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The Khalidi Gambit: McCain Attacks Obama for Connection to Palestinian Activist Whose Work McCain Helped Fund
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Oct 29, 2008 01:24pm |
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| Category | News |
| News Date | Wednesday, October 29, 2008 07:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | October 29, 2008 10:35 AM
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., did a live interview with Radio Mambi in Miami this morning in which he went after Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., for his connections to a “PLO spokesman.”
McCain was referring to Rashid Khalidi, who five years ago Obama toasted at a going-away party before Khalidi headed off to New York City to become a professor at Columbia University.
In April, the Los Angeles Times’s Peter Wallsten wrote about the toast, saying 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.’”
Wrote Wallsten: “In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.
“He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a ‘war crime’ and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.” |
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