LA Times Withholds Video of Obama Toasting Former PLO Operative at Jew Bashing Dinner
By John Stephenson (Bio Archive)
October 25, 2008 - 16:37 ET
The mainstream media are willfully ignoring many questionable ties and friendships of Barack Obama. The list does not end with the radical racist preacher Jeremiah Wright and unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. They have totally ignored Obama campaigning for the socialist revolutionary Raila Odinga in Kenya. http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/10/25/obama-and-odinga/ They have also ignored his ties with radical Islamic extremist Khalid Al Masour.
http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/10/25/obama-and-khalid-al-masour/
LA Times takes things to the next level. They are going beyond the level of ignoring to the level of willfully witholding informative evidence from the public. The associate of Barack Obama in question this time is Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative and best friend of William Ayers. The LA times has a video of Barack Obama toasting this friend of his while attending a Jew bashing dinner, and they are refusing to release the video to the public.
Gateway Pundit has the scoop and what I summarize here is lifted from him.
Here is a video that explains his history and ties with Obama. http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/10/25/obamas-ties-to-rashid-khalidi/ He is a long time friend of Obama and shares a mutual friend, Bill Ayers.
Barack Obama funnelled thousands of dollars of cash to Rashidi’s anti-Israel Foundation through his work on the Woods Fund.
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/04/obama-funneled-cash-to-former-plo.html
In 2000, Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative who justified Palestinian terrorism as contributing to “political enlightenment,” threw a fundraiser for his friend Barack Obama.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1972901/posts
LA Times writer Peter Wallsten wrote about Barack Obama’s close association with former Palestinian operative Rashid Khalidi back in April.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obamamideast10apr10,0,1780231,full.story
“During the dinner 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.”
….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.”
…The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit) talked to Peter Wallsten from the Los Angeles Times about the article on Obama and Khalidi on Wednesday.
I asked him if he was planning on releasing this video of Obama toasting the radical Khalidi at this Jew-bash. He told me he was not releasing the video. He also would not comment on his source for the video. Wallston also said he did not know if Khalidi’s good friend Bill Ayers was at the event or not.
So, the LA Times has video of Obama attending a Jew bash and toasting a radical former PLO operative, and they are not sharing it with the public. I think we all know they would immediately release the tape if it were Sarah Palin making the toast.
If not for double standards the media would have no standards at all.
—John Stephenson is editor of Stop The ACLU
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/john-stephenson/2008/10/25/la-times-witholds-video-obama-toasting-former-plo-operative-jew-bas
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http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2008/10/reader_eli_was.html
Reader Eli Was First To Push L.A. Times to Release Obama/Khalidi Video Back In April; No Dice Then, Either
By Debbie Schlussel
Yesterday, I noted that I was unsure why Jim Hoft/Gateway Pundit only just contacted Los Angeles Times plagiarist/"reporter" Peter Wallsten about releasing the video of Barack Obama at a dinner with Rashid Khalidi, William Ayers, and Bernadine Dorn, where anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements were made. I figured he only just thought of it.
But if I had not missed an e-mail in April that I received, I guess I could have made the story happen and the pressure build sooner. My bad. And I'm glad Jim/Gateway Pundit got to it at all.
In searching my inbox today, I discovered that back in April, reader Eli (whose surname I am redacting) contacted the Los Angeles Times, asking Wallsten to release the video, at which time Wallsten declined. Eli sent me his correspondence, and unfortunately I forgot about it.
Here is the interchange:
From: Eli
Date: Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 3:47 AM
Subject: FW: CHECK THIS OUT!!!!
To: writedebbie@gmail.com
Hi Debbie:
I have attached a article from the Los Angeles Times and my correspondence with Mr Peter Wallsten. Mr Wallsten replied to me:
Thanks for your note. We have no plans to post the video.
All best,
Peter Wallsten
the rest is up to you..... my hands are tied. I am only a reader of newspapers. A powerful Video is in the hands of the Los Angeles Times... you decide if it is worth to pursue.
The ball is in your court,
Eli
***
From: Eli
To: peter.wallsten@latimes.com
Sent: 4/11/2008 10:39:47 PM
Subject: LETS RELEASE THE VIDEO!!!!!
Hi Mr Wallsten,
Lets release the Video your holding..... you write you have a Video.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times (exact words in your article)
Your exact words in your article.... lets see the video. Release it to CNN.. or do you even have a Video!!!
or release it on Latimes.com
Thanks,
Eli
Dear Mr Wallsten,
I enjoyed your article "Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama". I found it very interesting.. and what I found what most of interest was the fact you have "The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times". Peter, I am really interested in you sharing that video especially the part of the celebration with Senator Obama in attendance and "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.'" Also in the same Video that you possess, "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.
Peter, lets release this video.... lets not suppress the NEWS... Lets release the video to CNN, ABC,CBS, NBC AND FOXNEWS.
Lets do the what's right...
Thanks,
Eli
***
From: Eli
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 12:40 AM
To: peter.wallsten@latimes.com
Subject: STILL WAITING!!!!
The job of a Journalist is not to suppress the news.... if you have a story... you let your readers view and make up there own minds. If your holding on to a video that is of interest you should release it. Peter you were the one who said you have a video of the evening in Question.... how else would you have quoted the participants so accurate!!! You have a video that is of value... I can only imagine if it was a video Of Senator McCain or Senator Clinton the Video would be released... but for some reason you are giving Senator Obama Prefential Treatment. This Election is to important to play favors.
***
From: Wallsten, Peter
To: Eli
Sent: 4/14/2008 3:47:12 PM
Subject: RE: STILL WAITING!!!!
Thanks for your note. We have no plans to post the video.
All best,
Peter Wallsten
The Obama protection machine started early.
Posted by Debbie at October 30, 2008 03:11 PM
////////////////////////////////////////
Middle East studies in the News
Allies of Palestinians See an Ally in Obama [incl. Rashid Khalidi]
by Peter Wallsten
The Los Angeles Times
April 10, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obamamideast10apr10,0,5826085.story
CHICAGO — 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."
Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.
And yet the 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 either of his opponents for the White House.
"I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates," said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a "moral imperative" in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions.
"That's my personal opinion," Ibish said, "and I think it for a very large number of circumstantial reasons, and what he's said."
Aides say that Obama's friendships with Palestinian Americans reflect only his ability to interact with a wide diversity of people, and that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been consistent. Obama has called himself a "stalwart" supporter of the Jewish state and its security needs. He believes in an eventual two-state solution in which Jewish and Palestinian nations exist in peace, which is consistent with current U.S. policy.
Obama also calls for the U.S. to talk to such declared enemies as Iran, Syria and Cuba. But he argues that the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is an exception, calling it a terrorist group that should renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist before dialogue begins. That viewpoint, which also matches current U.S. policy, clashes with that of many Palestinian advocates who urge the United States and Israel to treat Hamas as a partner in negotiations.
"Barack's belief is that it's important to understand other points of view, even if you can't agree with them," said his longtime political strategist, David Axelrod.
Obama "can disagree without shunning or demonizing those with other views," he said. "That's far different than the suggestion that he somehow tailors his view."
Looking for clues
But because Obama is relatively new on the national political scene, and new to foreign policy questions such as the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides have been looking closely for clues to what role he would play in that dispute.
And both sides, on certain issues, have interpreted Obama's remarks as supporting their point of view.
Last year, for example, Obama was quoted saying that "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people." The candidate later said the remark had been taken out of context, and that he meant that the Palestinians were suffering "from the failure of the Palestinian leadership [in Gaza] to recognize Israel" and to renounce violence.
Jewish leaders were satisfied with Obama's explanation, but some Palestinian leaders, including Ibish, took the original quotation as a sign of the candidate's empathy for their plight.
Obama's willingness to befriend Palestinian Americans and to hear their views also impressed, and even excited, a community that says it does not often have the ear of the political establishment.
Among other community events, Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign "against settlements, against Israeli apartheid."
The use of such language to describe Israel's policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel's defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said's keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University.
Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At one, a 2000 fundraiser at a private home, Obama called for the U.S. to take an "even-handed" approach toward Israel, Abunimah wrote in an article on the website last year. He did not cite Obama's specific criticisms.
Abunimah, in a Times interview and on his website, said Obama seemed sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but more circumspect as he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. At a dinner gathering that year, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East.
Abunimah quoted Obama as saying that he was sorry he wasn't talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say.
Obama, through his aide Axelrod, denied he ever said those words, and Abunimah's account could not be independently verified.
"In no way did he take a position privately that he hasn't taken publicly and consistently," Axelrod said of Obama. "He always had expressed solicitude for the Palestinian people, who have been ill-served and have suffered greatly from the refusal of their leaders to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist."
In Chicago, one of Obama's friends was Khalidi, a highly visible figure in the Arab American community.
In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.
He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a "war crime" and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.
While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi and his wife lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the Obamas. The families became friends and dinner companions.
In 2000, the Khalidis 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 served on the fund's board of directors.
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.
Khalidi added that he strongly disagrees with Obama's current views on Israel, and often disagreed with him during their talks over the years. But he added that Obama, because of his unusual background, with family ties to Kenya and Indonesia, would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians.
"He has family literally all over the world," Khalidi said. "I feel a kindred spirit from that."
Ties with Israel
Even as he won support in Chicago's Palestinian community, Obama tried to forge ties with advocates for Israel.
