Prior to the presidential election in 2008 the editors of the Washington Post objected to charges that there was something wrong with candidate Obama’s relationship with Rashid Khalidi.
It’s fair to question why Mr. Obama felt as comfortable as he apparently did during his Chicago days in the company of men whose views diverge sharply from what the presidential candidate espouses. Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position. To suggest, as Mr. McCain has, that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable — especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults. To further argue that the Times, which obtained the tape from a source in exchange for a promise not to publicly release it, is trying to hide something is simply ludicrous, as Mr. McCain surely knows.
The Post allowed one of the subjects of the editorial a last word:
Which reminds us: We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that “I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over.” That’s good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign’s increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.
I wrote about the Post’s editorial here.
Now both Professor Khalidi and President Obama are back in the news. (A longer version appears here.)
A group calling itself U.S. Boat to Gaza is seeking $370,000 in the next month to send an aid ship to the Gaza Strip that would be named after President Obama’s best-selling book “The Audacity of Hope.”
Rashid Khalidi, a friend of Obama who is active in Palestinian causes, has signed the appeal, part of a broader effort to thwart the Israeli blockade of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave.
Khalid doesn’t think that naming the boat after the President should be a problem:
The White House declined to comment. Khalidi said he was not aware the boat would be named after Obama’s book when he agreed to add his name to the list of sponsors.
“But if the name is a problem for the administration, it can simply insist publicly that Israel lift the siege: end of problem, end of embarrassment,” he wrote in an e-mail.
There’s a certain clarity in Khalidi’s position: he intends to help Hamas. The consequence of this writes Barry Rubin:
Helping Hamas is helping to plunge the Middle East, and perhaps the world, into a nightmare of bloodshed and horror.
So Khalidi isn’t now (and probably never was) a simple academic, but an activist with a radical anti-Israel agenda.
Robert Mackey of the New York Times, of course, perpetuates a number of falsehoods. He quotes from a woman who was on board the Mavi Marmara uncritically. (via memeorandum)
On Friday, Ms. Lee argued in the Huffington Post that the nine activists who were killed on board one of the ships as they resisted Israeli commandos were not, as Israel has claimed, “terrorists.” Ms. Lee used some of the video she shot on board the flotilla’s main ship, the Mavi Marmara, to produce a video report (embedded above) on the aid organization that helped sponsor it, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, often called the I.H.H.
Except this ignores the video of the soldiers being beaten by the “activists.” (h/t Israel Matzav)
And it ignores that Germany and even Turkey tied IHH to terrorist groups. And Barry Rubin even provided a full accounting here.
Finally it’s clear that the IHH were not on a humanitarian mission, much like Prof. Khalidi, their goal was to help Hamas. (h/t Rubin Reports)
So here a few questions.
1) Now that the extent of Prof. Khalidi’s extremism is known – he supports Hamas – maybe those talks with candidate Obama deserve the scrutiny the Washington Post thinks we didn’t need. Maybe Obama was demonstrating more than simple “intellectual curiosity.”
2) A little while back while arguing against a recent Supreme Court ruling the editors of the Washington Post acknowledged that providing material support to terrorists should be illegal. Will they now criticize that the fellow they defended two years ago is boasting about providing such support to Hamas?
3) The other day, Thomas Friedman wrote:
A journalist should lose his or her job for misreporting, for misquoting, for fabricating, for plagiarizing, for systemic bias — but not for a message like this one.
Given that Robert Mackey ignored every bit of evidence that the IHH is a terror organization and effectively shilled for one of its defenders, would Friedman agree that Mackey should be fired? (This isn’t the first time that Mackey’s done this.)
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
