Israel Eyes Barack Obama

by BallyZACA | November 9, 2008 at 05:41 am

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Does Israel have anything to fear from a President Barack Obama after taking the Oath of Office on January 20th?

4 Nov.: Many Israelis fear that pro-Arab figures will step out from behind Obama’s Middle East campaign advisers and be installed in key positions in his administration. They recall that his campaign was choreographed by a hard left Chicago group. Aware of this, Dennis Ross, Middle East envoy under Democratic and Republican presidents, and Martin Indyk, former ambassador to Israel, issued pre-election statements assuring Israel they had nothing to fear from Obama.

However, Rob Malley, who is in close rapport with Syrian president Bashar Assad and the radical Hamas headquarters in Damascus, is still around and acts as Obama’s liaison with Arab leaders, although the candidate claimed earlier to have dropped this controversial figure from his team.

A lesser known fact is that Malley is a personal friend of Dr. Samir Thaki, Syria’s top negotiator in the indirect talks with Israel brokered by Turkey. He played a shadowy but firm role in those talks under Obama’s policy guideline to back Damascus’ push for a complete Israel withdrawal from the Golan. This ultimatum kept the Bush administration from backing those negotiations and explains why Assad preferred to stall until a new US president was elected.

If Israel’s transitional prime minister Ehud Olmert goes along with this line – he is still weighing the option - it would represent Israel’s biggest concession ever to an Arab state and hamper the chances of his successor, foreign minister Tzipi Livni, to lead their Kadima party to victory in Israel’s February 10, 2009 general election.

Israel’s opposition has said it would not be bound by any such concessions. However its endorsement by Obama would represent his first step toward ushering in a Middle East policy based on drawing Damascus out of its alliance with Iran. Israel would then find itself on a collision course with Washington.

www.Debka@thejmg.com

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Does Israel have anything to fear from a President Barack Obama after taking the Oath of Office on January 20th?

No.

The Palestinians can expect the 41 year Occupation to continue just as brutally as before.

Obama's hand picked White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, is as pro-Occupation as it gets. The Chief of Staff is considered to be the person who controls the information that reaches the President. The chief of staff has been dubbed "the Gatekeeper" and "the Co-President."

Trivia: Rahm Emanuel is the inspiration for the character Josh Lyman on "The West Wing."

Obama picks pro-Israel hardliner for top post
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...

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....

...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).

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