Rahm Emanuel Leaves Maze for Protesters
Sivan 10, 5770, 23 May 10 01:21
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu(Israelnationalnews.com) White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has arrived quietly in Israel for a ”private visit” without letting protesters know when and where his son’s Bar Mitzvah will take place. Government spokesmen did not reply to questions from Israel National News concerning whether Emanuel will meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.
Emanuel said several weeks ago he would celebrate his son’s Bar Mitzvah at the Western Wall (Kotel), but Israeli activists Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir, calling Emanuel a “traitor,” vowed they would protest his visit. “We will make sure to receive you as you deserve to be received ... with catcalls and disgust," they stated.
According to ABC News, the activists are offering to take 13-year-old Zach Emanuel "on a day of fun without his father" in order to "teach him a few things about the Jewish People's heritage."
If Emanuel does visit the Western Wall, it could complicate matters for President Obama, who also visited the holy site during his presidential campaign. Since taking office, President Obama has accepted virtually all of the Palestinian Authority demands that Israel surrender “settlements” in parts of the capital that were restored to the Jewish State in the Six-Day War in 1967. The Western Wall and the Old City were occupied by Jordan, in violation of the 1948 United Nations Partition Plan, until 1967.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office several months ago denied a report that he termed Emanuel a self-hating Jew. Emanuel, whose father fought for the Underground against Britain when he lived in pre-State Israel, has largely been considered responsible for guiding U.S. President Barack Obama’s hard stance against Israel.
Jews in the United States and Israel welcomed his appointment as President Obama’s Chief of Staff after the 2008 election and considered Emanuel to be ”our man” in the White House. However, it was quickly discovered that he was the person who choreographed the handshake between Yasser Arafat and former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin on the White House lawn during the Clinton administration and that his views were far from that of Israeli nationalists.
Emanuel also has been highly critical of Israel for promoting a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria and is known for a tendency to use unprintable expletives when crossed on this and other issues.
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Obama Advisor: Warm Words for Saudi Arabia, Hizbullah, Al-Quds
Sivan 10, 5770, 23 May 10 12:37
by Hillel Fendel(Israelnationalnews.com)
John Brennan, Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security, called Jerusalem “Al-Quds,” praised Saudi Arabian religious tolerance, and is encouraging of Hizbullah.
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has drawn attention to the above three instances of recent remarks by one of U.S. President Barack Obama’s top terrorism-issues advisors, calling them “outrageous” and “disgraceful.”
Speaking to an apparently Muslim audience at New York University in February, at a forum co-hosted by the White House and the Islamic Center at New York University." Brennan first told a story in Arabic, evoking laughter and concluding with, “Don’t tell the folks who don’t speak Arabic what I said.” He then said that his favorite city in the Middle East is “Al Quds, Jerusalem.”
In the same speech, Brennan also spoke of his time at the American University in Cairo in the 1970s, referring to the common aspirations of his former Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian classmates, including the freedom “to practice our faith freely … In Saudi Arabia, I saw how our Saudi partners fulfilled their duty as custodians of the two holy mosques at Mecca and Medina.”
In another speech before Lebanese leaders who visited Washington recently, Brennan told them, “Hizbullah is a very interesting organization,” and said that it had evolved from “purely a terrorist organization” to a militia and now to an organization that has members within the parliament and the cabinet. “There is certainly the elements of Hizbullah that are truly a concern to us, what they’re doing,” Brennan said. “And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements.”
The ZOA noted that Hizbullah is actually a Lebanese-Iranian proxy terrorist group that has called continually for the elimination of Israel.
In another speech before Lebanese leaders who visited Washington recently, Brennan told them, “Hizbullah is a very interesting organization,” and said that it had evolved from “purely a terrorist organization” to a militia and now to an organization that has members within the parliament and the cabinet. “There is certainly the elements of Hizbullah that are truly a concern to us, what they’re doing,” Brennan said. “And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements.”
The ZOA noted that Hizbullah is actually a Lebanese-Iranian proxy terrorist group that has called continually for the elimination of Israel.
“These comments by John Brennan are as outrageous as they are deeply troubling,” ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “No one refers to Jerusalem in the English language as Al-Quds, unless they have a specific political, anti-Israel agenda - in this case, pandering to Israel’s enemies, who will draw comfort from the use of the term Al-Quds by a senior U.S. government official.”
Klein termed “disgraceful” the fact that “Mr. Brennan’s pandering is taken so far that he speaks of some supposed shared goal of freedom of religious practice, and then immediately refers in complimentary words to Saudi Arabia - a country that is notorious for its harsh denial of freedom of religion, in which even non-Wahhabi Muslim mosques are prohibited, let alone churches and synagogues.”
Regarding Brennan’s comments about Hizbullah, Klein said, “Worse, Brennan give unwarranted legitimacy to the recognized terrorist group Hizbullah, thereby undercutting past U.S. efforts to isolate this murderous outfit.”
Klein sums up: “John Brennan is yet another hand-picked Obama adviser who shows a distinct animus against Israel and partiality for its enemies. It is unsurprising that, when Barack Obama is advised by people like these, quite apart from the President’s own troubling history of friendships with vicious critics of Israel and having belonged for two decades to an anti-Israel, anti-American black supremacist church, the Obama Administration has ignited major tensions in its relations with Israel while not holding accountable and penalizing the Palestinian Authority for continuing terrorism and incitement to hatred and murder.”
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