White House Chief of Staff comes under fire from right-wing Jewish activists

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"The White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is being asked by right-wing activists to stay away from Kotel, when he arrives in Israel to celebrate his son’s Bar Mitzvah.

Right-wing activists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel sent a threatening letter Emanuel , accusing him of hurting Israel’s interests.

"You whisper in President (Barack) Obama’s ears against the state (of Israel), inciting, agitating and working against the entire Jewish people like a fifth column in the White House. Recently you even told our consul in Los Angeles that Americans were ‘disgusted with Israelis.’" they wrote.

The Western Wall sometimes referred to as the Wailing Wall or simply the Kotel (al-Buraaq Wall in Arabic) is located in the Old City of Jerusalem which was occupied by Israel in the 1967 war."

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[sharesunited]

1. That's not cool. He would be visiting the Western Wall for religious reasons, not political ones.

[jwirr]

2. I think they are being a little unfair to Rahm. The problem the people

of the USA are having with the whole ME is that none of them want peace between each other. It is frustrating to know that we have such big problems (oil depletion, global warming, food shortages, poverty, etc) and all our energies are necessarily centered on the ME. The only problem that deals directly with the ME is the oil problems. Please let us have peace so we can deal with the other problems of the world.

[Violet_Crumble]

3. A bit of information on who these 'activists' are...

They're terrorists. I certainly hope everyone here will agree with me on that....


Itamar Ben Gvir (Hebrew: איתמר בן-גביר‎; born 1976) is a Knesset aide to MK Rabbi Dr. Michael Ben-Ari and a spokesman for the Jewish National Front Party, a right-wing Jewish party in Israel.

Party Policy
Among its goals are the transfer of all Non-Jews in Israel who object to Israel as a Jewish state. A member of the Kach Party since the age of 14, Ben Gvir denies that there is a such thing as current membership, citing government harassment as impeding that. Nevertheless, he and his colleagues, mainly the former Kach leaders Noam Federman and Baruch Marzel (both, like Ben-Gvir, convited criminals), remain the students of their teacher and leader, Kach founder and ideologue Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Rise to Prominence
Since the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Kahane in New York, Marzel has been the de facto political leader of the former Kach activists. Today, Ben-Gvir is the spokesman and youth organizer and Federman is an aggressive activist in the field and a leader of The Hilltop Youth. Ben Gvir has often been accused of incitement for the fierce verbal attacks he throws against political figures, almost always calling them in some way traitors. Ben Gvir is a fixture of settler violence against Palestinians living near Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

Since the February 25, 1994 massacre of Palestinians in Hebron by Dr. Baruch Goldstein security authorities have increased their pressure and surveillance of Ben-Gvir and fellow activists. He has boasted that he was detained in prison more times than he can count, but maintains that every detention was administrative, meaning that he never received trial, and that therefore this constitutes state harassment. Ben-Gvir's causes have often led to media frenzies. A well publicized incident was one in Jerusalem in the 1990s when he chased senior Palestinian Authority official Muhammad Dahlan using an Israeli flag as his weapon, a scene that humiliated both local security officials and Dahlan's bodyguards. Ben-Gvir recently led protests during the visit of German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, denouncing the hanging of German flags for the state visit. He claims that the German state doesn't deserve any special honours in the country where its victims' descendants found refuge.

Criminal Activity
Ben-Gvir numerous remarks and actions presenting his beliefs have caused him to be criminally prosecuted. According to the Jerusalem magistrate's court <1> Ben-Gvir has 14 prior convictions including possession of materials on behalf of a terrorist organization, breach of judicial order and vandalism. In 2008 he was convicted of a string of offences including incitement to racial hatred, offences that were perpetrated about 7 years previously, the court of appeal acquitted him on one account<2>.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir



Baruch Meir Marzel (Hebrew: ברוך מאיר מרזל‎) is an Israeli politician.<1><2> Marzel, an American-born Orthodox Jew, lives in the Jewish community of Hebron in Tel Rumeida with his wife and nine children. He is the leader of the Religious Zionism-orientated Jewish National Front party. He claims he was the "right hand man" of assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane, acting as spokesman for the American rabbi's Kach organization for ten years<3> until it was outlawed in Israel and the US as a terrorist organization. The mainstream Israeli press regularly describes him as an "extreme right-wing activist".<4>

