Free Republic

Today the hot topic in the conservative blogsphere is the apparent return of Robert Malley. He was Obama’s senior foreign-policy adviser who had been caught meeting regularly with Hamas which Obama had pledged never to do and was subsequently thrown under the bus back in May of this year. Two days after the election he was dispatched by Obama to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Other reports have him leaving for the Middle East just hours after the election results. There is no confirmation from the Obama campaign on Malley but many sources are...

Ahmad Yousuf, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's political advisor, said that during the recent US presidential race a secret meeting between senior Islamist group figures and advisors to President-elect Barack Obama was held in Gaza. "We were in contact with a number of Obama's aides through the Internet, and later met with some of them in Gaza, but they advised us not to come out with any statements, as they may have a negative effect on his election campaign and be used by Republican candidate John McCain (to attack Obama)," Yousuf said in an interview with London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat, published...

The Arab daily Al-Hayat on Tuesday quoted a senior Hamas official as saying that United States President-elect Barack Obama's advisors met with members of the Palestinian militant group before the U.S. presidential election. Ahmed Yusuf, a political advisor to Hamas' Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh, reportedly told the London-based paper that, "The connection was made via email and after that we met with them in Gaza." Al-Hayat reported that Yusuf also said the relations were maintained after Obama's electoral victory last Tuesday. He said the president-elect's advisors requested that the relations be kept secret so as not to aid his rival,...

News services in Israel are on fire with talk that Barack Obama has just sent a supporter of the terror group Hamas as his envoy to Syria and Egypt to relay news of his policies to come. .... ..... In September of this year, Robert Malley caused consternation among people that stand against the terror group Hamas when he went to Syria to work for a group called the International Crisis Group — a George Soros funded NGO also chaired by other doyens the far left. ...

Charles Ryder has a video of Robert Malley (the Obama aide who may or may not be an Obama aide, depending on who you listen to), at the June 2007 American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Conference in Washington DC, sharing the stage with radical anti-Israel academic Sarah Roy and Palestinian diplomat Alif Safieh: A Future Obama Advisor speaks at the ADC Conference. There’s some interesting stuff here ... he seems to speak highly of Arafat at times, and is anxious for Fatah and Hamas to come together under a single program and work together. Near the end he speaks somewhat darkly of...

News services in Israel are on fire with talk that Barack Obama has just sent a supporter of the terror group Hamas as his envoy to Syria and Egypt to relay news of his policies to come. Last September Israel's suspicions were heated up about "former" Obama advisor Robert Malley being sent to Syria with a George Soros funded group. It was then claimed by Egyptian sources that Malley was still working as an advance man for Obama which angered Israelis because six months earlier Malley announced that he had held "regular meetings" with Hamas. At that time, Malley's comment...

Robert Malley, a top Middle East advisor that US President-elect Barack Obama promised months ago would play no role in his administration due to ties to Hamas, has reportedly been sent out on the next administration's first diplomatic mission. According to a report in Middle East Newsline, Obama dispatched Malley to Egypt and Syria late last week with a message that the he intends to mend and bolster relations with both nations, and to give greater weight to their concerns regarding regional conflicts than did President George W. Bush. During the Democratic Party primaries, Obama was lashed by critics for...

(IsraelNN.com) According to a report on Middle East Newsline, President-elect Barack Obama has dispatched his "senior foreign policy adviser", Robert Malley to Egypt and Syria to outline Obama's policy on the Middle East. Malley reportedly relayed a promise from Obama that the United States would seek to enhance relations with Cairo and reconcile differences with Damascus. "The tenor of the messages was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests," an aide to Malley was quoted as saying. The aide said Obama plans to launch a U.S. diplomatic initiative toward Syria. Malley met both Egyptian...

