of the 'Declaration of Principles' between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Emanuel was elected to Congress representing a north Chicago district in 2002 and he is credited with a key role in delivering a Democratic majority in the 2006 mid-term elections. He has been a prominent supporter of neoliberal economic policies on free trade and welfare reform.
>
> One of the most influential politicians and fundraisers in his party, Emanuel accompanied Obama to a meeting of AIPAC's executive board just after the Illinois senator had addressed the pro-Israel lobby's conference last June.
>
> In Congress, Emanuel has been a consistent and vocal pro-Israel hardliner, sometimes more so than President Bush. In June 2003, for example, he signed a letter criticizing Bush for being insufficiently supportive of Israel. 'We were deeply dismayed to hear your criticism of Israel for fighting acts of terror,' Emanuel, along with 33 other Democrats wrote to Bush. The letter said that Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders 'was clearly justified as an application of Israel's right to self-defense' ('Pelosi supports Israel's attacks on Hamas group,' San Francisco Chronicle, 14 June 2003).
>
> In July 2006, Emanuel was one of several members who called for the cancellation of a speech to Congress by visiting Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki because al-Maliki had criticized Israel's bombing of Lebanon. Emanuel called the Lebanese and Palestinian governments 'totalitarian entities with militias and terrorists acting as democracies' in a 19 July 2006 speech supporting a House resolution backing Israel's bombing of both countries that caused thousands of civilian victims.
>
> Emanuel has sometimes posed as a defender of Palestinian lives, though never from the constant Israeli violence that is responsible for the vast majority of deaths and injuries. On 14 June 2007 he wrote to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice 'on behalf of students in the Gaza Strip whose future is threatened by the ongoing fighting there' which he blamed on 'the violence and militancy of their elders.' In fact, the fighting between members of Hamas and Fatah, which claimed dozens of lives, was the result of a failed scheme by US-backed militias to violently overthrow the elected Hamas-led national unity government. Emanuel's letter urged Rice 'to work with allies in the region, such as Egypt and Jordan, to either find a secure location in Gaza for these students, or to transport them to a neighboring country where they can study and take their exams in peace.' Palestinians often view such proposals as a pretext to permanently 'transfer' them from their country, as many Israeli l
> eaders have threatened. Emanuel has never said anything in support of millions of Palestinian children whose education has been disrupted by Israeli occupation, closures and blockades.
>
> Emanuel has also used his position to explicitly push Israel's interests in normalizing relations with Arab states and isolating Hamas. In 2006 he initiated a letter to President Bush opposing United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based Dubai Ports World's attempt to buy the management business of six US seaports. The letter, signed by dozens of other lawmakers, stated that 'The UAE has pledged to provide financial support to the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority and openly participates in the Arab League boycott against Israel.' It argued that allowing the deal to go through 'not only could place the safety and security of US ports at risk, but enhance the ability of the UAE to bolster the Hamas regime and its efforts to promote terrorism and violence against Israel' ('Dems Tie Israel, Ports,' Forward, 10 March 2006).
>
> Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, told Fox News that picking Emanuel is 'just another indication that despite the attempts to imply that Obama would somehow appoint the wrong person or listen to the wrong people when it comes to the US-Israel relationship ... that was never true.'
>
> Over the course of the campaign, Obama publicly distanced himself from friends and advisers suspected or accused of having 'pro-Palestinian' sympathies. There are no early indications of a more balanced course.
>
> Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli- Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006). | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Nov 07, 2008 12:13 pm Post subject: |
| Obama's first pick to help him in the White House? The Israeli War party's man "go to" guy in Congress.
And the US news media has nothing to say about it:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/474.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Nov 07, 2008 12:37 pm Post subject: |
| Ali Abunimah on Rahm Emanuel
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/6/president_elect_obama_and_the_future
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk also about the first position that has been named, Rahm Emanuel. I want to also go to Ali Abunimah. He is joining us by video stream from Chicago, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Ali Abunimah.
ALI ABUNIMAH: Thank you. Good morning, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to that first news out of the new Obama administration. By the way, President-elect Obama, Joe Biden are getting their first intelligence—top-secret intelligence briefing today by the Director of National Intelligence. But what about yesterday’s announcement that Rahm Israel Emanuel, the Chicago Congress member, very close to Barack Obama, has been offered the Chief of Staff position? You, too, are in Chicago.
