Sarah Palin PRANKCALLED! hahahahah

[Heywood]

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6103

Middle East studies in the News
Will the Obama Circle Be Unbroken? [on Rashid Khalidi]
by Scott Johnson
Power Line Blog
November 1, 2008
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/11/021943.php

Among the Hyde Park friends of Barack Obama was former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi was on the faculty of the University of Chicago, at whose law school Obama was a lecturer. Their children attended the same school. The Khalidis and the Obamas became friends and dinner companions.

As Paul notes below, when Khalidi moved from the University of Chicago to Columbia, Obama attended the dinner honoring Khalidi. Obama saluted Khalidi for "offer[ing] constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." What a guy.

Last night FOX News reported that Khalidi wrote an obituary for Salah Khalaf (also known as Abu Iyad) when he died in 1991. According to the FOX News report, Khalidi praised Khalad and said he would be "sorely missed by the Palestinian people to whom he devoted his life."

Khalaf held many PLO posts. In Inside the PLO Neil Livingstone and David Halevy report that Khalaf was the PLO's spymaster, the leader of its security and covert apparatus and the principal link to so-called rejection front elements like Abu Nidal. He directly oversaw the PLO's internal security including Force 17, the Special Operations Group and the Intelligence and Security Apparatus.

Khalaf was also the commander in chief of the terrorist Black September organization. Black September was a PLO front group that answered directly to Yasser Arafat. It is of course best known for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.

Among its other operations was the 1973 seizure of the Saudi embassy in Khartoum. During the operation the American ambassador to Sudan (Cleo Noel) and his deputy chief of misson (George Curtis Moore) were both brutally murdered on Arafat's orders along with the Belgian diplomat Guy Eid. Khalaf was involved in the planning of the operation and directed the seizure of the embassy. (I tell the story of the operation in "How Arafat got away with murder.")

Before they murdered Noel, Moore and Eid, the Black September terrorists demanded the release of Robert Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Sirhan. Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were also big fans of Sirhan Sirhan. FOX News also reported this week that Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn dedicated their 1974 book Prairie Fire to "political prisoners" including Sirhan Sirhan.

I wonder if Obama has had a chance to discuss the fans of Sirhan Sirhan within his circle of friends as he has met up with the members of the Kennedy family who are supporting his election for president. Obama would note that he was only six years old when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Would that cut it? The younger generation of the Kennedy family that lost its father and uncle wasn't much older at the time either...

Note: Articles listed under "Middle East studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique

[The True Adonis]

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6103

Middle East studies in the News
Will the Obama Circle Be Unbroken? [on Rashid Khalidi]
by Scott Johnson
Power Line Blog
November 1, 2008
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/11/021943.php

Among the Hyde Park friends of Barack Obama was former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi was on the faculty of the University of Chicago, at whose law school Obama was a lecturer. Their children attended the same school. The Khalidis and the Obamas became friends and dinner companions.

As Paul notes below, when Khalidi moved from the University of Chicago to Columbia, Obama attended the dinner honoring Khalidi. Obama saluted Khalidi for "offer[ing] constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." What a guy.

Last night FOX News reported that Khalidi wrote an obituary for Salah Khalaf (also known as Abu Iyad) when he died in 1991. According to the FOX News report, Khalidi praised Khalad and said he would be "sorely missed by the Palestinian people to whom he devoted his life."

Khalaf held many PLO posts. In Inside the PLO Neil Livingstone and David Halevy report that Khalaf was the PLO's spymaster, the leader of its security and covert apparatus and the principal link to so-called rejection front elements like Abu Nidal. He directly oversaw the PLO's internal security including Force 17, the Special Operations Group and the Intelligence and Security Apparatus.

Khalaf was also the commander in chief of the terrorist Black September organization. Black September was a PLO front group that answered directly to Yasser Arafat. It is of course best known for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.

Among its other operations was the 1973 seizure of the Saudi embassy in Khartoum. During the operation the American ambassador to Sudan (Cleo Noel) and his deputy chief of misson (George Curtis Moore) were both brutally murdered on Arafat's orders along with the Belgian diplomat Guy Eid. Khalaf was involved in the planning of the operation and directed the seizure of the embassy. (I tell the story of the operation in "How Arafat got away with murder.")

Before they murdered Noel, Moore and Eid, the Black September terrorists demanded the release of Robert Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Sirhan. Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were also big fans of Sirhan Sirhan. FOX News also reported this week that Obama's friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn dedicated their 1974 book Prairie Fire to "political prisoners" including Sirhan Sirhan.

I wonder if Obama has had a chance to discuss the fans of Sirhan Sirhan within his circle of friends as he has met up with the members of the Kennedy family who are supporting his election for president. Obama would note that he was only six years old when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Would that cut it? The younger generation of the Kennedy family that lost its father and uncle wasn't much older at the time either...

Note: Articles listed under "Middle East studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique

Again, there is NOTHING about Obama there as anyone can see.  I love the opinion piece, it is laughable.

