In a move that surprised both Washington insiders and political pundits alike, White House Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel yesterday denounced both Israeli expansionism and the outsized role of corporate interests in the shaping of our current political debate. “Though my father, Benjamin, was an arms smuggler for the Irgun, and is still an unrepentant anti-Arab bigot, who carried out activities that, were he a Muslim today, would have left him in Guantánamo for many years, or on the outside chance that he might have gained a habeas corpus hearing, serving several life terms in a Federal Penitentiary, I can no longer support current Israeli policies toward the Palestinian people.
He went on to explain the nature of is ideological evolution. “During the the Juy 4th weekend I finally got around to reading Ilan Pappé’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and found the argument compelling. Now, rather than simply encouraging Obama to make grandstanding and completely toothless demands to Netanyahu about stopping settlement expansion, I want him to begin thinking of Palestinians as people who love their children, families and homes almost as much as Jews love theirs. While we realize it will be some time before their ability to love their children matches our Holocaust-induced ability to do so, we believe everyone involved in the Middle Eastern conflict to begin preparing for this eventuality”.
When we asked well-known financier Haim Saban to comment on Emanuel’s recognition of the Palestinian’s historical plight and his apparent bestowal upon them of full human status, he remarked, “It must be a misprint. As I made clear to Nancy Pelosi during the Jane Harman spy scandal that the mainstream media obediently decided not to cover, I, as an American citizen, hold nothing in higher regard than the ruthless promotion of Israeli interests, especially that country’s continued and unfettered ability to displace undeserving Palestinians from their ancestral lands. He (Rahm) knows quite well that if he persists in suggesting that that these creatures are something other, something more human, than what they are, his boss cannot count on the support of my friends and I in 2010 and 2012”.
In a related note, Emanuel, who along with Chuck Schumer headed the fundraising efforts for congressional Democrats in 2006 and 2008, and scored a notable success in making the Democrats rather than the Republicans the proprietary party of Wall Street, announced, “It’s time to get money out of politics. I know that while in the past two election cycles I went on bended to knee to big business and then used their generous donations to recruit hawkish and pro-business candidates to run in primaries against our party’s peace-loving and middle-class supporting lunatic fringe, it is now time for a change. Fortunately for us, most Democrats, desperate to see the last of Bush, did not understand Obama’s FISA vote last summer for what it was: his signal to big business the Israel Lobby and the military complex that he would not in any way challenge their long-standing right to run the country as they saw fit. But now, even the most NPR-addled dolt has begun to realize that his next book, when it comes out, should be rightfully be titled The Audacity of Betrayal. We think we need to get out ahead of the curve on this one.” When we asked Emanuel how he planned to do this and replenish his party’s war chest, he said, “Can’t answer that right now. Gotta run. I’ve already kept Steve Bing waiting longer than any plutocrat should ever have to wait when summoning the president’s Chief of Staff for a White House meeting”.
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