Obama Served On Board That Funded Pro-Palestinian Group

The Jewish Press ^ | Feb. 27, 2008 | Aaron Klein

[FocusNexus]

Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director on the board of a nonprofit organization that granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe."

The co-founder of the Arab group, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, is a harsh critic of Israel who reportedly worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization when it was labeled a terror group by the State Department.

Khalidi held a fundraiser in 2000 for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Although AAAN co-founder Rashid Khalidi has at times denied working directly for the PLO, he reportedly served as director of the official PLO press agency WAFA in Beirut from 1976 to 1982, a period during which the PLO committed scores of anti-Western attacks and was labeled by the U.S. as a terror group.

While the Woods Fund's contribution to Khalidi's AAAN might be perceived as a one-time contact with Obama, there is evidence of a deeper relationship between the presidential hopeful and Khalidi.

According to a professor at the University of Chicago who said he has known Obama for 12 years, the senator first befriended Khalidi when the two worked together at the university. The professor spoke on condition of anonymity. Khalidi lectured at the University of Chicago until 2003; Obama taught law there from 1993 until his election to the Senate in 2004.

Khalidi said he supports Obama for president "because he is the only candidate who has expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause."

[BellStar]

Say what!

[ari-freedom]

walks like a duck, talks like a duck... maybe just maybe he is a duck

[FocusNexus]

The article also mentions that Obama served on the board of Woods Fund together with Ayers, the Weather Underground bomber, and Obama and Ayers also served on other panels together.

Birds of a feather, and all that.

[444Flyer]

bookmark/Badnews Barry

[FocusNexus]

Similar article also appeared at FoxBusiness:

Obama Worked with Terrorist, Expert Says

http://www.foxbusiness.com/article/obama-worked-terrorist-expert-says_492428_1.html

Looks like Obama’s experience consists of associating with known terrorists — does this experience qualify him to be US Commander in Chief?

[LouAvul]

How much evidence does the brainless dimocratic party need? They are truly the party of reprobates.

[Kleon]

Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director on the board of a nonprofit organization that granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe."

As a member of the board, how did Obama vote?

[ari-freedom]

voting “Present” would be bad enough

[FocusNexus]

“The article also mentions that Obama served on the board of Woods Fund together with Ayers, the Weather Underground bomber, and Obama and Ayers also served on other panels together.”

And there is more...

Will the Media Report Obama’s Terrorist Connection?

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/john-stephenson/2008/02/23/will-media-ignore-obamas-terrorist-ties

“In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.”

(SAME Ayers — member of Weather Underground)

[FocusNexus]

Read the rest — there is more, he has been personal friends with Khalid

[Prokopton]

How much evidence does the brainless dimocratic party need?

I don't think they need any more evidence. They have seen enough mounting evidence to convince them that Obama should definitely be our next president.

[rogue yam]

Obama...Osama...Let’s call the whole thing off!

[Lizavetta]

Run a candidate that has a Muslim name.

Run that candidate with the Muslim name with a Muslim background.

Run that candidate with the Muslim name and Muslim background with pro-Muslim connections.

Run that same candidate with those same connections in the U.S. during a war in which U.S. is battling Islam.

And do it during a time in U.S. history when the battle cry is diversity, multiculturalism, and nonjudgmentalism.

Run a candidate that is immune to ALL criticism of any kind, because to criticize would make you a racist, AND THERE'S NOTHING WORSE THAN THAT in today's modern life.

I hope America's sense of nationalism and self-preservation kicks in in time.

[nutmeg]

ping!

[tcrlaf]

SHhhhhhhh....

Don’t tell the Democrats, ESPECIALLY the ones at KOS.

Bad news about the great Liberal Messiah Hussein Obama sends them into fits of stuttering rage....

This will NEVER see the light of day in a major US MEdia outlet...

[sheik yerbouty]

Khadaffy Duck?

[doug from upland]

Skip to comments.