John McCain supports and consults with Khalidi regularly.  He should be praised for consulting with a highly educated man as Khalidi.  I ask you again to stop questioning John McCain`s judgement.

[Heywood]

http://sandbox.blog-city.com/khalidi_and_obama_kindred_spirits.htm


Khalidi and Obama: kindred spirits

« H E » email
posted Thursday, 30 October 2008
"He has family literally all over the world. I feel a kindred spirit from that." —Rashid Khalidi on Barack Obama

The link between Palestinian-American agitprof Rashid Khalidi and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has finally been picked up by the mainstream media. It's something they should have looked at long ago, and even now, they aren't really digging. They're simply reporting the demand of the McCain campaign that the Los Angeles Times release the video of Obama's praise of Khalidi, at a farewell gathering for Khalidi in 2003. Obama and Khalidi (and their wives) became friends in the 1990s, when Obama began to teach at the University of Chicago, where Khalidi also taught. In 2003, Khalidi accepted the Edward Said Professorship of Arab Studies at Columbia; the videotaped event was his Chicago farewell party. The Los Angeles Times, which refuses to release the tape (and which endorsed Obama on October 19) reported last spring that Obama praised Khalidi's "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." Other speakers reportedly said incendiary things against Israel. Whether or how Obama reacted, only the videotape might tell.

That Obama spoke on this important occasion suggests that his attachment to Khalidi wasn't a superficial acquaintance. As Obama admits, the two had many "conversations" over dinner at the Khalidis' home, and these may well have constituted Obama's primer on the Middle East. Yet Obama has given no account of these conversations, even as he has repeatedly emphasized other ones which would seem far less significant.

For example, Obama, in an interview and in his spring AIPAC speech, recalled conversations with a Jewish-American camp counselor he encountered—when he was all of eleven years old. "During the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted." (In the same interview, Obama said Israel "speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus.")

Of course, the story of someone like Khalidi could just as readily have spoken to Obama's history of uprootedness, exodus, preserving a culture, and longing to return home. (So too would the story of the late Edward Said, who was photographed seated at a dinner with Obama in 1998, and who entitled his memoir Out of Place. Obama has never said anything about the impact, if any, of that conversation.) And indeed, it stretches credulity to believe that a two-week childhood encounter at a summer camp was more significant to Obama that his decade-long association, as a mature adult, with his senior university colleague, Khalidi.

Nor does it seem far-fetched that the sense of "kindred spirit" felt by Khalidi toward Obama was mutual. One particularly striking parallel deserves mention. Obama, it will be recalled, was born to a nominally Muslim father (a Kenyan bureaucat) and an American Christian mother, which has created some confusion as to the religious tradition in which he was raised. Khalidi's father, a nominally Muslim Palestinian (and a bureaucrat who worked for the United Nations) married his mother, a Lebanese Christian, in a Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, where Khalidi would later attend Sunday school. For such people caught between traditions, Third Worldist sympathies often serve as ecumenical substitutes for religion. (Obama himself allows that as an undergraduate, "in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy." One wonders how Israel fared in those conversations.)

Were we to see the videotape, it might give us some sense of how far down the road Obama went in that direction—and not all that long ago. It would be interesting to know, for example, if there was reference to Iraq. In 2003, when Khalidi's friends gave him his goodbye party, he was deep into propagandizing against the Iraq war. Among his arguments, he included this one:
This war will be fought because these neoconservatives desire to make the Middle East safe not for democracy, but for Israeli hegemony. They are convinced that the Middle East is irremediably hostile to both the United States and Israel; and they firmly hold the racist view that Middle Easterners understand only force. For these American Likudniks and their Israeli counterparts, sad to say, the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend: It enabled them to draft the United States to help fight Israel's enemies.
This argument against the war was not at all unusual on the faculty of the University of Chicago at the time. Another professor of Middle East history, Fred Donner, gave it blatant expression on the pages of the Chicago Tribune, calling the Iraq war "a vision deriving from Likud-oriented members of the president's team—particularly Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith." So perhaps it is not surprising that Obama, in his October 2002 antiwar speech, declared: "What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." No mention of Cheney or Rumsfeld—and no need to mention them, to a constituency that knew who was really behind the push for war, and why. (Later, the same argument would figure prominently in The Israel Lobby, co-authored by another Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer.)

Obama, when pressed during an appearance before a Jewish audience, admitted that "I do know him [Khalidi] because I taught at the University of Chicago." This sounds wholly innocuous; I also know Khalidi because I taught at the University of Chicago—twice, in 1990 and 1991, when I had an office on the same hall. Obama continues: "And I do know him and I have had conversations." Well, even I've had conversations with Khalidi. (A former Chicago graduate student who must keep meticulous records writes to me that he spotted me on December 6, 1990, at the Quad Club lunching with Khalidi.) Nor does it mean much if Khalidi introduced Obama to Edward Said; Khalidi introduced me to Edward Said in New York in November 1986.

