Posted on 10/22/2008 12:13:52 PM PDT by pissant
The invaluable Andrew McCarthy takes note of a connection between Barack Obama and Edward Said, an apologist for terrorism, who played a key role in changing the field of Middle East Studies towards an anti-Western and anti-Israel bias.
Said, a writer and professor at Columbia University, trained many of the Middle East professors who now broadcast his message to thousands of students across America and the world. Said hated Israel so much that he was seen throwing rocks from Lebanon at Israeli soldiers across the border.
His role in distorting the field of Middle Eastern studies has prompted a counter-movement led, among others, by the esteemed Bernard Lewis of Princeton University. McCarthy:
Obama was a student at Columbia from 1981 to 1983. He refuses to discuss those years; it is known only that he studied for at least some time under Edward Said, the late PLO apologist.
Not only has Barack Obama refused to discuss those years-as he refuses to discuss much of his past, he will not release his transcripts from Columbia or his thesis that he wrote before he graduated (claiming he "lost" the thesis). Would a transcript reveal more about his education under Edward Said?
How long-lasting and durable were these ties between Barack Obama and Edward Said? There is a photo of the Saids and Obama having dinner together in 1998 at an Arab community event in Chicago at which Said gave the keynote speech.
Not so ironically, Obama also enjoyed close relations with Rashid Khalidi when Khalidi was a professor at the University of Chicago. In 2003, Khalidi became the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and he now also serves as the director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. Barack Obama was on the small board of the Woods Fund (along with Bill Ayers) when that fund (originally chartered to help the poor) gave two grants to the Arab American Action Network totaling $110,000 in the years 2001 and 2002. This group was headed by Khalidi's wife and engaged in a series of anti-Israel actions.
The closeness of the ties between Obama and Khalidi has been outlined in a Los Angeles Times article ("Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama").The article began with a description of a going away party held for the Khalidis before their move to New York:
It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.
A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
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."
Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.
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.
Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.
At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."
One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."
Columbia University is a hot bed of anti-Israel sentiment Khalidi has certainly shown these inclinations to exhibit his anti-Israel sentiments in the past.
His statements have been so inflammatory that New York's School Chancellor ended Khailid's participation in a program to help train city's schoolteachers. Khalidi is also a fierce critic of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy-a leading think-tank in Washington, describing it thusly in an interview with Al Jazeera a few years ago:
By God, I say that the participation of the sons or daughters of the Arabs in the plans and affairs of this institute is a huge error, this Israeli institute in Washington, an institute founded by AIPAC, the Zionist lobby, and that hosts tens of Israelis every year. The presence of an Arab or two each year can't disguise the nature of this institute as the most important center of Zionist interests in Washington for at least a decade. I very much regret the participation of Arab officials and non-officials and academics in the activities of this institute, because in fact if you look at the output of this institute, it's directed against the Palestinians, against the Arabs, and against the Muslims in general. Its products describe the Palestinians as terrorists, and in fact its basic function is to spread lies and falsehoods about the Arab world, of course under an academic, scholarly veneer. Basically, this is the most important Zionist propaganda tool in the United States.
Edward Said died in 2003. His spirit lives on in Rashid Khalidi who continues to spread the venom that Said injected into the field of Middle Eastern Studies.
Should Barack Obama become President, will his friend Rashid Khalidi be in line for another move-this time from New York City to Foggy Bottom?
![From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. [Ali Abunimah archives]](http://prorev.com/703obamasaid.jpg)
Too many odd connections and still NO coverage nationally...WTH????
THREATSWATCH.org - blog: "ENTERING A NEW ERA" by Jay Fraser (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "However, to consider that the War on Terrorism and its battles are over simply because the United States has not had to withstand another direct attack on our soil would be naive.") (October 28, 2008, 6:19 pm)
NEWSMAX.com: "EXPECT FEWER LIBERTIES IF OBAMA WINS" by David Limbaugh (COMMENTARY SNIPPET: "I am sincerely worried that if Obama wins, the checks and balances incorporated into our Constitution may not be enough to prevent a radical and irreversible diminution of our individual liberties because a confluence of factors has emerged to create a climate conducive to fundamental change. These are the factors:") (October 28, 2008, 8:40 am)
DANIEL PIPES.org (HUDSON INSTITUTE): "PLO ACKNOWLEDGES: STILL AT WAR WITH ISRAEL" by Daniel Pipes (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Yasir Arafat may have shaken Yitzhak Rabin's hand in 1993 and signed solemn declarations about ending the war to eliminate Israel, but late last month, in a New York City courtroom, the Palestine Liberation Organization formally confirmed that it still sees terrorism against Israelis as legitimate acts of war.") (October 28, 2008)
FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS.org: "BARACK OBAMA'S ANTI-ISRAEL ALLIANCES" by Rachel Neuwirth (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Rashid Khalidi was the director of the PLO's press agency WAFA from 1976 to 1982, at a time when the PLO was conducting a massacre of 37 Israeli civilians in a bus on Israel's coastal road, the brutal murder of a four-year-old Israeli girl in Nahariya, and numerous other terrorist killings of Israeli civilians. The PLO was also waging a brutal war against the Lebanese Christian community during this period, and carried out numerous massacres of Lebanese Christians; the worst of these was the killing of about 500 people in the village of Damour.") (October 24, 2008)
Elections.FOX NEWS.com: "LA TIMES REFUSES TO RELEASE TAPE OF OBAMA PRAISING CONTROVERSIAL ACTIVIST Video of farewell party for alleged PLO worker shows Obama toasting 'friend and dinner companion' with questionable past." (October 28, 2008)
AMERICAN THINKER.com - blog: "THE SAID-KHALIDI-OBAMA CONNECTION" by Ed Lasky (October 22, 2008)
stepping back in time...CAMPUS-WATCH.org - Campus Watch Research: "COLUMBIA U. RELEASE EDWARD SAID CHAIR DONORS: NAMES ARAB GOVERNMENT" (March 19, 2004)
stepping back in time...CAMPUS-WATCH.org (FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE.com): "SECRETS, DONORS AND THE EDWARD SAID CHAIR" by Jonathan Calt Harris (November 19, 2003)
stepping back in time...MARTIN KRAMER'S SANDBOX - blog: "RASHID REDUX" (Posted Janurary 29, 2003)
[Post no. 2] - ARCHIVES - Topic: BIDEN & OBAMA (aka B & O) (October 28, 2008 -- Click Here TO VIEW MY ARCHIVED LINKS.)
JEFF HEAD.com - Videos: "THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH - Obama In His & His Supporters Own Words"
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