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YES WE CAN! ...get phucked by Obama

Michael Coren: Obama courts trouble with dubious decision to appoint
Emanuel
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/11/18/michael-coren-obam
a-courts-trouble-with-dubious-decision-to-appoint-emanuel.aspx
Posted: November 18, 2008, 9:00 AM by Kelly McParland

Euphoria is by its nature transitory and unreliable, and never more so
than when induced by political celebrity and media hysteria. Oh the
disappointment when the holy icon comes down from the wall and is
revealed as just another mediocre portrait. They wanted him to Barack
their world, but in his first major appointment the President-elect
has sent the dreamers back to their barracks. He asked Rahm Emanuel to
be the White House Chief of Staff, thus alienating those domestic
political opponents he claimed he wanted to include in his new America
and, perhaps more importantly, outraging the Arab and greater Muslim
community.


Emanuel’s entire political career as a Bill Clinton staffer and a
congressman has been characterized by extreme partisanship and
personal attacks. He has cultivated the reputation of political pit
bull, relished the much-told stories of how he screamed at friends as
well as enemies and stabbed knives into tables as he listed critics
who would be “dead, dead, dead.” Beyond the obvious hypocrisy of
Obama’s first major act being the selection of one of the least
conciliatory figures in Washington politics, Emanuel’s intimate ties
to, and support for, Israel have caused consternation and anger in
even moderate and pro-Western Arab circles.


He is the son of a leading revisionist Zionist family, his father
Benjamin being a former member of the Irgun, otherwise known as Etzel
or IZL. Revisionism was an alternative and more militant form of
Zionism, offering a different path to that of the more socialistic and
pragmatic mainstream. Its tough nationalism produced two underground
military organizations, the Irgun and LEHI or The Stern Gang. They
fought both the local Palestinians and the British Army and police
between 1931 and 1948.


Regarded by the occupying British, the Arabs and by many in the rest
of the Jewish community in pre-Israel Palestine as terrorists, the
Irgun was involved in attacks on British soldiers and Palestinian
civilians that are even now deeply disturbing and divisive. When I was
working on my university thesis on LEHI, I was shocked by the
hostility shown toward these organizations by other Israelis, some of
whom had served in commando units, known as the Palmach, in the 1940s
in Palestine. Their dedication and sacrifice was beyond question, as
was their rejection of what they saw as the self-serving violence of
the Irgun.


This, of course, was the father and not necessarily the son, but it is
far from unreasonable to assume that the new Chief of Staff has been
influenced by his beloved father’s ideas and the context of his
precise kind of Jewish nationalism. Just recently, in an interview
with an Israeli newspaper, Benjamin Emanuel is said to have replied,
when asked about his son’s appointment, “Obviously he will influence
the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he be? What is he, an
Arab? He’s not going to clean the floors of the White House.”


This may be the apparent racism of an older generation, but it hardly
inspires confidence. Rahm Emanuel himself was born with dual Israeli
and American citizenship due to his father, but renounced his Israeli
nationality before entering politics. He also served briefly as a
civilian volunteer for the Israeli military in 1991 during the Gulf
War, has spoken numerous times to pro-Israeli rallies and
organizations and is an active campaigner for the Jewish state. None
of which is in any way surprising or inappropriate for an average
Jewish person in North America. Only a bigot or a fool would see
conspiracy or malice where there is loyalty, courage and commitment.


But Rahm Emanuel is not ordinary and is not in an ordinary position.
How, for example, would the world in general and the Jewish world in
particular react to an active supporter of the Palestinian cause whose
father was a member of a nationalist Arab group with terror links
being appointed to a senior position in the White House? The answer is
as obvious as the question is rhetorical. This is not an issue of
placating Arab and Muslim fanatics but of rebuilding a relationship of
trust with responsible leaders and secular pragmatists who, together
with the West, can carve out a workable peace in the Middle East.


Already dozens of informed editorials and opinion columns in the Arab
press have expressed incredulity at the Emanuel appointment, pointing
out that it plays into the hands of the absolutists who detest the
prospect of a new Middle East where Israel is considered a partner and
the United States an ally. Frankly, it also bad for even hard-line
supporters of Israel. The State Department, the diplomatic corps and
overall American policy should be, for moral reasons if nothing else,
supportive of Israel’s security. Now their statements will be
perceived in the Arab mind through the prism of the real or imagined
sway of the chief of staff.


The apologists have been quick to explain and justify. Writing in The
Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, a close friend of Emanuel, replied to
attacks that have actually seldom been made in an American media as
reluctant to criticize Obama as it is to explore the new chief of
staff’s credentials. “Rahm, precisely because he’s a lover of Israel,
will not have much patience with Israeli excuse-making, so when the
next prime minister tells President Obama that as much as he’d love
to, he can’t dismantle the Neve Manyak settlement outpost, or
whichever outpost needs dismantling, because of a) domestic politics;
b) security concerns, or c) the Bible, Rahm will call out such
nonsense, and it will be very hard for right-wing Israelis to come
back and accuse him of being a self-hating Jew.”


Hardly. It’s rash politics, poor government and short-sighted policy.
Can we pose as an enlightened radical but behave with less decorum,
empathy and understanding of the external world than even our
predecessor? Apparently so. Or to put it another way, Yes we can.
National Post
www.michaelcoren.com


Michael Coren is an author and broadcaster.

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