DFU SONG: Let's Call the Whole Thing Off (Teddy - you say Obama and I'll say Osama)
DFU SONGS | 1-2005 | Lyrics, Doug from Upland

Posted on 01/14/2005 6:48:21 PM PST by doug from upland

MIDI - LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF

Keep on pouring and I'll get blotto...then I will go get in my auto
My legs quiver...my poor liver...I'm lucky I'm not dead

You say Obama and I say Osama...pass me the bottle, I'll step on the throttle
Obama, Osama, the bottle, the throttle...let's go drive on the bridge

I guess that I shouldn't speak while drunk...that's what some pundits note
And I should drive a Vee Dub...an Oldsmobile can't float

Dodd and I so love a good waitress sandwich
Pass me the mustard, and pass me the Manwich

My legs quiver...oh, my poor liver...I'm so lucky I am not dead
I'm lucky I'm not dead

My apartment last week was burgled...in my dreams, I still hear her gurgle
My legs quiver...my poor liver...I'm lucky I'm not dead

You say Obama and I say Osama...pass me the bottle, I'll step on the throttle
Obama, Osama, the bottle, the throttle...let's go drive on the bridge

I guess that I shouldn't speak while drunk...that's what some pundits note
And I should drive a Vee Dub...an Oldsmobile can't float

I'll weigh 400 if I keep on eating...artery clogging will stop my heart beating
My legs quiver...oh, my poor liver...I'm so lucky I am not dead
I'm lucky I'm not dead

[XR7]

HIS MIDDLE NAME
IS HUSSEIN

[maine-iac7]

Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002,................Obama may face increased scrutiny over his ties to William C. Ayers, a member of the Weather Underground terrorist group ............Obama served on the Woods Fund board alongside Ayers (who is still on the board). Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has written about his involvement with the Weather Underground’s bombing of U.S. governmental buildings including the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972......... "I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough," Ayers told The New York Times in an interview published, ironically, on Sept. 11, 2001.

Nothing to see here, folks, move along...

(Note to media: these are just facts, not invented innuendos, so we understand you wont be interested) .

[Norman Bates]

This keeps getting better.

[FocusNexus]

Anti-Obama Attacks Zero In on Farrakhan Support, Israel Policy

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/02/27/anti-obama-attacks-zero-in-on-farrakhan-support-israel-policy/

Barack Obama’s detractors are trying to make hay out of an unsought endorsement by Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, adding to the rumors and innuendo about the Democratic presidential candidate’s religious affiliations and casting Obama as a threat to Israel.

Farrakhan, who has drawn attention for calling Judaism a “gutter religion,” dubbed the Illinois senator the “hope of the entire world” on Sunday.

The article said Clinton operatives are also circulating e-mails questioning his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the recently retired pastor at Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. The church magazine gave Farrakhan the 2007 lifetime achievement award for social justice (though Obama said he disagreed with the decision).

[A CA Guy]

“What you talkin’ about Hillary”

[American in Israel]

As a member of the board, he either is a total fool, or is a terrorist supporter.

Either way how can he be president?

[FocusNexus]

Another good article, detailing Barack Hussein Obama’s unsavory assoications:

The Obama Files by John Batchelor

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1976100/posts

“The story focuses on four astute men who have little in common other than Mr. Obama: Messrs Rezko, Ayers, Khalidi and Auchi. Finding facts about Mr. Obama’s exchanges with this quartet creates much of what can be called a political profile of candidate Obama. “

[Republic of Texas]

Haven’t most liberal politicians done this? They all support Palestinians, or as I like to call them, terroristic Jordanians, so hating Israel is not that uncommon for democrats.

[~Kim4VRWC's~]

More dirt......thanks for the thread. This is the craziest election year since I’ve been able to vote.

[Cindy]

[familyop]

Both Democrats are very bad news for defense, and one of them has too much bi-partisan support from special pecuniary and other interests. The situation for the Democrat candidates is not as it appears on the surface with either of them.

After Hillary's out of the race,...

Most Americans Support Right of Jews to Live and Build in Judea-Samaria
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/927783/posts
June 10, 2003
"By a margin of nearly five to one, Americans oppose the Bush administration's demand to halt all further Jewish construction in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza . . . The poll, carried out by John McLaughlin & Associates, surveyed a scientific sample of 1,000 American adults on May 21, 2003.

[ChiMark]

We hope these revelations of B. Hussein Obama jell
this summer.

I pray that this “puppy love” phenomenon with him
last but a short time.

[familyop]

BTW, Iran must be dealt with soon (months). Diplomacy and tactical information work won’t be enough.

[Old Seadog]

What we need to do is bring back Lifebuoy soap. It was famous for stopping b.o.

[ari-freedom]

[browardchad]

Interesting wording on that article, isn't it?

Instead of reporting Farakkan's endorsement of Obama as a straight news story, and letting the reader form their own opinion, it's twisted to read "Obama’s detractors are trying to make hay out of an unsought endorsement."

