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L.A. Times refuses to release Obama video
Republicans slam newspaper, urge evidence be made public
Posted: October 28, 2008
7:15 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
JERUSALEM – The Los Angeles Times says it will not release a video it obtained of Sen. Barack Obama attending an anti-Israel event in which he delivered a glowing testimonial for an anti-Israel professor who excuses terrorism.
Rashid Khalidi
"When we reported on the tape six months ago, that was our full report," Times spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan told the Politico website, refusing to elaborate on the reason behind keeping the tape under wrap.
Sen. John McCain's campaign, in response, accused the Times of intentionally suppressing the video.
"A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi," said McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb.
"The election is one week away, and it's unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job – make information public," he said.
Goldfarb was referring to videotape the Times said it obtained of Obama delivering in-person testimonial in 2003 at the farewell party of anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi, who at the time was departing the University of Chicago for a new teaching position at Columbia University.
In a piece last April, L.A. Times writer Peter Wallsten reported that while praising Khalidi, Obama reminisced about conversations over meals prepared by the professor's wife Mona Khalidi.
Unreported by Wallsten was that the event was sponsored by Mona Khalidi's anti-Israel Arab American Action Network, which, as WND first reported, received large sums of money from the Woods Fund, an ultra-liberal Chicago nonprofit for which Obama served as a board member alongside Weather Underground radical William Ayers.
According to a Times account of the farewell dinner, Obama said his talks with the Khalidis served as "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."
Khalidi's farewell dinner was replete with anti-Israel speakers.
One, a young Palestinian American, recited a poem in Obama's presence that accused the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticized U.S. support of Israel, the Times reported.
Another speaker, who reportedly talked while Obama was present, compared "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden.
In the kicker, Wallsten wrote, "The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times."
But that detail went largely unnoticed until this past weekend, when the Gateway Pundit blog made an issue of the tape.
Wallsten did not immediately return a WND e-mail and phone call seeking comment.
Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel. He has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.
During documented speeches and public events, Khalidi has called Israel an "apartheid system in creation" and a destructive "racist" state. He has multiple times expressed support for Palestinian terror, calling suicide bombings a response to "Israeli aggression."
He dedicated his 1986 book, "Under Siege," to "those who gave their lives ... in defense of the cause of Palestine and independence of Lebanon." Critics assailed the book as excusing Palestinian terrorism.
Obama, Khalidi closely tied
According to a professor at the University of Chicago who said he has known Obama for 12 years, the Democratic presidential hopeful first befriended Khalidi when the two worked together at the university. The professor spoke on condition of anonymity. Khalidi lectured at the University of Chicago until 2003, while Obama taught law there from 1993 until his election to the Senate in 2004.
Khalidi in 2000 held what was described as a successful fundraiser for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, a fact not denied by Khalidi.
Speaking in a joint interview with WND and the John Batchelor radio show, Khalidi was asked about his 2000 fundraiser for Obama.
"I was just doing my duties as a Chicago resident to help my local politician," Khalidi stated.
Khalidi said he supports Obama for president "because he is the only candidate who has expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause."
Khalidi also lauded Obama for "saying he supports talks with Iran. If the U.S. can talk with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, there is no reason it can't talk with the Iranians."
In 2001, the Woods Fund, which describes itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to Mona Khalidi's Arab American Action Network, or AAAN. The fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.
Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-Israel line. The group co-sponsored a Palestinian art exhibit, titled, "The Subject of Palestine," that featured works related to what some Palestinians call the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948.
Obama hijacked phrase from Khalidi?
In May, WND noted Obama termed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a "constant sore" in an interview just five days after Khalidi wrote an opinion piece in the Nation magazine in which he called the "Palestinian question" a "running sore."
In his piece, "Palestine: Liberation Deferred," Khalidi suggests Israel carried out "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians; writes Western powers backed Israel's establishment due to guilt of the Holocaust; laments the Palestinian Authority's stated acceptance of a Palestinian state "only" in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern sections of Jerusalem; and argues Israel should be dissolved and instead a bi-national, cantonal system should be set up in which Jews and Arabs reside.
To interview Aaron Klein, contact M. Sliwa Public Relations by e-mail, or call 973-272-2861 or 212-202-4453.
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