{"id":4663,"date":"2008-11-13T11:02:06","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T16:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4663"},"modified":"2008-11-13T11:02:06","modified_gmt":"2008-11-13T16:02:06","slug":"ali-abunimah-obamas-ambiguity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4663","title":{"rendered":"Ali Abunimah: Obama&#8217;s ambiguity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Ali Abunimah, <em>Washington Times<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2008\/nov\/13\/obamas-ambiguity\/\">13 November 2008<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sons are not responsible for the racism of their fathers. But they do have a responsibility to let others know that they disagree vehemently with such sentiments. This is certainly the case for individuals in public service, particularly the man President-elect Barack Obama has chosen as White House chief of staff. Yet, Rep. Rahm Emanuel has not said a word regarding the troubling statement his father made to the Israeli newspaper Ma&#8217;ariv.<\/p>\n<p>In a recent interview, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel asserted that his son&#8217;s appointment would be beneficial to Israel. &#8220;Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel,&#8221; the elder Emanuel said, according to the Jerusalem Post. &#8220;Why wouldn&#8217;t he be? What is he, an Arab? He&#8217;s not going to clean the floors of the White House.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The public has a right to expect Mr. Emanuel to reject such raw racism especially given the historic resonance of Mr. Obama&#8217;s victory. It&#8217;s especially important for Arab and Muslim Americans who came through the election campaign feeling they are the last group of Americans who can still be publicly denigrated. <\/p>\n<p><strong>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2008\/nov\/13\/obamas-ambiguity\/\">Read the article<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ali Abunimah, Washington Times, 13 November 2008 Sons are not responsible for the racism of their fathers. But they do have a responsibility to let others know that they disagree vehemently with such sentiments. This is certainly the case for &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4663\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-1dd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4665,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4663\/revisions\/4665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}