In 2000, he submitted a policy paper to CityPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, that among other things supported a unified Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a position far out of step from that of his Palestinian friends. The PAC concluded that Obama's position paper "suggests he is strongly pro-Israel on all of the major issues."
In 2002, as a rash of suicide bombings struck Israel, Obama sought out a Jewish colleague in the state Senate and asked whether he could sign onto a measure calling on Palestinian leaders to denounce violence. "He came to me and said, 'I want to have my name next to yours,' " said his former state Senate colleague Ira Silverstein, an observant Jew.
As a presidential candidate, Obama has won support from such prominent Chicago Jewish leaders as Penny Pritzker, a member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and who is now his campaign finance chair, and from Lee Rosenberg, a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas.
One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama's outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright.
"In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Rashid Khalidi, Obama's Palestinian pal
Rashid Khalidi Referred to Arafat’s PLO As ‘We’Wednesday, October 29, 2008By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
The late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, seen here in one of his final TV interviews. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – Rashid Khalidi, the Columbia University professor whose friendship with Sen. Barack Obama is raising questions, says he was never a spokesman for the PLO, but his strong PLO leanings were evident at a time when Yasser Arafat’s group was mounting terror attacks in Israel and causing mayhem in Lebanon. And while Khalidi may not have been speaking on behalf of the PLO, during interviews he occasionally used the word “we” when speaking of the organization. In one 1981 interview, Khalidi referred to the exiled PLO’s growing standing among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, saying “we have built up tremendous links with the Palestinians ‘on the inside’ in different ways. We can render them services … we’ve never been stronger there, and the trend is continuing.” Sen. John McCain’s campaign has urged the Los Angeles Times to release a video reportedly showing Obama speaking at an event in Chicago about his friendship with Khalidi. The newspaper last April reported on the 2003 event, which took place when Khalidi was leaving Chicago for a new job, a professorship of Arab studies, at Columbia University. “Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi’s wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking,” the LA Times said. “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.’” The newspaper said Khalidi had praised Obama, “telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat.” The report also mentioned that the event had been filmed and said that “a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.” After conservative bloggers raised questions about the unaired videotape, the McCain campaign issued a statement Tuesday. “A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi,” said campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb. “The election is one week away, and it’s unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job – make information public.” LA Times editor Russ Stanton in a statement said that paper had not published the video “because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it. The Times keeps its promises to sources.” Attacks, atrocities Obama’s relationship with Khalidi has become an issue because during his campaign for president, the Illinois senator has portrayed himself as strongly pro-Israel. Khalidi has denied being a spokesman for the PLO during his years in Lebanon, when he taught political studies at the American University of Beirut in the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s. During that period, the PLO was based in the Lebanese capital, having been expelled from Jordan after an abortive attempt to topple King Hussein. In Beirut Arafat’s group established a “state within a state” taking over entire residential areas, setting up roadblocks, and extorting protection taxes. The PLO became a party to Lebanon’s civil war, backing Muslims against Maronite Christians. PLO atrocities against Christians reached a climax in early 1976, when PLO fighters killed 582 inhabitants of the Christian town of Damour, south of Beirut, before turning it into a stronghold. According to published accounts, the terrorists pillaged and ransacked the town and its churches, desecrated a Maronite cemetery by digging up and robbing corpses, and used the interior of the St. Elias Church for a shooting range and a garage for PLO vehicles. From its Lebanon stronghold, the PLO mounted cross-border terrorist attacks against Israel, culminating in a deadly assault that cost the lives of 35 Israeli civilians. Israel retaliated by sending in the army in 1978, pushing the PLO out of southern Lebanon. PLO shelling of northern Israel continued until Israel’s invasion in 1982 led to the PLO’s final expulsion from Lebanon, and it relocated to Tunisia. Khalidi began teaching in Beirut in 1976, the year of the Damour massacre.
Excerpt from New York Times report published on June 11, 1979.
Over the following years, he was quoted a number of times in media reports, giving a Palestinian perspective on events. On June 11, 1979, a New York Times report assessed Palestinian views of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty signed that March, following the Camp David accord the previous year. Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat was the first of Israel’s enemies to sign a peace deal with the Jewish state, officially recognizing Israel, and many Palestinians worried about the implications for the PLO’s armed campaign. The New York Times story, by Youssef Ibrahim quoted Khalidi – whom it called “a professor of political science who is close to [Arafat’s faction] Fatah” – as saying, “We are in a make-it-or-break-it period.” “If we don’t turn the tide, if what Sadat is doing is not decisively repudiated, if the idea that Sadat has brought peace is allowed to stick without regard to Palestinian rights, then we are done in,” Khalidi said. ‘We’ve never been stronger’ On January 6, 1981 the Christian Science Monitor quoted Khalidi – a professor of political science “with good access to the PLO leadership” – in a report examining the incoming Reagan administration’s Mideast options. If a “hard-line anti-Palestinian view” dominated the Reagan administration, he said, then “[t]he PLO will probably perceive the new administration as basically hostile – possibly more hostile than the Carter administration.” Khalidi in the story appeared at least highly supportive of the PLO, if not actually speaking on its behalf. He also seemed to refer to the PLO as “we” on occasion. “All you’ll see during the coming period of stalemate, which is all you can attain without the PLO, is the PLO getting stronger and stronger internally,” he said. “It is already happening. When was the last time people inside the Palestinian movement solved their differences with guns? A long time ago – apart from executing traitors. We are much more mature these days – the most sophisticated political constituency in the Arab world.” Arguing that the PLO’s standing among Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza had grown, he said, “Quite apart from the politics of it, we have built up tremendous links with the Palestinians ‘on the inside’ in different ways. We can render them services, often through our compatriots in the West, that King Hussein, for example, could never match. We’ve never been stronger there, and the trend is continuing.” Another Christian Science Monitor story, on June 2, 1981, referred to “Rashid Khalidi of the Institute of Palestinian Studies” (apparently a reference to the Institute for Palestine Studies, an institution set up in Lebanon in the 1960s. In 1971 it launched its Journal of Palestine Studies, a publication Khalidi has written for on occasion since then. He is its current editor.) Khalidi was quoted again by the New York Times in April 26, 1982 – two months before Israel invaded Lebanon – when a report by Thomas L. Friedman described him as “a Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut.” At the time the PLO was under pressure from the Lebanese government not to provoke an Israeli reaction to its attacks. Khalidi commented on PLO strategies, again using the word “we.” “If we break the cease-fire now it would not only play into Israel’s hands but would also divert world attention away from the popular uprising on the West Bank, which is equally important to the PLO’s long-term objectives,” Khalidi said. On June 9, 1982, three days after Israel invaded, another Friedman report for the New York Times described Khalidi as “a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa,” and quoted him as saying the Israelis were out to “crush the PLO.”
Wafa was a PLO-owned and PLO-funded news agency. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, worked for Wafa when they lived in Beirut. She currently works for Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Wafa remains today the news agency of the Palestinian National Authority, the self-rule administration set up by Arafat after the Oslo Accords enabled him to return to the disputed territories.
The late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, seen here in one of his final TV interviews. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – Rashid Khalidi, the Columbia University professor whose friendship with Sen. Barack Obama is raising questions, says he was never a spokesman for the PLO, but his strong PLO leanings were evident at a time when Yasser Arafat’s group was mounting terror attacks in Israel and causing mayhem in Lebanon. And while Khalidi may not have been speaking on behalf of the PLO, during interviews he occasionally used the word “we” when speaking of the organization. In one 1981 interview, Khalidi referred to the exiled PLO’s growing standing among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, saying “we have built up tremendous links with the Palestinians ‘on the inside’ in different ways. We can render them services … we’ve never been stronger there, and the trend is continuing.” Sen. John McCain’s campaign has urged the Los Angeles Times to release a video reportedly showing Obama speaking at an event in Chicago about his friendship with Khalidi. The newspaper last April reported on the 2003 event, which took place when Khalidi was leaving Chicago for a new job, a professorship of Arab studies, at Columbia University. “Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi’s wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking,” the LA Times said. “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.’” The newspaper said Khalidi had praised Obama, “telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat.” The report also mentioned that the event had been filmed and said that “a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.” After conservative bloggers raised questions about the unaired videotape, the McCain campaign issued a statement Tuesday. “A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi,” said campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb. “The election is one week away, and it’s unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job – make information public.” LA Times editor Russ Stanton in a statement said that paper had not published the video “because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it. The Times keeps its promises to sources.” Attacks, atrocities Obama’s relationship with Khalidi has become an issue because during his campaign for president, the Illinois senator has portrayed himself as strongly pro-Israel. Khalidi has denied being a spokesman for the PLO during his years in Lebanon, when he taught political studies at the American University of Beirut in the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s. During that period, the PLO was based in the Lebanese capital, having been expelled from Jordan after an abortive attempt to topple King Hussein. In Beirut Arafat’s group established a “state within a state” taking over entire residential areas, setting up roadblocks, and extorting protection taxes. The PLO became a party to Lebanon’s civil war, backing Muslims against Maronite Christians. PLO atrocities against Christians reached a climax in early 1976, when PLO fighters killed 582 inhabitants of the Christian town of Damour, south of Beirut, before turning it into a stronghold. According to published accounts, the terrorists pillaged and ransacked the town and its churches, desecrated a Maronite cemetery by digging up and robbing corpses, and used the interior of the St. Elias Church for a shooting range and a garage for PLO vehicles. From its Lebanon stronghold, the PLO mounted cross-border terrorist attacks against Israel, culminating in a deadly assault that cost the lives of 35 Israeli civilians. Israel retaliated by sending in the army in 1978, pushing the PLO out of southern Lebanon. PLO shelling of northern Israel continued until Israel’s invasion in 1982 led to the PLO’s final expulsion from Lebanon, and it relocated to Tunisia. Khalidi began teaching in Beirut in 1976, the year of the Damour massacre.
