Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January-February 2009, pages 22-24

Two Views

The Obama Cabinet: Back to the Future?

Obama and the Promised Land—Change to Believe In

By John V. Whitbeck

	President-elect Barack Obama (r) and Sen. Hillary Clinton leave the stage following the Dec. 1 press conference in Chicago at which Obama nominated Clinton as his secretary of state. Also on stage are (l-r) Defense Secretary Robert Gates, whom Obama asked to remain in that position; former NATO chief Gen. James Jones, named national security adviser by Obama; and Vice President-elect Joe Biden (AFP Photo/Jim Watson).

IN THE first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Israel Emanuel (D-IL), a former Israeli citizen. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Emanuel’s father, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, was a member of Menachem Begin’s Irgun forces, famous for the Deir Yassin massacre and the bombing of the King David Hotel, and named his son after “a Lehi combatant who was killed”—i.e., a member of Yitzhak Shamir’s Stern Gang, responsible for, in addition to atrocities against Palestinians, the assassination of the U.N. peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte. Rahm himself volunteered to serve with the Israeli army (not the American army) during the 1991 Gulf war.

In rapid response to this news, the editorial in the next day’s Arab News from Jeddah was entitled “Don’t pin much hope on Obama—Emanuel is his chief of staff and that sends a message.” This editorial referred to the Irgun as a “terror organization” and concluded: “Far from challenging Israel, the new team may turn out to be as pro-Israel as the one it is replacing.”

That was always likely. Obama repeatedly pledged unconditional allegiance to Israel during his campaign, most memorably in an address to the AIPAC national convention which Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery characterized as “a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning,” and America’s electing a black president has always been more easily imagined than any American president’s declaring his country’s independence from Israeli domination.

Still, one of the greatest advantages for the United States in electing Barack Hussein Obama was the prospect that the world’s billion-plus Muslims, who now view the United States with almost universal loathing and hatred, would be dazzled by the new president’s eloquence, life story, skin color and middle name, would think again with open minds and would give America a chance to redeem itself in their eyes and hearts—not incidentally, drastically shortening the long lines of aspiring jihadis eager to sacrifice their lives while striking a blow against the evil empire.

The profound loathing and hatred of the Muslim world toward the United States, which has always had its roots in America’s unconditional support for the injustices inflicted and still being inflicted on the Palestinians, can fairly be considered the core of the primary foreign policy and “national security” problems confronting the United States in recent years. Why would Obama, a man of unquestioned brilliance, have chosen to send such a contemptuous message to the Muslim world with his first major appointment? Why would he wish to disabuse the Muslim world of its hopes (however modest) and slap it across the face at the earliest opportunity?

A further contemptuous message was rumored to be imminent in an early December article in Haaretz, based on information attributed to “a senior Israeli diplomatic source”—the appointment as Obama’s personal envoy for “Middle East peace” of Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel cited by Haaretz as being an “observant, Hebrew-speaking Jew” and “among the main writers” of Obama’s AIPAC speech which so appalled not only Uri Avnery and other peace-oriented Israelis but all Muslims who learned about it.

Nevertheless, since it is almost always constructive to seek a silver lining in the darkest clouds, a silver lining can be found and cited. For decades, the Palestinian leadership has been “waiting for Godot”—waiting for the U.S. government finally to do the right thing (if only in its own obvious self-interest) and force Israel to comply with international law and U.N. resolutions and permit them to have a decent mini-state on the tiny portion of the land that once was theirs which the Zionist movement did not occupy until 1967.

This was never a realistic hope. It has not happened, and it never will happen. So it may well be salutary not to waste eight more weeks (let alone eight more years) playing along and playing the fool while more Palestinian lands are confiscated and more Jewish colonies and Jews-only bypass roads are built on them, clinging to the delusion that the charming Mr. Obama, admirable though he may be in so many other respects, will eventually (if only in a second term, when he no longer has to worry about re-election) see the light and do the right thing. It is long overdue for the Palestinians themselves to seize the initiative, reset the agenda and declare a new “only game in town.”

