Who is he?
- Rashid Khalidi, a Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University.
- Khalidi’s statements about the relationship between Israel and Palestine has caused considerable controversy, and possibly cost the Professor a position at Princeton University.
Why is everyone talking about him?
- In 2003, then-State Senator Barack Obama gave a speech at a farewell party for Khalidi and his wife, claiming visits with his fellow University of Chicago professor were “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 was referred to as a PLO spokesperson in several articles in WorldNetDaily earlier this year, though he had never held any such position and has never approved of terrorist bombings.
- Based these articles, Republican groups have claimed that Obama has shown sympathy for anti-Israel activists.
- In May, Obama responded to a question about Khalidi by noting “He is not one of my advisors; he’s not one of my foreign policy people. His kids went to the Lab school where my kids go as well. He is a respected scholar, although he vehemently disagrees with a lot of Israel’s policy… To pluck out one person who I know and who I’ve had a conversation with who has very different views than 900 of my friends and then to suggest that somehow that shows that maybe I’m not sufficiently pro-Israel, I think, is a very problematic stand to take.”
- Republican groups have accused the LA Times of hiding a videotape of Obama at the fete for Khalidi, which was also attended by Bill Ayers and his wife. The McCain campaign today demanded the tape’s release.
- Discussing Khalidi, a McCain advisor said “Obama needs to understand he will own his friendships with individuals that are in some cases anti-American, anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist. The American people can decide whether Obama’s buddies reflect their values.”
- Ironically, the McCain-chaired International Republican Institute gave several grants to Khalidi’s Center For Palestine Research And Studies in the nineties—over $500,000 worth—to fund polls and studies in Palestine.
Rashid Khalidi Fun Facts!
- Khalidi once accused conservative activist group CampusWatch of actions “intended to silence such perfectly legitimate criticism, by tarring it with the brush of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, truly loathsome charges. They reveal the lengths that these people apparently feel impelled to go to in order to silence a true debate on campus.”
- While Khalid was never officially a PLO spokesperson, he advised at the Madrid Conference of 1991, which attempted to broker a peace treaty between Palistine and Israel.
- Khalidi has said that Americans “owe reparations to the Iraqi people.”
- Commentator and former University of Chicago professor Stanley Kurtz claims that Ayers and Khalidi were “best friends.”
[Obama Photo: AFP]
