by Eric Walberg, Dissident Voice, October 6th, 2010
Obama has just lost his close friend and chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who is making the unusual transition from national to municipal politics. He is also losing his closest adviser, David Axelrod, (pragmatist Emanuel described their difference as prose versus poetry) and his mentor and director of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers.
Why are Obama’s three closest advisers — all Jewish — leaving? There is no pat answer. Axelrod is no friend of Summers, having suggested in an email the latter would be more comfortable in the “cafeteria at Goldman Sachs”. He claims he is homesick. Obama’s Keynesianism probably finally got to Summers, who prefers tax cuts. Emanuel, a former congressman, a talented ballet dancer, son of an Irgun terrorist, and an Israeli soldier during the first Gulf war against Iraq, leads us to the real answer.
As a very, very strong Zionist (dual citizen? sayan?), he is Israel’s canary in the White House. Israel boycotted Obama’s UN speech at the Millennium Goals Summit in September, and has subjected Obama to dose after dose of humiliating treatment, the latest when Netanyahu asked for the pardon of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard (serving a life sentence) in exchange for a temporary halt in settlement expansion. Netanyahu defiantly visited Pollard in jail in 2002 and he is celebrated as a hero in yearly commemorations in Israel. There seems to be an eerie replay of 1991, the last time the White House seriously tried to stop the settlements. The Israel lobby abandoned Bush then and destroyed him in the 1992 elections.
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