Barack Obama's real thinking about Israel and the Middle East continues to be an enigma. The words he chose in an address to AIPAC create a different impression than the composition of his foreign policy advisory team. Several advisors have evidenced a history of suspicion and worse toward Israel. One of his advisors in particular, Robert Malley, clearly warrants attention, as does the reasoning that led him to being chosen by Barack Obama. A little family history may be in order to understand the genesis of Robert Malley's views. Normally, one should be reluctant in exploring a person's family background...

Wednesday morning, August 27, between 11 am and 1:30 pm EST or 9 am and 11:30 am mountain time, I'll be chairing a New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force event in Denver at the Colorado History Museum. The keynotes are Senator JOHN KERRY (D-MA), Obama National Security Adviser GREG CRAIG, Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School Dean ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, former Congressman and Obama Adviser MEL LEVINE, former German Foreign Minister JOSCHKA FISCHER, and Aspen Institute President (and former CNN Chairman and CEO and TIME Managing Editor) Walter Isaacson. Our panel will be former Israeli negotiator and New America Foundation Senior Fellow...

If you haven’t read Barack Obama’s mealy mouthed, pusillanimous statement on the crisis in Lebanon, I would suggest you read it with the fact uppermost in your mind that this is the man who may very well have the responsibility of preventing Iran from achieving its hegemonic aims in the Middle East. Hezbollah’s power grab in Beirut has once more plunged that city into violence and chaos. This effort to undermine Lebanon’s elected government needs to stop, and all those who have influence with Hezbollah must press them to stand down immediately. It’s time to engage in diplomatic efforts to...

Rob Malley, a Middle East policy adviser to likely Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, resigned after news surfaced that he had been meeting with Hamas -- something Obama pledged he himself would never do. Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said Saturday Malley called the Obama campaign on Friday to sever ties with the candidate after learning the Times of London was publishing a story about his contacts with the terrorist group. He told NBC News that his job "is to meet with all sorts of savory and unsavory people and report on what they say. I've never denied whom...

May 10, 2008 -- Barack Obama has dumped one of his advisers for meeting with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, according to published reports. Robert Malley, who acted as an informal adviser to Obama on Mideast policy, told the Times of London that he was in regular contact with the militant group as part of his work for the International Crisis Group think tank.

A list of the national security and foreign policy advisers to the leading presidential candidates from both parties. DEMOCRATS Barack Obama Robert Malley, President Clinton’s Middle East envoy and now International Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa program director, national security adviser

One of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy advisers disclosed yesterday that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas – prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him. Robert Malley told The Times that he had been in regular contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza and is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution think-tank and had no connection with his position on Mr Obama’s Middle East advisory council. “I’ve never hidden the fact that in my job with...

Barack Obama’s campaign has severed ties with a Middle East policy adviser who acknowledged having held talks with Hamas, according to The Times newspaper in London. Adviser Robert Malley said he had been in contact with the Palestinian group, but only through his work for a “conflict resolution think tank,” and not on behalf of the Obama campaign, the newspaper reported.

Barack Obama sacks adviser over talks with Hamas Barack Obama had criticised former President Jimmy Carter for holding direct talks with Hamas Tom Baldwin in Washington One of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy advisers disclosed today that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas - prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him. Robert Malley told The Times he had regularly been in contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza but is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution...

The Washington Post reports on the efforts of Barack Obama and his campaign to "rebuff[] challenges on his Israel stance." Part of that "challenge" relates, of course, to his foreign policy advisers some of whom, the Post accurately observes, are regarded by some Jews as anti-Israel. The Post reports: Obama took on those issues in Cleveland when he told Jewish leaders that Brzezinski, a national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, is not a key adviser but merely someone he had lunch with and exchanged e-mails with "maybe three times." Malley, a State Department official in the Clinton White House...

...The truth test, or the best evidence as to Malley’s skewed views, (better uninformed views) is the line "to imagine that the 100-year conflict between Jews and Palestinians living in this region, with roots going back thousands of years more and tens of thousands of victims along the way, could be resolved in a fortnight without any of the core issues..".