ALI ABUNIMAH: Well, I thought it was quite ironic, since a lot of racists have tried to make an issue out of Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein, that the same kind of people might be happy with Rahm Israel Emanuel’s middle name. And indeed, Emanuel is one of the most hard-line supporters of Israel in the Congress and has been for many years. He’s the son of Benjamin Emanuel, who actually was a gun runner for the Irgun, the Zionist, pre-Israel Zionist, militia that carried out numerous terrorist attacks on Palestinian civilians, including the bombing of the King David Hotel. Of course, Rahm Emanuel himself is not responsible for any of that, but his record is sometimes far to the right of President Bush when it comes to supporting Israel.
But I think the important thing here is not just the appointment of Emanuel, but the greater context here, which is that from the days we knew Barack Obama as a small-time politician in Illinois, I won’t tell you, and I’ve never said that he was incredibly progressive on Israel-Palestine, but he was certainly more open-minded than he is now. And what he’s done systematically throughout the campaign is to distance himself or to throw under the bus, as the term goes, any adviser or friend who was suspected of having pro-Palestinian sympathies. In other words, he has succumbed to the McCarthyite and racist campaigns that says if you associate with even very moderate Columbia University professors, for example, or take their advice, that that’s the biggest crime.
So the signal he’s sending here is that that is not going to change, that people who could give him more balanced, more objective, more realistic advice that could change the course from the disastrous Palestine-Israel policies of the Bush and Clinton administrations, that that’s not going to happen. And that should be very, very worrying, because a lot of progressive people, a lot of people in the Middle East, a lot of leaders, have pinned hopes on Obama being quite different on this issue, and I just don’t see any evidence so far that that’s going to be the case. And it worries me that people will stay silent, rather than putting on the table now and loudly the demands for a more balanced, more objective, more fair policy that could bring peace for Palestinians and Israelis.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And you mentioned a Columbia University professor, obviously referring to Rashid Khalidi. The reaction of the Obama campaign to the attempts by some supporters of John McCain to link him to Khalidi, how Obama responded to that?
ALI ABUNIMAH: I think that I am going to be very frank. I know that—I agree with the other speakers that the euphoria and joy felt at Obama’s victory is sincere and justified, in terms of people’s hopes and desire for something different, but I think Obama’s reaction all along to the claims that he’s a secret Muslim or that he supports Palestinian rights has really been disgraceful. Rather than saying, you know, “So what if I had been a Muslim?” or “So what if I listen to different advice? Our policies have been unbalanced, and we want to take a wide range of advice”—instead of saying that, he’s really played into the McCarthyism by saying, “No, you know, I didn’t know Rashid Khalidi.” Well, the fact is, he was very happy to associate with Rashid Khalidi and with the broader Palestinian American community for many years.
What does it say that the sort of things he was prepared to do just a few years ago he is no longer prepared to do, that he didn’t visit a single Muslim community center or mosque or associate publicly with Arab Americans during the campaign? And it’s not as if, the day after the campaign, he started to send more conciliatory signals. On the contrary, there could not be a more provocative appointment than Rahm Emanuel, if he wanted to send a signal that he is going to stick by a quite hard-line pro-Israel policy.
AMY GOODMAN: Last June, on his first day as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, Senator Barack Obama addressed AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Let me be clear. Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state—the Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive and that allows them to prosper, but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized, defensible borders. And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Barack Obama last June. Ali Abunimah, you write a moving piece about watching Barack Obama over the years, from when you first met him as a state senator and what he meant to you then, when you heard him speak at the University of Chicago.
ALI ABUNIMAH: —official, acted as Israel’s lawyers, people like Dennis Ross, people like Martin Indyk. These have been Israel’s lawyers, rather than US officials being honest brokers, and they are now being brought back in.
AMY GOODMAN: Ali Abunimah, Ali, Ali, I just want to say we were playing the sot of Barack Obama—I don’t know if you heard it—speaking before AIPAC, the clip of him. We might not have heard what you said, if you were speaking through that clip. But if you could talk about knowing Barack Obama for the last decade and then continue with what you were saying now.
ALI ABUNIMAH: Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that the clip was playing. So, well, basically, the point I want to make is that Barack Obama has painted himself into a corner by appealing to the most hard-line pro-Israel elements in this country, by distancing himself from all advisers, even very mainstream establishment figures like Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Malley, who was one of Clinton’s officials who is considered by the pro-Israel lobby to be too pro-Palestinian.
And what he’s done is he’s publicly embraced people like Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, two of the most pro-Israel officials from the Clinton era, who are totally distrusted by Palestinians and others across the Middle East, because they’re seen as lifelong advocates for Israeli positions.