Poor Obama; next thing you know, Al-Qaeda, Kim Jong-Il and/or Ahmadinejad will endorse him, and those nasty "detractors" will act like schoolyard bullies again with all those logical implications.

The media, including Fox, is bulletproofing the messiah.

[JessieHelmsJr]

bookmark

[Fred Nerks]

Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar University of Illinois at Chicago billayers.org

The William Ayers Problem:

William Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist, though he is normally described as a distinguished education professor. One does not necessarily rule out the other, but he himself acknowledges planting bombs in U.S. Federal buildings.

There is now undeniable proof of a longstanding relationship between Barack Obama and William Ayers. We are not talking about two guys who just happened to bump into one another on the street. We are not talking about a secret admirer (Ayers) who quietly sent $200 to an aspiring politician.

No, we are talking about William Ayers hosting a fundraiser for Barack Obama and actively working with him to secure Barack's first electoral victory in Illinois. But wait, there is more. Barack and Ayers also served on the board of the Woods Fund. And they worked together to give money to some other folks, including a group with ties to the PLO.

What makes Ayers so toxic is his own written record equating U.S. Marines with terrorists. Look at the beating that John Kerry took for tossing his medals over the White House fence. Ayers did not toss medals, he threw bombs. Real ones. Bombs that exploded.

Do you think that Republicans will ignore Obama's ties to Ayers? The two were serving on the same board in 2002. We are talking less than six years ago and the record will come out showing some questionable grants by these two characters. William Ayers, in the age of terrorism, will be Barack Obama's Willie Horton.

[kindred]

The democrat party is pro Arab Islamic state in Israel in general and anti Christian and Jewish in works also. So of course they will do what Europe does as they are pro UN and anti American sovereignty anyway.
They all hate America in their love of perverse diveristy and the world citizen under totalitarion and cruel one world government is their end, even if they don’t think it is.

[SueRae]

Yep, it’s a long way to November, plenty of time to shine a light on his background. It’s adding up and does not paint a favorable picture.

[nyyankeefan]

a lib/dem hero.....

all lib/dems are anti-american, anti-semetic, pro-f’n muzzie pali terrorists.......and that is why.....their standard bearer is....................b. HUSSEIN!!!!!

[ought-six]

“Looks like Obama’s experience consists of associating with known terrorists — does this experience qualify him to be US Commander in Chief?”

To the Left and the MSM (but, I repeat myself) it does.

[GiovannaNicoletta]

bookmark

[yldstrk]

He’s Arab/Islamic—the intolerance of Islam is a problem.

[Hacklehead]

I wish these f’in idiots would hold this s**t until obama wins the nomination.

The defeat of Hellary is the Prime Directive. Those who disagree can KMA.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]

----------------------------

www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org Date: 2/28/2008 7:37:27 AM

RASHID KHALIDI

Controversial professor of Middle East Studies at Columbia University

Holds violently anti-Israel views

Former PLO operative

Has justified as legitimate Palestinian “resistance” that results in death of armed Israelis

Contends that “American Likudniks” control American foreign policy while posturing as a moderate

Rejects the possibility of a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

On March 7, the Lebanese publication Daily Star interviewed Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi about his opinions regarding recent developments in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Regarding Hamas' victory in the January 2006 Palestinian elections, Rashidi stated, "They [Hamas] have an interpretation of this [suicide bombings against Israelis] that is actually closer to the view of most Palestinians and most people in the Arab world than to the American or Israeli interpretation, which is that the overwhelming majority of the violence that goes on daily is the violence of the [Israeli] occupation, ...until that stops there's going to be resistance....Now, the Israelis want to be able to maintain their occupation and have the Palestinians abjure any form of violence. ... it means you can do anything you want as the most powerful party, and that what you do is not bad and that anything they do is unacceptable."

When observers advert to the problems of Middle East Studies programs at American universities—notorious for their rabidly polemical pedagogy and the pronouncedly anti-American and anti-Israeli dispensation of the professors tasked with their instruction—Rashid Khalidi's is a name that rarely escapes mention. Holding the lushly-subsidized Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies at Columbia University, and serving as the director of that university’s government-funded Middle East Institute, Khalidi ranks among the most prominent members of the Middle Eastern studies community in the United States. Less well known is that he is also among its most radical.

