11-15-8
America's powerful Jewish lobby is alive, well and kicking. It is likely to become even more influential when President-Elect Barack Obama takes office as the 44th president of the United States in two months time, and Rahm Israel Emanuel the son of a former Zionist terrorist becomes the White House Chief of Staff in Obama's administration.
Emanuel, 51, is the first person named by Obama to become a member of his administration. He has been a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives since 2003, representing Illinois's 5th congressional district, which covers much of the north side of Chicago and parts of suburban Cook County.
Illinois is Obama's home state, from where he was elected to the US Senate in 2006. He is the son of a Kenyan father and a white American mother. He was (allegedly -ed) born in the US State of Hawaii and grew up in Chicago.
Emanuel was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2006 mid-term elections, in which the Democratic Party gained control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. After the Democrats regained control of the House, Emanuel was elected as the next chairman of the Democratic Caucus. He is the fourth-ranking Democrat in the 435-member House, behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny How and Majority Whip Jin Clyburn.
On November 6, 2008, only two days after Obama was elected president, Emanuel accepted an offer from him to become the White House Chief of Staff in his administration, which begins on January 20th, 2009.
Emanuel is an influential member of the New Democratic Coalition, and a prominent advocate of economic liberalisation. He is noted for his combative style of politics and his political fundraising abilities.
Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois. His first name, Rahm, means "high" or 'lofty" in Hebrew, while his surname, Emanuel, means "God is with us." The Jews call themselves "God's chosen people" a description that implies that the Jews believe that non-Jews (i.e. the rest of the world) don't matter. The meaning of Emanuel's surname seems to be of a piece with this reprehensible Jewish belief. Judaism is the only religion in the world that, by implication, denigrates the followers of other faiths in this belittling fashion.
According to Emanuel's father, his son is the namesake of Rahamim, a Lehi group commander who was killed. Rahm's surname was adopted by his family in 1933 after Rahm's paternal uncle, Emanuel Auerbach, was killed in a skirmish with Arabs in Jerusalem.
M Auerbach's death suggests that there is no love lost between Emanuel's family and the beleaguered people of Palestine, who have been at the receiving end of Israeli state terrorism ever since the creation of the Zionist state in 1948.
Emanuel's family background suggests that the long stalled Middle East peace process is not likely to make much headway while he is the White House Chief of Staff in Obama's administration.
This impression is reinforced by the fact that Emanuel an American citizen by birth joined the Israeli army as a volunteer during the 1991 Gulf war between the United States and Iraq. By joining the Israeli army, Emanuel violated a US law which prohibits American citizens from joining the armed forces of another country. Americans who do so can be stripped of their citizenship.
Emanuel's father, Benjamin M. Emanuel, is a pediatrician who was born in Jerusalem. He was a member of the Irgun, a Zionist terrorist group that operated in Palestine from 1931 to 1948 during the British Mandate.
Irgun (Hebrew: shorthand for Halgrun Ha Tzvai Hale'um BeEretz Yisra'el, National Military Organisation in the Land of Israel) was established as a terrorist offshoot of the earlier and larger Zionist paramilitary organisation Haganah (Hebrew: 'The Defence"). For reasons of secrecy, Zionists often referred to the Irgun, during that time, as Haganah Bet (Hebrew: literally "Defence B" or "Second Defence").
During the period 1936-1939, the Irgun carried out 60 attacks against Arab civilians and British soldiers, reflecting its world view that "political violence and terrorism" were "legitimate tools" in the Zionist struggle for the Land of Israel" a state carved out, in 1948, from land where the Palestinians were in the majority, with a population of 900,000 Palestinians versus 600,000 Jews.
If a free and fair referendum had been held at the time to determine the future of the territory, the majority of the population would have voted for the creation of a Palestinian state. Instead, the great powers connived with the Zionists to create the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. The new state promptly proceeded to drive hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands. Israel then illegally transferred the ownership rights of those lands to Jewish settlers who were brought in by the shipload from Europe.
Irgun was described as a terrorist organisation by the New York Times and by the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry. All told, Irgun attacks against Arab targets resulted in at least 250 Arab deaths during this period.
In an Irgun attack on August 26, 1934, 24 Arab civilians were killed by a bomb at a marketplace at Jaffa. On February 27m 1939, 33 Arab civilians were killed in multiple Irgun attacks, including 24 by a bomb in an Arab market in the Suk Quarter of Haifa and 4 by a bomb in an Arab vegetable market in Jerusalem. On May 24, 1939, 5 Arab civilians were killed by a mine detonated by an Irgun group at the Rex cinema in Jerusalem. On June 19, 1939, 20 Arab civilians were killed by an Irgun hit squad in multiple shootings during a one-hour period.
Two of the most well-known Irgun attacks were the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946 and the Deir Yassin massacre (accomplished together with the Stern gang) on April 9, 1948. Irgun was also responsible for the assassination of the UN representative in Palestine in 1948.
Irgun was a political predecessor to Israel's right-wing Herut (or "Freedom") party, which led to today's Likud party. Likud has led or been part of most Israeli governments since 1977.
Menachem Begin was also a member of Irgun. He was on the British Mandate authorities' list of Irgun terrorists. He was later elected prime minister of Israel.
There has been no mention of any of this aspect of Rahm Israel Emanuel's background in the mainstream US media since he agreed to become the White House Chief of Staff in Obama's administration.
Emanuel went to school in Chicago. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981, and went on to receive a master's degree in Speech and Communications from Northwestern University in 1985.
Emanuel is a close friend of fellow Chicagoan David Axelrod, chief strategist for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign. Axelrod signed the ketubaa Jewish marriage contract at Emanuel's wedding to Amy Rule. Emanuel and his wife are members of Anshe Sholom B'nai Israel, a Modern Orthodox Jewish congregation in Chicago,
Emanuel has said of his Judaism: "I am proud of my heritage" That heritage, presumably, includes his father's stint as a member of the Irgun.
Bill Clinton's most serious primary rival in the 1992 presidential election campaign, Paul Tsongas (the New Hampshire Democratic primary winner in 1992) later withdrew, citing a lack of campaign funds.
Richard Mintz, a Washington public relations consultant who worked with Emanuel on the Clinton campaign says: "It was that (extra) million dollars (raised by Emanuel) that really allowed the campaign to ride out in New Hampshire (over Clinton's relationship with Gennifer Flowers and the controversy over his draft status during the Vietnam War."
Emanuel's rapport with potential donors within the Jewish community helped Clinton amass a then unheard of campaign fund sum of $ 72 million.
According to a report published in the London Economist after the 1992 election, 60 per cent of all private contributions to Clinton's campaign fund came from American Jews.
Following the campaign, Emanuel became a senior adviser to Clinton at the White House in 1993 to 1998. In the White House, Emanuel was initially Assistant to the President for Political Affairs and then Senior Adviser to the President for Policy and Strategy.
According to an American commentator, one of Emanuel's "proudest moments" during the Clinton administration "was an event that touched his political sensibilities and his personal ties to Israel: the 1993 Rose Garden signing ceremony after the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Emanuel directed the details of the ceremony, down to the choreography of the handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Hamas, a militant Palestinian organisation, said that Arafat had "sold out" to the Americans.
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