And so, he’s made it impossible or extremely difficult for himself to say, “Look, now we’re going to talk to a wider range of views. We’re going to talk to those excluded voices that could give us advice that could actually get us out of this mess in Israel-Palestine.” And that’s very worrying.
And I think that progressive people across this country, you know, instead of basking in the euphoria, need to pick themselves up today and start demanding that the Obama administration immediately end the siege of Gaza. It’s totally indefensible. It is a crime unprecedented in modern history that 1.5 million people are confined to a ghetto, starved, cut off from the world, threatened. This is indefensible, and there’s no excuse for it to continue even for a single day under a new administration. And we should be setting the standard very high, not accepting slight hints that in a few years’ time an Obama administration might accept a Palestinian state or might talk about one. The days for that are over. The situation is urgent, and we really need to see radical change. It’s not going to come from Rahm Emanuel and Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk; it’s only going to come from a groundswell demanding that the promises of change be kept.
AMY GOODMAN: Ali Abunimah is co-founder of the Electronic Intifada and author of the book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israel-Palestine Impasse. We are continuing in our journey around the world in a minute.
[break] | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Nov 07, 2008 12:43 pm Post subject: |
| Book Review
By Blood and Fire
By Blood and Fire, by Thurston Clarke, G.P.Putnam's Sons, Ilb, $12.95.
reviewed by W. R. Silberstein
In these days of erotic fiction and strange "documentaries" on the market, it is rewarding to read an excellent non-fiction book on a little known subject that hasn't been widely documented.
By Blood and Fire is virtually a scenario of one of the most contemptible acts of unmitigated murder by terrorism of the Twentieth Century; the deliberate bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, 22 July 1946.
Author Thurston Clarke, who's other literary credits are The Last Caravan and Dirty Money, has done a masterful job in research of a painful subject that places the blame for this horrible terrorist attack on the present Prime Minster of Israel, Menahem Begin.
At just past noon on 22 July 1946, six members of Begin's Irgun zvai leumi crept into the basement entrance of the King David Hotel, placed seven steel milk churns filled with gelignite and TNT in the popular Regency Bar and blew up the entire south wing of the hotel, killing 91 British civil servants, Arabs and Jews and wounding 46.
The reasoning behind such an act is as strange as the acts of terrorism committed by Jews and Arabs in Palestine today. What these murders accomplish seems to be a mute question. Any mention of this bombing attack to Prime Minister Begin today brings on stoney silence accompanied by a statement, "they were given a warning beforehand."
Much of the value of this book lies in the chronology; the time table of events by these "soldiers" of the terrorist Irgun, and goes into detail how Begin, the commander-in-chief of the Irgun, disregarded the pleas of the Haganah and the powerful "X Committee" and even Dr. Chaim Weizmann the chief Zionist of the entire Israeli movement, not to engage in an act of terrorism against the British "caretakers" of Palestine.
The six story King David Hotel in Jerusalem was one of the most popular meeting places in the city. The British administrative offices were in the south wing of the hotel and those employed were innocent British civil servants including 17 Jews, all of whom were murdered in the tremendous blast.
It is difficult to understand the rationale of such an act, except to remember that the Arabs outnumbered the Jews over the years and it is still an enigma as to "whom does Palestine belong to?"
Because of all the Arab and Jewish unrest in 1939 when thousands of Jews "emigrated" to Israel, the caretaker Government of Great Britain issued a White Paper stating that "no more than 75,000 Jews would be allowed to immigrate into Palestine in the coming 5 years." This declaration was as unpopular to the resident Arabs as the invading Jews, and brought about terrorism toward the British from Jew and Arab alike.
Following Hitler's passage of the law allowing German nationals to repurchase their commercial and residential property at the same price they were forced to sell to wealthy Jews after World War I, the German Jews were stripped of their financial power and left Germany in droves to immigrate into Palestine against the wishes of the British Government.
Thurston Clarke walks a tightrope depicting the objectives of both Arabs and Jews as well as British interests. He takes no sides and makes use of documented evidence and eye witness accounts of the bombing.
Excellent photographs, maps and diagrams are included in the book, available in selected bookstores and in many public libraries.
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Bibliographic information Author:
W. R. Silberstein
Title:
By Blood and Fire (review)
Source:
The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)
Date:
Spring 1982
Issue:
Volume 3 number 1
Location:
Page 88
ISSN:
0195-6752
Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $60 per year."
Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Nov 07, 2008 6:03 pm Post subject: |
| Obama picks pro-Israel hardliner for top post
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 5 November 2008
Senator Barack Obama greets Representative Rahm Emanuel at the Illinois Delegation party at a restaurant in Boston on the eve of the Democratic National Convention 2004. (Tom Williams)
During the United States election campaign, racists and pro-Israel hardliners tried to make an issue out of President-elect Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein. Such people might take comfort in another middle name, that of Obama's pick for White House Chief of Staff: Rahm Israel Emanuel.
