Rashid Khalidi and Edward Said: Barack Obama’s Good Friends

We've been here before, back in the third week of March 2008 to be precise. Recall the NEINblog entry "Barak Hussein Obama & his questionable connections" which was dreived directly from the news originally broken by Dr. Laurie Roth on her nationally syndicated radio program. Well, now the McCain/Palin campaign has finally been convinced that the long-term friendship between Obama and Khalidi is of the utmost importance to the American electorate five days before the election. A report in yesterday's Jerusalem Post which has been updated today has the details. The McCain campaign call is for the Los Angeles Times to release a tape it has had for quite some time now. That tape was the basis of Peter Wallsten's April 10, 2008 article entitled "Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama." A key sentence of Wallsten's article stated:

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"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."

Oh really? What else besides Obama's embrace of Rashid Khalidi would give the Palestinian's such a notion, so strong a notion that the favor voting for him by a wide margin? Is barack Hussein Obama more receptive or supportive of the Palestian cause than he has made public to date? Hmmm. I wonder if this widespread Palestinian belief about Obama's true inner worldview has anything to do with the fact that, by his own words, he purposefully, deliberately sought out such radical Palestinian leaders? Make no mistake, when Palestinians talk about "ending the occupation" they are talking about the destruction of the State of Israel. Period. This should give all of us in the American Judeo-Christian tradition extreme pause before casting our ballot next Tuesday. Remember Barack Hussein obama is on record stating that his conversations with his friend, the PLO terrorist Khalid Rashidi, had "challenged his thinking." Indeed. As we have all seen by now Obama's thinking as verbally expressed is totally dependent upon to whom he is speaking. When Obama spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Friday, March 2, 2007 he sounded like Israel's best friend. However, when Obama spoke face-toface to The Electronic Intifada's Ali Abunimah, he had this to say:

"Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front."

Then Obama told Abunimah, a radical Palestinian activist, "Keep up the good work!" Hmmm. The work of a radical Palestian activist dedicated to the destruction of Israel is privately cheered by Obama as "good work." This is no different than when Obama tells the people of Pennsylvania how much he is with them, how he'll help them, and then while at dinner with his radical leftist and other assorted socialist pals in San Francisco he derides the people of Pennsylvania as bitter people "clinging to their guns and religion." That's a religion, by the way, which is allegedly the same as Obama's. Well, it's not just the people of Pennsylvania that Obama is back-stabbing every chance he gets, it's all of us, We the People, the American family, and our contract with each other that established this great Republic, our beloved Constitution. One can only hope that the LA Times feels enough intense heat that it releases the tape it holds onto with an at-all-costs death grip. Release the tape so we can all see and hear for ourselves, so we can decide on merit instead of having an LA TImes reporter tell us his skewed version of that particular event. Absent that tape I have posted above the widely circulated 1998 image of Obama and the late-Edward Said and their spouses at an Arab community fiund-raiser dinner in Chicago. Said, a top-tier life-long Israel hater, was the keynote speaker at that event. And just in case you don't know, one of Said's closest friends and fellow travellers was Noam Chomsky.