[GOPJ]

AMY GOODMAN:We're talking to Professor Rashid Khalidi, he's the Edward Said Professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. Author of a number of books, his latest is called The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Joining us in studio in Chicago, is Ali Abunimah. He is the creator and editor of the Electronic Intafada, and more recently of Electronic Iraq, his new book is called One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Ali Abunimah, thank you for joining us, layout that proposal, please.

ALI ABUNIMAH: Thank you, Amy. What I layout in the book is really an old idea, which I think needs to be revived and discussed most vigorously. And really it's the proposition in the title One Country, recognition that what we have in Palestine-Israel is one country. It is an Israeli ruled country in which half the population, 5 million Israeli Jews, has a monopoly on political, economic and military power. And the other half, Palestinians, are disenfranchised either partially or totally.

Cozy.

ping

[jpeg82]

Reason for giving the tape to LA Times? Perhaps Ali was upset by Obama's newly found love for Israel .

[SJackson]

Interesting, my first reaction is that he wouldn’t do it as it would harm Obama’s chances. However Abunimah had a bit of a falling out with Obama a year or so ago, don’t they all, over his increasingly pro-Israel positions. There’s probably a thread or two here on it. Giving the tape to the LAT, knowing it had damaging material on it which could be released only with Abunimah’s consent would be something which could be held over Obama’s head. And no one would have thought anything of Abunimah, the friendly press, videoing the proceedings. Shame on the LAT for apparently accepting it with these conditions.

[SJackson]

For anyone not familiar with Abunimah, he's another Chicago local, from the southwest suburbs.

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RESOURCES

 

ALI ABUNIMAH

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Barack Obama's Islamist Ties to Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said and Ali Abunimah
By Militant Islam Monitor
September 10, 2008

 

 

• Vice president of the Arab American Action Network
• Anti-Israeli activist

Born in Washington, DC on December 29, 1971, Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian American who serves as the Board of Directors Member for the Chicago-based Arab American Action Network. He is also a co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website, which was created by activists affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement. His personal website, abunimah.org, acts as a clearinghouse for his writings, which are fiercely hostile toward Israel and the United States.

Abunimah authored the 2006 book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which rejects a two-state solution for the Mideast conflict and proposes instead the creation of a single, united, democratic state for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

In Abunimah's calculus, Palestinian violence and terrorism is caused entirely by Israel's "land confiscation," its "ongoing orgy of violence," and its "routine human-rights abuses" that have "made life under a seemingly endless occupation so intolerable." In February 2002 he characterized "Israel's humiliation and virtual imprisonment of [Yasser] Arafat" (after the Palestinian leader had failed to prevent or discourage a recent wave of suicide bombings) as confirmation that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his supporters had "never given up the dream of a Greater Israel stretching from the Mediterrannean to the Jordan River and perhaps beyond."

According to Abunimah, "Zionist leaders, academics, and propagandists are actually professional, malicious liars as much as they are violent, merciless murderers." From that premise, Abunimah reasons: "[I]f lying is Israel's best policy, … shouldn't the world … doubt the Zionists' official stories about … the holocaust, for example? … Indeed, if Zionists could lie about their present and ongoing torment of my [Palestinian] people, usurpation of my homeland and arrogation of my rights, and they do it rather obscenely, couldn't they likewise lie, equally obscenely, about the holocaust, an event that took place over half a century ago?"

Abunimah is strongly opposed to America's military operations in Iraq, whose 2003 invasion he called a "massive assault on a small, defenseless country by an uncontrollable superpower." "We should also remember," he added, "that America's armed forces are disproportionately composed of the economically and socially disenfranchised, people who, denied a slice of the 'American dream' at home by failing schools, racism, the prison industry, and growing economic inequality, must seek to escape by joining the military. Empires have always sent their poorest, least educated and most marginalized to fight in the distant provinces."

 

 

[NOBAMA in 08]

EXCELLENT POSTS!! MUST READ FOR LATER TODAY!!

[floriduh voter]

Huh? Edward Said I read is deceased. He’s not Khalidi.