The difference is that while I came away from these encounters convinced that Khalidi's purported moderation was a sham, and have said so, Obama went the other direction, maintaining their friendship right up to Khalidi's send-off from Chicago, to which he contributed an encomium. Which is why I'd really like to see that videotape. I'm just curious which of Rashid Khalidi's virtues I somehow missed, and Barack Obama saw.

Pointer: The next public sighting of Khalidi will be at a Columbia conference entitled "Orientalism from the Standpoint of its Victims—An Edward Said Conference," on November 7. Khalidi will deliver the opening address.

[The True Adonis]

http://sandbox.blog-city.com/khalidi_and_obama_kindred_spirits.htm


Khalidi and Obama: kindred spirits

« H E » email
posted Thursday, 30 October 2008
"He has family literally all over the world. I feel a kindred spirit from that." —Rashid Khalidi on Barack Obama

The link between Palestinian-American agitprof Rashid Khalidi and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has finally been picked up by the mainstream media. It's something they should have looked at long ago, and even now, they aren't really digging. They're simply reporting the demand of the McCain campaign that the Los Angeles Times release the video of Obama's praise of Khalidi, at a farewell gathering for Khalidi in 2003. Obama and Khalidi (and their wives) became friends in the 1990s, when Obama began to teach at the University of Chicago, where Khalidi also taught. In 2003, Khalidi accepted the Edward Said Professorship of Arab Studies at Columbia; the videotaped event was his Chicago farewell party. The Los Angeles Times, which refuses to release the tape (and which endorsed Obama on October 19) reported last spring that Obama praised Khalidi's "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." Other speakers reportedly said incendiary things against Israel. Whether or how Obama reacted, only the videotape might tell.

That Obama spoke on this important occasion suggests that his attachment to Khalidi wasn't a superficial acquaintance. As Obama admits, the two had many "conversations" over dinner at the Khalidis' home, and these may well have constituted Obama's primer on the Middle East. Yet Obama has given no account of these conversations, even as he has repeatedly emphasized other ones which would seem far less significant.

For example, Obama, in an interview and in his spring AIPAC speech, recalled conversations with a Jewish-American camp counselor he encountered—when he was all of eleven years old. "During the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted." (In the same interview, Obama said Israel "speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus.")

Of course, the story of someone like Khalidi could just as readily have spoken to Obama's history of uprootedness, exodus, preserving a culture, and longing to return home. (So too would the story of the late Edward Said, who was photographed seated at a dinner with Obama in 1998, and who entitled his memoir Out of Place. Obama has never said anything about the impact, if any, of that conversation.) And indeed, it stretches credulity to believe that a two-week childhood encounter at a summer camp was more significant to Obama that his decade-long association, as a mature adult, with his senior university colleague, Khalidi.

Nor does it seem far-fetched that the sense of "kindred spirit" felt by Khalidi toward Obama was mutual. One particularly striking parallel deserves mention. Obama, it will be recalled, was born to a nominally Muslim father (a Kenyan bureaucat) and an American Christian mother, which has created some confusion as to the religious tradition in which he was raised. Khalidi's father, a nominally Muslim Palestinian (and a bureaucrat who worked for the United Nations) married his mother, a Lebanese Christian, in a Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, where Khalidi would later attend Sunday school. For such people caught between traditions, Third Worldist sympathies often serve as ecumenical substitutes for religion. (Obama himself allows that as an undergraduate, "in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy." One wonders how Israel fared in those conversations.)

Were we to see the videotape, it might give us some sense of how far down the road Obama went in that direction—and not all that long ago. It would be interesting to know, for example, if there was reference to Iraq. In 2003, when Khalidi's friends gave him his goodbye party, he was deep into propagandizing against the Iraq war. Among his arguments, he included this one:
This war will be fought because these neoconservatives desire to make the Middle East safe not for democracy, but for Israeli hegemony. They are convinced that the Middle East is irremediably hostile to both the United States and Israel; and they firmly hold the racist view that Middle Easterners understand only force. For these American Likudniks and their Israeli counterparts, sad to say, the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend: It enabled them to draft the United States to help fight Israel's enemies.
This argument against the war was not at all unusual on the faculty of the University of Chicago at the time. Another professor of Middle East history, Fred Donner, gave it blatant expression on the pages of the Chicago Tribune, calling the Iraq war "a vision deriving from Likud-oriented members of the president's team—particularly Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith." So perhaps it is not surprising that Obama, in his October 2002 antiwar speech, declared: "What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." No mention of Cheney or Rumsfeld—and no need to mention them, to a constituency that knew who was really behind the push for war, and why. (Later, the same argument would figure prominently in The Israel Lobby, co-authored by another Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer.)

