US President-elect Barack Obama has chosen a warmongering Israel lobbyist and son of a Zionist terrorist as his chief of staff, dashing misplaced hopes that his presidency would usher in a change in Washington’s unconditional support of Israeli crimes in the Middle East.
Israel-first Rahm Israel Emanuel (born 1959) is, or was, a dual Israeli-US citizen (the Israeli newspaper Haaretzdescribes him as “Israeli”).
On 6 November 2008, Emanuel accepted an offer from President-elect Barack Obama to become the White House chief of staff in Obama’s administration, which begins on 20 January 2009.
Rahm Israel Emanuel's pro-war, Zionist, Israel lobbyist stock is beyond doubt
Rahm Emanuel was reportedly born in Chicago, Illinois. His father, the Jerusalem-born Benjamin M. Emanuel, is a former member of the Irgun, a Zionist terrorist group active in the British Mandate of Palestine between 1931 and 1948.
Rahm Emanuel was a volunteer in the Israeli occupation forces in 1991 under a programme, Volunteers for Israel, initiated in 1982 during the invasion of Lebanon. The idea of Volunteers for Israel was to free up soldiers who would otherwise do mundane chores to go to the front and fight, in the first instance, to kill Lebanese and Palestinians. They wore Israeli army uniforms while on duty.
Open Secrets reports that Rahm Israel Emanuel “was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry”.
Following the end of the Clinton presidency, Emanuel went into investment banking, reportedly earning 18 million US dollars in just over two years at Wasserstein Perella & Co and Dresdner Kleinwort.
During his original 2002 campaign, Emanuel “indicated his support of President Bush’s position on Iraq...”
Emanuel held a seat on the quasi-governmental Freddie Mac board, which paid him 231,655 dollars in director’s fees in 2001 and 31,060 dollars in 2000... During the time Emanuel spent on the board, Freddie Mac was plagued with scandal involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities...”
A 2006 Chicago Tribune article raised speculation regarding a possible connection between Emanuel’s Congressional election success and convicted former Chicago water department boss Don Tomczak.
USA Today reported in late January 2007 that Emanuel failed to disclose that he was an officer of a family charity, a violation of law requiring members of Congress to report non-profit leadership roles. The charity does not ask for outside donations and is funded by Emanuel and his family.
Emanuel, whose father was in the Irgun Zionist terrorist group, is a strong supporter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and personally introduced Barack Obama to the organization’s directors during the 2008 presidential campaign.
What other people say about Israel Rahm Emanuel
Christine Cegelis. Cegelis is an information technology professional in the Chicago area who ran as the Democratic nominee for Congress against longtime incumbent Henry Hyde in 2004, winning an unexpected 44 per cent of the vote. After Hyde announced he would be retiring, she attempted to run again in 2006, but Emanuel – then head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – backed a Democrat less critical of the Iraq war, Tammy Duckworth, who defeated Cegelis in the primary. Duckworth ended up losing in the general election.
Cegelis said today: “Emanuel has never backed off from his initial support of the invasion of Iraq; he says even knowing everything we know now, he’d still back it. I fear that slating Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff in a sense cancels out the message from Barack Obama that the Iraq war was something we should not have fought in the first place.” See “Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives.”
Reuters quoted Republican strategist John Feehery happily predicting that Emanuel “is going to spend most of his time cracking Democratic heads, getting them to move from the left to the middle.” It’s a reasonable prediction, because Emanuel has spent the past two years doing that on various issues, most notably Iraq. As chair of the DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] in 2006, Emanuel directed campaign funding overwhelmingly to the more pro-war Democratic candidates and recruited opponents to run against promising anti-war candidates like Christine Cegelis and Jerry McNerney.
In January 2007, as chair of the Democratic Caucus when the 110th Congress took office with the clearest anti-war mandate in national history, Emanuel spoke to the Washington Post, which reported: “Don’t look to Emanuel’s Democrats for solutions on Iraq. It’s Bush’s war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP [Grand Old Party – the Republican Party] power, the Democrats are waiting to pick up the pieces.” For two full years,”‘Emanuel’s Democrats” maintained that ending the war on Iraq would require passing legislation, when in truth they could have simply stopped funding it, a conclusion reached by a hearing chaired by Senator Russ Feingold. Their pretence that legislation was needed allowed the Democrats to blame the war on Republican senators’ filibuster power and presidential vetoes.
Those excuses may be gone now, but my concern is what we’ve learned about Emanuel’s priorities.”
A version of this article was originally published here.
