"It's conceivable that there are some in the Arab world who say to themselves, 'This is a guy who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so he's not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as George Bush." Except these people launch rockets at Israel and oppose its existence." Obama

ALI ABUNIMAH, a Palestinian activist from Chicago, insists that at least in the recent past, Obama wanted to see U.S. policy move in that direction.

"In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor," Abunimah has written. "On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."

Abunimah says that as late as 2004, during his tough primary race, Obama praised him for his activism, and apologized, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front."

The Obama campaign has disputed Abunimah's account, and there is no audio to back him up. But Abunimah has released a photo of Obama breaking bread with Edward Said, one of the leading anti-Israel intellectuals of the 20th century, at a 1998 Arab community event in Chicago.

Furthermore, Obama has ties with Rashid Khalidi, who currently serves as the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. Khalidi, who once served as a flak for Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, is an active proponent of the view that U.S. policy is too biased in favor of Israel.

Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that Obama spoke at a going away party in honor of Khalidi in Chicago in 2003:

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."

WITH THIS PAST as prologue, many of the statements (or omissions) Obama has made on the campaign trail raise questions about his true stance on Israel.

When Obama said, "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people," did he really mean as he later clarified, that nobody was suffering more from the failure of the Palestinian leadership? Or was he trying to start a "conversation" about whether the U.S. is too focused on Israeli suffering, and not enough on the suffering of the Palestinians?

When he was asked by Brian Williams in a debate last year to name the top three allies of the United States, why did he filibuster the question without naming Israel?

When he said in February, "I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel," what did he mean by "pro-Likud"?

There is an active strain within the liberal foreign policy community that believes that since Hamas was democratically elected and controls Gaza, any peace process would have to include talks with their leaders. When Carter met with Hamas last month, Obama was slow to criticize the former president. "I'm not going to comment on former President Carter," Obama said at first. "He is a private citizen, and you know, it's not my place to discuss who or -- who he shouldn't meet with." (Obama, interestingly, didn't employ the private citizen dodge when he called on NBC to fire Don Imus last year in the wake of the controversy over the radio show host's racially insensitive remarks.)

While Obama did eventually criticize Carter's trip, it was only after much prodding, and he still didn't consider the question important enough to disrupt his waffle-eating experience.

On a number of other issues, there has been a pattern of Obama saying one thing on the campaign trail that was undercut by his advisers. We saw that when his economic adviser assured the Canadians that Obama wasn't really serious about the anti-NAFTA rhetoric he was spewing in Ohio.

We saw that when former adviser Samantha Power, speaking of Obama's plans to withdraw troops out of Iraq, said Obama wouldn't "rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate." And now we have Obama's public opposition to Hamas undercut by the fact that an adviser is meeting with them.

SO IS IT REALLY a stretch to wonder whether Obama would eventually support talks with the terrorist group, despite his public pronouncements to the contrary?

This is not a theoretical matter. Ahmed Yousef, the same Hamas adviser who said that the terrorist group supports Obama, wrote a Washington Post op-ed last June arguing for engagement with Hamas.

The group is obviously embarking on a strategy, similar to the one Arafat pursued during the Oslo peace process, of making public overtures of peace abroad, duping naive Western leaders into granting them legitimacy and the financial aid that comes along with it, while continuing to support terrorism at home. Clearly, Hamas views Obama as an easy mark.

The interesting thing about Obama's candidacy is that his lack of experience, and the mixed messages he sends, enable close observers to come to drastically different conclusions as to what kind of policies he would support as president.

Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing Jewish magazine Tikkun, said, "Based on my conversations with Obama, I have a very strong belief that he shares the Tikkun perspective..." But the staunchly pro-Israel Marty Peretz assured "friends of Israel" that they could trust Obama.

Abunimah, the Palestinian activist from Chicago, is disappointed that Obama has sold out to the pro-Israel Lobby, while Hamas adviser Yousef chalked up Obama's pro-Israel statements to election year posturing, and declared that the terrorist group still wants him to win.

Obama is running for the most powerful job in the world without much of a public record of which to speak. Yet those who demand to know a little bit more about the candidate by scrutinizing his statements and relationships are arrogantly dismissed as engaging in "smears" and being divisive for refusing to simply take him at his word.

Welcome to the new kind of politics.  http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/5104

Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.

Obamastan [incl. Rashid Khalidi]
Decision '08: After criticizing McCain for mentioning that Hamas endorses him, Obama says it's understandable that Hamas would do so. Just how anti-Hamas and pro-Israel is the Democratic front-runner?

by Editorial
Investor's Business Daily
May 14, 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=295659438660017

Barack Obama would like us to believe that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright who ranted anti-American profanities at the National Press Club was not the man he saw from the pews of his church for two decades.

He'd also have us believe that Weatherman terrorist bomber William Ayers, who played host to his first fundraiser and with whom he would later serve on a board, is just a "guy in the neighborhood."

Similarly, Obama would have us believe he doesn't accept the recent endorsement of his candidacy by Ahmed Yousef of the terrorist organization Hamas. John McCain, he said, had "lost his bearings" for asserting, "If Sen. Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly."

We have, and we hope the American people will as well.

Obama told CNN that McCain's remarks were "offensive" and that it was "disappointing" his Republican rival would engage "in that kind of smear . . . particularly since my policy toward Hamas has been no different than his."

Oh, really? If McCain's remarks were a "smear," senator, why did you tell the Atlantic magazine:

"It's conceivable that there are some in the Arab world who say to themselves, 'This is a guy who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so he's not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as George Bush." Except these people launch rockets at Israel and oppose its existence.

