donderdag 6 november 2008

Obama 30

Juni 2008

Deze foto dateert uit juni van dit jaar: President-elect Barack Obama speaks with Democratic Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois in Chicago in June. (John Gress/Reuters)


Deze foto dateert uit 2004.

The Brothers Emanuel
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: June 15, 1997



The best Rahm Emanuel story is not the one about the decomposing two-and-a-half-foot fish he sent to a pollster who displeased him. It is not about the time - the many times - that he hung up on political contributors in a Chicago mayor's race, saying he was embarrassed to accept their $5,000 checks because they were $25,000 kind of guys. No, the definitive Rahm Emanuel story takes place in Little Rock, Ark., in the heady days after Bill Clinton was first elected President.
It was there that Emanuel, then Clinton's chief fund-raiser, repaired with George Stephanopoulos, Mandy Grunwald and other aides to Doe's, the campaign hangout. Revenge was heavy in the air as the group discussed the enemies - Democrats, Republicans, members of the press - who wronged them during the 1992 campaign. Clifford Jackson, the ex-friend of the President and peddler of the Clinton draft-dodging stories, was high on the list. So was William Donald Schaefer, then the Governor of Maryland and a Democrat who endorsed George Bush. Nathan Landow, the fund-raiser who backed the candidacy of Paul Tsongas, made it, too.
Suddenly Emanuel grabbed his steak knife and, as those who were there remeber it, shouted out the name of another enemy, lifted the knife, then brought it down with full force into the table.
''Dead!'' he screamed.
The group immediately joined in the cathartic release: ''Nat Landow! Dead! Cliff Jackson! Dead! Bill Schaefer! Dead!''
Today, Rahm Emanuel is, at 37, one of the most powerful people at the White House. He is also the middle brother of two similar tank commanders: Ariel Emanuel, 36, a relentless Hollwyood television agent who left International Creative Management under cover of darkness to create a rival firm, and Ezekiel Emanuel, 39, an oncologist (with a doctorate in political theory) who is a nationally known medical ethicist at Harvard and a leading opponent of assisted suicide.
''We were cloned, full grown,'' says Ezekiel.
Of the three brothers, Rahm is the most famous, Ari is the richest and Zeke, over time, will probably be the most important. Zeke is also, according to his brothers, the smartest. Rahm, naturally, gets the most press attention. Last erm he managed the President's campaigns to pass the crime bill and the North American Free Trade Agreement, but this term he has taken over the job and close-to-the-Oval-Office cub-byhole of his friend Stephanopoulos. Now chief promoter of Clinton's small-bore issues like stopping teen-age smoking and requiring trigger locks on guns, Rahm has been singled out in recent profiles as the centrist, hyperactive counterreaction to the Stephanopoulos liberal cool. The articles are more colorful than is typical of the genre (the dead fish helps), but Rahm is more interesting, and reflective of his time, in the context of his brothers.'







'During the 1991 Gulf War, Emanuel was a civilian volunteer in Israel, rust-proofing brakes on an army base in northern Israel.[8]' Zie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel


De Amerikaanse kiezers mogen zich dan wel massaal hebben afgewend van de pro-Israel politiek van de Bush-regering, of Obama dat ook heeft gedaan is twijfelachtig, gezien ook het feit dat het eerste wat hij deed na zichzelf tot presidentskandidaat te hebben uitgeroepen het toespreken van AIPAC was, waarbij hij de pro-Israel lobby verzekerde dat Jeruzalem in handen van Israel zou blijven, een toezegging die hem in dank werd afgenomen, maar die in strijd is met het internationaal recht dat diefstal van andermans land niet toestaat.

1 opmerking:

Sonja zei

Wat hebben Hans Jansen (de 'arabist') en Rahm Emanuel met elkaar gemeen? Ze wilden vroeger allebei balletdanser worden.

Emanuel belongs to an orthodox Jewish congregation in Chicago and worked as a volunteer in Israel during the first Gulf War.

The night after Clinton was elected, Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" and plunging the knife into the table after every name. "When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape," one campaign veteran recalls. (Biografie Rolling Stone)

Emanuel's vader, Benjamin Auerbach (later Benjamin Emanuel), is nog steeds een praktizerend kinderarts in Chicago. Hij was ook lid van de Irgun (Etzel). Op 17 september 1948 pleegde hij een geslaagde moordaanslag, onder leiding van Yitzhak Shamir, op de Zweed Folke Bernadotte (gezant van de UNO in Palestina) en de Franse kolonel André Sérot (militaire VN observateur). En wie weet wat de terroristische kinderarts nog meer uitgespookt heeft met deze militante zionistenclub. (op de website van de Irgun wordt nog steeds gepronkt met foto's van de aanslagen...)

Is het niet merkwaardig, dat de zoon van een terrorist nu de vierde machtigste man in de VS (de wereld) is?

Zou hij weten wat het Israëlische leger doet met de familieleden van Palestijnse militanten? En met hun huizen?

En is het niet merkwaardig, dat je in zijn biografiën die nu in kranten verschijnen, ook de Nederlandse, daar helemaal niets over leest? Zo'n opmerkelijk feit?

Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...