Obama, when pressed during an appearance before a Jewish audience, admitted that "I do know him [Khalidi] because I taught at the University of Chicago." This sounds wholly innocuous; I also know Khalidi because I taught at the University of Chicago—twice, in 1990 and 1991, when I had an office on the same hall. Obama continues: "And I do know him and I have had conversations." Well, even I've had conversations with Khalidi. (A former Chicago graduate student who must keep meticulous records writes to me that he spotted me on December 6, 1990, at the Quad Club lunching with Khalidi.) Nor does it mean much if Khalidi introduced Obama to Edward Said; Khalidi introduced me to Edward Said in New York in November 1986.

The difference is that while I came away from these encounters convinced that Khalidi's purported moderation was a sham, and have said so, Obama went the other direction, maintaining their friendship right up to Khalidi's send-off from Chicago, to which he contributed an encomium. Which is why I'd really like to see that videotape. I'm just curious which of Rashid Khalidi's virtues I somehow missed, and Barack Obama saw.

Pointer: The next public sighting of Khalidi will be at a Columbia conference entitled "Orientalism from the Standpoint of its Victims—An Edward Said Conference," on November 7. Khalidi will deliver the opening address.

Khalidi is AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR. John McCain knows the value of Khalidi.

Look at Khalidi`s crednetials. Impressive to say the least.

Rashid Khalidi (born 1950), an American historian of the Middle East, is the 'Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies' at Columbia University,[1] and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.


Khalidi was born in New York. He received a B.A. from Yale University, where he was a member of Wolf's Head Society,[2] in 1970,[3] and a D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1974[4] and spent many years as a professor and director of both the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago before joining the Columbia faculty. He has also taught at Georgetown University, Lebanese University, and the American University of Beirut.

Khalidi is married to Mona Khalidi, who is the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and the Assistant Director of Graduate Studies of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.[5] He is a member of the National Advisory Committee of the U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East, which describes itself as "a national organization of Jews, Christians and Muslims dedicated to dialogue, education and advocacy for peace based on the deepest teachings of the three religious traditions."[6]

He is member of the Board of Sponsors of The Palestine-Israel Journal, a publication founded by Ziad AbuZayyad and Victor Cygielman, prominent Palestinian and Israeli journalists.

He is founding trustee of The Center for Palestine Research and Studies.
[/size]
Princeton University let it be known that it was considering hiring Khalidi in 2005.[7] However, a controversy developed over Khalidi's political involvements and no job offer was made.[8]

Academic work

Khalidi’s research covers primarily the history of the modern Middle East. He focuses on the countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean, with an eye to the emergence of various national identities and the role played by external powers in their development. He also researches the impact of the press on forming new senses of community, the role of education in the construction of political identity, and in the way narratives have developed over the past centuries in the region.[4] Michael C. Hudson, director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown, describes Khalidi as "preeminent in his field."[9] He served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in 1994. Khalidi is currently editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

Much of Khalidi's scholarly work in the 1990s focused on the historical construction of nationalism in the Arab world. Drawing on the work of theorists Benedict Anderson who described nations as "imagined communities", he does not posit primordial national identities, but clearly argues that these nations have legitimacy and rights. In Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997), he places the emergence of Palestinian national identity in the context of Ottoman and British colonialism as well as the early Zionist effort in the Levant. This book won the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Prize as best book of 1997.[10] His dating of Palestinian national emergence to the early 20th century and his tracing of its contours provide a rejoinder to Israeli nationalist claims that Palestinians either do not exist, or had no collective claims prior to the 1948 creation of Israel. Nevertheless, Khalidi is also careful to focus on the late development, failings and internal divisions within the various elements of the Palestinian nationalist movement as well.

In Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004), Khalidi takes readers on a historical tour of Western intervention in the Middle East, and argues that these interventions continue to have a colonialist nature that is both morally unacceptable and likely to backfire.

[Heywood]

Yes, McCain and his GOP charitable organization wrote a check to a foreign entity to do polling.

Obama went to this PLO spokesman's home repeatedly with this wife.  Kahlidi's wife Mona was a top English translator to Arafat's press agency.

And Kahlidi wrote the nice tribute to Abu Iyad a/k/a Salah Khalaf who was a top PLO leader, and the commander in chief of the Black September, which you are probably too young to understand the full impact of.

Listen, do all the hero worship you want.  Hopefully enough of us will be  watching this guy.........

[The True Adonis]

I can`t think of anyone more qualified on Middle Eastern International Studies than Khalidi.

John McCain has done the right thing by funding Khalidi and consulting with him regularly.  This is one area you should be bragging and highlighting about McCain, instead of running away from.  McCain KNOWS Khalidi is an expert and knows that 500 grand he gave Khalidi was well spent.

[The True Adonis]

Yes, McCain and his GOP charitable organization wrote a check to a foreign entity to do polling.

Obama went to this PLO spokesman's home repeatedly with this wife.  Kahlidi's wife Mona was a top English translator to Arafat's press agency.

And Kahlidi wrote the nice tribute to Abu Iyad a/k/a Salah Khalaf who was a top PLO leader, and the commander in chief of the Black September, which you are probably too young to understand the full impact of.

