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PrintFebruary 18, 2009
Allies of Palestinians have a powerful friend in Obama
In April ,2008 the LA Times carried an article “Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama."
The article noted Barack Obama’s long friendship with Rashid Khalidi and quoted Barack Obama’s tribute to Khalidi at a going away party (Khalidi was going to a professor at Columbia-he occupies the Edward Said Chair there):
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."
Khalidi was a former spokesman for the PLO and is a Palestinian propagandist. Barack Obama credited him with informing his views.
What has he been up to lately?
Well, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that contained a vicious canard that led, after much criticism, to a later correction by the Times.
What else has Khalidi been conversing about lately?
At a conference at Columbia, Campus Watch reports:
He blurted out his belief that "the law is an ass" during a discussion with students, yet he condemned Israel's lack of respect for the law and presented a sympathetic view of (illegal) terrorism as a tactic. He used facts and numbers that, in his own words, "may or may not be correct" to convince his audience that everything we thought we knew about the situation in Gaza is wrong. He published known fabrications in the New York Times Op-Ed, lied about the terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, and made the hand-waving claim in front of a crowd of legal experts that according to some laws, somewhere, "there is a right of resistance to occupation." (He later admitted that no legal system recognized that right.
He's a historian who does not learn from his own history, who repeats the same oft-disproven tales at every opportunity.
Campus Watch provides many examples of his “wrong facts”. In addition, Khalidi seems to want to depict Israel as being an apartheid state. He compared Gaza to a “giant sealed prison camp” ruled by Israelis who persecuted Palestinians just for being Palestinians which is “like driving while black”.
Gee..wonder if he made the same analogy back in Chicago to a certain friend who now lives in Washington and who credited his many long conversations with Khalidi for “educating him”.
While we are on the subject of educating, anyone remember this photo from the campaign?
Notice that book Barack Obama is carrying with him on the tarmac? The title is “The Post-American World” and was written by Fareed Zakaria. The book covers the rise of other nations’ influence and power, relative to that of America. Today, I recalled this photo because Zakaria was caught making a major mistake when writing about Palestinian refugees. Needless to say, the mistake was far from harmless and tarnished Israel’s image and legitimacy. The mistake was straight out of the Palestinian propaganda handbook.
Jonathan Tobin writes over at Commentary Contentions:
Zakaria blunders when he repeats some of the usual myths about the birth of the Palestinian refugee issue. He refers to “the forced expulsion of most Palestinians from the Jewish state in 1948.”
Such a broad generalization undermines his credibility. If he has read the works of historian Benny Morris that he cites, he knows that the answer to what caused the flight of Arabs from the territory of Israel in 1948 is a lot more complex than that simple phrase. Some were forcibly expelled. But most of those who fled did so before any Jewish soldiers appeared on the scene. Arab refugees were caught in the crossfire of a war that had been fomented and launched by their own leaders. Those leaders refused to countenance any sort of Jewish state in any part of the country and never tried to build a Palestinian state in the areas allotted for one by the same United Nations resolution that called for a Jewish state. As in many other wars of that era, the factor that mandated flight was fear, not an actual direct threat.
And let’s not forget that hundreds of thousands of Jews fled or were forced from their homes in Arab countries as the result of pogroms and discrimination. They were largely resettled in Israel or elsewhere in the world. By contrast, Palestinian refugees remain stateless so as to keep alive the Arab and Islamic world’s war to wipe Israel off the map.
This was the man whose book Barack Obama was perusing before becoming President so clearly he believes Zakaria’s views are worthy. Perhaps these ideas might even help guide him in the years ahead.
So these are the people informing our President about the Middle East: Rashid Khalidi, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Jim Jones, Samantha Power and Fareed Zakaria. We might throw in George Soros, as well.
Yes. Allies of Palestinians seem to have a powerful friend in Washington.
