November, 06 2008, 03:02pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Who is Rahm Emanuel?
WASHINGTON
CHRISTINE CEGELIS
An IT professional in the Chicago area, Cegelis ran as the Democratic nominee for Congress against longtime incumbent Henry Hyde in 2004, winning an unexpected 44 percent of the vote. After Hyde announced he would be retiring, she attempted to run again in 2006, but Emanuel -- then head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- backed a Democrat less critical of the Iraq war, Tammy Duckworth, who defeated Cegelis in the primary. Duckworth ended up losing in the general election.
Cegelis said today: "Emanuel has never backed off from his initial support of the invasion of Iraq; he says even knowing everything we know now, he'd still back it. I fear that slating Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff in a sense cancels out the message from Barack Obama that the Iraq war was something we should not have fought in the first place." See "Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives."
ALI ABUNIMAH
Currently traveling and available for a limited number of interviews, Abunimah just wrote the piece "Obama picks pro-Israel hardliner for top post."
Abunimah is author of the book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
More Information
DAVID SWANSON
Swanson is co-founder of After Downing Street and Washington director of Democrats.com, which is not affiliated with the Democratic Party. He said today: "Reuters quoted Republican strategist John Feehery happily predicting that Emanuel 'is going to spend most of his time cracking Democratic heads, getting them to move from the left to the middle.' It's a reasonable prediction, because Emanuel has spent the past two years doing that on various issues, most notably Iraq. As chair of the DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] in 2006, Emanuel directed campaign funding overwhelmingly to the more pro-war Democratic candidates and recruited opponents to run against promising anti-war candidates like Christine Cegelis and Jerry McNerney.
"In January 2007, as chair of the Democratic Caucus when the 110th Congress took office with the clearest anti-war mandate in national history, Emanuel spoke to the Washington Post, which reported: 'Don't look to Emanuel's Democrats for solutions on Iraq. It's Bush's war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP power, the Democrats are waiting to pick up the pieces.' For two full years, 'Emanuel's Democrats' maintained that ending the war on Iraq would require passing legislation, when in truth they could have simply stopped funding it, a conclusion reached by a hearing chaired by Senator Russ Feingold. Their pretense that legislation was needed, allowed the Democrats to blame the war on Republican senators' filibuster power and presidential vetoes. Those excuse may be gone now, but my concern is what we've learned about Emanuel's priorities."
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
LATEST NEWS
Gaza Child Amputees Struggle to Recover Amid Israeli Destruction of Health System
Save the Children's Palestine director said that children wounded in Israeli attacks "are suffering unimaginable physical and mental harm."
May 01, 2024
Thousands of Palestinian children who have lost limbs and suffered other debilitating injuries to Israeli bombs and bullets are struggling to recover due to the destruction of Gaza's healthcare infrastructure and a lack of adequate treatment, medication, and equipment like wheelchairs, Save the Children said Tuesday.
The London-based international charity recently published an analysis concluding that "the rate of attacks on healthcare in Gaza has been higher than in any other recent conflict globally." The group cited figures from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which found that more than 1,000 Gazan children had one or both legs amputated during just the first month of Israel's 208-day assault on the besieged coastal enclave. Many more children—the exact number is unknown—have had limbs amputated since then in what UNICEF called "the world's most dangerous place to be a child."
"Our pediatric staff say they are seeing lots of children with injuries caused by explosive weapons who are suffering unimaginable physical and mental harm," Xavier Joubert, Save the Children's country director for Palestine, said in a statement Tuesday.
The father of one 10-year-old boy who was playing outside when he was struck in the leg by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike described how his wounded son "was left on the floor for four hours lying in his own blood before there was a bed available for him" at a desperately overcrowded hospital.
"My son witnessed things that children should not see. Scenes of blood, his leg being broken, scenes of children being killed around him," the father told Save the Children. "Now he talks about what happened to him all the time. He talks about his dead cousin and his other friends who died. He's always talking about missiles. He even talks about it in his sleep. The scenes he has seen are terrible. One of the girls had her head split open. His cousin had a severe head injury and was in the ambulance with Ahmed."
Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a London-based plastic-and-reconstructive surgeon who specializes in pediatric trauma, recently toldThe New Yorker that "this is the biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history" and that he sometimes performs as many as six amputations per day in Gaza.