Listen, do all the hero worship you want.  Hopefully enough of us will be  watching this guy.........

I`m simply praising McCain`s own Judgment for consulting with the American Scholar, Khalidi and funding his research is all.  McCain USED to be able to surround himself and choose experts. 

[The True Adonis]

Slandering a Noted Scholar

Both McCain and Palin have referred to Khalidi as a former "spokesman" for the Palestine Liberation Organization, citing his time in Beirut during the late 1970s and early 1980s when the then-exiled PLO was based there and some of its armed factions were still engaged in terrorism. Khalidi was never a spokesman for the organization, however, instead serving during that period as a fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies and as a professor at the American University in Beirut. (I first met Khalidi in the Lebanese capital back in 1981 and recall him as someone who clearly embraced an independent and moderate nationalist perspective.) Later, he served in an advisory capacity for the non-PLO Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace talks.

Campaigning on Wednesday, Palin referred to Khalidi as "another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years." Fox News and scores of other pro-Republican news outlets have similarly accused Khalidi of being an "extremist" and a "supporter of terrorism."

In reality, rather than allying himself with anti-Israeli extremists, Khalidi is far more closely identified with Palestinian moderates and the Israeli peace camp. For example, he serves on the national advisory committee of the U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East, a highly regarded interfaith group advocating dialogue, education and peace advocacy.

Furthermore, while recognizing the international legal right for a people to resist uniformed foreign occupation forces, Khalidi has opposed terrorism and has explicitly stated that killing Israeli civilians is a "war crime" and "a violation of international law."

The apparent source of many of these misrepresentations of Khalidi come from a 2004 Washington Times article written by Asaf Romirowsky and by Jonathan Calt Harris of the right-wing Middle East Forum, which falsely accused Khalidi of "shilling for terrorists." In addition, despite Khalidi's well-known criticism of former Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, the article was headlined "Arafat Minion as Professor." Neither the mainstream media nor the Obama campaign have bothered to cite Harris' notorious history of demonstrably false reporting and mischaracterizations of Khalidi and other Middle East scholars who have dared question Bush administration policy in the Middle East. (That same year, Harris wrote a widely circulated article for the National Review Online -- another source of a series false claims against Khalidi -- in which he manufactured an anti-Semitic remark that he claimed I had made as a speaker on a panel at the National Press Club in Washington sponsored by the American Committee on Jerusalem, a group for which Khalidi once served as president. Fortunately, the event was taped, so I succeeded in getting NRO to drop the fabricated quote from the article when I threatened legal action.)

Unfortunately, the Obama campaign has yet to defend Khalidi from any of the demonstrably false mischaracterizations of Khalidi's political positions, simply claiming that Obama "does not share Khalidi's views."

For example, when McCain demanded that the Los Angeles Times release a tape -- which it received on the condition that it not be made public -- of a social event Obama attended in honor of Khalidi, McCain declared, "If there was a tape of John McCain in a neo-Nazi outfit, I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different." Regretfully, the Obama campaign has yet to challenge the Republican nominee's unconscionable comparison of this respected Arab American scholar to neo-Nazis.

Indeed, instead of coming to Khalidi's defense against these and other racist and transparently false attacks against him, the Obama campaign has instead launched a counterattack, pointing out that the International Republican Institute, a government-funded foundation nominally headed by McCain, funded a project founded by Khalidi known as the Center for Palestine Research and Studies. The IRI has provided more than $800,000 to the group, which engages in polling and other survey research on Palestinian sociopolitical attitudes. It is unclear, however, what the Democrats find so objectionable about the center's work.

Both campaigns, then, are effectively buying into this myth that there are these far left academics who are unduly influencing our policy makers and/or squandering our tax dollars. In doing so, both McCain and Obama are thereby contributing to the growing anti-intellectualism and ongoing threats to academic freedom in this country.

[Heywood]

Yeah, all that is wonderful, TA.  I don't care about what other great things this guy does.

Khalaf was, at least at some point, very committed to the destruction of Israel. That's enough for me.

Note, TA - the issue is not really Khalaf, it is Obama's ties.

Funny how that LA Times tape just cannot be released.  Supposedly we get Obama, Ayers, and Khalaf, and Mona.  Too bad.  I don't think it would stop Obama from being elected.

[Heywood]

Look, TA, live in your own world.

Make fun of McCain and Palin.  They are both kind of stupid and dense sometimes.

But they don't seem to have an unseen agenda.  We can only guess at what Biden was talking about.

[Heywood]

TA, read the last 2 paragraphs of Krauthammer's commentary:

Obama & Friends: Judge Not?

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 10, 2008; A19

Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters. Yet let the McCain campaign raise the issue, and the mainstream media begin fulminating about dirty campaigning tinged with racism and McCarthyite guilt by association.

But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate.

McCain has only himself to blame for the bad timing. He should months ago have begun challenging Obama's associations, before the economic meltdown allowed the Obama campaign (and the mainstream media, which is to say the same thing) to dismiss the charges as an act of desperation by the trailing candidate.

