Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: Emanuel's Middle Name Is Israel. And I Guess So Is Obama's... via Mondoweiss by Philip Weiss on 11/7/08
Martin Sieff in the Daily Beast calls Rahm Emanuel a "quasi-neocon-hawk" and points out that his middle name is Israel. This is why I pushed for a low Jewish vote for Obama. He got 78 percent. He didn't get the hard-core neocons. The absolute nuts. But because he got 80 percent, the generational shakeout between progressive Jewish voice and the liberal hawks didn't happen. The quasi-neocons are still with him. The necessary conversation/battle within the Jewish community won't take place because the Zionists are as ardent in Obama's camp as they are in McCain's, and everyone's afraid to call them out. Even the New York Times. Maybe Obama's quasis are slightly more reasonable re dividing Jerusalem than Doug "Son of Betar" Feith. But only slightly; and who knows? Who's done the reporting? Obama, who won the Dem nomination because he opposed the Iraq war and Hillary didn't, now is in bed with the hawks. The latest New York Review of Books has a great piece saying that the neocons are like a "shadow government," a sect, a party. And the tragedy for our politics is that they have such a power base of their own that they are able to jump from party to party without consequence. It's like Dennis Ross leaping from one horse to another, the party doesn't matter. First they were Dems in the 70s with Scoop Jackson and Moynihan. Then they went to Reagan, then they abandoned George H.W. Bush for Clinton, somewhat. And of course they rode into Rome with George W. Bush. In a sense, they don't care about who is in the White House. They don't really care whether the president is a Muslim. All that matters is they pick the winner and mob him up. Obama. My man needs some help. Things you can do from here: - Subscribe to Mondoweiss using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