"Sometimes you have no other medical option," he explained. "The Israelis had surrounded the blood bank, so we couldn't do transfusions. If a limb was bleeding profusely, we had to amputate."
The story of 4-year-old Gazal Bakr, as told by The New Yorker's Eliza Griswold, is not atypical:
Gazal was wounded on November 10th, when, as her family fled Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital, shrapnel pierced her left calf. To stop the bleeding, a doctor, who had no access to antiseptic or anesthesia, heated the blade of a kitchen knife and cauterized the wound. Within days, the gash ran with pus and began to smell. By mid-December, when Gazal's family arrived at Nasser Medical Center—then Gaza's largest functioning healthcare facility—gangrene had set in, necessitating amputation at the hip. On December 17th, a projectile hit the children's ward of Nasser. Gazal and her mother watched it enter their room, decapitating Gazal's 12-year-old roommate and causing the ceiling to collapse... Gazal and her mother managed to crawl out of the rubble. The next day, their names were added to the list of evacuees who could cross the border into Egypt and then fly to Qatar for medical treatment. Gazal's mother was nine months pregnant; she gave birth to a baby girl while awaiting the airlift to Doha.
Other children have suffered worse fates. Dunia Abu Mohsen, 12, lost a leg in an October 27 Israeli airstrike on her family home in Khan Younis that killed six of her relatives, including her parents and two siblings. Undaunted, Abu Mohsen resolved to become a doctor so she could help other wounded children. She was recovering in the maternity ward of Nasser Hospital—site of recently discovered mass graves containing the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians—when a shell fired from an Israel tank came blasting into her room. It didn't explode but it hit Abu Mohsen in the head, killing her and wounding several other patients.
Israeli attacks on hospitals and other facilities have obliterated Gaza's healthcare infrastructure and medical workers' ability to adequately treat injured patients. According to the World Health Organization, Israeli forces carried out at least 435 attacks on health facilities or personnel during the first six months of the war on Gaza.
Only 11 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are at least partially functional, leaving around 350,000 Palestinians suffering from chronic illnesses unable to access essential medicines, supplies, and services.
In addition to the at least 34,568 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, more than 77,000 others have been wounded. Palestinian and international officials say the majority of casualties have been women and children. Overwhelmed and undersupplied hospitals have been forced to amputate arms, legs—and sometimes both—from children without anesthesia.
"We've recently seen an influx of children from other hospitals with wounds and lost limbs, often needing skin grafting and multiple operations, but even getting hold of simple things like strong pain relief is a major challenge," said Becky Platt, a nurse at Rafah field hospital.
"Children are psychologically destroyed by everything that's happened."
"When children have to undergo a procedure to save their limb and avoid infection, we are forced to do it with less pain relief than we'd normally use," she continued. "So, I brought bubbles and games on my phone to distract them, but the reality is that a lot of these procedures need strong pain relief. That is causing huge distress, and it will also add to long-term psychological damage."
"Children are psychologically destroyed by everything that's happened," Platt added.
Joubert said that "children who have suffered life-changing injuries don't have the sustained, specialist treatment they need—from effective pain relief to long-term rehabilitation—or even a safe home to go back to. They live in overcrowded displacement camps, sharing a tent with their whole family, and sanitation facilities with hundreds of people."
"After six months of unimaginable horror, the healthcare system in Gaza has been brought to its knees," he added. "Healthcare workers are risking their lives daily to give Palestinian children a chance at survival. The constant attacks on healthcare are simply unjustifiable and must stop."
On Tuesday, dozens of humanitarian organizations including Save the Children sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden urging his administration to "use all of its influence" to prevent an expected Israeli assault on Rafah, where more than 1.5 million people—most of them forcibly displaced from other parts of Gaza—are sheltering.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Are We in a Police State?' Progressives Demand End to Crackdown on Campus Protests
"I know from experience that these actions are traumatizing and dangerous; they do nothing to address the underlying issues and simply fuel more violence against non-violent protesters," said Rep. Cori Bush.
May 01, 2024
Progressive members of the U.S. Congress on Wednesday demanded an end to nationwide police attacks on pro-Palestinian campus protests following
violent raids and mass arrests at universities across the country, from Columbia in New York City to the University of South Florida in Tampa.
