Top row, from left: Dennis Ross, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod. Bottom row, from left: Martin Indyk, Aaron David Miller, Daniel Kurtzer.Forward - By Nathan Guttman
... Both [Obama senior advisers Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod] have significant ties with their hometown Jewish community in Chicago, and both have spoken to Jewish activists throughout the campaign and since Obama took office. Emanuel and Axelrod were among the few advisers who attended Obama’s meeting with Jewish communal leaders in July.
Emanuel, who has been in government since the Clinton administration, has been more visible. The son of an immigrant from Israel who was active in the pre-state Irgun underground militia, Emanuel visited Israel frequently as a child and even volunteered as a civilian in an Israel Defense Forces workshop during the First Gulf War. Emanuel was also praised by Jewish groups for his consistent record of supporting Israel while in Congress.
Axelrod grew up in a New York middle-class Jewish family and has been active in his Jewish community in Chicago since moving there as a student. Although he is less known on the national Jewish scene, Jewish activists said he impressed them in all their encounters with his commitment to Israel.
“They both speak very proudly about being Jewish and about their commitment to Israel and belonging to the Jewish community,” said Alan Solow, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and a fellow Chicagoan. “I have no reason to believe that the support they had both expressed for Israel has diminished in any way.”
Rabbi Jack Moline of Alexandria, Va., who has given spiritual advice to Emanuel in the past, added, “I don’t know many who are more secure and proud of their faith than Rahm Emanuel.”
... Despite the overall rejection of using religion as a means of criticizing officials on policy issues, it has become an almost compulsory experience for Jewish administration officials dealing with Israel.
“The first time [Israelis used anti-Semitic terms in a personal attack], I was shocked and offended,” said Daniel Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel. Kurtzer, an Orthodox Jew, got hit twice with the term “Jew boy” — once as part of former secretary of state James Baker’s Middle East team, alongside Dennis Ross and Aaron David Miller during the administration of George H.W. Bush, and once as ambassador. It was during his ambassadorship that Kurtzer was referred to as “that little Jew boy” by right-wing lawmaker Zvi Hendel from the Knesset podium.
“The reality is that it is more of a statement about the person saying it than on those who are being called it,” said Kurtzer, who is currently teaching a summer course in Israel.
For Martin Indyk, America’s first Jewish ambassador to Israel, there was also a sense of shock after his confrontation with Zeevi. But he said it was a “common attack” on America’s Jewish officials. “As a Jewish American in high office, it’s part of the hazard that comes with the job,” Indyk said.
“It is, to a great extent, inside Jewish baseball, so you shouldn’t take it too seriously,” former peace negotiator [Aaron David] Miller added... Full story
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