Who Is The President Elect: Obama or AIPAC?

Sarah Meyer
Index Research
November 11, 2008

“I know that when I visit AIPAC I am among friends.” Barack Obama.

“Color does not matter when you are in the service of White racist leadership.” Jafar Syed .

“It is important that President Obama hear well-reasoned, fact-based viewpoints which differ from main-line views. There has been no progress under Bush on so many issues because he disliked discussion and dissent. There will be no progress on Israel/Palestine, for example, if no-one outside of the umbra of AIPAC advises Obama.” Peter Beaumont.

1. Rahm Emanuel
2. Dennis Ross
3. Meanwhile, No “Change”
4. Recent News
5. References

Too much hope, expectations that are too high, are both pathological and produce their shadow pathology – disappointment. We saw this earlier after the congressional elections; we are now seeing it again.

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1. RAHM EMANUEL

Benjamin M. Emanuel, (Wikipedia)

Irgun (Wikipedia)

Rahm Emanuel (Wikipedia)

The Enforcer
20.10.08. J. Green, Rolling Stone. Friends and enemies agree that the key to Emanuel’s success is his legendary intensity. There’s the story about the time he sent a rotting fish to a pollster who had angered him. There’s the story about how his right middle finger was blown off by a Syrian tank when he was in the Israeli army. And there’s the story of how, the night after Clinton was elected, 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. “When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape,” one campaign veteran recalls. “It was like something out of The Godfather. But that’s Rahm for you.”

Hail to the Chief of Staff
7-9.11.08. Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch. The first trumpet blast of change ushers in Rahm Emanuel as Obama’s chief of staff and gate keeper. This is the man who arranges his schedule, staffs out the agenda, includes, excludes. It’s certainly as sinister an appointment as, say, Carter’s installation of arch cold-warrior Zbigniev Brzezinski as his National Security Advisor at the dawn of his “change is here” administration in 1977.

rahm israel emanuel & north american mossad
07.11.08. bodyonthe line. The Wayne Madsen Report. Obama faced with security problem at outset of transition process. WMR has learned from informed U.S. intelligence sources that prospective Barack Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has an active FBI counter-intelligence file maintained on him. Emanuel’s rise to the Chief of Staff position may pose a significant security problem for President-elect Obama if the FBI insists on conducting the full background security investigation normally required for senior White House officials. 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.

Forget the Honeymoon
07.11.08. Justin Raimondo, anti-war. When the House Democratic majority passed a military appropriations bill slated for Iraq, a clause that would have prohibited an attack on Iran without a vote in Congress was deleted at the instigation of Emanuel and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. [Both Pelosi and Emanuel have the nickname, Pitbull} More on JANE HARMON (“ambition is matched only by her recklessness”) - and AIPAC.

Does Emanuel Appointment Signal Obama Pro-Israel Tilt?
08.11.08. Richard Silverstein, Huff Post. There seems to be a semi-conspiratorial meme developing in the left blogosphere that Rahm Emanuel's appointment as Obama chief of staff (along with Dennis Ross' potential role at State possibly dealing with Iran or Israel-Palestine negotiations) involves a sort of "pro-Israel fix" in which Aipac guarantees itself both access and an administration fully supportive of Israeli interests. I don't buy it.

Rahm Emanuel: Chief of Staff, All-Around Thug
08.11.08. Dark Wraith, uncaptitalist. President-elect Obama promised during his campaign for the presidency to be a consensus-builder; upon winning the election, he said during his victory speech on the night of November 4, "I will listen to you, especially when we disagree." These words appear to ring hollow now that he has put between him and those who would address him a gatekeeper like Rahm Emanuel, who has no tolerance for disagreement and who has crafted a well-earned reputation for intolerance with troubling tendencies for violent expression of his desire to get his own way. Indeed, Rahm Emanuel has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is "from good Irgun stock."

