Obama's Radical Palestinian Ties Used to Influence Jewish Voters in Florida and Pennsylvania

Obama's Radical Palestinian Ties Used to Influence Jewish Voters [incl. Rashid Khalidi]http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/5660
by Israel Today Staff
Israel Today
September 17, 2008
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=17190

A telephone campaign in Florida and Pennsylvania is trying to convince Jewish voters in those states to drop their support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama over his ties to and endorsement by Palestinian terrorist elements....

It is now well known that Hamas, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other radical elements in the Middle East are rooting for Obama to win in November. What is less known is his past affiliation with groups that advocate and work for the violent downfall of the Jewish state.

From 1999 to 2002, Obama served as a paid director for a Chicago-based non-profit organization called the Woods Fund. In 2001 and then again in 2002, the Woods Fund provided grants totaling $75,000 to the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), a radical organization with firm ties to the PLO that laments Israel's existence as a "catastrophe."

AAAN co-founder, Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University, has openly supported terrorism against Israeli Jews and even took an active role in PLO operations when Yasser Arafat's group was still considered a terrorist organization by the West.

After learning that Obama was running for president, Khalidi embarked on a serious fundraising effort. The Obama campaign has gladly accepted the money raised by that effort.

Also of note is the fact that Obama served on the Woods Fund board with admitted and unrepentant US domestic terrorist William Ayers.

By Aaron Klein
C 2008 WorldNetDaily
(Jewish voters should research background of Obama and Rashid Khalidi before casting their vote)

JERUSALEM - The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barack Obama
served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted
funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of
Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform, including
providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens.
The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor
Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh
critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and
reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization
while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State
Department as a terror group.

In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes itself as
a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab
American Action Network, or AAAN, for which Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as
president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.

Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002,
according to the Fund's website. According to tax filings, Obama received
compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2001.
Obama served on the Wood's Fund board alongside William C. Ayers, a member
of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the U.S.
government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.

Ayers, who still serves on the Woods Fund board, contributed $200 to Obama's
senatorial campaign fund and has served on panels with Obama at numerous
public speaking engagements. Ayers admitted to involvement in the bombings
of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s. He is a professor at the
University of Illinois at Chicago.

The $40,000 grant from Obama's Woods Fund to the AAAN constituted about a
fifth of the Arab group's reported grants for 2001, according to tax filings
obtained by WND. The $35,000 Woods Fund grant in 2002 also constituted
about one-fifth of AAAN's reported grants for that year.

The AAAN, headquartered in the heart of Chicago's Palestinian immigrant
community, describes itself as working to "empower Chicago-area Arab
immigrants and Arab Americans through the combined strategies of community
organizing, advocacy, education and social services, leadership development,
and forging productive relationships with other communities."

It reportedly has worked on projects with the Illinois Coalition for
Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which supports open boarders and education for
illegal aliens.

The AAAN in 2005 sent a letter to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson in which
it called a billboard opposing a North Carolina-New Mexico joint initiative
to deny driver's licenses to illegal aliens a "bigoted attack on Arabs and
Muslims."

Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-Israel
line.

The group co-sponsored a Palestinian art exhibit, titled, "The Subject of
Palestine," that featured works related to what some Palestinians call the
"Nakba" or "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948.

According to the widely discredited Nakba narrative, Jews in 1948 forcibly
expelled hundreds of thousands - some Palestinians claim over one million -
Arabs from their homes and then took over the territory.

(Story continues below)

Historically, about 600,000 Arabs fled Israel after surrounding Arab
countries warned they would destroy the Jewish state in 1948. Some Arabs
also were driven out by Jewish forces while they were trying to push back
invading Arab armies. At the same time, over 800,000 Jews were expelled or
left Arab countries under threat after Israel was founded.

The theme of AAAN's Nakba art exhibit, held at DePaul University in 2005,
was "the compelling and continuing tragedy of Palestinian life ... under
[Israeli] occupation ... home demolition ... statelessness ... bereavement
... martyrdom, and ... the heroic struggle for life, for safety, and for
freedom."

Another AAAN initiative, titled, "Al Nakba 1948 as experienced by Chicago
Palestinians," seeks documents related to the "catastrophe" of Israel's
founding.

A post on the AAAN site asked users: "Do you have photos, letters or other
memories you could share about Al-Nakba-1948?"

