Here is how Obama threw Khalidi under the bus, per the JPost:
Asked by a member of the Jewish community about the
relationship during a campaign stop in Florida, Obama responded, "To
pluck out one person who I know and who I've had a conversation with
who has very different views than 900 of my friends and then to suggest
that somehow that shows that maybe I'm not sufficiently pro-Israel, I
think, is a very problematic stand to take …. We gotta be careful
about guilt by association."
Some friend. Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune says that Obama has approached Congressman and powerbroker Rahm Emanuel
to be his chief of staff. Emanuel's aide Sarah Feinberg denies this in an
email. Jews in the news. Emanuel is the son of Israeli immigrants. He made gazillions as an investment banker in no time after leaving the Clinton administration, then ran for Congress. Of course he was a big supporter of the disastrous Iraq war. Now he's is the bankroll for a lot of Democratic candidacies around the country.
I wonder whether Jewish power will become any
kind of issue now that a third presidential administration is about to
defer to this reality in our public life (so brilliantly encapsulated by Avraham Burg in his
new book: "The combination of the American state's power and the Jewish power in
the areas of legislation, administration, media, law, business,
culture, and entertainment have made the Jews a defining factor of
contemporary America."). I wonder whether Emanuel's service in Israel, at a military
base, as a volunteer, I believe, during the '91 Persian Gulf war, will
be journo-fodder. He was subsequently accused of dual loyalty, by an ally of his primary opponent in Chicago in 2002, and there was a legal fracas over
this. Emanuel wasn't actually in the army.
But the point generalizes, as Chomsky likes to say: Why is there
a revolving door between Israeli society and ours? Since when did our interests in the Middle East become utterly congruent with a state practicing apartheid against Arabs? Why does the prohibition on "radical Islam" extend to all American Palestinians? What about radical Jewry?
PS. Jack Ross sees the upside: "Would you rather he be White House chief of staff or the likely successor to Nancy Pelosi?
Two years ago I was hoping Pelosi would make him Democratic Whip in the
name of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. Thus I was
a little nervous – though absolutely not as hysterical as others – when
he held the ceremonial position of 'Democratic caucus chairman'. But now Obama will put him in his place, as he definitely knows how to keep his friends close and his enemies closer."
