On Nov 6, 11:45 pm, "Bay Area Holdout" <Linea...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> "Jeff McCann" <NoS...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>
<Snip wasted good advice that will never see the light of day>
Here it comes kids.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
From:
http://rense.com/general83/done.htm
ALI ABUNIMAH: On yesterday's announcement of Rom Israel Emmanuel to
become White House Chief of Staff. "Indeed Emmanuel is one of the most
hard-line sup****ter's of Israel and has been for years. He's the son
of Benjamin Emmanuel who actually was a gun-runner for Irgun, the pre-
Israeli Zionist militia that carried out numerous terrorist attacks on
Palestinian civilians, including the bombing of the King David Hotel.
Of course Rom Emmanuel himself is not responsible for any of that, but
his record is sometimes far to the right of President Bush when it
comes to sup****ting Israel. But I think the im****tant thing here is
not just the appointment of Emmanuel but the greater context here
which is that from the days when we knew Barack Obama as a small time
politician in Illinois.
I won't tell you that I've never said that he was incredibly
progressive on Israel-Palestine; but he was certainly more open minded
than he is now. And what he's done substantially throughout the
campaign is to distance himself, or to 'throw under the bus' as the
term goes; any advisor or friend that was suspected of having pro-
Palestinian sympathies. In other words he has suc***bed to the
McCarthyite and racist campaigns that says; If you associate with even
a very moderate Columbia University professor, or take their advice,
then that's the biggest crime. So the signal he's sending here is that
this is not going to change. The people who could give him more
balance, more objective or more realistic advice that could change the
course of the disastrous Palestine- Israeli policies of the Bush and
Clinton administrations-that that is not going to happen.
That should be very worrying because a lot of progressive people; a
lot of people in the Middle-East, a lot of leaders, have pined hopes
upon Obama of being quite different on this issue-and I just don't see
any evidence so far, that that's going to be the case.
It worries me that people will stay silent, rather than putting on the
table now: and loudly-their demands for a more balanced, more
objective, more fair plan that could bring peace for Palestinians and
Israelis.
There could not be a more provocative appointment than Rom Emmanuel,
if he wanted to send a signal that he is going to stick by a hard-line
pro-Israel!
The point I want to make is that Barack Obama has painted himself into
a corner by appealing to the most hard-line pro-Israeli elements in
this country. By distancing himself from all advisors, even mainstream
establishment figures like Zebignev Brzezinski or Robert Malley who
was one of Clinton's officials who was thought by the pro-Israeli
lobby to be too pro-Palestinian. What he has done is he has publicly
embraced people like Dennis Ross and Martin Endig, two of the most pro-
Israeli officials from the Clinton era, who are totally distrusted by
the Palestinians and other across the Middle-East, because they are
seen as life-long advocates for Israeli positions.
So he's made it impossible or extremely difficult for himself to say
'look, now we're going to talk to wider range of people; we're going
to talk to those excluded voices that could give us advice, that could
actually get us out of this mess in Israel- Palestine' and that's very
worrying. And I think that progressive people across this country;
instead of basking in the euphoria, need to pick themselves up today
and start demanding that the Obama administration immediately end The
Siege of Gaza: it's totally indefensible, and it is a crime
unprecedented in modern history, that 1.5 million people are confined
to a Ghetto, starved, cut-off from the world: threatened! This is
indefensible and there's no need for this to continue even for a
single day under a new administration that should be setting the
standard very high; not accepting 'slight hints' that 'in a few year's
time,' an Obama administration "might" accept a Palestinian State or
might talk about one. The days for that are over. This situation is
urgent, and we really need to see radical change: It's not going to
come from Rom Emmanuel and Dennis Ross and Martin Endig-it's only
going to come from a groundswell; demanding that the promises of
'change' be kept!"
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