Excerpt from New York Times report published on June 11, 1979.
Over the following years, he was quoted a number of times in media reports, giving a Palestinian perspective on events. On June 11, 1979, a New York Times report assessed Palestinian views of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty signed that March, following the Camp David accord the previous year. Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat was the first of Israel’s enemies to sign a peace deal with the Jewish state, officially recognizing Israel, and many Palestinians worried about the implications for the PLO’s armed campaign. The New York Times story, by Youssef Ibrahim quoted Khalidi – whom it called “a professor of political science who is close to [Arafat’s faction] Fatah” – as saying, “We are in a make-it-or-break-it period.” “If we don’t turn the tide, if what Sadat is doing is not decisively repudiated, if the idea that Sadat has brought peace is allowed to stick without regard to Palestinian rights, then we are done in,” Khalidi said. ‘We’ve never been stronger’ On January 6, 1981 the Christian Science Monitor quoted Khalidi – a professor of political science “with good access to the PLO leadership” – in a report examining the incoming Reagan administration’s Mideast options. If a “hard-line anti-Palestinian view” dominated the Reagan administration, he said, then “[t]he PLO will probably perceive the new administration as basically hostile – possibly more hostile than the Carter administration.” Khalidi in the story appeared at least highly supportive of the PLO, if not actually speaking on its behalf. He also seemed to refer to the PLO as “we” on occasion. “All you’ll see during the coming period of stalemate, which is all you can attain without the PLO, is the PLO getting stronger and stronger internally,” he said. “It is already happening. When was the last time people inside the Palestinian movement solved their differences with guns? A long time ago – apart from executing traitors. We are much more mature these days – the most sophisticated political constituency in the Arab world.” Arguing that the PLO’s standing among Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza had grown, he said, “Quite apart from the politics of it, we have built up tremendous links with the Palestinians ‘on the inside’ in different ways. We can render them services, often through our compatriots in the West, that King Hussein, for example, could never match. We’ve never been stronger there, and the trend is continuing.” Another Christian Science Monitor story, on June 2, 1981, referred to “Rashid Khalidi of the Institute of Palestinian Studies” (apparently a reference to the Institute for Palestine Studies, an institution set up in Lebanon in the 1960s. In 1971 it launched its Journal of Palestine Studies, a publication Khalidi has written for on occasion since then. He is its current editor.) Khalidi was quoted again by the New York Times in April 26, 1982 – two months before Israel invaded Lebanon – when a report by Thomas L. Friedman described him as “a Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut.” At the time the PLO was under pressure from the Lebanese government not to provoke an Israeli reaction to its attacks. Khalidi commented on PLO strategies, again using the word “we.” “If we break the cease-fire now it would not only play into Israel’s hands but would also divert world attention away from the popular uprising on the West Bank, which is equally important to the PLO’s long-term objectives,” Khalidi said. On June 9, 1982, three days after Israel invaded, another Friedman report for the New York Times described Khalidi as “a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa,” and quoted him as saying the Israelis were out to “crush the PLO.”
Wafa was a PLO-owned and PLO-funded news agency. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, worked for Wafa when they lived in Beirut. She currently works for Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Wafa remains today the news agency of the Palestinian National Authority, the self-rule administration set up by Arafat after the Oslo Accords enabled him to return to the disputed territories.Khalidi and Obama: kindred spirits
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.
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.
Jewish Voters: Obama and Khalidi plan a one state soulution: Palestine and no Israel
http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/eme073108.pdf
Professor Rashid Khalidi, "A Palestinian Who Wouldn't Harm the Cause"
March 12, 2005
Rashid Khalidi’s impressive résumé – he’s the Edward Said Professor of Middle East Studies at Columbia University and the director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute – suggests a disinterested and objective scholar, who goes where the facts take him. A more realistic assessment of Khalidi comes from the Palestine Liberation Organization, which, according to press reports, regards the professor as a reliable partisan who "wouldn’t harm the cause": Khalidi enjoys the confidence of the PLO and has access to its leaders that stems from the ties he forged while teaching in Beirut from 1974 to 1985, when the PLO maintained its headquarters there.
“He became close to the leadership and gained their confidence,” said Suhail Miari, executive director of the United Holy Land Fund.
For Khalidi’s book, Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking During the 1982 War, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat made the organizations archives available to him, for the first time.
He was given access because he’s a serious scholar and a Palestinian who wouldn’t harm the cause," said Hassan Abdul Rahman, director of the Palestine Affairs Center in Washington ...(Chicago Tribune, Oct. 31, 1991; emphasis added.)
Not harming the cause, in Khalidi’s case, means using his academic credentials to give credibility to the most extreme anti-Israel canards, such as the fabrication that non-Jews are barred from most land in Israel:
... non-Jews are barred by law from purchasing or leasing most properties (Jewish National Fund property, "state land," and land under control of the Custodian of "Absentee" Property – ie., stolen Arab land) and are barred from renting in segregated Jewish-only neighborhoods. Where is the racism in this picture? (Washington Post, Oct. 1, 1997)
In fact, half the land used by Israeli-Arab farmers is state land leased from the Israeli government, and the only segregated towns in Israel are Arab localities such as Nazareth and Umm al-Fahm, where no Jews are allowed to live. In contrast, the “Jewish” town of Upper Nazareth is now more than 17 percent Arab.
Khalidi also served as president of the so-called American Committee on Jerusalem (now known as the American Task Force on Palestine), a Washington-based non-profit that regularly disseminates crude anti-Israel propaganda. Khalidi, for example, more than once signed fund-raising letters for the ACJ claiming that Israel engages in "ethnic cleansing" in Jerusalem:
... forcing out its Muslim and Christian Arab population, and making Jerusalem an exclusively Israeli city. Israel is attempting to reach its stated goal of a 70% Jewish majority in all of Jerusalem by the year 2020. (ACJ fund raising letter, dated December 1998 and signed by Dr. Rashid Khalidi)
Khalidi’s claim is arrant nonsense. The fact is that Jerusalem’s population in 1967, after reunification, was 74.2 percent Jewish and 25.8 percent Arab, and since then the Jewish proportion has declined and the Arab proportion grown, so that today Jerusalem’s population is 32 percent Arab. That is, the city has become less Jewish and more Arab! Some ethnic cleansing.
Perhaps Khalidi’s most shocking fabrication, however, was his "Remembrance" for the PLO terrorist mastermind known as Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf). Khalaf was notorious for his plots to assassinate King Hussein, and for his leadership of the so-called "Black September" organization, the PLO group that slaughtered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and in 1973 murdered US diplomats in Khartoum. The assassination of the US Ambassador to Lebanon in 1976 was also carried out under Khalaf’s orders. (For details on Khalaf see entry in An Historical Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Greenwood Press.)
Incredibly, Khalidi remembers not one word about any of these bloody terrorist attacks in his “Remembrance.” Instead he credits Khalaf with pioneering the PLO’s “diplomatic strategy” in 1988, with his “eloquent speeches and his back room political skills.”
According to Khalidi, “Abu Iyad will be sorely missed by the Palestinian people to whom he devoted his life” (Middle East Report, March-April 1991).
No wonder the PLO places so much trust in Khalidi.
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=923
Before coming to the U.S. and assuming his current role at Columbia, Rashid Khalidi
was a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – then headed by
Yasser Arafat.294 He served on the PLO “guidance committee” at the 1991
Palestinian/Israel Madrid Conference295 and is on record praising the late-Arafat296 and
his second-in-command, PLO terrorist mastermind Abu Iyad (a.k.a. Salah Khalaf).297
Iyad is said to have been behind the plots to assassinate King Hussein of Jordan and to
attack Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich (“Black September”).298
Aside from his clearly troubling connections and sympathetic stance toward violent
terrorists, Khalidi also maintains his own extreme views. In an article penned for the
Journal of Palestine Studies, Khalidi places the responsibility of conflict in the Middle
East solely on Israel’s shoulders. To him, violence will continue so long as Israel refuses
to relinquish its status as a Jewish State by allowing a full “right of return” for
Palestinians. According to Khalidi, such an action would “ensure a final resolution of an
issue which will always haunt Israel if it is not finally laid to rest in a mutually
satisfactory manner.”299 http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/eme073108.pdf
Professor Rashid Khalidi, "A Palestinian Who Wouldn't Harm the Cause"
March 12, 2005
Rashid Khalidi’s impressive résumé – he’s the Edward Said Professor of Middle East Studies at Columbia University and the director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute – suggests a disinterested and objective scholar, who goes where the facts take him. A more realistic assessment of Khalidi comes from the Palestine Liberation Organization, which, according to press reports, regards the professor as a reliable partisan who "wouldn’t harm the cause": Khalidi enjoys the confidence of the PLO and has access to its leaders that stems from the ties he forged while teaching in Beirut from 1974 to 1985, when the PLO maintained its headquarters there.
“He became close to the leadership and gained their confidence,” said Suhail Miari, executive director of the United Holy Land Fund.
For Khalidi’s book, Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking During the 1982 War, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat made the organizations archives available to him, for the first time.
He was given access because he’s a serious scholar and a Palestinian who wouldn’t harm the cause," said Hassan Abdul Rahman, director of the Palestine Affairs Center in Washington ...(Chicago Tribune, Oct. 31, 1991; emphasis added.)