Political activity
The Supreme Court of Israel deemed Kach "racist" and disqualified it from the 1988 elections because it advocated the forced expulsion of the Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel from Israel.<5><6>

Marzel was elected head of the Kach movement's secretariat after Kahane was assassinated in New York. A splinter group from Kach, Kahane Chai, was led by Kahane's son Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane. In 1994 both groups were designated terrorist organisations in Israel and the US following the groups’ statements in support of Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of 29 Palestinians in Hebron.<7>

In 2003, Marzel joined Herut and Paul Eidelberg's Yamin Israel party to become the number two candidate on the party list, after Michael Kleiner, in the bid to enter the 16th Knesset session. The election advertisements featured him prominently with the traditional Hebrew saying "Hazak U'Baruch" (literally strong and blessed, Hebrew: חזק וברוך‎), a pun on Marzel's first name. Herut narrowly missed the minimum number of votes needed to enter the Knesset.

In 2004, he founded the Jewish National Front and headed its Knesset list in the 2006 elections. During the election campaign, Marzel called on the Israeli military to "carry out a targeted killing against (left-wing figure) Uri Avneri and his leftist collaborators."<8> This came in reaction to Avneri earlier saying on Israeli radio station Kol Israel that the assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi was a Palestinian "targeted killing," like the Israeli military's "targeted killings" of Palestinian political leaders. According to Gush Shalom, "the radio did not quote next words: 'I am against all assassinations, both by Israelis and Palestinians.'"<9>

Ultimately the Jewish National Front received 24,824 votes (0.79%), less than half the minimum 2% required to enter the Knesset.

In 2009, after fellow party member Michael Ben-Ari won a seat in Knesset on the National Union (Israel) list, Marzel agreed to serve as Ben-Ari's parliamentary aid, along with Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Criminal activity
According to a 2003 report in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, "Marzel had acquired a police record of some 40 files before he was 30".<10> The report goes on to detail his criminal record, including assaults on Palestinians (one earning him a 12-month suspended prison sentence), an Israeli police officer and Israeli left-wing activist and journalist Uri Avnery.

Controversies
Marzel has also advocated violence towards homosexuals in Israel, calling for a religious war against them during a radio interview. In 2006, in the days leading up to a planned gay pride parade in Jerusalem, Marzel reportedly stated that "The stabbing incident during last year's parade will seem minor in comparison with what is anticipated this year. We have to declare a holy war".<11> Marzel also was involved in the controversial March 2009 flag parade through Umm al-Fahm.

Marzel has named Pope Benedict XVI as a leading defendant in a criminal complaint before a Jerusalem court. <12>


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Marzel

[LeftishBrit]

4. 'Activists'?? I could think of a stronger word for them.

They are both members of the Jewish National Front, a party which has views pretty much of the sort that you'd expect of a party called National Front. They used to be activists in Kach, the main Kahanist party, which is officially banned in Israel for its support of domestic terrorism; and are still closely linked to the Kahanists. They have both been frequently in trouble with the (Israeli) police for attacking and threatening Palestinians and sometimes Israelis with whom they disagree.

Marzel has publicly recommended that Uri Avnery should be targeted for assassination! He hates not only Palestinians and left-wing Jews but gays as well. In 2006, he recommended 'holy war' against gays and threatened violence against participants in a gay pride parade.

Lovely people.

[Scurrilous]

5. Sarah Palin takes aim at foul-mouthed Rahm Emanuel

<snip>

"Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential hopeful, demanded on Monday that President Barack Obama fire his White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, over a reported expletive he is said to have uttered, CBS News reported.

According to a Wall Street Journal article cited by CBS, Emanuel told Democratic lawmakers during a political strategy session in August that they were "f----ng retarded" for planning to run advertisements against the conservative wing of the party for opposing health-care reform.

Palin's youngest daughter is afflicted with Down Syndrome. The former Alaska governor posted a note on Facebook likening Emanuel's comments to the infamous racial slur used to refer to African-Americans.

"Our president is doing himself a disservice by seeming to condone Rahm's recent sick and offensive tactic," Palin wrote in a Facebook posting titled "Are You Capable of Decency, Rahm Emanuel?."

"I would ask the president to show decency - by eliminating one member of (his) inner circle, Mr. Rahm Emanuel, and not allow Rahm's continued indecent tactics to cloud efforts" to debate issues, Palin wrote."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1147023.html