The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Obama, Khalidi, and the PLO

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I have an article up on the main site about Rashid Khalidi's relationship with the PLO and why his friendship with Barack Obama matters. The key question is: which Obama will guide U.S. policy toward Israel if he is elected president – the Obama who toasted Khalidi at his farewell party, or the Obama who spoke to AIPAC this year? Like on every other issue with Obama, we won't know until he's in office whether he'll reassert his radical roots, or make pragmatic compromises as he has done as a general election candidate.

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M. Tobias| 10.31.08 @ 8:12AM

What key question? People do noy turn 180 degrees when then get sworn in a President. They are what they are. One last point. What pragmatic compromise has he made in the election? Remember the old saw; "How do you tell if a politician is lying? His lips are moving."

Michael Roush| 10.31.08 @ 9:14AM

I would like to invite every reader of TAS to do a little inter-net research on John McCain's relationship with Rashid Khalidi. That McCain, Palin and Klein think this can be kept secret is amazing.

WendyG| 10.31.08 @ 9:38AM

Michelle Obama attended Rashid Khalidi's daughter's wedding, so the relationhsip is close and personal.

And Obama has no real record of supporting Israel - only associations with a whole slew of folks who hold openly or thinly-veiled anti-Israel sentiments. Advisors such as Samantha Powers.

And Bill Ayers, Obama's buddy, dedicated one of his manifestos, to, among others, Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian who murdered Bobby Kennedy. Oh, and let's not forget that Obama attended Farrakhan's Million Man March. Farrakhan of "Judaism is a gutter religion" fame.

McCain on the other hand has a solid record of supporting Israel and Jewish causes.

Connect the dots and the Obama/Khalidi connection takes on far more meaning.

Barackula| 10.31.08 @ 11:10AM

Check out what Joe Klein wrote in the Swamp against critics of Khalidi. Klein sounds like he's writing for Stormfront.

Barackula| 10.31.08 @ 11:38AM

It's Swampland . I don't usually read it. He just backtracted but carefully didn't repeat exactly what he wrote. He wrote that Khalidi couldn't be an anti-semite because he is a semite. That's the oldest one in the books.

WendyG| 10.31.08 @ 12:43PM

>>>He wrote that Khalidi couldn't be an anti-semite because he is a semite. That's the oldest one in the books.

Amazing. Believe me I've seen that one at all the Jewhater sites. It's ugly folks. The pro-Obama press will go very far to cover his fanny.

WendyG| 10.31.08 @ 12:59PM

I knew I'd be sorry for taking a look at Swampland. Klein dragged out another old canard as well. To wit:

" And while the term, antisemitism, will always retain its traditional meaning--anti-Jewishness--it does conflate certain categories: there are those who just hate Jews, and then there are those who merely disapprove of zionism..."

He's not an anti-semite, he's anti-Zionism! Pu-leeze.