The Promised Land? Obama, Emanuel and Israel
08.11.08. John V. Whitbeck, Counterpunch / global research. That was always likely. Obama repeatedly pledged unconditional allegiance to Israel during his campaign, most memorably in an address to the AIPAC national convention which Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery characterized as "a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning", and America's electing a black president has always been more easily imagined than any American president's declaring his country's independence from Israeli domination. / The profound loathing and hatred of the Muslim world toward the United States, which has always had its roots for America's unconditional support for the injustices inflicted and still being inflicted on the Palestinians, can fairly be considered the core of the primary foreign policy and "national security" problems confronting the United States in recent years. Why would Obama, a man of unquested brilliance, have chosen to send such a contemptuous message to the Muslim world with his first major appointment? Why would he wish to disabuse the Muslim world of its hopes (however modest) and slap it across the face at the ealiest opportunity?

Conned Again
09.11.08. Paul Craig Roberts, ICH. Indeed, Obama’s selection of Rahm Israel Emanuel as White House chief of staff is a signal that change ended with Obama’s election. Rahm Israel Emanuel is a supporter of Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Emanuel rose to prominence in the Democratic Party as a result of his fundraising connections to AIPAC. … / My despondent friends in the Israeli peace movement ask, “What is this man doing in Obama’s administration?” .. / Obama’s advisers are drawn from the same gang of Washington thugs and Wall Street banksters. .. / DENNIS ROSS has long associations with the Israeli-Palestinian “peace negotiations.” .. Ross is “chairman of a new Jerusalem-based think tank, the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, funded and founded by the Jewish Agency.” .. Clearly, this is not a group of advisors that is going to halt America’s wars against Israel’s enemies or force the Israeli government to accept the necessary conditions for a real peace in the Middle East. If Obama were to reach outside the usual crowd, anyone suspected of being a bringer of change could not get confirmed by the Senate. Powerful interest groups--AIPAC, the military-security complex, Wall Street--use their political influence to block unacceptable appointments.

Obama Mideast Watch: Rahm Emanuel
09.11.08. Scott MacLeod, Time. After hearing of Emanuel's appointment, the paper headlined its next editorial "Don't pin much hope on Obama." Arab expectations, the paper [Arab News] warned, “are likely to be dashed, generating a great deal of pain and resentment…The new team may turn out to be as pro-Israeli as the one it is replacing.” / Arab disappointment aside, there’s enough in Emanuel’s background to raise a fair question of whether the key appointment of such a demonstratively pro-Israel figure is going to help or hurt the prospects for Obama’s avowed plans to play an effective role in brokering Middle East peace.

VIDEO INTERVIEW: Obama and Emanuel (with Robert Parry)

2. DENNIS ROSS

Obama’s Neocon in Residence
04.11.08. Philip Giraldi, anti-war. The grip that the Israeli lobby has over both political parties means that any real shift in U.S. Middle Eastern policy is unlikely, whoever is elected president today. Discussion on Fox News commentator and WINEP’s Ross. Ross reportedly has been helping the Obama campaign formulate positions that AIPAC would be comfortable with.

3. MEANWHILE: NO “CHANGE”

Obama Camp to US: Curb Your Enthusiasm
09.11.08. anti-war.

Obama Stifles Hope of Change on Iran Relations
(09.11.08. anti-war.

Pakistan’s Protests Against US Strikes Fall on Deaf Ears
09.11.08. anti-war.

4. RECENT NEWS

Hillary Rodham Clinton birthday Sunday; in Chicago for AIPAC speech
26.10.08. suntimes.

New DCI report: increased settler attacks against children
07.11.08. Defence for Children International/uruknet. Today, Defence for Children International–Palestine Section (DCI/PS) released a report that documents the troubling extent of settler attacks perpetrated against Palestinian children in the Occupied Territory. While settler violence has steadily increased since the beginning of the second Intifada in September 2000, the start of 2008 has marked a notable increase in settler attacks against Palestinian civilians, including children…

Israel demolishes homes for ‘City of David’ heritage site
07.11.08. Donald Macintyre, Independent/uruknet.
Israel has been accused of demolishing Palestinian houses in Arab East Jerusalem while international attention was focused on the election of Barack Obama. Palestinian leaders and Israeli human rights organisations have said Israeli authorities displaced more than 20 people – mostly children – by demolishing three homes in the Silwan district of Jerusalem to make way for an archaeological park.