Not harming the cause, in Khalidi’s case, means using his academic credentials to give credibility to the most extreme anti-Israel canards, such as the fabrication that non-Jews are barred from most land in Israel:
... non-Jews are barred by law from purchasing or leasing most properties (Jewish National Fund property, "state land," and land under control of the Custodian of "Absentee" Property – ie., stolen Arab land) and are barred from renting in segregated Jewish-only neighborhoods. Where is the racism in this picture? (Washington Post, Oct. 1, 1997)
In fact, half the land used by Israeli-Arab farmers is state land leased from the Israeli government, and the only segregated towns in Israel are Arab localities such as Nazareth and Umm al-Fahm, where no Jews are allowed to live. In contrast, the “Jewish” town of Upper Nazareth is now more than 17 percent Arab.
Khalidi also served as president of the so-called American Committee on Jerusalem (now known as the American Task Force on Palestine), a Washington-based non-profit that regularly disseminates crude anti-Israel propaganda. Khalidi, for example, more than once signed fund-raising letters for the ACJ claiming that Israel engages in "ethnic cleansing" in Jerusalem:
... forcing out its Muslim and Christian Arab population, and making Jerusalem an exclusively Israeli city. Israel is attempting to reach its stated goal of a 70% Jewish majority in all of Jerusalem by the year 2020. (ACJ fund raising letter, dated December 1998 and signed by Dr. Rashid Khalidi)
Khalidi’s claim is arrant nonsense. The fact is that Jerusalem’s population in 1967, after reunification, was 74.2 percent Jewish and 25.8 percent Arab, and since then the Jewish proportion has declined and the Arab proportion grown, so that today Jerusalem’s population is 32 percent Arab. That is, the city has become less Jewish and more Arab! Some ethnic cleansing.
Perhaps Khalidi’s most shocking fabrication, however, was his "Remembrance" for the PLO terrorist mastermind known as Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf). Khalaf was notorious for his plots to assassinate King Hussein, and for his leadership of the so-called "Black September" organization, the PLO group that slaughtered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and in 1973 murdered US diplomats in Khartoum. The assassination of the US Ambassador to Lebanon in 1976 was also carried out under Khalaf’s orders. (For details on Khalaf see entry in An Historical Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Greenwood Press.)
Incredibly, Khalidi remembers not one word about any of these bloody terrorist attacks in his “Remembrance.” Instead he credits Khalaf with pioneering the PLO’s “diplomatic strategy” in 1988, with his “eloquent speeches and his back room political skills.”
According to Khalidi, “Abu Iyad will be sorely missed by the Palestinian people to whom he devoted his life” (Middle East Report, March-April 1991).
No wonder the PLO places so much trust in Khalidi.
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=923
Before coming to the U.S. and assuming his current role at Columbia, Rashid Khalidi
was a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – then headed by
Yasser Arafat.294 He served on the PLO “guidance committee” at the 1991
Palestinian/Israel Madrid Conference295 and is on record praising the late-Arafat296 and
his second-in-command, PLO terrorist mastermind Abu Iyad (a.k.a. Salah Khalaf).297
Iyad is said to have been behind the plots to assassinate King Hussein of Jordan and to
attack Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich (“Black September”).298
Aside from his clearly troubling connections and sympathetic stance toward violent
terrorists, Khalidi also maintains his own extreme views. In an article penned for the
Journal of Palestine Studies, Khalidi places the responsibility of conflict in the Middle
East solely on Israel’s shoulders. To him, violence will continue so long as Israel refuses
to relinquish its status as a Jewish State by allowing a full “right of return” for
Palestinians. According to Khalidi, such an action would “ensure a final resolution of an
issue which will always haunt Israel if it is not finally laid to rest in a mutually
satisfactory manner.”299 http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/eme073108.pdf
Please hear the screams of the Children of Eldoret:Obama-Odinga Connection
http://africanpress.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/senator-barack-obama-in-kenya-obama-and-odinga-the-true-story/
Clearly, Obama campaigned for someone who is corrupt, ruthless and has financial ties to terrorists. More importantly, Obama campaigned for a candidate who had the stated objective of dismantling US & Kenyan government efforts to root out Al Queda and other terrorist organizations. Organizations that had already caused the deaths of hundreds of Americans and Africans in embassy bombings. Senator Obama’s actions—intentional or not—were in direct conflict with the efforts and interests of US national security. I think this raises serious questions about the judgment, maturity and readiness of Senator Obama.
Senator Barack Obama in Kenya > Obama and Odinga: The True Story
Posted by africanpress on August 10, 2008
By Paula Abeles Friday, August 8, 2008
The mainstream media has justified ignoring this story based on a “conspiracy theory” chain email (politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/465) making the rounds from some African missionaries. Politifact.com examined the email—which claims Obama gave $1MM to Odinga’s campaign—and declared it “a pants on fire”.
However, the underlying (more important issues) are verifiably true. In August and September 2006, Senator Barack Obama traveled to South Africa, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Chad and Kenya as a congressional delegation of one (Codel Obama) (“Codel Obama” The Hill 9/7/2006) While in Kenya, Obama consistently appeared at the side of fellow Luo Raila Odinga (“your agent for change’), who was running for President. (“Senator Rebukes Kenya’s Corruption” Chicago Sun Times 8/29/2006) Because of his African heritage, Obama was treated as a virtual “Head of State” in Kenya While campaigning with Odinga, Obama was openly critical of governmental corruption under President Mibaki –usually a fair, if undiplomatic, criticism from an objective observer.
However, Kibaki’s government has been better than most—and Odinga has his own corruption issues.(
“Loud and Populist, But No Political Outsider” The Guardian 12/29/2007)
Obama’s partisan support for Odinga was considered so transparent, that the Kenyan Government spokesman, Alfred Matua, complained of political posturing to aid Odinga’s election chances: “It is very clear that the senator has been used as a puppet to perpetuate opposition politics,”(“Walking The World Stage” Newsweek 9/11/06) And, “…we earlier thought he was mature in his assessment of Kenyan and African politics,” Mutua told AFP.”We forgive him because it is his first time in the Senate and he is yet to mature into understanding issues of foreign policy,” he said.”(“Obama’s Kenya Honeymoon Ends Abruptly After Graft Rebuke” 8/29/06) Subsequently, Ambassador Ogingo Ogego made a public complaint to the US.(“Kenyan Envoy Kicks Off Diplomatic Row” My Africa 9/27/2006)
Raila Odinga subsequently lost the controversial (probably rigged) presidential election. In what appeared to many—including Human Rights Watch– as a coordinated strategy from the top, (“Violence We Fled was Planned, Say Kenyan Refugees” Reuters 1/26/2008 and “Kenya: Violence Planned Before Poll, Says Report” The Nation 3/18/2008) his Luo supporters (a core of whom call themselves The Taliban”(“Ethnic Gangs Rile Kenyan Slums” Newsweek 1/10/08)) engaged in what US Envoy Jendayi Frazer called “clear ethnic cleansing” (“US Envoy Calls Violence in Kenya ‘Ethnic Cleansing’” USA Today 1/30/2008) of the Kikuyu opposition.
Odinga’s supporters went on a rampage—burning Kikuyu homes and businesses, (“Ethnic Cleansing in Luoland” The Economist 2/7/2008) raping Kikuyu women, and murdering everyone in their path—including at least 50 Christian Kikuyu woman & children who had sought refuge in a church. They burned them alive. (“Mob Burns Kenyans Seeking Refuge In Church” CNN 1/10/2008)
“We have evidence that ODM [Odinga’s party] politicians and local leaders actively fomented some post-election violence,” Georgette Gagnon, acting Africa director for the New York based Human Rights Watch (HRW), said on Thursday.” (Violence We Fled was Planned, Say Kenyan Refugees” Ibid)
So: who is Raila Odinga that Senator Obama would expend his political capital and risk the goodwill of half the population of Kenya?
Their relationship is unclear. The BBC initially reported that Obama and Odinga were first cousins.(“Odinga Says Obama is His Cousin” 1/8/2008) The Obama campaign has since denied a familial relationship. Raila Odinga’s father Oginga Odinga was leader of the “Kenya People’s Union” and perceived as a “committed socialist” (“Oginga Odinga: Kenya’s Most Persecuted Politician” Kenya: Key Issues 8/21.2002). Odinga Sr. was also the political ally of fellow Luo; Barack Obama Sr.(The Risks of Knowledge (Ohio University Press, 2004) p. 182)
What we do know about Odinga is not good. A former Minister of Energy, Odinga is reported to have been set up in the oil business by the al Bakri Group and Muammar Quaddafi (“How Rich is Raila-The ODM Kenya Presidential Aspirant?” African Press 4/26/2007) Abdel Qader Bakri (or- Abdulkader al Bakri) was listed on the infamous “Golden Chain”–an internal Al-Queda list of wealthy Saudi financial sponsors seized by Bosnian police in a Islamic “charity” raid in 2001. (“Terrorist Financing Staff Monograph 9/11 Commission and “The Golden Chain”) According to his website, Odinga was educated in Communist East Germany, (Herder Institute, Leipzig & Otto von Guericke Tech. Institute, Magdeburg) (http://www.raila07.com) Odinga’s eldest son is named “Fidel” (http://www.raila07.com)
Perhaps most troubling is Odinga’s links to Islamic extremists in Kenya. According to Voice of America and the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, on 8/29/07, Odinga signed a secret agreement (exposed 11/27) with Sheikh Abdullah Abdi of the National Muslim
Leaders Forum (NAMLEF) in which he agreed to institute Islamic law in exchange for Abdi’s support (eakenya.org)–thereby potentially disenfranchising and curtailing the liberties of millions of Christian Kenyan women. Further, he promised that Muslims suspected of terrorism would be safe from extradition—thereby establishing a ‘safe haven’ for terrorists in Kenya.
