Rahm Emanuel appointment not playing well in Arab world

November 14th, 2008 at 11:13am Chuck Sweeny

Barack Obama may have dealt a severe setback to his own chances of being seen as an honest broker in the Arab world when it comes to dealing with Israel.

During the campaign, Obama’s foes made much of his middle name, Hussein, his Muslim heritage on his father’s side and his four year residency in Indonesia as a child. Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country.

Arabs, and Muslims in general, were hopeful that President-elect Obama would be more open than past presidents to the Muslim community, and particularly to the Arab community (which includes Arab Christians) in the long quarrel with Israel.

Now, their hopes have been tempered severely  because of Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff. Emanuel, a Chicago congressman who is Jewish, volunteered to fight in the Persian Gulf War — as a captain in the Israeli Defense Force. His father was a member of the  Irgun, a militant Zionist paramilitary organization in Palestine the 1930s and 1940s, leading up to the founding of Israel in 1948.

Rahm Emanuel has already apologized to Arabs because of an ethnic slur his father made about Arabs.

In all probability, Obama named Emanuel because of his perceived ability to guide Obama’s domestic legislative program through the often-stubborn Congress, even a Congress controlled by his fellow Democrats.

But it’s not playing that way in the Middle East. Obama has to make it clear, perhaps through the appointment of a high-profile Arab American in a leading foreign policy role, that he is, indeed intending to be an  honest broker between Israel and her Arab neighbors.

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