Emanuel is Obama's first high-level appointment and it's one likely to disappointment those who hoped the president-elect would break with the George W. Bush Administration's pro-Israel policies. White House Chief of Staff is often considered the most powerful office in the executive branch, next to the president. Obama has offered Emanuel the position according to Democratic party sources cited by media including Reuters and The New York Times. While Emanuel is expected to accept the post, that had not been confirmed by Wednesday evening the day after the election.
Rahm Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1959, the son of Benjamin Emanuel, a pediatrician who helped smuggle weapons to the Irgun, the Zionist militia of former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, in the 1940s. The Irgun carried out numerous terrorist attacks on Palestinian civilians including the bombing of Jerusalem's King David Hotel in 1946.
Emanuel continued his father's tradition of active support for Israel; during the 1991 Gulf War he volunteered to help maintain Israeli army vehicles near the Lebanon border when southern Lebanon was still occupied by Israeli forces.
As White House political director in the first Clinton administration, Emanuel orchestrated the famous 1993 signing ceremony of the "Declaration of Principles" between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Emanuel was elected to Congress representing a north Chicago district in 2002 and he is credited with a key role in delivering a Democratic majority in the 2006 mid-term elections. He has been a prominent supporter of neoliberal economic policies on free trade and welfare reform.
One of the most influential politicians and fundraisers in his party, Emanuel accompanied Obama to a meeting of AIPAC's executive board just after the Illinois senator had addressed the pro-Israel lobby's conference last June.
In Congress, Emanuel has been a consistent and vocal pro-Israel hardliner, sometimes more so than President Bush. In June 2003, for example, he signed a letter criticizing Bush for being insufficiently supportive of Israel. "We were deeply dismayed to hear your criticism of Israel for fighting acts of terror," Emanuel, along with 33 other Democrats wrote to Bush. The letter said that Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders "was clearly justified as an application of Israel's right to self-defense" ("Pelosi supports Israel's attacks on Hamas group," San Francisco Chronicle, 14 June 2003).
In July 2006, Emanuel was one of several members who called for the cancellation of a speech to Congress by visiting Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki because al-Maliki had criticized Israel's bombing of Lebanon. Emanuel called the Lebanese and Palestinian governments "totalitarian entities with militias and terrorists acting as democracies" in a 19 July 2006 speech supporting a House resolution backing Israel's bombing of both countries that caused thousands of civilian victims.
Emanuel has sometimes posed as a defender of Palestinian lives, though never from the constant Israeli violence that is responsible for the vast majority of deaths and injuries. On 14 June 2007 he wrote to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "on behalf of students in the Gaza Strip whose future is threatened by the ongoing fighting there" which he blamed on "the violence and militancy of their elders." In fact, the fighting between members of Hamas and Fatah, which claimed dozens of lives, was the result of a failed scheme by US-backed militias to violently overthrow the elected Hamas-led national unity government. Emanuel's letter urged Rice "to work with allies in the region, such as Egypt and Jordan, to either find a secure location in Gaza for these students, or to transport them to a neighboring country where they can study and take their exams in peace." Palestinians often view such proposals as a pretext to permanently "transfer" them from their country, as many Israeli leaders have threatened. Emanuel has never said anything in support of millions of Palestinian children whose education has been disrupted by Israeli occupation, closures and blockades.
Emanuel has also used his position to explicitly push Israel's interests in normalizing relations with Arab states and isolating Hamas. In 2006 he initiated a letter to President Bush opposing United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based Dubai Ports World's attempt to buy the management business of six US seaports. The letter, signed by dozens of other lawmakers, stated that "The UAE has pledged to provide financial support to the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority and openly participates in the Arab League boycott against Israel." It argued that allowing the deal to go through "not only could place the safety and security of US ports at risk, but enhance the ability of the UAE to bolster the Hamas regime and its efforts to promote terrorism and violence against Israel" ("Dems Tie Israel, Ports," Forward, 10 March 2006).
Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, told Fox News that picking Emanuel is "just another indication that despite the attempts to imply that Obama would somehow appoint the wrong person or listen to the wrong people when it comes to the US-Israel relationship ... that was never true."
Over the course of the campaign, Obama publicly distanced himself from friends and advisers suspected or accused of having "pro-Palestinian" sympathies. There are no early indications of a more balanced course.
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