After the public outcry, Odinga denied signing a secret agreement. Angry at Odinga’s apparent repudiation, a member of NAMLEF subsequently released the agreement to the press. Odinga then claimed the document was a forgery, but acknowledged a secret agreement had been signed in exchange for Muslim support. Finally, under constant pressure, Odinga released what he claimed was the actual document (“Real” MOU) a considerably watered down version of the original; but still anathema to many Christian groups. “In response to the revelations, The Evangelical Alliance of Kenya released a statement in which church leaders said Raila, in both MOUs, ‘comes across as a presumptive Muslim president bent on forcing Islamic law, religion and culture down the throats of the Kenyan people in total disregard of the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of freedom of worship and equal protection of the law’” (“Concerns Raised Over Alleged Vow To Enforce Islamic Law in Kenya” Christian Post 12/18/2007) To many westerners, the idea of imposing Sharia in a predominantly Christian country may have seemed fanciful. However, Kenya has had Sharia courts for family law (not criminal law)—called Khadi courts—since 1963.
For the US and “the war on terror”—the most worrisome section—contained in both agreements– concerns extradition (or renditions) of suspected terrorists to the US and
elsewhere. The Kibaki government had been a leading supporter of the US’s efforts to dismantle Al-Queda cells in Kenya (National Commission of Terrorist Attacks on the United States- 9/11 Report) and elsewhere. Raila Odinga made opposition to the government’s crackdown of suspected Al Queda supporters a cornerstone of his campaign “In Kimanthi’s view, ‘only some of the leaders’…were Al Queda sympathizers. The renditions- along with frequent police sweeps on the Swahili coast-had become an emotional issue in the presidential race. Islamic outrage had placed the incumbent, Kibaki, on the defensive and provided Raila Odinga with a tool to rally the support of Kenya’s Muslims.” (“The African Front” New York Times Magazine 12/23/2007) And, “Our government will not be held at ransom to extradite Muslims to foreign lands”, Odinga told supporters in the coastal city of Mombassa. ‘This government is behaving as if it is still a colony.’” (“Outcome of Kenyan Election Could Impact Anti-Terror Cooperation” CNSNews.com 10/17/2007)
So, how much of a national security concern is this? Well, actually: huge “…proximity to the volatile states…including Somalia and Sudan have made Kenya especially vulnerable, in the views of counterterrorism experts, to the call for jihad. Since the early 1990s, the mosques of Mombasa and other towns have resonated with militant Islamic rhetoric. Radical imams have preached violence against Westerners, attacked the Kenyan government as the lackey of the United States and Israel and called for the implementation of Shariah. Members of the Qaeda cells that blew up the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania…were recruited in mosques near the Indian Ocean beaches [in Kenya]“ (“The African Front” , ibid)
At no point has Senator Obama tried to distance himself from Odinga. Odinga visited Obama on a fundraising tour of the US in 2007 and it is believed that political strategist Dick Morris assisted in Odinga’s presidential campaign- gratis- at Obama’s request (Morris only acknowledged the suggestion came through “mutual friends”). (“Bridges Burned in US, Political Kingmaker Hits Africa” ABC News 11/20/2007) Odinga has claimed that he and Obama speak regularly and whether this is true or not– the similarities between their campaigns are startling. (“Kenya Tests New Style of Politicking” The Washington Post, 12/22/2007)
In fairness to Senator Obama, after Kenya erupted into violence ( and at the request of Condoleezza Rice), Obama did record a message “. …calling for calm…” and had “..near daily conversations with the US Ambassador…and Raila Odinga” (“The Demons That Still Haunt Africa” TIME magazine 1/10/2008). Perhaps not surprisingly, President Kibaki apparently declined to take his call. Kibaki’s not the only one no longer filled with enthusiasm for Senator Obama’s brand of diplomacy. As Nicholas Kristof reported (with some surprise) in February: “You might think that all Kenyans would be vigorously supporting Mr. Obama. But Kenya has been fractured along ethnic lines in the last two months, so now Mr. Obama draws frenzied support from the Luos ethnic group of his ancestors, while many members of the rival Kikuyu group fervently support Hillary Rodham Clinton. (“Obama’s Kenya Roots” New York Times 2/24/2008)
Curiously, it has been the Kenyan press (almost alone) who have realized the potential implications: “… this is what may be the most memorable effect of the ODM’s [Odinga’s party] post-election campaign for State House. The longer their protests last, and the less disciplined they are - or the more atrocities like Eldoret [church massacre] are conducted in the party’s name- the more likely Kenya is to be stuck on the front pages of the world’s media and the more embarrassment it will bring to the Senator.” (“The Kiss of Death, How Kenya Could Spoil It For Obama” KenyaImagine 1/13/2008)
Clearly, Obama campaigned for someone who is corrupt, ruthless and has financial ties to terrorists. More importantly, Obama campaigned for a candidate who had the stated objective of dismantling US & Kenyan government efforts to root out Al Queda and other terrorist organizations. Organizations that had already caused the deaths of hundreds of Americans and Africans in embassy bombings. Senator Obama’s actions—intentional or not—were in direct conflict with the efforts and interests of US national security. I think this raises serious questions about the judgment, maturity and readiness of Senator Obama.
Respectfully submitted,
Paula Abeles
spabeles@comcast.net
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23000292-601,00.html
According to witnesses including police and a Red Cross volunteer, those who escaped the Assemblies of God Church in Eldoret,
Children torched in Kenya churchFont Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print Correspondents in Nairobi January 03, 2008
In broad daylight, a crowd of Kenyans set a church filled with hundreds of terrified families on fire and listened to their screams as flames engulfed them.
According to witnesses including police and a Red Cross volunteer, those who escaped the Assemblies of God Church in Eldoret, about 300km west of Nairobi, were hunted down with machetes; others hid inside pit latrines.
Up to 50 people were killed in the attack, said a Red Cross official, in scenes reminiscent of Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered, many of them in churches where they had sought refuge. The attack was the ugliest incident yet since last week's disputed elections unleashed a torrent of ethnic and political violence.
The December 27 presidential election was narrowly won by the incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, amid allegations from defeated challenger Raila Odinga that the vote was rigged. The violence is the worst Kenya has witnessed since a failed coup in 1982.
With Mr Kibaki belonging to Kenya's largest tribe, the Kikuyu, and Mr Odinga to the second-largest, the Luo, the violence has taken on a distinctly ethnic hue, with tit-for-tat killings and targeted arson attacks.
"What I saw was unimaginable and indescribable," said the director of the Kenyan Red Cross, Abbas Gullet, after visiting several of the worst hit areas of western Kenya. "This is a national disaster."
Those massacred in the church were mostly Kikuyus. Kenya's other 41 official tribes accuse them of monopolising political power and businesses at the expense of other tribes - accusations stridently taken up by supporters of Mr Odinga.
One of the dead was the nephew of George Karanja, whose family had sought sanctuary with about 2000 other people in the church. They had fled to the church on Monday night, seeking refuge after mobs began torching homes. "In the morning, when the men were sleepy and some had gone to take a shower, we heard the first scream," recalled the 37-year-old Mr Karanja. Many from his family - including his nephew, his wife's parents and his two children - were inside.
At least 2000 raiders had arrived, he said. "They started burning the church. The mattresses that people were sleeping on caught fire. There was a stampede, and people fell on one another," he said. Mr Karanja said he helped pull out at least 10 people, but "I could not manage to pull out my sister's son. He was screaming 'uncle, uncle'... He died." He was 11.
Mr Karanja said his two children were staying in the church with their grandparents.
"They hacked my father. He is a 90-year-old man. My sister is a widow." He said the attackers had seen him saving people and began stoning him. He managed to hide by submerging himself in a pit latrine.
The horrific incident is likely to raise concerns that the wave of post-poll violence that has claimed more than 300 lives across Kenya could develop into full-blown ethnic conflict.
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith joined international appeals for an end to the ethnic violence and in upgraded advice Canberra recommended that people reconsider travel plans to Kenya. About 200 Australians are registered as living in Kenya, although the real figure is closer to 350.