It is a revealing commentary on Khalidi’s approach to Middle Eastern studies that he has long cited Edward Said, the late radical professor of literature at Columbia and an untiring propagandist for the Palestinian cause, as his main influence. Following Said’s death in 2003, Khalidi penned a revealing obituary that valorized Said’s “eloquent espousal of the cause of Palestine.” Khalidi acknowledged neither Said’s long history of anti-Israel provocation—a tendency that found its most militant expression in Said’s willingness to hurl rocks at Israeli defense forces—nor his unscrupulous anathematization of the Jewish state. Instead, he portrayed Said’s career as one of “giving a voice to the voiceless.” In this context, Khalidi likened Said to another of his idols: Noam Chomsky. Wrote Khalidi:

“Like Noam Chomsky and very few others, he [Said] managed not only to reshape his own field of scholarly endeavor, but to transcend it, influencing other fields and disciplines, and going well beyond the narrow boundaries of the American academy to become a true public intellectual, and a passionate voice for humanistic values and justice in an imperfect world.”

As with Said before him, Khalidi’s involvement with the Palestinian cause goes beyond mere support. Though Khalidi has consistently denied the charge, news reports, including a 1982 dispatch from Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, suggest that he once served as the director of the Palestinian press agency, Wikalat al-Anba al-Filastinija. Khalidi's wife, Mona, was reportedly the agency’s main English-language editor between 1976 and 1982. Commentators have also noted that Khalidi so strongly identified with the aims of the PLO, designated a terrorist organization by the State Department during Khalidi’s affiliation with the Yasser Arafat-run political entity in the 1980s, that he repeatedly referred to himself as “we” when expounding on the PLO’s agenda.

Additional evidence of Khalidi’s intimacy with the PLO can be seen in his involvement with a so-called PLO “guidance committee” in the early 1990s. Describing his appearance in the company of several PLO operatives at a 1991 conference, Khalidi related that “We had political decisions to make and diplomatic strategy to decide.”

Khalidi’s often aggressive cheerleading for the PLO has not escaped the notice of his employers in the academy. Upon luring Khalidi away from the University of Chicago in 2003, Columbia president Lee Bollinger conceded that has his hire “has a particular point of view, pro-Palestinian nationalism.” It is also a prominent selling point for the financial backers of Khalidi’s endowed chair, the total funds for which are estimated at between $3 and $4 million: Among the donors to the chair are the United Arab Emirates and the Hauser Foundation, a New York charity headed by Rita Hauser, a controversial philanthropist whose onetime law firm, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, was registered with the Department of Justice as an agent for the Palestinian Authority until 2001. Yet another donor was the Olayan Charitable Trust, a New York-based charity with ties to the Olayan America Corporation, an arm of the Saudi organization the Olayan Group.

Seen against this background, it should come as no surprise that Khalidi’s 1986 book about the PLO, Under Siege: P.L.O. Decision-making During the 1982 War, was little more than an extended advertisement for the organization. Dedicated to PLO terror chieftain Arafat and opening with a glowing tribute to anti-Israel fighters (“to those who gave their lives during the summer of 1982 . . . in defense of the cause of Palestine and the independence of Lebanon”), the book offered a remarkably airbrushed account of PLO-instigated violence against Israelis and Lebanese. In the interest of celebrating the PLO, the book also retailed a number of falsehoods, including Khalidi’s trumped-up charge that, in 1982, the organization was under siege by “the full might of the U.S. and Israel.” In actuality, the U.S. fielded not a single soldier against the PLO; Israel, for its part, deployed only a minor percentage of its military forces. Far more forgiving was Khalidi’s treatment of dictatorial Syria, whose brutal occupation of Lebanon elicited no criticism from Khalidi. Despite the stridently polemical character of Under Siege, the book was brought by an academic publisher, Columbia University Press, and billed as a work of dispassionate scholarship. It would not be the last time that Khalidi would enlist his status as a supposedly serious academic into a propaganda war against Israel and its supporters.

Khalidi’s rhetorical assaults on the Jewish State are frequently indistinguishable from the conspiracy mongering practiced with such vitriol by the Arab press. Among the more disturbed of Khalidi’s charges against Israel is his inflammatory claim that the Israeli army is in possession of “awful weapons of mass destruction (many supplied by the U.S.) that it has used in cities, villages and refugee camps.” Khalidi also denounces Israel as an “apartheid” state. Khalidi made this very point in a now infamous 2000 interview in which he averred that Israel is “basically an apartheid system in creation.” In a related vein, Khalidi has asserted that Israel is a “racist” state.