McCain had his chance back in April when the North Carolina Republican Party ran a gubernatorial campaign ad that included the linking of Obama with Jeremiah Wright. The ad was duly denounced by the New York Times and other deep thinkers as racist.

This was patently absurd. Racism is treating people differently and invidiously on the basis of race. Had any white presidential candidate had a close 20-year association with a white preacher overtly spreading race hatred from the pulpit, that candidate would have been not just universally denounced and deemed unfit for office but written out of polite society entirely.

Nonetheless, John McCain in his infinite wisdom, and with his overflowing sense of personal rectitude, joined the braying mob in denouncing that perfectly legitimate ad, saying it had no place in any campaign. In doing so, McCain unilaterally disarmed himself, rendering off-limits Obama's associations, an issue that even Hillary Clinton addressed more than once.

Obama's political career was launched with Ayers giving him a fundraiser in his living room. If a Republican candidate had launched his political career at the home of an abortion-clinic bomber -- even a repentant one -- he would not have been able to run for dogcatcher in Podunk. And Ayers shows no remorse. His only regret is that he "didn't do enough."

Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright's angry racism or Ayers's unreconstructed 1960s radicalism?

No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama.

First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with -- let alone serve on two boards with -- an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics?

Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success.

Obama is not the first politician to rise through a corrupt political machine. But he is one of the rare few to then have the audacity to present himself as a transcendent healer, hovering above and bringing redemption to the "old politics" -- of the kind he had enthusiastically embraced in Chicago in the service of his own ambition.

Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama's core beliefs. He doesn't share the Rev. Wright's poisonous views of race nor Ayers's views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.

Until now. Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.

Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not

[The True Adonis]

I do take issue with the Obama campaign for not defending Khalidi: Unfortunately, the Obama campaign has yet to defend Khalidi from any of the demonstrably false mischaracterizations of Khalidi's political positions, simply claiming that Obama "does not share Khalidi's views."


Obama should not let anyone falsely accuse Khalidi of anything.  Khalidi has been a great advisor to McCain and has taken the money that McCain has given him and used it for important research.


McCain should also defend his consultant Khalidi whenver the rogue Palin brings it up.  Clearly she hasn`t gotten the memo yet.  McCain I am sure is pissed yet again.  He knows firsthand Khalidi is an AMERICAN SCHOLAR and very knowledgeable about Middle Eastern Policies.

[The True Adonis]

I think McCain should defend his friend Khalidi.  He probably will when the election is over and he is back in the Senate.

[The True Adonis]

Khalidi is a great American.  I feel sorry for him.  McCain needs to come out in his defense.

[Heywood]

I do take issue with the Obama campaign for not defending Khalidi: Unfortunately, the Obama campaign has yet to defend Khalidi from any of the demonstrably false mischaracterizations of Khalidi's political positions, simply claiming that Obama "does not share Khalidi's views."


Obama should not let anyone falsely accuse Khalidi of anything.  Khalidi has been a great advisor to McCain and has taken the money that McCain has given him and used it for important research.


McCain should also defend his consultant Khalidi whenver the rogue Palin brings it up.  Clearly she hasn`t gotten the memo yet.  McCain I am sure is pissed yet again.  He knows firsthand Khalidi is an AMERICAN SCHOLAR and very knowledgeable about Middle Eastern Policies.

1) Obama went to Khalidi's home many times for dinner.  

2)  Khalidi was a PLO spokesperson.  His wife worked for the PLO as well.

3) In 1991, Khalidi wrote a obit for Khalaf, the chief terrorist of the Black September organization.

4) In 1998, McCain was a member and chaired the International Republican Institute, which wrote a check for $448,873 to fund a Center for Palestine Research and Studies.

I'm concerned about #1, 2, and 3.  My nervous system isn't so worried about #4.

[Heywood]

I think McCain should defend his friend Khalidi.  He probably will when the election is over and he is back in the Senate.

Nice schtick....and that's regarding BOTH Olbermann and you......

[Heywood]

Khalidi is a great American.  I feel sorry for him.  McCain needs to come out in his defense.

As long as you're doing schtick, I'll oblige you......... 


Lyrics to Hooray for Captain Spaulding:
Jamison (Zeppo): There's something that I'd like to state
That he's too modest to relate.
The Captain is a moral man.
Sometimes he finds it trying.

Spaulding (Groucho): This fact I'll emphasize with stress:
I never take a drink unless
Somebody's buying.

Crowd: The Captain is a very moral man.

Jamison: If he hears anything obscene,
He'll naturally repel it.

Spaulding: I hate a dirty joke I do,
Unless it's told by someone who
Knows how to tell it.

Crowd: The Captain is a very moral man.
Hooray for Captain Spaulding,
The African Explorer.

Spaulding: Did someone call me Schnorer?

Crowd: Hooray hooray hooray!

Spaulding: [Wacky Dance]

Jamison: He went into the jungle,
Where all the monkeys throw nuts.

