David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel are Obama's aides in the White House, which means, of course, that the hype man is their boss. Therefore, when he decided, back in October, to say that his chums in Zionistan should slow down on their construction of illegal settlements and leave a wee bit of the West Bank for the Palestinians, it was only right that David and Rahm sided with him and what did those two staunch Zionists get from their pals back in Jerusalem? Well, for one thing, we had a little outburst from Netanyahu who called them "self-hating Jews". Of course, it cannot get anymore ridiculous; Rahm Emmanuel worked as a volunteer for Israel during the first Gulf War, his kids attend a Jewish day school, his father fought in the Irgun. Rham Emmanuel and David Axelrod, who has links to AIPAC as well has long term ties with the Chicago Jewish community, are not only prouldly Jewish, they are also staunch Zionists.
What we have here is Israel cleverly creating an oppostion where there is in fact none. For while, David and Rahm will side with their boss when he tentatively points out that at least a few crumbs of the cake have to be left to negotiate over, they know that this in fact will ultimately help Israel to appear conciliatory when they tell a couple of lone settlers, stuck somewhere between Jenin and Ramallah, that they are going to have to vacate their pile of stones. Indeed, one might suspect that there is a little bit of "Realpolitik" going on here and that Bibi probably even phoned David and Rahm to tell them of his grand strategy.
Of course, I am probably crediting Bibi with a little bit too much grey matter and maybe, just maybe, this man just doesn't like to be told by anyone what Israel can or cannot do. Moreover he is certainly not alone among Israeli politicians when it comes to thinking like this and we now have the Israeli Finance Minister, Yuval Steinitz, saying that Richard Goldstone, the head of the UN commission that accused Israel of war crimes during last winter's Gaza operation, is a Jewish "anti-Semite," Well, not according to Goldstone's daughter, who said last week that that "her father is a "Zionist and loves Israel." My inclination is to believe her. Moreover, when he delivered a lecture in Israel back in 2000, he might actually have been telling the truth when he said that "he believes bringing war criminals to justice stems from the lessons of the Holocaust." Yes, it is to be expected that the Holocaust has played a crucial role in shaping Mr Goldstone's humanistic view of things and, no doubt, Auschwitz-Birkenau and the other Nazi death camps were also central in forming him as a Zionist.
Yes, the "self-hating Jews" and Bibi and his boys really have assemlbed a motley crew ranging from "the beyond the Zionist pale" to his Zionist pals in the White House, ranging from Finkelstein, Klein, Chomsky and Pappe to Axelrod and Emmanuel and when the "self hating Jew" label doesn't quite fit, lo and behold, even Jews can be anti-semites. Yes, "wer nicht für uns ist, ist gegen uns" and in Bibi's "thousand year Reich" people like Finkelstein would either wander into a Zionist gulag or receive a definite "ban of the empire" and the Axelrods and Emmanuels would be allowed to cultivate illusions not too disimilar to those that German nationalists were allowed to entertain up until July 1944. Of course, with Bibi's new "Reich" officially determining who is a Jew and who isn't, all of them, including the humanist Goldstone, would have their right to call themselves Jewish revoked. After all, this is a man who really has learned the leasons of the holocaust and wasn't it Hermann Göring who said "Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich!"?
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