McCain Racism, Hypocrisy on Khalidi Issue (Juan Cole, Informed Comment)

[Voice for Peace]

http://www.juancole.com/ (scroll down)

McCain Racism, Hypocrisy on Khalidi Issue

The increasingly sleazy John McCain, who once promised to run a clean campaign, has now attacked my friend Rashid Khalidi and attempted to use him against Barack Obama. Khalidi is an American scholar of Palestinian heritage, born in New York and educated at Yale and Oxford, who now teaches at Columbia University. He directed the Middle East Center at the University of Chicago for some time, and he and his family came to know the Obamas at that time. Knowing someone and agreeing with him on everything are not the same thing. -snip-

McCain's and Palin's attacks on Khalidi are frankly racist. He is a distinguished scholar, and the only objectionable thing about him from a rightwing point of view is that he is a Palestinian. There are about 9 million Palestinians in the world (a million or so are Israeli citizens; 3.7 million are stateless and without rights under Israeli control in the West Bank and Gaza; and 4 million are refugees or exiled in the diaspora; there are about 200,000 Palestinian-Americans, and several million Arab-Americans, many living in swing vote states). Khalidi was not, as the schlock rightwing press charges, a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. He was an adviser at the Madrid peace talks, but would that not have been, like, a good thing?

Much of the assault on Khalidi comes from the American loony Zionist Right, which quietly supports illegal Zionist colonies in the West Bank and the ethnic cleansing of the remaining Palestinians. They have been tireless advocates of miring the US in wars in Iraq and Iran to ensure that their dreams of ethnic cleansing are unopposed. They are a tiny, cranky but well-funded group that has actively harassed anyone who disagrees with them (at one point, cued by Daniel Pipes, they cyberstalked Khalidi and clogged his email mailbox with spam for weeks at a time). All opinion polling shows that most American Jews are politically liberal, overwhelmingly vote Democrat, and support trading land for peace to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Khalidi is their political ally in any serious peace process, which many have recognized.

[niyad]

1. and then, of course, there is mccain giving him half a million dollars or more

In regards to Khalidi, however, the guilt-by-association game burns
John McCain as well.

During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International
Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the
Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth
half a million dollars.

. ...

A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to
Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the
West Bank. (See grant number 5180, "West Bank: CPRS" on page 14 of
this PDF.)

The relationship extends back as far as 1993, when John McCain joined
IRI as chairman in January. Foreign Affairs noted in September of that
year that IRI had helped fund several extensive studies in Palestine
run by Khalidi's group, including over 30 public opinion polls and a
study of "sociopolitical attitudes."

Of course, there's seemingly nothing objectionable with McCain's
organization helping a Palestinian group conduct research in the West
Bank or Gaza. But it does suggest that McCain could have some of his
own explaining to do as he tries to make hay out of Khalidi's ties to
Obama.

http://www.thesabre.com/message_board/politics/2008/October/28/225555.php