"The continued repression and violence against anti-war student activists and their allies by Columbia University, NYPD, and Mayor [Eric] Adams is abhorrent and barbarous," Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) wrote on social media. "The nationwide crackdown on protesters must end."
More than 300 demonstrators were arrested at Columbia and the nearby City College of New York late Tuesday alone, bringing the total number of arrests at dozens of universities across the U.S. to more than 1,000.
In a statement Tuesday, Bush said she was "appalled" by the police response to demonstrations at Washington University in St. Louis, which is in the Missouri Democrat's district.
"The police brutality, mass arrests, suspensions, evictions, and wholesale bans on access to the St. Louis campus are inappropriate, unacceptable, and outright shameful," said Bush. "Washington University administrators have joined the disgraceful nationwide trend of violent, aggressive responses by university administrators and local law enforcement aimed at curbing the rights to free speech and assembly by students, faculty, staff, and community members."
"Violently assaulting and injuring people who are courageously advocating for peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike is unconscionable," she added. "I know from experience that these actions are traumatizing and dangerous; they do nothing to address the underlying issues and simply fuel more violence against non-violent protesters."
The continued repression and violence against anti-war student activists and their allies by Columbia University, NYPD, and Mayor Adams is abhorrent and barbarous.
The nationwide crackdown on protesters must end. https://t.co/UbImkexSzH
— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) May 1, 2024
Bush is part of a growing chorus of progressive lawmakers, advocacy organizations, and human rights experts condemning U.S. universities for siccing police officers on nonviolent demonstrators who are pushing their schools to divest from companies profiting off Israel's war on Gaza and criticizing the Biden administration's continued support for the Netanyahu government.
Like many on Capitol Hill and across corporate media, President Joe Biden has
attempted to cast the protests as "antisemitic," giving tacit support to efforts to disband them and prompting warnings that the White House is further alienating young voters.
"Summoning excessively armed, militarized police onto college campuses to violently arrest unarmed students engaged in non-violent protest—students surviving and matriculating through the mass shooting generation—is shameful, misguided, and inhumane," Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said late Tuesday. "Student protests against injustice are not new. From Birmingham to Kent to Soweto, we've seen the devastating results of excessive police force. History has sided with the students every time. Political and university 'leaders' should know better than to repeat condemned history."
Video footage and photographs that have gone viral in recent days show police officers assaulting students, professors, and journalists in an attempt to crush a campus protest movement that has spread across the nation over the past two weeks.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, said Wednesday that "the use of city police to dismantle peaceful protests on college campuses in the United States, coupled with
proposed legislation to punish Americans for criticizing Israel, is a dangerous assault on our democracy and a sign of the very creeping authoritarianism infecting so much of the world."
"The Biden administration has been a shameful accomplice in sacrificing American free speech and civil society at the altar of Israeli interests and demands," Whitson added.
"We must stand with our young people and demand justice and freedom for Palestinians and everyone in this world."
In a floor speech on Wednesday, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.)—a longtime educator and former school principal—said that in the past he's had guns pulled on him "multiple times by law enforcement simply for being a Black man in America."
"Now I see guns being drawn on peaceful protesters at Columbia University," said Bowman. "When I was 11 years old, I was a victim of police brutality simply for being Black in America. And now I see that brutality being inflicted on peaceful protesters at Columbia University. And for what? Simply for exercising their First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble as they protest the collective punishment and murder of civilians in Gaza."
"Are we in a police state, or is this a democracy?" the New York Democrat asked. "We must stand with our young people and demand justice and freedom for Palestinians and everyone in this world."
When I was 11, I was a victim of police brutality just for being Black in America. Now I see that brutality being inflicted on peaceful students at Columbia and across the country.
We must stand with our students to demand liberation for Palestinians and everyone in this world. pic.twitter.com/aCORt8uOwA
— Congressman Jamaal Bowman (@RepBowman) May 1, 2024
The outspoken progressive support for the student protesters comes as police crackdowns continued on campuses across the country, with dozens more students arrested Wednesday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Georgia, and other schools.