Spaulding: If I stay here I'll go nuts.

Crowd: Hooray hooray hooray.

Spaulding: [Wacky Dance]

Crowd: He put all his reliance
In courage and defiance.
And risked his life for science.

Spaulding: Hey hey!

Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont): He is the only white man
Who covered every acre.

[Note: This line is often edited from the film, and the version from
which the sound clip was taken is no exception]
Spaulding: I think I'll try and make her.

Crowd: Hooray hooray hooray!

Spaulding: [Extended Wacky Dance]

Crowd: He put all his reliance
In courage and defiance.
And risked his life for science.

Spaulding: Hey hey!

Crowd: Hooray for Captain Spaulding,
The African explorer.
He brought his name undying fame,
And that is why we say:
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

Spaulding (spoken): My friends, I am highly gratified at this
magnificent display of effusion. And I want you to know -

Crowd (interrupting): Hooray for Captain Spaulding,
The African explorer.
He brought his name undying fame,
And that is why we say:
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

Spaulding (spoken): My friends, I am highly gratified at this
magnificent display of effusion. And I want you to know -

Crowd (interrupting again): Hooray for Captain Spaulding,
The African explorer.
He brought his name undying fame,
And that is why we say:
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

Spaulding (spoken): My friends, I am highly gratified at this
magnificent display of effusion. And I want you to know -
(singing): Hooray for Captain Spaulding,
the African Inquirer.
(spoken): Well, somebody's gotta do it.

 

[The True Adonis]

1) Obama went to Khalidi's home many times for dinner.  

2)  Khalidi was a PLO spokesperson.  His wife worked for the PLO as well.

3) In 1991, Khalidi wrote a obit for Khalaf, the chief terrorist of the Black September organization.

4) In 1998, McCain was a member and chaired the International Republican Institute, which wrote a check for $448,873 to fund a Center for Palestine Research and Studies.

I'm concerned about #1, 2, and 3.  My nervous system isn't so worried about #4.

You forgot number 5.

5) McCain should stop the attacks on his advisor Khalidi and tell everyone how useful the 500,000 dollars he gave Khalidi for research.
    Obama should also make sure that the lies about Khalidis political positions are not distorted as the Obama camp is not calling out the lies.

I feel sorry for Khalidi, as an American Scholar, one who has served many United States Presidents, Congressman and Senators with valuable research and who has taught hundreds and thousands of people around the world, AND who has basically written every single textbook on Middle Eastern International Relations-
It is about time SOMEBODY STOOD UP FOR HIM AND SAID ENOUGH!

McCAIN and Obama.  Especially McCain since he has had a long working relationship with Khalidi.


Poor Guy.

[Heywood]

You forgot number 5.

5) McCain should stop the attacks on his advisor Khalidi and tell everyone how useful the 500,000 dollars he gave Khalidi for research.
    Obama should also make sure that the lies about Khalidis political positions are not distorted as the Obama camp is not calling out the lies.

I feel sorry for Khalidi, as an American Scholar, one who has served many United States Presidents, Congressman and Senators with valuable research and who has taught hundreds and thousands of people around the world, AND who has basically written every single textbook on Middle Eastern International Relations-
It is about time SOMEBODY STOOD UP FOR HIM AND SAID ENOUGH!

McCAIN and Obama.  Especially McCain since he has had a long working relationship with Khalidi.


Poor Guy.

schtick coma....

[The True Adonis]

Number 2 is wrong though. 

I take it you have never read any Khalidi.  McCain has. He Knows.  Palin I don`t think does.

Khalidi was never a spokesman for the organization, however, instead serving during that period as a fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies and as a professor at the American University in Beirut. (I first met Khalidi in the Lebanese capital back in 1981 and recall him as someone who clearly embraced an independent and moderate nationalist perspective.) Later, he served in an advisory capacity for the non-PLO Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace talks.

[The True Adonis]

Poor Khalidi,

He is just an American Scholar getting drug in the mud because he has a funny sounding name.  So what if McCain gave him 500,000 dollars personally for research.

So what if he is one of THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED AMERICAN SCHOLARS on Middle Eastern Studies.

He is American born and HIGHLY RESPECTED around the world and by McCain.  I don`t think McCain would give someone 500,000 dollars of tax payer money if he didn`t think he would use it wisely.

McCain is smart. He knows Khalidi is brilliant.

[The True Adonis]

William Ayers and John McCain both gave Khalidi money.  Mr. Ayers also must know what John McCain does, that Khalidi is a great AMERICAN SCHOLAR of Middle Eastern Studies.

[Mars]

yeah yeah adam its ok, we know hes a good guy.

[Heywood]

From National Review:

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ZDFkMGE2MmM1M2Q5MmY0ZmExMzUxMWRhZGJmMTAyOGY=


The L.A. Times Suppresses Obama’s Khalidi Bash Tape
Obama, Ayers, and PLO supporters toast Edward Said’s successor, but the press doesn’t think it’s quite as newsworthy as Sarah Palin’s wardrobe.
By Andrew C. McCarthy


Let’s try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.