Still another index of Khalidi’s political radicalism is his rejection of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Formerly, Khalidi had paid lip service to the notion of an Israeli state alongside a Palestinian one. In recent years, however, Khalidi has taken to dismissing such a solution—the only one that ensures the survival of Israel—as hopelessly unrealizable. At a February 2005 conference at Columbia called “One State or Two? Alternative Proposals for the Middle East,” Khalidi agreed with his Columbia colleague, the outspokenly anti-Israel Joseph Massad, in declaring that the two-state solution was an impractical “utopian vision.”

A clue about Khalidi’s skepticism was provided when he further assailed Israel’s very legitimacy, proclaiming that Israel is “a state that exists today at the expense of the Palestinians.” Israel’s existence, according to Khalidi, generated an “inherently unstable” status-quo and “fails to meet the most important requirement: justice.” The February conference was not the first time that Khalidi had dismissed the possibility of a two-state solution. In March 2004, when Israel assassinated Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Khalidi told Newsweek that “I really think that the killing of this individual may well be the last nail in the coffin of the two-state solution.” Khalidi, in keeping with his standard practice, did not balk at blaming Israel for the supposed demise of the two-state solution, going so far as to suggest, against all evidence, that Israel had targeted those Hamas leaders most likely to accept a two-state compromise. “I don't think it's a coincidence,” Khalidi told NPR, that “the two most accommodating or accommodationist political leaders of Hamas were the ones to be assassinated by Israel.” Notwithstanding this hagiographic account of the late terrorist figureheads, Khalidi deceptively styles himself a “severe critic of Hamas.” And yet it was Khalidi himself who, mere days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, rebuked the news media for what he termed their exaggerated “hysteria about suicide bombers.” Khalidi expressed a still more charitable view of anti-Israel terrorism during a June 2002 speech before the conference of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, in which he offered a justification for the murder of armed Israelis. Said Khalidi:

"Killing civilians is a war crime. It’s a violation of international law. They are not soldiers. They’re civilians, they’re unarmed. The ones who are armed, the ones who are soldiers, the ones who are in occupation, that’s different. That’s resistance." (emphasis added)

Pressed about his remarks by the New York Sun one year later, Khalidi again maintained that “[r]esistance to occupation is legitimate.” He nevertheless sought to downplay his 2002 statement, suggesting that he did not recall making it, before finally insisting that they ought not to be considered a “blanket statement.” As Khalidi now explained it, “Things change and there are differences. . . . There’s no such thing as a blanket statement. I was describing a specific occupation at a specific time. At the time I said it, I think that, saying resistance to occupation, is legitimate.”

Khalidi’s animus against Israel is equaled only by his disdain for the Jewish state’s supporters. In one 2000 interview, for instance, he scoffed at American supporters of Israel as “brainwashed” backers of the Israeli Army and its “utter and absolute control over 90 percent of the West Bank.” But while Khalidi does not hesitate to level the most malignant of calumnies toward Israel and its supporters, he is notoriously sensitive to any criticism. He has excoriated his detractors as “intellectual thugs” who “are not very reputable” and whose “charges themselves are scurrilous.”

Khalidi reserves his most pointed disdain for Jewish members of the Bush administration, most notably the former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz. In 2001, Khalidi smeared Wolfowitz as “a fanatical, extreme right-wing Zionist.” (Khalidi did not quite have the courage of his convictions: Challenged about his more radical remarks by television host Joe Scarborough during a 2003 interview, Khalidi retreated from his record, explaining, “I have to tell you, Joe, I don’t recognize any one of those quotes.”) Scholarly institutions that do not deal in anti-Israel propaganda have also incurred Khalidi’s wrath. Appearing on Al-Jazeera in 2004, for instance, Khalidi took aim at the prominent Middle Eastern studies think-tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. That the non-partisan center is headed by Dennis Ross, a respected diplomat and a former Middle East envoy in the Clinton and George H.W Bush administrations, and that it regularly hosts speakers from the Middle East critical of Israel, did not prevent Khalidi from baselessly execrating the center as “the most important Zionist propaganda tool in the United States.”