AP
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/17/no-ties-to-terrorism/
Below are MAJ. GEN. J. SCOTT GRATION, Air Force (retired) comments on the Odinga trip. However his comments need to be viewed from smoke colored glasses. (see http://www.millenniumvillages.org/involved/index.htm)
CEO of Africa anti-poverty effort Millennium Villages
Mark Hyman's “Obama's Kenya ghosts,” (Commentary, Sunday), was a disgraceful smear on Sen. Barack Obama. Because I accompanied Mr. Obama on his trip to Kenya, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cEZkKZkwnU&feature=relatedI can say unequivocally that Mr. Hyman's piece was filled with lies and innuendo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pFrw_U9b8U
• Mr. Obama's 2006 trip to Kenya was authorized by the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, )http://foreign.senate.gov/ Senator Joseph R Biden Jr.Chairman, sir come on... Senator Biden is the Chairman of this Committee) who congratulated Mr. Obama on a successful trip when he returned. (sir hard to hear what you are saying when the organization you are connected with links you with Columbia University and the cast of associations already linked to Obama.) Your desire to help the people of Africa through this organization may or may not be a factor in your defense of the Senator. But now questions do arise. (Will the US Tax payers be called upon to fund this adventure?) (Will US Companies be pressured to support this project?) How much money will tax payers be called upon to spread the wealth around in Africa?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-acT5ajRjY&feature=related
• Mr. Obama did not “campaign” on behalf of Raila Odinga, has never endorsed him, and was not “nearly inseparable” from Mr. Odinga during his time in Kenya. Mr. Obama met with a wide range of Kenyan and American officials, including a Nobel Prize winner, human-rights defenders, and President Mwai Kibaki. He did not have a single scheduled meeting with Mr. Odinga.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1P_P8lBCsE
• Mr. Obama was accompanied throughout his trip by myself and two other active-duty U.S. military officers; and the U.S. ambassador attended meetings and events throughout the trip. The Obama staffer - Mark Lippert - that Mr. Hynes names is a naval reservist and Iraq War veteran whose deployment began several months before the Kenyan elections and continued well past it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OivgE4r0NYg&feature=related
• The Obama speech that Mr. Hyman references was a widely praised effort that condemned corruption and tribalism while urging the promotion of private enterprise and accountable, transparent government.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6eVVVKFHu0&feature=related
MAJ. GEN. J. SCOTT
GRATION
Air Force (retired)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvmmG7dQMLc&feature=related
Obama Commander in Chief: In Action
Obama and Ayers showing how they truely feel about America....http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/Wallace_to_Ayers_Communist_Progressive.pdf
www.usasurvival.org/ck101408.html
http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/chicago-obama.pdf
http://www.usasurvival.org/
http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/chicago-obama.pdf
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/vernon/080526
http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/ASI_Report_on_Tribune_+_Terrorists.pdf
Obama ties to Hamas
The Jerusalem Post
Oct 27, 2008 20:18
Obama's unsavory ties
By DANIEL PIPES
One watches with dismay as Democratic candidate Barack Obama manages to hide the truth on his longstanding, if indirect ties to two institutions: the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), listed by the US government in 2007 as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding trial; and the Nation of Islam (NoI), condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its "consistent record of racism and anti-Semitism."
First, Obama's ties to Islamists:
• The Khalid al-Mansour connection: According to former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton, Mansour "was raising money for" Obama's expenses at Harvard Law School. Mansour, a black American (né Don Warden), became adviser to Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talal, CAIR's largest individual donor. Mansour holds standard Islamist views: He absolves the Islamist government in Sudan of sponsoring slavery, he denies a Jewish tie to Jerusalem and he wrote a booklet titled "Americans Beware! The Zionist Plot Against S. Arabia." (Both Obama and Mansour deny Sutton's account.)
• The Kenny Gamble (also known as Luqman Abdul-Haqq) connection: Gamble, a once-prominent pop music producer, cut the ribbon to the Obama campaign headquarters housed in a South Philadelphia building he owns. Gamble is an Islamist who buys large swaths of real estate in Philadelphia to create a Muslim-only residential area. Also, as the self-styled "amir" of the United Muslim Movement, he has many links to Islamist organizations, including CAIR and the Muslim Alliance in North America. (MANA's "amir" is Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.)
• The Mazen Asbahi connection: The Obama campaign's first Muslim outreach coordinator resigned after it came to light that he had served on the board of a subsidiary of the Saudi-sponsored North American Islamic Trust, with Jamal Said, another unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Hamas funding trial. Asbahi has ties to CAIR's Chicago and Detroit offices, to the Islamic Society of North America, yet another unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas funding trial, and to other Islamist organizations.
• The Minha Husaini connection: The campaign's second Muslim outreach coordinator has an Islamist background, having served as an intern in the Muslim Public Service Network. Immediately upon her appointment by Obama, she met with a group of about 30 Muslims including such notorious figures as CAIR's Nihad Awad; the Muslim American Society's Mahdi Bray, who has publicly supported Hamas and Hizbullah; and Johari Abdul Malik of the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, who has advised American Muslims: "You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work."
SECOND, OBAMA's ties to the Nation of Islam:
Obama's long-time donor and ally Antoin "Tony" Rezko partnered for nearly three decades with Jabir Herbert Muhammad, a son of NoI leader Elijah Muhammad, and says he gave Jabir and his family "millions of dollars over the years." Rezko also served as executive director of the Muhammad Ali Foundation, a rogue organization that, without Ali's permission, exploited the name of this CAIR awardee.
Jeremiah Wright, Obama's esteemed pastor for 20 years, came out of a Nation background. Recently he accepted protection from an NoI security detail, and has praised Louis Farrakhan, the NoI's leader, as one of the "giants of the African American religious experience." Wright's church celebrated Farrakhan for his having "truly epitomized greatness."
Farrakhan himself endorsed Obama, calling him "the hope of the entire world," "one who can lift America from her fall," and even "the messiah." That Obama's biography touches so frequently on such unsavory organizations as CAIR and the Nation of Islam should give pause. How many of politicians have a single tie to either group, much less seven of them?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1225036822047&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. www.DanielPipes.org
Oct 27, 2008 20:18
Obama's unsavory ties
By DANIEL PIPES
One watches with dismay as Democratic candidate Barack Obama manages to hide the truth on his longstanding, if indirect ties to two institutions: the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), listed by the US government in 2007 as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding trial; and the Nation of Islam (NoI), condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its "consistent record of racism and anti-Semitism."
First, Obama's ties to Islamists:
• The Khalid al-Mansour connection: According to former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton, Mansour "was raising money for" Obama's expenses at Harvard Law School. Mansour, a black American (né Don Warden), became adviser to Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talal, CAIR's largest individual donor. Mansour holds standard Islamist views: He absolves the Islamist government in Sudan of sponsoring slavery, he denies a Jewish tie to Jerusalem and he wrote a booklet titled "Americans Beware! The Zionist Plot Against S. Arabia." (Both Obama and Mansour deny Sutton's account.)
• The Kenny Gamble (also known as Luqman Abdul-Haqq) connection: Gamble, a once-prominent pop music producer, cut the ribbon to the Obama campaign headquarters housed in a South Philadelphia building he owns. Gamble is an Islamist who buys large swaths of real estate in Philadelphia to create a Muslim-only residential area. Also, as the self-styled "amir" of the United Muslim Movement, he has many links to Islamist organizations, including CAIR and the Muslim Alliance in North America. (MANA's "amir" is Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.)
• The Mazen Asbahi connection: The Obama campaign's first Muslim outreach coordinator resigned after it came to light that he had served on the board of a subsidiary of the Saudi-sponsored North American Islamic Trust, with Jamal Said, another unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Hamas funding trial. Asbahi has ties to CAIR's Chicago and Detroit offices, to the Islamic Society of North America, yet another unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas funding trial, and to other Islamist organizations.
• The Minha Husaini connection: The campaign's second Muslim outreach coordinator has an Islamist background, having served as an intern in the Muslim Public Service Network. Immediately upon her appointment by Obama, she met with a group of about 30 Muslims including such notorious figures as CAIR's Nihad Awad; the Muslim American Society's Mahdi Bray, who has publicly supported Hamas and Hizbullah; and Johari Abdul Malik of the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, who has advised American Muslims: "You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work."
SECOND, OBAMA's ties to the Nation of Islam:
Obama's long-time donor and ally Antoin "Tony" Rezko partnered for nearly three decades with Jabir Herbert Muhammad, a son of NoI leader Elijah Muhammad, and says he gave Jabir and his family "millions of dollars over the years." Rezko also served as executive director of the Muhammad Ali Foundation, a rogue organization that, without Ali's permission, exploited the name of this CAIR awardee.
Jeremiah Wright, Obama's esteemed pastor for 20 years, came out of a Nation background. Recently he accepted protection from an NoI security detail, and has praised Louis Farrakhan, the NoI's leader, as one of the "giants of the African American religious experience." Wright's church celebrated Farrakhan for his having "truly epitomized greatness."
Farrakhan himself endorsed Obama, calling him "the hope of the entire world," "one who can lift America from her fall," and even "the messiah." That Obama's biography touches so frequently on such unsavory organizations as CAIR and the Nation of Islam should give pause. How many of politicians have a single tie to either group, much less seven of them?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1225036822047&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. www.DanielPipes.org
Khalidi Tape News: The Guest List
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31740_Khalidi_Tape_News-_The_Guest_List
Khalidi Tape News: The Guest List
Oct 29, 2008 at 11:12:45 am PST
A PUMA blog has done some good investigative work, and pieced together a verified guest list for that party for Rashid Khalidi: The Khalidi Tape: Putting the Bits and Pieces Together with New Details.
Verified Information Location: Burbank Manor, 6312 W 79th St., Burbank, Illinois
Time: Friday, August 1, 2003
6pm - Reception
7pm - Dinner and Reception
Those who attended:
1. AAAN (Arab American Action Network)
2. Not In My Name
3. Ali Abunimah (a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, who met Obama in 2000)
4. Bernadine Dorhn and Bill Ayers
5. Barack Obama
6. Mayor of Chicago Richard Daley
7. Rashid Khalidi
8. Mona Khalidi
9. Gihad Ali, a Palestinian spoken word poet
10. NPR Worldview host Jerome McDonnell (not McDonald as written in the e-mail)
11. Camilia Odeh (director of SWYC Southwest Youth Collaborative)
12. Sanabel debka troupe (traditional Palestinian dance group)
13. Hatem Abudayyeh
14. Others - Up to 50 to 500 guests
Khalidi Tape News: The Guest List
Oct 29, 2008 at 11:12:45 am PST
A PUMA blog has done some good investigative work, and pieced together a verified guest list for that party for Rashid Khalidi: The Khalidi Tape: Putting the Bits and Pieces Together with New Details.