Furthermore, in February, Israel will elect a new Knesset. Binyamin Netanyahu, who, most polls and coalition-building calculations suggest, is most likely to emerge as the next prime minister, has one (if only one) great virtue. He is absolutely honest in not professing any desire (however insincere) to see the creation of any Palestinian “state” (whether decent or less-than-a-Bantustan in nature) or to engage in any talks (even never-ending and fraudulent ones) ostensibly about that possibility. His return to power would definitively slam the door on the illusion of a “two-state solution” somewhere over an ever-receding horizon.

This would constitute a blessing and a liberation for Palestinian minds and Palestinian aspirations. Their leadership(s) could then return, after a long, costly and painful diversion, to fundamental principles, to pursuing the goal of a democratic, nonracist and nonsectarian state in all of Israel/Palestine with equal rights for all who live there.

This just goal could and should be pursued by strictly nonviolent means. If the goal is to convince a determined and powerful settler-colonial movement which wishes to seize your land, settle it and keep it (eventually emptying it of you and your fellow natives) that it should cease, desist and leave, relying exclusively on nonviolent forms of resistance is suicidal. If, however, the goal were to be to obtain the full rights of citizenship in a democratic, nonracist state (as was the case in the American civil rights movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement), then nonviolence would be the only viable approach. Violence would be totally inappropriate and counterproductive. The morally impeccable approach would also be the tactically effective approach. The high road would be the only road.

No American president—least of all Barack Obama—could easily support racism and apartheid and oppose democracy and equal rights, particularly if democracy and equal rights were being pursued by nonviolent means. No one anywhere could easily do so. The writing would be on the wall, and the clock would run out on the tired game of using a perpetual “peace process” as an excuse to delay decisions (while building more “facts on the ground”) forever.

Democracy and equal rights would not come quickly or easily. Forty years passed between when, on the night before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King cried out that he had been to the mountain top and had seen the promised land and when Barack Obama was elected as president of the United States. Forty-six years passed between the installation of a formal apartheid regime in South Africa and the election of Nelson Mandela as president of a fully democratic and nonracist “rainbow nation.”

While it may be be hoped that the transformation would be significantly quicker in Israel/Palestine, it is clear that many who already qualify as “senior citizens” will not live to see the promised land. However, if the promised land of a democratic state with equal rights for all is correctly and clearly perceived and persistently and peacefully pursued, there is ample reason for confidence that Israel/Palestine will one day experience the tearful exaltation of a “Mandela Moment” or an “Obama Moment,” restoring hope in the moral potential both of a nation and of mankind, and that the Jews, Muslims and Christians who live there will finally reach their promised land.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of The World According to Whitbeck, available from the AET Book Club.

Inglorious Steps on the Path to Victory

By Paul Findley

A Muslim friend of longstanding is distressed at President-elect Barack Obama’s decision to make U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) his chief of staff. He wants to know when I will “deplore and condemn” this decision. In this public response, I explain why I will disappoint him.

Although I have never met Emanuel, he first came to my attention in 1980, when he arrived in Springfield, IL to raise money for my Democratic opponent, State Rep. David Robinson. I was seeking my 11th term in the U.S. House of Representatives. Emanuel’s fund-raising companion was David Wilhelm, later a chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Early in the campaign, someone inserted advertisements in Jewish periodicals nationally that falsely labeled me an anti-Semite—a tactic that was saddening but, for Robinson, financially productive. I won on election day, but Emanuel’s skill in assembling funds was apparent when Robinson’s financial reports disclosed contributions from every state in the Union. Aggregate spending in the contest topped $2 million, making it the most expensive congressional race in Illinois history.

Years later, while attending a ceremony on the south lawn of the White House, I applauded Emanuel, then serving as staff chief for President Bill Clinton, because he planned the president’s successful stage maneuver that caused a reluctant Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to shake hands publicly with PLO leader Yasser Arafat. A photograph of the handshake symbolized hopes for Middle East peace at the time.

Elected to Congress, Emanuel quickly moved up the Democratic ladder, most recently holding the position of chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, where he used his fund-raising skills to increase Democratic seats in the House of Representatives and enhance his own leadership prospects. If he stayed in the House, his energy and hardball tactics might have landed him in the speaker’s chair.