Israel’s Man of the Year Eluded Justice
08.11.08. Mahmoud El-Yousseph, uruknet. After reading about Israel’s most recent Man of the Year Award recipient, I did not know whether to laugh or cry. It looks like the judging panel at the Israeli television station Channel 2 is in need of a public relations consultant. The recipient of this year’ s award was Meir Dagan, the Chief of Mossad – the Israeli foreign intelligence agency. Meir Dagan is an unindicted war criminal with Arab blood on his hands…

Obama reassures big business on economic policy
08.11.08. Patrick Martin,uruknet. In his first public appearance as president-elect, Barack Obama held a press conference in Chicago Friday afternoon after meeting for several hours with a selected group of economic advisers, comprised entirely of bankers, corporate executives and current and former government officials. Members of Obama’s Transitional Economic Advisory Board and other economic advisers, including former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and Clinton-era treasury secretary and current Citigroup executive Robert Rubin, were lined up behind Obama as he answered questions from reporters…

Settlers stone six-year-old boy in Hebron
08.11.08. Ma’an news/uruknet. Israeli settlers wounded six-year-old Palestinian Bilal Da’na from Hebron after pelting the young boy with stones near the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, Palestinian sources in Hebron said. See video here.

Settler Violence Report: September and October 2008
09.11.08. Ahmad Jaradat, Alternative Information Center (AIC)/uruknet. …. On 16 October, approximately 50 settlers from settlements to the east of Bethlehem and the Jerusalem region illegally entered Oush Ghrab, located to the east of Beit Sahour. The settlers entered the site with a number of mobile homes, under the guard of Israeli soldiers who set up checkpoints to prevent local Palestinian residents and internationals from coming to protest the illegal occupation of the site. . The soldiers arrested two Palestinians and four internationals. Oush Ghrab was originally a Jordanian military site which was occupied by the Israeli military after 1967; two years ago the Israeli military left the site and the city of Beit Sahour is now in negotiations to acquire it. There is a city park across from the former base. Israeli settlers have made various visits to the site, defacing it with graffiti; their presumed intention is to build a settlement outpost…

Media Silent on Evidence of Israeli Targeting of Palestinian Youngsters
09.11.08. Haitham Sabbah / Media Lens

Fuel-starved Gaza faces blackouts
10.11.08.. al jazeera. Citizens in the Gaza Strip are bracing for more electricity blackouts after Israel cut off fuel shipments to the territory’s only power plant.

War Crime

Gazans plunged into darkness
10.11.08. al jazeera. Hospital fuel fears. “Some of the smaller hospitals will start running out of fuel in the next 36 hours” / Aside from general supply problems, Tadros highlighted two areas of serious concern following the cut in power. / “The electricity supply affects the water pumps that deal with the sewage system here, and electricity is needed for hospitals,” she said. / “Some of the smaller hospitals will start to running out of fuel in the next 36 hours – that’s going to be the immediate concern.”

VIDEO: The World After Bush (al jazeera)

5. REFERENCES

ABOUT AIPAC

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Wikipedia)

See here for Sourcewatch articles on AIPAC.

The Unmentionable Source of Terrorism
20.03.04. John Pilger, anti-war. Israel is the guard dog of America’s plans for the Middle East. … / Until recently, a group of Zionists ran their own intelligence service inside the Pentagon. This was known as the Office of Special Plans, and was overseen by Douglas Feith, an under-secretary of defence, extreme Zionist and opponent of any negotiated peace with the Palestinians.

J Street
J Street is the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement. We seek to change the direction of American policy in the Middle East and to broaden the public and policy debate in the U.S. about the Middle East. We support strong American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli conflicts peacefully and diplomatically.

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer & Stephen M. Walt, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 2008.

Palestine: Wake up America