Verified Information Location: Burbank Manor, 6312 W 79th St., Burbank, Illinois
Time: Friday, August 1, 2003
6pm - Reception
7pm - Dinner and Reception
Those who attended:
1. AAAN (Arab American Action Network)
2. Not In My Name
3. Ali Abunimah (a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, who met Obama in 2000)
4. Bernadine Dorhn and Bill Ayers
5. Barack Obama
6. Mayor of Chicago Richard Daley
7. Rashid Khalidi
8. Mona Khalidi
9. Gihad Ali, a Palestinian spoken word poet
10. NPR Worldview host Jerome McDonnell (not McDonald as written in the e-mail)
11. Camilia Odeh (director of SWYC Southwest Youth Collaborative)
12. Sanabel debka troupe (traditional Palestinian dance group)
13. Hatem Abudayyeh
14. Others - Up to 50 to 500 guests
Social Security at Risk with Obama and his Tax starts at 25,000
Charles R. Smith Obama’s Scheme: Tax the Poor, Pay the Rich
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 1:57 PM
By: Charles R. Smith Article Font Size
If you think you are going to get a tax cut from Sen. Obama, think again. The fact is, Obama’s plan will actually increase taxes on the vast majority of Americans.
Obama promises that no one making less than $250,000 a year will see an increase in their taxes. Yet, according to The Wall Street Journal, Obama has a stealth tax — called credits — hidden in his plan.
These credits basically would have the effect of raising taxes on average income couples making between $25,000 and $40,000 a year.
In fact, some families in this range could see an increase in their taxes of up to 40 percent.
The credit scheme also discourages people from earning more. Since the credits are tied to income, the more you make, the less credits you can earn. Thus, people will see their real income go down even though they are earning more from raises or over-time. Since you take home less at the higher pay scale — the incentive is to not work overtime or seek a better paying job.
Worse still, millions of Americans who pay no taxes are also entitled to these credits. Obama has labeled the stealth credits “refundable." Thus, people who are paying no taxes at all will still receive a check from the government.
According to the Tax Foundation, under Obama’s tax scheme 63 million Americans, or 44 percent of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability. Most of those 63 million would also get a check from the IRS.
The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama scheme, an additional 10 million would pay no taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.
According to the Tax Policy Center, the cost of these “tax credits” to the real tax payers would quickly rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to over $1 trillion.
Add on top of this Obama’s government backed healthcare plan that is estimated to top $1 trillion, and you have over $2 trillion worth of government backed welfare programs. Clearly, no increase in taxes on the “rich” will be able to make up for this huge outlay of cash benefits to the non-working.
So where is this $1 trillion going to come from? The answer may shock and surprise you.
Here's another part of Obama’s stealth tax plan: The so-called credits will actually threaten Social Security. Americans paying no taxes would get an income tax credit up to $500 based on what they are paying into Social Security.
Since people are going to get a tax refund based on what they pay into Social Security, then the scheme is not about income tax relief but cutting payroll taxes. The same payroll taxes that fund Social Security.
The Obama scheme means billions of dollars in lost revenue for Social Security. In short, the solvency of Social Security system will come quickly to a head because of this lost revenue, threatening the lives of millions of senior citizens within months.
Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago economic professor who serves as one of Sen. Obama’s top advisers, noted this little problem during a recent appearance on Fox News.
“You can’t just cut the payroll tax because that’s what funds Social Security,” Mr. Goolsbee admitted to Fox’s Shepard Smith. “So if you tried to do that, you would undermine the Social Security Trust Fund.”
If that form of political suicide is not enough to end Obama’s career then consider this: Obama’s tax increase would hit the bottom line of small businesses.
Obama claims that no business making less than $250,000 would be hit by more taxes but this is a bald faced lie. The fact is that 85 percent of small business owners are taxed at the personal income tax rate, any moderately successful business with an income above as little as $165,000 a year will face higher taxes.
The businesses that do make more than $250,000 a year will be slammed big time, even harder than major corporations. The Obama scheme requires many small business owners to pay as much as a 4-percentage-point payroll tax surcharge on net income above $250,000.
The result is the federal marginal small business tax rate jumps up to nearly 45 percent for the little guys, while big business would continue to pay the 35 percent corporate tax rate.
Joe the plumber would get hit if he expanded his business and hired other plumbers. According to the National Federation of Independent Business, 50 percent of businesses with 20 to 249 workers would pay the extra tax. In short, the Obama scheme is an incentive to hire fewer workers.
The most successful small- and medium-sized businesses that create most of the new jobs in our dynamic society will be slammed by Obama’s tax hikes. If you hire another worker — you will get slammed harder.
Obama’s stealth tax/credit scheme is actually a plan to redistribute the wealth and is nothing more than a giant welfare program. Obama’s tax scheme will cut jobs, threaten Social Security and hit the lowest income wage earners like a ton of bricks.
I find it ironic that the base of voters who support Obama that also make between $25,000 and $40,000 a year are totally unaware of the cruel fate they are signing onto by supporting the freshman senator. Obama’s scheme is Robin Hood in reverse — tax the poor to pay the rich.
According to Obama, “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 1:57 PM
By: Charles R. Smith Article Font Size
If you think you are going to get a tax cut from Sen. Obama, think again. The fact is, Obama’s plan will actually increase taxes on the vast majority of Americans.
Obama promises that no one making less than $250,000 a year will see an increase in their taxes. Yet, according to The Wall Street Journal, Obama has a stealth tax — called credits — hidden in his plan.
These credits basically would have the effect of raising taxes on average income couples making between $25,000 and $40,000 a year.
In fact, some families in this range could see an increase in their taxes of up to 40 percent.
The credit scheme also discourages people from earning more. Since the credits are tied to income, the more you make, the less credits you can earn. Thus, people will see their real income go down even though they are earning more from raises or over-time. Since you take home less at the higher pay scale — the incentive is to not work overtime or seek a better paying job.
Worse still, millions of Americans who pay no taxes are also entitled to these credits. Obama has labeled the stealth credits “refundable." Thus, people who are paying no taxes at all will still receive a check from the government.
According to the Tax Foundation, under Obama’s tax scheme 63 million Americans, or 44 percent of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability. Most of those 63 million would also get a check from the IRS.
The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama scheme, an additional 10 million would pay no taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.
According to the Tax Policy Center, the cost of these “tax credits” to the real tax payers would quickly rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to over $1 trillion.
Add on top of this Obama’s government backed healthcare plan that is estimated to top $1 trillion, and you have over $2 trillion worth of government backed welfare programs. Clearly, no increase in taxes on the “rich” will be able to make up for this huge outlay of cash benefits to the non-working.
So where is this $1 trillion going to come from? The answer may shock and surprise you.
Here's another part of Obama’s stealth tax plan: The so-called credits will actually threaten Social Security. Americans paying no taxes would get an income tax credit up to $500 based on what they are paying into Social Security.
Since people are going to get a tax refund based on what they pay into Social Security, then the scheme is not about income tax relief but cutting payroll taxes. The same payroll taxes that fund Social Security.
The Obama scheme means billions of dollars in lost revenue for Social Security. In short, the solvency of Social Security system will come quickly to a head because of this lost revenue, threatening the lives of millions of senior citizens within months.
Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago economic professor who serves as one of Sen. Obama’s top advisers, noted this little problem during a recent appearance on Fox News.
“You can’t just cut the payroll tax because that’s what funds Social Security,” Mr. Goolsbee admitted to Fox’s Shepard Smith. “So if you tried to do that, you would undermine the Social Security Trust Fund.”
If that form of political suicide is not enough to end Obama’s career then consider this: Obama’s tax increase would hit the bottom line of small businesses.
Obama claims that no business making less than $250,000 would be hit by more taxes but this is a bald faced lie. The fact is that 85 percent of small business owners are taxed at the personal income tax rate, any moderately successful business with an income above as little as $165,000 a year will face higher taxes.
The businesses that do make more than $250,000 a year will be slammed big time, even harder than major corporations. The Obama scheme requires many small business owners to pay as much as a 4-percentage-point payroll tax surcharge on net income above $250,000.
The result is the federal marginal small business tax rate jumps up to nearly 45 percent for the little guys, while big business would continue to pay the 35 percent corporate tax rate.
Joe the plumber would get hit if he expanded his business and hired other plumbers. According to the National Federation of Independent Business, 50 percent of businesses with 20 to 249 workers would pay the extra tax. In short, the Obama scheme is an incentive to hire fewer workers.
The most successful small- and medium-sized businesses that create most of the new jobs in our dynamic society will be slammed by Obama’s tax hikes. If you hire another worker — you will get slammed harder.
Obama’s stealth tax/credit scheme is actually a plan to redistribute the wealth and is nothing more than a giant welfare program. Obama’s tax scheme will cut jobs, threaten Social Security and hit the lowest income wage earners like a ton of bricks.
I find it ironic that the base of voters who support Obama that also make between $25,000 and $40,000 a year are totally unaware of the cruel fate they are signing onto by supporting the freshman senator. Obama’s scheme is Robin Hood in reverse — tax the poor to pay the rich.
