Rahm Emanuel's Dirty Secret

by Christopher Bollyn 


17 November 2006

The new "golden boy" of the Democrat Party, the Israeli-American congressman Rahm Emanuel, is the son of terrorist. Really, I am not making this up, the chief power-broker of the Democrat Party, the short and foul-mouthed Israeli named Rahm, is the son of a real living terrorist.

So, what do we do as citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave fighting the War on Terror?  Do we run and hide from the foul-mouthed little Israeli who swears for effect - or do we demand answers? How can we respect a U.S. Congressman who served in a foreign army and whose father was a terrorist?

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the Democrat congressman for the 5th District of Illinois in Chicago is the son of an Israeli terrorist. Rahm's father, Benjamin, was a member of the Irgun, the Zionist terrorist organization that coined the word "terrorist" as they blew up hotels, train stations, and other buildings in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s.

Rahm is an Israeli national who joined the Israeli Army in 1991 to defend Zion from Saddam's Scuds. Irgun, the army of his father, is short for Irgun Zvai Leumi, which means something like "National Military Organization" in Hebrew. As a matter of fact, the Irgun was simply a terrorist Zionist group that operated in Palestine from 1931 to 1948. They killed innocent Palestinians and British soldiers and blew up buildings.

After 1948 they became part of the new Israeli government and did the same thing. The Irgun even has a website with pictures of the buildings they blew up.  In Israel, the Irgun is referred to as Etzel, an acronym of the group's Hebrew initials. The Irgun was considered a terrorist organization by the British authorities as well as by mainstream Zionist and Jewish organizations, such as the Jewish Agency, the Haganah and the Histadrut. Irgun was founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and the relationship with Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism made it the predecessor to Israel's right-wing Herut and Likud parties.

The sons and daughters of Irgun members are in the highest positions of power in Israel.  Rahm Emanuel has a similar position in the U.S. government.  Of course you won't find anything Rep. Emanuel's father's exploits in Palestine on Rahm's website.  The late Sherman Skolnick of Chicago called Rahm Emanuel the "Acting Deputy Chief for North America of the Mossad."

Skolnick, an independent journalist, went on to say that Emanuel's father Benjamin had been "part of the Israeli assassin team that murdered Sweden's Count [Folke] Bernadotte" in 1948. Bernadotte was the envoy of the United Nations in Palestine who sought to find a solution to the UN Partition Plan that gave Palestinian land to Jews from "beyond the pale."
Was Skolnick correct? Skolnick does not document his claims so I checked into his allegations.

"Beyond the pale" would certainly describe where Rahm Emanuel's family came from. His father's family came to Palestine from somewhere in the Ukraine in 1917, according to what Dr. Benjamin M. Emanuel told me. Dr. Emanuel now lives on Locust Road in Wilmette, Illinois.  Benjamin, speaking with a thick Israeli accent, told me that his father's name was Ezekiel Auerbach and that his mother's name was Pinina or something like that. He said it meant "pearl" in Hebrew. Asked about his role in the Irgun, Ben told me he had been a "simple soldier."

The Emanuel family name was Auerbach until 1936, although they are not related to the famous rabbinical family of Germany and Krakow named Auerbach. Ben said that his family was from Russia. His father Ezekiel supposedly changed the family name to Emanuel when his son with that name died fighting Palestinians in 1936. Many European Jewish families in Palestine changed their names to make themselves sound more authentic.
Sheinerman became Sharon, Yezernitzky became Shamir, and Auerbach became Emanuel, and so on.  In this way the names of many thousands of European Jews vanished as the immigrants started new lives in Palestine.

Ben told me that Emanuel Auerbach had died from "shrapnel in the knee" in 1936. When I asked him today for details on this incident he suddenly decided that he did not want to do an interview on the phone and hung up. But before he terminated the conversation, Dr. Benjamin Auerbach-cum-Emanuel told me that he had been a member of the Irgun and had served under Menachem Begin. He told me that he had never met Begin and had not smuggled weapons into Palestine, other news reports notwithstanding.

Naftali Bendavid (not a local reporter) with the Chicago Tribune spent 18 months working with Rahm Emanuel to prepare a story for the week after the mid-term elections although Naftali did not think that there was enough room in the 9-page story to mention the salient fact that Dr. Benjamin Emanuel had been a member of the terrorist Irgun. Naftali Bendavid wrote a 9-page cover story for last Sunday's paper, which took up the entire second section of the Chicago Tribune. From his office in Washington, Naftali knew all about Irgun when I spoke with him on the phone. When I said it was an egregious omission to leave out the fact that Rahm's father had been in the Irgun, he said he just couldn't figure how to squeeze that bit into the 9-page article.

Rahm's mother is Martha Smulevitz, who married the Ben the Israeli in August 1955. Ben told me that they met in Chicago. I asked if she was related to the Smulevitz family that was living in Palestine in the 1930s. He said no. There are Smulevitz's and Shmuelevitz's all throughout the Zionist invasion of Palestine: one was hanged by the Brits and another was the chief of staff for Menachem Begin.

It would, however, be most interesting if Rahm's father were actually related to Moshe Auerbach, the Zionist who went to Berlin with Pino Ginzburg to arrange the transfer of Jews and money to Palestine with the Nazi regime.  And you wonder where Rahm Emanuel got his "chutzpah" from?