He has top credentials with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s principal U.S. lobby, which claimed credit for my defeat in 1982 and which Obama praised to the skies during his presidential campaign. But I doubt Emanuel’s Israeli connections were the principal reason Obama selected him as staff leader. The president-elect needs a strong loyalist who can be counted on to get things done. Even presidents have trouble getting the federal bureaucracy to carry out orders. During the last days of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, I was present when Vice President Richard Nixon told freshman Republican House members, “The president often had trouble getting his orders carried out. For example, he would send an order to the State Department and nothing would happen.” After watching Emanuel perform in the House of Representatives, Obama has reason to believe he will get things done as chief of staff, even when dealing with cabinet-level prima donnas.

Will Emanuel be a roadblock to Middle East justice, the goal of my endeavors for nearly 40 years? Only if Obama wills it. I don’t believe his new chief of staff will ever push his boss around. The president-elect strikes me as the strongest, most disciplined and most committed politician ever. In supporting him for the presidency, I admit I had no reason to believe that he will give top billing to justice for Palestinians. I supported him for other reasons.

To open the door to statesmanship, Obama first had to be nominated and then elected. He had to clear high hurdles beyond the color of his skin.

First, the lobby for Israel. It has powerful influence throughout America. It effectively shields the public from awareness of the Jewish state’s brutal treatment of Arabs, and U.S. complicity in these misdeeds. It is a major source of funding for the Democratic National Committee, the institution that handles presidential campaigns.

To clear this hurdle, Obama bowed low to Israel’s lobby. He visited synagogues but not mosques. Because prominent pro-Israel zealots hate former President Jimmy Carter’s recent truth-telling book about the “other Israel,” Obama shunned the architect of Israel’s groundbreaking treaty with Egypt in a spectacular way: he broke precedent by denying Carter a speaking role at the Democratic nominating convention.

Second hurdle, the prevalence of false stereotypes of Islam. Nearly half of the American people have an unwarranted fear of Muslims. They are uninformed about Islam and unaware of its close kinship with Christianity and Judaism. A recent university survey showed that 44 percent of those interviewed favor curbing the civil liberties of all U.S. Muslims. Given that enormous bias, any candidate with a Muslim-sounding middle name—Obama’s is Hussein—would face a daunting task trying to win votes among the suspicious 44 percent if he catered in any way to Muslims.

Accordingly, although most of America’s four million eligible Muslim voters supported Obama on election day, his campaign operatives kept Muslims at arm’s length, even rudely escorting ladies wearing headscarves out of close camera range in Obama’s public appearances.

Were these inglorious tactics necessary? When the Denver convention occurred in August, polls showed Obama and McCain in a dead heat. Factors that ultimately helped yield Obama’s victory—the market meltdown, Sarah Palin’s emergence, and McCain’s angry nit-picking—were still in the future. Obama decided to keep the harsh tactics in place—a decision that calls to mind the ugly compromise in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, when delegates accepted an amendment extending the slave trade for 20 years as a necessary step to gain approval of the constitution by some slave-state delegates.

Unsettling tactics fade in the glow of historic victory. But as the president-elect, already justifiably heralded as an historic figure, studies the world scene, it is important that he come to realize that bringing justice to the mostly-Muslim Palestinians is the essential key to progress on almost every U.S. foreign policy challenge. Moreover, he must recognize that Israelis will never attain true security until Palestinians enjoy the same in an independent, viable state of their own. Indeed, demographic trends suggest that Israel may cease to be a Jewish state in a few years unless it withdraws from Arab territory seized in June 1967.

Peace in the Middle East is unlikely in the next eight years unless Obama himself leads in strength. Just a few months ago, Obama’s rhetorical magic brought 200,000 Germans together in Berlin; on Nov. 4 a quarter-million Americans applauded his victory speech in Chicago; and in between, scores of massive U.S. crowds awaited his words in cities across the country. One day maybe—just maybe—this magic will inspire a great gathering of Israelis to save themselves from endless anxiety by cooperating with Arabs in a just and lasting peace. If Obama chooses this path, one must hope that Rahm Emanuel could be a big help.

Paul Findley served as a Republican Member of Congress from 1961-83. He is the author of five books, the most recent being Silent No More: Confronting America’s False Images of Islam. All areavailable from the AET Book Club.