According to Obama, “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Joe Biden Worries Obama's Inexperience Will Prompt Foreign Nations To Test U.S.
From: http://www.investigativeproject.org/
With Enemies at Home and Abroad, now is not the time for on the job training -- We need a strong Commander-in-Chief
JOE BIDEN SAYS WORLD WOULD TEST YOUNG PREZ
By CARL CAMPANILE in Belton, Mo., and GEOFF EARLE in Orlando, Fla.
New York Post
Saturday, October 25, 2008
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10212008/news/politics/joe_doh_puts_o_in_crisis_mode_134547.htm.
Joe Biden warned that America's enemies would test Barack Obama with an international crisis within six months if he's elected president - a shocking comment John McCain eagerly pounced on yesterday to claim Obama isn't ready to be commander-in-chief.
McCain Ad: “Tiny”
August 27, 2008 by Media Lizzy
Barack Obama is not ready to lead his own party, let alone hold the awesome responsibility of President. Often, the position is referred to as ‘Leader of the Free World.’ The President must be a competent manager with a clear, bold vision. While “change” sounds good, the fact remains that on January 20, 2009 - change is coming. President Bush will return to Texas and the next president will assume the mantle of leadership.
Institutional knowledge matters. Tackling the Middle East Peace Process requires more knowledge than a three week trip as a college kid to Pakistan. It requires real knowledge. Relationships with the key leaders in the Middle East. And a willingness to broker a resolution - without interfering in the natural dialogue between countries. The next president needs gravitas. You can’t farm out foreign policy to staff. The critical issues we face today require solid leadership, not pretty words and dreams. America needs a solid leader to set our compass and guide our nation to our best days.
John McCain is that man. He will surround himself with folks like potential running mate Eric Cantor, who can inform him not only of the facts on the ground as President McCain makes his assessment, but an understanding of the human toll as well. (Cantor lost a cousin in a suicide bombing perpetrated by Islamic Jihad in Tel Aviv)
—Media Lizzy
2 Responses to “McCain Ad: “Tiny””
on August 27, 2008 at 7:03 pm1 Ed from OK
Now is not the time for experiments. Now is not the time for on-the-job training. Now is not the time for dreaming big only to find out you bit off way more than you can chew. Now is time to elect the right leader for our country in a very unstable and uncertain world. The right leader isn’t a lifelong lawyer from Harvard. The right leader is not two lawyers who are married and dreaming of eight more years of hard work and then an early retirement. The right leader is not someone who dreams big dreams but lives on eloquent speeches.
Who is the right leader? Someone who’s been to hell and back and is still alive to tell about it. Someone who has fought and shed blood for America but who has healed over time and strongly desires to heal the wounds of America. Someone who wants to make America as strong and as prosperous as no other country has ever known on the face of this planet. That man is none other than John McCain. America is hated abroad but cherished at home. America will always have enemies and John McCain realizes that. So our next president needs experience in strategic warfare. Our next president needs backbone and an iron fist. Our next president should be and will be one of the greatest presidents this nation will ever or has ever known. That man is John McCain. Get used to it America. He will be your next Commander-in-Chief because our military will crumble without him.
on August 27, 2008 at 9:32 pm2 Eddie
From the AP. Here is the full text of the speech from right up the road in Penedlton. Where does Mr. Obama say that, “Iran is not a threat”? Smears by innuendo are not very presidential.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/08/27/ap5362860.html
Last May in Pendleton, Ore., Obama reiterated his belief that the U.S. is strong enough to talk with its adversaries. In calling Iran “tiny” compared to the Soviet Union and having a small fraction of the Soviet military force, he noted that direct diplomacy with the Soviets was a bipartisan policy for decades in spite of their threat.
“Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries,” Obama said at the time. “I mean, think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, ‘We’re going to wipe you off the planet.’”
http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:Oj_Cnzlmi4cJ:medializzy.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/mccain-ad-tiny/+With+enimies+at+home+and+abroad+now+is+not+the+time+for+on+the+job+training+--+%3Cstrong%3EWe+need+a+strong+Commander-in-Chief%3C/strong%3E&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
MORE: Key States Start Swinging Against McCain
EDITORIAL: Joe BIden's Fears
"Mark my words," Biden told donors at a Seattle fund-raiser Sunday night.
"It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America.
"Watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.
"And he's going to need help . . . to stand with him. Because it's not going to be apparent initially; it's not going to be apparent that we're right."
McCain treated Biden's comments as a gift while stumping across Missouri yesterday.
"The next president won't have time to get used to the office. We face many challenges here at home and many enemies abroad in this dangerous world," McCain said. "We don't want a president who invites 'testing' from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting two wars."
McCain said it was even "more troubling" that Biden suggested supporters stick by Obama if the actions he takes are wrong or unpopular.
"Senator Obama won't have the right response, and we know that because we've seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign," he said.
With Enemies at Home and Abroad, now is not the time for on the job training -- We need a strong Commander-in-ChiefJOE BIDEN SAYS WORLD WOULD TEST YOUNG PREZ
By CARL CAMPANILE in Belton, Mo., and GEOFF EARLE in Orlando, Fla.
New York Post
Saturday, October 25, 2008
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10212008/news/politics/joe_doh_puts_o_in_crisis_mode_134547.htm.
Joe Biden warned that America's enemies would test Barack Obama with an international crisis within six months if he's elected president - a shocking comment John McCain eagerly pounced on yesterday to claim Obama isn't ready to be commander-in-chief. McCain Ad: “Tiny”
August 27, 2008 by Media Lizzy
Barack Obama is not ready to lead his own party, let alone hold the awesome responsibility of President. Often, the position is referred to as ‘Leader of the Free World.’ The President must be a competent manager with a clear, bold vision. While “change” sounds good, the fact remains that on January 20, 2009 - change is coming. President Bush will return to Texas and the next president will assume the mantle of leadership.
Institutional knowledge matters. Tackling the Middle East Peace Process requires more knowledge than a three week trip as a college kid to Pakistan. It requires real knowledge. Relationships with the key leaders in the Middle East. And a willingness to broker a resolution - without interfering in the natural dialogue between countries. The next president needs gravitas. You can’t farm out foreign policy to staff. The critical issues we face today require solid leadership, not pretty words and dreams. America needs a solid leader to set our compass and guide our nation to our best days.
John McCain is that man. He will surround himself with folks like potential running mate Eric Cantor, who can inform him not only of the facts on the ground as President McCain makes his assessment, but an understanding of the human toll as well. (Cantor lost a cousin in a suicide bombing perpetrated by Islamic Jihad in Tel Aviv)
—Media Lizzy
2 Responses to “McCain Ad: “Tiny””
on August 27, 2008 at 7:03 pm1 Ed from OK
Now is not the time for experiments. Now is not the time for on-the-job training. Now is not the time for dreaming big only to find out you bit off way more than you can chew. Now is time to elect the right leader for our country in a very unstable and uncertain world. The right leader isn’t a lifelong lawyer from Harvard. The right leader is not two lawyers who are married and dreaming of eight more years of hard work and then an early retirement. The right leader is not someone who dreams big dreams but lives on eloquent speeches.
Who is the right leader? Someone who’s been to hell and back and is still alive to tell about it. Someone who has fought and shed blood for America but who has healed over time and strongly desires to heal the wounds of America. Someone who wants to make America as strong and as prosperous as no other country has ever known on the face of this planet. That man is none other than John McCain. America is hated abroad but cherished at home. America will always have enemies and John McCain realizes that. So our next president needs experience in strategic warfare. Our next president needs backbone and an iron fist. Our next president should be and will be one of the greatest presidents this nation will ever or has ever known. That man is John McCain. Get used to it America. He will be your next Commander-in-Chief because our military will crumble without him.
on August 27, 2008 at 9:32 pm2 Eddie
From the AP. Here is the full text of the speech from right up the road in Penedlton. Where does Mr. Obama say that, “Iran is not a threat”? Smears by innuendo are not very presidential.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/08/27/ap5362860.html
Last May in Pendleton, Ore., Obama reiterated his belief that the U.S. is strong enough to talk with its adversaries. In calling Iran “tiny” compared to the Soviet Union and having a small fraction of the Soviet military force, he noted that direct diplomacy with the Soviets was a bipartisan policy for decades in spite of their threat.
“Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries,” Obama said at the time. “I mean, think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, ‘We’re going to wipe you off the planet.’”
http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:Oj_Cnzlmi4cJ:medializzy.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/mccain-ad-tiny/+With+enimies+at+home+and+abroad+now+is+not+the+time+for+on+the+job+training+--+%3Cstrong%3EWe+need+a+strong+Commander-in-Chief%3C/strong%3E&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
MORE: Key States Start Swinging Against McCain
EDITORIAL: Joe BIden's Fears
"Mark my words," Biden told donors at a Seattle fund-raiser Sunday night.
"It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America.
"Watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.
"And he's going to need help . . . to stand with him. Because it's not going to be apparent initially; it's not going to be apparent that we're right."
McCain treated Biden's comments as a gift while stumping across Missouri yesterday.
"The next president won't have time to get used to the office. We face many challenges here at home and many enemies abroad in this dangerous world," McCain said. "We don't want a president who invites 'testing' from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting two wars."
McCain said it was even "more troubling" that Biden suggested supporters stick by Obama if the actions he takes are wrong or unpopular.
"Senator Obama won't have the right response, and we know that because we've seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign," he said.
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