Obama, His Chief of Staff, and the Middle East (Part 2)

The item on Barack Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff has sparked a good deal of discussion. Some readers have noted the welcoming of Emanuel's appointment by Israeli media, in particular the headline in Ma'ariv "Our Man in the White House".

I cannot find an English translation of the Ma'ariv story, but a reader has pointed me to the summary in Al Jazeera magazine. While noting from the outset that Al Jazeera is likely to have a far different perspective from most of the Israeli media, it does offer some interesting quotes. The most striking comes from Emanuel's father in Ma'ariv, '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.'

I'm still not convinced that Emanuel's appointment is that significant for the Obama Administration's Middle East policy. Few Presidents have taken foreign policy advice from their Chiefs of Staff, and I don't sense that Obama is going to prefer Emanuel to, say, the Secretary of State or National Security Advisor.

It's striking, though, how much play this story is getting in the Middle Eastern press (though, interestingly, the English-language Jerusalem Post was much more muted, merely recycling the quotes from Ma'ariv) and how non-existent the Israel-Palestine angle is in the US and British media's coverage of Emanuel's appointment One has to wonder if the Obama team realise that the issue is so charged that a tangential appointment causes consternation throughout Middle Eastern communities and, consequently, how expectations --- positive and negative --- are already being formed.

Obama, His Chief of Staff, and the Middle East

Dr Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a colleague at the University of Tehran, offers this comment on Barack Obama's choice of Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff:

I think I can safely say that most people in the Middle East have always felt that a new president in the White House, effectively means a continuation of the same American policies in the Middle East.

The fact that Obama's first appointment, and one of the most important appointments that he could possibly make, was to choose a person whose middle name is Israel will cause major waves in the Middle East. Those optimists who thought change meant the end of apartheid in Palestine or at least some sort of relief for the nearly starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will feel deeply disappointed and hurt. The choice of Rahm Israel Emanuel who has been selected as the US president-elect's chief of staff will do Obama no good if he wishes to change the image of the US in the region and it will reaffirm the widely held belief that the United States government simply can not free itself from the Zionist lobby.

Dr Marandi's comment indicates to me the challenges already facing the President-elect, a day after the Bush Administration declares that it has abandoned all hopes of brokering a Middle East peace before its departure.

I doubt that the root problem is the choice of Emanuel. His father was Israeli, and thus Emanuel was born as a dual US-Israeli citizen; however, he renounced Israeli citizenship when he was 18. In 1991, he served as a civilian volunteer with the Israeli Defence Forces. Despite this background as well as his middle name, his primary engagement as both a key staffer for Bill Clinton as a Democratic Congressman has been with domestic issues. He has criticised the Palestinian leadership, both Fatah and Hamas, but his comments are far less strident than those offered by other US politicians and pro-Israel activists.

Instead, my suspicion is that Obama made a rod for his own back earlier this year with his appearance before the America Israel Public Affairs Committee. That speech may have been politically necessary to ensure the Democratic nomination, but Obama re-cast himself from being a proponent of "engagement" of both sides to a backer of Tel Aviv.

It is in that context that a Chief of Staff's middle name and ethnic background take on significance. It is transposed into the belief that Obama's primary advisor, including advice on foreign affairs, is an Israeli citizen --- incorrect both in the understanding of the Chief of Staff's role and in the facts about Emanuel --- and thus it adds to the high hurdles the Obama Administration faces before it can even begin to think about a restoration of American credibility on the Israel-Palestine issue.

Reviving the Israel-Palestine Issue: Nader's Letter to Obama

A reader from Pennsylvania passes on a portion of Ralph Nader's open letter to Barack Obama. My own reading is that Obama is saved at the moment from engaging with this because of short-term political paralysis: Israel is effectively without a government, Hamas is just trying to hold together the economic and social situation in Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is not strong enough either to pick a fight or to pursue negotiations.

At some point, however, Obama and advisors will have to grasp the nettle. Do they take the lead in re-starting talks or do they carry Obama's campaign position from the spring, backing Israel? Do they do so even if Israel maintains its blockade on Gaza and interventions such as yesterday's tank crossing?

Ralph Nader to Barack Obama:

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character,
courage, integrity- not expediency, accommodation and short-range
opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate
defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S.
Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which
bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization
and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and
their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman
summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation
magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of
Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the
Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a
detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of
Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful
resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with
the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to
the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the
Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed
negotiations with Hamas- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you
ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by
the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored
"direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is
what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace
with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism
today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes
of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to
Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the
brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal,
cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United
Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during
the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400
Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that
decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab
League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the
1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations
between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap
politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much
shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip
succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the
fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a
candidate, but not as a President."

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not
utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and
wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions
of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized
Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see
www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on
Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized
the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks
on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in
early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate- Uri Avnery- described Obama's
appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for
obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice
the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital
interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to
find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama
has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future- if
and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am
certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad
for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the
world and bad for the Palestinian people."

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you
turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to
send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited
numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque
in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington
D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a
frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008
titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott),
citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all
walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the
American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune
published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a
Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political
bigotry against Muslim-Americans- even though your father was a Muslim
from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even
the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of
the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking
at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former
presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but
his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid
Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to
sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy
Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a
stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of
a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack
Obama!