Ali Abunimah is correct to say — in reference to the racist remarks by Benjamin Emanuel, Rahm’s father — that “sons are not responsible for the racism of their fathers.” But Abunimah is also correct to expect Emanuel to distance himself from those remarks, as he has been asked to do by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

As Abunimah notes, Benjamin Emanuel was a member of Irgun, “the pre-state Jewish militia that carried out terrorist attacks on Palestinians and the British in the 1940s.” You may have noticed that National Review and Commentary have not been digging into the extremist past of the Emanuel family the way that they obsessively scrutinized every bit of information about Barack Obama’s other “extremist associations.” This is because these conservative organs don’t really consider political violence on behalf of causes of which they approve to be terrorism.

I do not suggest that Rahm Emanuel deserves to be judged on anything other than his own words and accomplishments, but I don’t think many would disagree that, were he the son of a former Arab Palestinian extremist, rather than a former Jewish Israeli extremist, he simply wouldn’t have been considered for the position of White House chief of staff, or probably have been able to make much of a political career at all.

This is because of the double standard that applies to the discussion of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the U.S. Americans identify much more closely with Israel than they do with the Palestinians, and thus tend to treat negative information about the former as exceptional, and negative information about the latter as the rule. Leaving aside why this is the case, the fact is that it places certain strictures on U.S. policy options, and create serious consequences both for the U.S.’s reputation and for the situation on the ground for Palestinians. Read more

Yesterday the Iranian press reported that the Islamic Republic “successfully test-fired a new generation of long range surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 1,200 miles.”

Some weapons experts have disputed whether this was, in fact, a new missile. Andrew Brookes of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies told The London Times, “I think the Iranians just keeping on rejigging the same missile and putting a new logo on it. It’s basically the Shahab 3 with a different name, and the purpose of the test firing is to tell the world, ‘don’t forget us’, we have missiles that can reach 2,000 kilometers.”

The White House responded with the requisite denunciation, with spokesman Gordon Johndroe saying “Iran’s development of ballistic missiles is contrary to United Nations Security Council resolutions and completely inconsistent with Iran’s obligations to the world.”

Iran’s missile test should be considered in light of the fact that Iran’s economy, which had been kept afloat on high oil revenues, is collapsing. The high price of oil — which was partly a consequence of the Iraq war — had enabled Iran to sidestep economic sanctions, but with the recent drop in oil prices Iran is in serious trouble. They’ve got double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation, there’s a whole generation of young Iranians whose future prospects are very dim. And they are very, very unhappy with their government right now.

The missile test should be therefore viewed less as an attempt to “test” the new president-elect, more as an attempt by hardliners to rally Iranians round the flag, as they have done consistently over the past few years, by provoking a crisis to draw attention away from their failure to manage the economy. Read more