Father in Irgun Gives Emanuel ‘Impeccable Credentials’. So Spake the Jews

by on November 7, 2008 9
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Oh my breaking heart. This is from Andrew Sullivan's blog. A reader kvelling (Yiddish, sorry; I promise equal Arabic in days to come) about Emanuel's "impeccable" credentials including the fact that his father was in the Irgun. But of course Hamas should be purged from all respectable corridors. My people are subject to visionary delusions. It happened with the Shabbatai Zevi. He led a bunch of us off the cliff in the 1600s with visions. Communism too. And capitalism, too, for that matter…

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Neocons, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics

{ 9 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Richard Witty says:
    November 7, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    Are you like your father?

  2. anon says:
    November 7, 2008 at 1:27 pm

    Obama sat in a pew for two decades listening to black liberation theology, and his chief of staff ignored the US military and opted to
    help the IDF, and was a key eraser of the bill rider that would have forced direct approval by congress of any attack on Iran.

    What should an average American make of this?

  3. Ezra says:
    November 7, 2008 at 1:44 pm

    From Sullivan's post:

    "His Israel credentials are every bit as impeccable as Alan Dershowitz's."

    Puke. Laugh. Repeat.

  4. Craig says:
    November 7, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    In at least some circles, as I'm sure you know, it is understood that when someone blows up a school bus full of children, you have to know what groups the bomber and the children belonged to before you can say whether it was right or wrong — and in fact, that's all you need to know. I learned this from an Orthodox Jew some years back who quite seriously informed me that the phrase "Israeli terrorist" was an oxymoron. Palestinians (who are not Israelis regardless of where they live) are terrorists; Israelis (who are all Jews) are freedom fighters. To him, it was that simple. By that standard, undeniably, having a father who fought in the Irgun constitutes "impeccable credentials," there is no moral equivalence between Irgun and Hamas, and dead Jewish children are a tragedy and a crime while dead Palestinian children are just good riddance to bad garbage. No wonder there is no peace in Palestine, nor any serious commitment to peace among Zionists other than peace achieved by exterminating the opposition (a lesson they apparently learned all too well from the Nazis — or was it the other way around? How many times in the Tanakh does God command the extermination of whole populations?).

    This sort of thinking is one reason I am not a Zionist.

  5. David F. says:
    November 7, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    "It happened with the Shabbatai Zevi. He led a bunch of us off the cliff in the 1600s with visions. Communism too. And capitalism, too, for that matter…"

    Jews are too smart for their own good. It's staggering how much intelligence went into creating the wacky ideological fads of the past century.

    I like to think of it as youthful enthusiasm after bursting out of the ghetto during the Haskalah. Hopefully Jews will settle down slightly this century, and become a bit more like Finns.

  6. Richard Witty says:
    November 7, 2008 at 2:08 pm

    Is Emanuel the same as his father?

    If you wish to criticize Emanuel, do so, clearly and charitably please.

    I would consider it a fraud to condemn me for my father's actions or sympathies.

  7. Ezra says:
    November 7, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    Richard, Rahm the Knife gives credit to his father's parenting as the basis of his success. If so, there's not a thing wrong with looking at Ben Emanuel for a clue to Rahm's personality.

  8. Steve Sailer says:
    November 7, 2008 at 2:59 pm

    I did some research a couple of years ago and was amazed to discover that followers of Shabbatai Zevi, the false messiah of the 1660s, still make up a coherent ethnic group, known as the Donme, that has considerable power in modern Turkey. After the messiah's apostasy, several hundred Jewish families in Salonika converted to Islam, but continued to worship Zevi in private. They mostly married only amongst themselves. They played important roles in the Young Turks, and Ataturk had childhood ties to them, growing up in Salonika. Today, they form a fair share of the elite of Istanbul. For example, the foreign minister of the previous government was a Donme. For more details, see:

    http://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/06/its-borges-borges-borges-borges-world.html

  9. Richard Witty says:
    November 7, 2008 at 4:15 pm

    Children's psychology not far from the tree.

    What elements do you think he derived from his father? His politics only?

    My sense is demeanor, like Podhoretz, pugnacious.

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