Now let’s say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.

Question: Is there any chance — any chance — the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the oped commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we’re pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media (y’know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?

Do we really have to ask?

So now, let’s leave thought experiments and return to reality: Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?

At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University’s Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.

The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi’s allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat’s press agency.

Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?

Gateway Pundit reports that the Times has the videotape but is suppressing it.

Back in April, the Times published a gentle story about the fete. Reporter Peter Wallsten avoided, for example, any mention of the inconvenient fact that the revelers included Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife and fellow Weatherman terrorist. These self-professed revolutionary Leftists are friendly with both Obama and Khalidi — indeed, researcher Stanley Kurtz has noted that Ayers and Khalidi were “best friends.” (And — small world! — it turns out that the Obamas are extremely close to the Khalidis, who have reportedly babysat the Obama children.)

Nor did the Times report the party was thrown by AAAN. Wallsten does tell us that the AAAN received grants from the Leftist Woods Fund when Obama was on its board — but, besides understating the amount (it was $75,000, not $40,000), the Times mentions neither that Ayers was also on the Woods board at the time nor that AAAN is rabidly anti-Israel. (Though the organization regards Israel as illegitimate and has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism, Wallsten describes the AAAN as “a social service group.”)

Perhaps even more inconveniently, the Times also let slip that it had obtained a videotape of the party.

Wallsten’s story is worth excerpting at length (italics are mine):

It was a celebration of Palestinian culture — a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.

A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."...

[T]he warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.

At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."

One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."

Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than … his opponents for the White House....

At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.

The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.

Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.

In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel — a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.

So why is the Times sitting on the videotape of the Khalidi festivities? Given Obama's (preposterous) claims that he didn’t know Ayers that well and was unfamiliar with Ayers’s views, why didn't the Times report that Ayers and Dohrn were at the bash? Was it not worth mentioning the remarkable coincidence that both Obama and Ayers — the “education reform” allies who barely know each other … except to the extent they together doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist agitators, attacked the criminal justice system, and raved about each others books — just happen to be intimate friends of the same anti-American Israel-basher? (Despite having watched the videotape, Wallsten told Gateway Pundit he “did not know” whether Ayers was there.)

Why won’t the Times tell us what was said in the various Khalidi testimonials? On that score, Ayers and Dohrn have always had characteristically noxious views on the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. And, true to form, they have always been quite open about them. There is no reason to believe those views have ever changed. Here, for example, is what they had to say in Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground’s 1974 Communist manifesto (emphasis in original):

Palestinian independence is opposed with reactionary schemes by Jordan, completely opposed with military terror by Israel, and manipulated by the U.S. The U.S.-sponsored notion of stability and status-quo in the Mideast is an attempt to preserve U.S. imperialist control of oil, using zionist power as the cat's paw. The Mideast has become a world focus of struggles over oil resources and control of strategic sea and air routes. Yet the Palestinian struggle is at the heart of other conflicts in the Mideast. Only the Palestinians can determine the solution which reflects the aspirations of the Palestinian people. No "settlements" in the Mideast which exclude the Palestinians will resolve the conflict. Palestinian liberation will not be suppressed.

The U.S. people have been seriously deceived about the Palestinians and Israel. This calls for a campaign to educate and focus attention on the true situation: teach-ins, debates, and open clear support for Palestinian liberation; reading about the Palestinian movement—The Disinherited by Fawaz Turki, Enemy of the Sun; opposing U.S. aid to Israel. Our silence or acceptance of pro-zionist policy is a form of complicity with U.S.-backed aggression and terror, and a betrayal of internationalism.

SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!

U.S. OUT OF THE MIDEAST!

END AID TO ISRAEL!

Barack Obama wouldn’t possibly let something like that pass without a spirited defense of the Israel he tells us he so staunchly supports … would he? I guess to answer that question, we’d have to know what was on the tape.

But who has time for such trifles? After all, isn’t Diana Vreeland about to critique Sarah Palin’s sartorial splendor?

— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy chairs the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’s Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008).

[The True Adonis]

Oopsy Doopsy.


Super-Zionist Peretz Defends Khalidi

November 01, 2008 1:21 PM

In Sen. John McCain's last week of campaigning, he and his campaign have done all they can to attack Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. They've called him anti-Semitic, they've falsely called him a spokesman for the PLO, they've mentioned him on TV as a central argument in their attacks on Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

Marty Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic and a longtime strong supporter of Israel, defended Khalidi this week.

"I assume that my Zionist credentials are not in dispute," Peretz writes. "And I have written more appreciative words about Khalidi than Obama ever uttered. In fact, I even invited Khalidi to speak for a Jewish organization with which I work. Moreover, the Israelis are trying to live cooperatively and in peace with Palestinians whose unrelenting positions make Khalidi almost appear like a Zionist."