Responding to police repression at Florida universities, ACLU of Florida interim executive director Howard Simon said Wednesday that "cracking down on peaceful protestors is likely to escalate—not calm—the tensions on campus, as events of the past week have made abundantly clear."
"Threatening students with expulsion from their university or deportation from the country does not align with the obligations of public officials to respect First Amendment rights regardless of the point of view that is being expressed," said Simon. "Universities are meant to be havens for robust debate, discussion, and learning—not sites of censorship where administrators and politicians squash political discourse they don't approve of with threats, arrests, rubber bullets, and tear gas."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Party Leaders 'Utterly Isolated' as College Democrats Back Campus Protests
"Each day that Democrats fail to stand united for a permanent cease-fire, two-state solution, and recognition of a Palestinian state, more and more youth find themselves disillusioned with the party," said the College Democrats of America.
May 01, 2024
Progressive lawmakers and rights advocates on Wednesday implored U.S. President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party to listen to young voters who oppose the government's funding of Israel's bombardment of Gaza, as the party's student organization announced its support for campus anti-war protests that have spread across the country over the past two weeks.
The College Democrats of America refuted Biden's suggestion last week that the protests are inherently antisemitic and urged the president to listen to the widespread calls for him to demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and end funding for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which is set to receive an additional $17 billion following Biden's signing of a foreign aid bill last week.
By failing to listen to those demands—backed by 77% and 56% of Democratic voters, respectively, according to recent polling—Biden risks losing crucial support from the voting bloc that the College Democrats has been tasked with engaging for decades.
"As College Democrats, we are committed to the re-election of President Biden and Democrats across down-ballot races in every corner of our nation," the organization said. "However, as representatives of youth across the country, we reserve the right to criticize our own party when it fails to represent youth voices... As young voters, we are well aware that come November, our votes will determine who wins the White House. The White House has taken the mistaken route of a bear-hug strategy for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and a cold-shoulder strategy for its own base and all Americans who want to see an end to this war."
"Each day that Democrats fail to stand united for a permanent cease-fire, two-state solution, and recognition of a Palestinian state, more and more youth find themselves disillusioned with the party," warned the College Democrats.
The group added that "calling for the freedom of Palestinians is not antisemitic, and neither is opposing the genocidal acts of the far-right radical extremist Israeli government."
The statement was spearheaded by the organization's Muslim Caucus, led by Wake Forest University student Hasan Pyarali.
"To the students out there protesting we stand with you!" said Pyarali. "To those seeking to silence us, know this: we will never back down in our fight against hatred and genocide!"
Sunjay Muralitharan, vice president of the College Democrats and a student at the University of California, San Diego, toldThe New York Times that the rapid spread of mass protests at schools across the country—and the aggressive response by police, who have arrested more than 1,200 people with the tacit approval of Biden—has caused the organization to reevaluate its role in a critical election year.
"We're realizing that our duty as College Democrats is to be representatives of college students to the party, rather than vice versa," Muralitharan told the Times. "As it stands right now, young people starkly differ on the issue of Palestine/Israel from the Democratic Party apparatus. And throughout the nation, we're witnessing Joe Biden, Democrats across the ballot, losing scores of young voters over this issue."
The organization released its statement hours before the New York Police Department stormed the campus of Columbia University and forcibly removed students who had occupied a building and displayed a sign proclaiming it Hind's Hall, after six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed by the IDF in January along with paramedics whom Israel had promised safe passage in order to save the child.
Images of violent arrests have spread on social media in recent days, including a video of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville professor Steve Tamari, who was beaten and slammed to the ground by police at a protest at Washington University in St. Louis last weekend.
Intercept journalist Ryan Grim said the statement from the College Democrats, as well as the Fairfax County Democratic Committee's support for the campus protests, announced on Monday, showed that the party leadership has rendered itself "utterly isolated" by continuing to defend and fund Israel's military, even as it's killed at least 34,568 Palestinians—the majority of whom have been women and children.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) urged the party to "listen to the moral sentiments of young people... about ending this brutal war and paving a way for peace."
"Reminder: It's not anti-war protesters that will hurt Democrats politically, it's the war itself that will hurt Democrats politically," said former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner. "Protest is a pillar of democracy and Democrats can either listen to the protests and the polls, or not and face the electoral consequences."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular