Rahm Emanuel: Chief of Staff, All-Around Thug

by: Dark Wraith

President-elect Barack Obama has named Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. Mr. Emanuel represents the 5th District in Illinois. He has a reputation for playing hard-ball politics that some might describe as vicious and over-the-top, with rumors that he tore up campaign donation checks that weren't large enough, sent a dead fish to a political opponent (and also to a pollster), and repeatedly stabbed a steak knife into a table while saying the word "Dead!" to describe Democrats with whom he disagreed. In 2005, Barack Obama, himself, even joked about Emanuel being dragged before a grand jury, noting the coincidence that he and Robert Novak, who reported the name of a CIA operative at the behest of Bush Administration officials, share the same lawyer. What might have triggered Obama's reference to Emanuel being called to testify was the long-standing ties Emanuel has had to the infamous Chicago Democratic machine led by Mayor Richard Daley and to a figure in Chicago politics, Donald Tomczak, who was convicted of corruption in office.

Rahm Emanuel is the son of Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, a pediatrician who was a member of the Zionist terrorist gang called Irgun, which carried out acts of violence in Palestine between 1931 and 1948. Among other terrorist acts, Irgun was responsible for the bombing of the King David hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946, where British diplomats and their families were staying. Ninety-one people were killed. To this day, the Israelis celebrate this act of unconscionable horror, crafting a wholly self-serving reconstruction of the event to exonerate the Irgun of responsibility for mass murder. Rahm has never condemned his father's terrorist past and, in fact, remains close to his dad. Upon being asked if his son would promote Israeli interests as Obama's chief of staff, Benjamin said, "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," thereby leaving the impression that, at least to the elder Emanuel, Rahm can be either a janitor for Barack Obama or a Zionist for Israel. William Daroff, director of the Washington office of the United Jewish Communities (UJC), an umbrella organization representing 155 Jewish Federations and 400 independent Jewish communities across North America, said of the new White House chief of staff, "Rep. Emanuel is... a good friend of Israel, coming from good Irgun stock..."

President-elect Obama promised during his campaign for the presidency to be a consensus-builder; upon winning the election, he said during his victory speech on the night of November 4, "I will listen to you, especially when we disagree." These words appear to ring hollow now that he has put between him and those who would address him a gatekeeper like Rahm Emanuel, who has no tolerance for disagreement and who has crafted a well-earned reputation for intolerance with troubling tendencies for violent expression of his desire to get his own way. Indeed, Rahm Emanuel has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is "from good Irgun stock."

While Barack Obama might have posed throughout his campaign as a prospective leader with a wide embrace of differing views, his first major appointment has rendered evidence of a far less expansive presidency that he plans to conduct. In essence, Mr. Obama has now stepped in front of a mirror where all can see the reflection of his true nature as an insular man with no plans to build any consensus that does not meet his own desires and the agenda of the man who will serve as his chief of staff.

While Mr. Obama's die-hard supporters may find nothing deeply troubling and broadly indicative in his appointment of Rahm Emanuel, other Americans may come to find out, once again, that a leader who would choose a thug for his close ally is a President who has no intention of governing by consensus, much less by the rule of law.

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