(By the way, isn't it funny how Obama can mention his middle name in a national forum when convenient, but if a Republican uses it, it's racist and offensive? Imagine the reaction if McCain had mentioned his legal name was Barack Hussein Obama or had made the above comments about Obama. When a warm-up speaker at a McCain event said "Barack Hussein Obama" repeatedly, media hell broke loose.)

If Obama's policy toward Hamas is different from McCain's, why did he have as one of his key Mideast advisers one Robert Malley, who disclosed to the Times of London that he'd been in regular contact with Hamas as part of his work for a conflict-resolution think tank similar to the one former President Jimmy Carter has?

Just as Obama disowned the pastor he said he could not disown after Rev. Wright's rants were hurting him politically, Obama has fired Malley — 48 hours after it was revealed Malley had met with Hamas on more than one occasion, something Obama has said that, as president, he would not do.

Malley got the boot shortly after this revelation and shortly after McCain raised the issue of Obama's endorsement by Hamas. Is Malley whispering in Obama's ear one of the reasons Hamas endorsed Obama? Does Obama want us to believe that, as with Rev. Wright, he also had no knowledge of Malley's views?

Malley was part of Bill Clinton's negotiating team at the 2000 Camp David talks, where Yasser Arafat turned down a Palestinian state on the West Bank. Soon after, Malley wrote a New York Times piece blaming Israel and the U.S. for the breakdown.

In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post co-authored by Arafat adviser Hussein Agha, Malley wrote: "A renewed national compact and a return of Hamas to the political fold would upset Israel's strategy of perpetuating Palestinian geographic and political division."

So, according to Obama's former adviser, it's all Israel's fault, not the fault of those who want to make sure Israel, celebrating 60 years of existence, doesn't have a 61st birthday.

Perhaps that's why Malley, whose father Simon was a personal friend of Arafat's, wrote another op-ed in the Baltimore Sun titled, "Making the Best of Hamas' Victory." After Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian parliament in February 2006, Malley advocated international aid to the terrorist group's newly formed government.

Did Obama know about this before he brought Malley on board? Asked if the Obama camp knew about his contacts with Hamas, Malley said: "They know who I am, but I don't think they vet everyone in a group of informal advisers."

If Obama wants to be president, he'd better do a better job of both vetting and picking friends and associates, as well as pastors.

As we have noted, Obama also has links with Rashid Khalidi, who currently is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. Said, who is one of the leading anti-Israeli "intellectuals" of the 20th century and once worked with Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization, has branded Israel as an "apartheid system in creation."

In 2000, Khalidi and his wife held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama, along with William Ayers, served on the fund's board of directors.

Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that Obama spoke at a going-away party in honor of Khalidi in Chicago in 2003. One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."

Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian activist from Chicago who helps run the Web site Electronic Intifada, says: "In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress, I heard him speak at a fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor." Abunimah says Obama called for a more "even-handed" — meaning less pro-Israel — policy in the Middle East.

So Obama's endorsement by Hamas is not all that surprising. The man who wants to be president has a consistent and disturbing pattern of associations with influence peddlers, racist preachers, terrorist professors and people who wouldn't mind if Israel just went away.

As John McCain says, the American people should make their judgments accordingly. http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/5122

Unreal Rashid

Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor at Columbia, gave an interview to the Radical History Journal, and it's a gem. The interviewers wanted his take on Title VI reform, but they got a lot more: a rambling compendium of excessive statements on a wide range of issues. In a new Sandstorm column, I look at one of the most bizarre assertions in the interview: Khalidi's insistence that universities and their faculty are conservative.

But alongside the wild claims are some astonishing confessions. In the rush of questions and answers, Khalidi inadvertently concedes many of the very points made by academe's critics. Here he is on scholarly objectivity: "Now, I'm with Edward Said. There's no such thing as opinionless, objective scholarship." Here he is on the tenure process: "It is in some sense a corrupt system, but I can't think of what the alternative would be." And here he is on faculty indoctrination: "It has to be admitted that this issue of abuse of authority, which the Right is using as a stick to beat us up with, is not entirely illusory. I mean, there is an issue there.... There's probably a way in which the academy is forcing a kind of mindless conformity on students." It's not every day that a chaired professor admits that scholarship is biased, the tenure system is corrupt, and students are forced to conform. These statements are smoking guns, and they suggest that we've just scratched the surface at Columbia.

The interview also includes an enraged tirade against proponents of Title VI reform. "They are political, and we're not political," he tells his fellow radical historians--a statement that shouts its absurdity to the heavens. "We're never going to be as good at the kind of mudslinging and the kind of deceitfulness that these people are masters of. There's just no way that we can get so far down in the gutter as them successfully.... These are people going for the jugular. These are people who want to destroy things.... They're operating on a level of a kind of slimy attack politics, which actually has become a very important part of the right-wing arsenal in the United States.... It's Karl Rove, and the Christian Right, and the neoconservative right wing that really is behind this. The Middle East and the specific concerns of these people have an important role. But this is bigger than that.... Reality bears no relationship whatsoever to the lies and falsehoods that they're putting out.”

Well, I don't sit atop the Olympus of truth and apolitical virtue that is the Edward Said Chair. And I'm sure the gutters at Columbia are so clean that its students can eat out of them. But read my column, and decide for yourself whether reality bears any relationship whatsoever to Khalidi's depiction of it.   http://sandbox.blog-city.com/unreal_rashid_khalidi.htm