Obama's Palestinian Pal rants on

By Ed Lasky

You want paranoia, conspiracy theories, falsehoods, and attacks on AIPAC and the "Israel Lobby?"

You got them - courtesy of Obama's pal professor, Rashid Khalidi - he man he credited with consistently reminding him of "my own blind spots and my own biases" in a series of conversations that were necessary not only around the dinner table of Rashid Khalid and his wife but around "this entire world."

A superb column by AT contributor Jonathan Schanzer in the Jerusalem Post destroys Khalidi's most recent points about an "occupational settlement industrial complex:"

Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO spokesman-turned Columbia University professor, is convinced that Israel has constructed a "matrix of control" in the Middle East. Khalidi once cited books and articles to back up his skewed views of Middle East history. Now he cites obscure Internet claims of an "occupation settlement industrial complex."

On April 1, Khalidi gave a one-hour phone briefing to Brit Tzedek v'Shalom (The Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace) - a leftist organization based in Chicago. While occasionally sounding balanced and insightful, he launched into short rants throughout the call.

Notably, about eight minutes in, he began to froth about a "network of interests which is bound up with the maintenance of this matrix of control. The occupation settlement industrial complex - a network of companies that an Israeli Web site called 'whoprofits' put together." Based on this site, which published a disclaimer about the "accuracy, completeness, usefulness of any information and/or documents disclosed," along with input from radical leftists like Jeff Halper and Palestinian apologists like Amira Haas, Khalidi claimed there are "hundreds of companies, hi-tech companies, that keep the databases on which Israel manages... the four million Palestinians... The telephone databases to the security companies that manage the checkpoints to the companies that build the roads... the settler-only roads." And so on and so forth.

This assertion is outrageous on several levels. The Palestinians constitute a never-ending financial and political burden for the Jewish state. From within the Palestinian population also comes a constant terrorist threat which requires millions of dollars in training and resources each year to counter. To imply that Israel prospers from this albatross is preposterous.

I have also written about Khalidi in the past at American Thinker.

Khalid has a habit of promoting falsehoods as he did with help from the "journalists" of the New York Times whose fact-finding department must have been fired years ago.