As the above comments suggest, Khalidi is an eager merchant of conspiracy theories. Nowhere was this more evident than in Khalidi’s opposition to the U.S.-led war against Iraq. In an unwittingly illuminating polemic for the January 2003 issue of the far-left journal In These Times, Khalidi, even as he conceded that “international terrorism has been sponsored by Iraq,” dismissed the notion that the case for war against Iraq could have any legitimate justification. Instead, he put forward a farrago of conspiracy theories that he described as the “real reasons” for the impending war:

"First, it will be fought because of an aggressive, ideological vision of America’s place in the world, propagated by the neo-conservatives who dominate the commanding heights of the American bureaucracy. Their vision proposes unfettered world hegemony for the United States, to be consecrated by the demonstration of U.S. power crushing a weak Iraq.

"Second, this war will be fought because of an obsession with control of the strategic resources (read: oil) and geography offered by the Middle East, with the view of neutralizing potential challengers to American hegemony in the 21st century" (meaning primarily China).

As Khalidi saw it, the war against Iraq was fought by “racist” neo-conservatives doing the bidding of the Israeli Likud party to which they paid an undeclared allegiance—a contention that bore a disquieting resemblance to the charge of dual loyalties at the heart of classic anti-Semitism. The Iraq war, Khalidi wrote:

" . . . will be fought because these neo-conservatives 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."

Dispensing with any pretence of scholarly detachment, Khalidi concluded by urging mass opposition to the military campaign against Iraq: “I propose that we withhold our consent and stop this unjustified and unjustifiable war before it begins,” he wrote, adding for good measure that “no one with any sense could believe a one-person-one-vote democracy in a country with a 60 percent Shiite majority is the Bush administration’s objective.” (Mindful of his reputation, however ill-deserved, as a respected scholar, Khalidi is careful to keep his more extreme opinions from being aired in the mainstream press. Typical was a May 2004 interview Khalidi gave to the Washington Post. Excising any reference to the influence of treasonous “American Likudniks,” Khalidi offered a comparatively mild critique of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, explaining that, “This administration is particularly knowledge-averse, not only to the academic world outside but to their academic experts inside.”

Khalidi had made similarly intemperate remarks in declaring his opposition to the first Gulf War in 1991. Following Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Khalidi called the widespread opposition to Saddam Hussein’s act of aggression an “idiots’ consensus” and urged his fellow academicians to resist it. At the time, Khalidi had also weighed in with several predictions about the war, none of which recommended him as an insightful analyst of modern-day Iraq. Among other erroneous claims, Khalidi wildly over-estimated the tenacity of the Iraqi army. Whereas the Iraqi troops quickly took flight before the superior onslaught of the U.S.-led forces, Khalidi had envisioned an altogether different scenario. “They’re [the Iraqis] in concrete bunkers. And it won’t be easy to force them out without resorting to bloody hand-to-hand combat. It’s my guess they’ll fight and fight hard, even if you bomb them with B-52s.”

The question of whether Khalidi is a serious scholar, or merely a radical polemicist masquerading as a scholar, remains vigorously debated—not least at Columbia, where Khalidi is embroiled in an ongoing scandal surrounding the faculty members of the university’s Middle East Studies program. Still, there is no doubting that, despite the charges of extremism frequently attached to his name, Khalidi continues to wield considerable influence in the field of Middle East Studies. At present, Khalidi, in his role as the director of Columbia’s Middle East Studies Institute, presides over a $300,000 annual grant from the federal government. Khalidi’s books, meanwhile, are among the most frequently assigned works on the Middle East in American college syllabi. Additionally, both Arab and American media outlets continue to seek out Khalidi as a leading American authority on the Middle East.

Khalidi is a member of MIFTAH's Board of Trustees.

[wmileo]

Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn are the scum of the earth. However, It might be a stretch to link them with OBAMA without making it look like a witch hunt.

One thing is clear. OBAMA has a circle of associates from Politics(Kerry supports him) to Church which leaves me to believe he will not make as good a Commander In Chief as McCain, especially during a time of conflict.

[Blood of Tyrants]

They don’t care. All they want is someone who promises that they will get something for nothing.

[bahblahbah]

If I was a “shady” 527 group for Clinton, I would do an attack ad on Obama’s relationship with Rashid Khalidi and Bill Ayers.

[Canedawg]

bookmark

[freespirited]

Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn are the scum of the earth. However, It might be a stretch to link them with OBAMA without making it look like a witch hunt.

IMO a politician has to have very poor judgment to allow unrepentant members of the Weather Underground hold a fundraiser for him at their home.

[FreedomProtector]

Thanks for posting.