That posting was recently removed. The AAAN website currently states the
entire site is under construction.

Pro-PLO advocate held Obama fundraiser, describes Obama as 'sympathetic'

AAAN co-founder Rashid Khalidi was reportedly a director of the official PLO
press agency WAFA in Beirut from 1976 to 1982, while the PLO committed
scores of anti-Western attacks and was labeled by the U.S. as a terror
group. Khalidi's wife, AAAN President Mona Khalidi, was reportedly WAFA's
English translator during that period.

Rashid Khalidi at times has denied working directly for the PLO but
Palestinian diplomatic sources in Ramallah told WND he indeed directed WAFA.
Khalidi also advised the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference in
1991.

During documented speeches and public events, Khalidi has called Israel an
"apartheid system in creation" and a destructive "racist" state.

He has multiple times expressed support for Palestinian terror, calling
suicide bombings response to "Israeli aggression." He dedicated his 1986
book, "Under Siege," to "those who gave their lives ... in defense of the
cause of Palestine and independence of Lebanon." Critics assailed the book
as excusing Palestinian terrorism.

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

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

Khalidi in 2000 held what was described as a successful fundraiser for
Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, a fact
not denied by Khalidi.

Speaking in a joint interview with WND and the John Batchelor Show of New
York's WABC Radio and Los Angeles' KFI Radio, Khalidi was asked about his
2000 fundraiser for Obama.

"I was just doing my duties as a Chicago resident to help my local
politician," Khalidi stated.

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

Khalidi also lauded Obama for "saying he supports talks with Iran. If the
U.S. can talk with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, there is no reason
it can't talk with the Iranians."

Asked about Obama's role funding the AAAN, Khalidi claimed he had "never
heard of the Woods Fund until it popped up on a bunch of blogs a few months
ago."

He terminated the call when petitioned further about his links with Obama.

Contacted by phone, Mona Khalidi refused to answer WND's questions about the
AAAN's involvement with Obama.

Obama's campaign headquarters did not reply to a list of WND questions sent
by e-mail to the senator's press office.

Obama, American terrorist in same circles

Obama served on the board with Ayers, who was a Weathermen leader and has
written about his involvement with the group's bombings of the New York City
Police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.

"I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough," Ayers told the
New York Times in an interview released on Sept. 11, 2001

"Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon," Ayers
wrote in his memoirs, titled "Fugitive Days." He continued with a disclaimer
that he didn't personally set the bombs, but his group set the explosives
and planned the attack.

A $200 campaign contribution is listed on April 2, 2001 by the "Friends of
Barack Obama" campaign fund. The two taught appeared speaking together at
several public events, including a 1997 University of Chicago panel
entitled, "Should a child ever be called a 'super predator?'" and another
panel for the University of Illinois in April 2002, entitled,
"Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?"

The charges against Ayers were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial
misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

Ayers is married to another notorious Weathermen terrorist, Bernadine Dohrn,
who has also served on panels with Obama. Dohrn was once on the FBI's Top 10
Most Wanted List and was described by J. Edgar Hoover as the "most dangerous
woman in America." Ayers and Dohrn raised the son of Weathermen terrorist
Kathy Boudin, who was serving a sentence for participating in a 1981 murder
and robbery that left 4 people dead.

Obama advisor wants talks with terrorists

The revelations about Obama's relationship with Khalidi follows a recent WND
article quoting Israeli security officials who expressed "concern" about
Robert Malley, an adviser to Obama who has advocated negotiations with Hamas
and providing international assistance to the terrorist group.

Malley, a principal Obama foreign policy adviser, has penned numerous
opinion articles, many of them co-written with a former adviser to the late
Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, petitioning for dialogue with
Hamas and blasting Israel for numerous policies he says harm the Palestinian
cause.

Malley also previously penned a well-circulated New York Review of Books
piece largely blaming Israel for the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations at Camp David in 2000 when Arafat turned down a Palestinian
state in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern sections of Jerusalem and instead
returned to the Middle East to launch an intifada, or terrorist campaign,
against the Jewish state.

Malley's contentions have been strongly refuted by key participants at Camp
David, including President Bill Clinton, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak and primary U.S. envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross, all of whom
squarely blamed Arafat's refusal to make peace for the talks' failure.

To interview Aaron Klein, contact M. Sliwa Public Relations by e-mail, or
call 973-272-2861 or 212-202-4453.