Rahm Emanuel and his Father's Arab Smears

Last Friday, Barack Obama held his first news conference as president-elect. It was extremely short. He answered only a few questions. Actually, he didn't really give answers to some of the questions. It's more accurate to say that he gave responses rather than answers.

The big news from the news conference was that Obama took a swipe at Nancy Reagan. Obama had to call the former first lady to apologize for his tasteless "joke."

Now, less than a week later, we already have another apology coming from Team Obama. This one isn't from Obama himself. It comes from his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.

From the Jerusalem Post:

US President-elect Barack Obama's White House chief of staff apologized to the Arab-American community on Thursday for remarks his Israeli-born father made to Ma'ariv.

Last week, Benjamin Emanuel talked about his son Rahm Emanuel's new job and told the Israeli daily that "obviously he'll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to be mopping floors at the White House."

That prompted an outcry from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which called on Rahm Emanuel, a former Israeli citizen, to condemn the "unacceptable smear."

On Thursday, Rahm Emanuel called the group's president, Mary Rose Oakar, to apologize on behalf of his family.

"These are not the values upon which I was raised or those of my family," the group quoted him as saying.

Oakar said the apology was accepted.

An apology from Emanuel was definitely in order. That was not a good statement from Emanuel's father, Benjamin.

Although the remarks were made by his father, and Emanuel can't be held responsible for his father's words, it still was necessary for him to condemn the smears. Failing to do so would suggest that he agreed with his father.

Emanuel had to make clear that he doesn't share that view of Arabs.

That said, it's difficult to believe that Benjamin Emanuel's anti-Arab remarks were an aberration. Those sort of comments just don't slip out.

Of course, Rahm Emanuel would claim that those are not the values he and his family hold. And certainly he can't be held accountable for what his father says.

Nevertheless, it's an awkward situation.

Benjamin is a problem for Emanuel and Obama.

From Swampland:

Rahm Emanuel is his own man, with an identity distinct from his father's. He is not responsible for the actions or opinions of Benjamin Emanuel, a Chicago pediatrician who worked in the 1940s with Irgun, the militant Zionist group that committed acts against Palestinian and British targets that have been widely categorized as terrorism. (In 1938, according to the scholar Avi Shlaim, members of the group attempted to ambush an Arab bus, an attack that failed when a grenade did not detonate. In 1946, members of the group bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people.)

But that does not mean that Rahm Emanuel, or Barack Obama for that matter, can easily ignore the fact that Benjamin Emanuel recently said a nasty thing about Arabs in the Israeli press.

To be sure, it's a sticky situation.