Obama Served on Board Calling Israel "Catastrophe"

by art3, Wed Feb 27, 2008 at 10:30:05 PM EST

How long can Obama remain a viable general election candidate with documented news stories like this. ive read accounts about his association with Ayers and Khalidi in many bits in papers etc.. What will the media and McCain do with a tale of obama serving as a paid board director of a group that calls Israel's existance a "catastrophe." What will happen to the dem's hances when the name Ayers is looked into-i saw a bit even today on him on Cnn? Ayers plotted to bomb govt buildings. At minimum such stories certainly draw question to Obama's judgement. Candidates must be vetted before winning the nom. Tonight i have great concerns if Obama is the nominee.

<Obama Served On Board That Funded Pro-Palestinian Group </p>

By:Aaron Klein Wednesday, February 27, 2008

JERUSALEM - Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director on the board of a nonprofit organization that granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe." ....
.....

The co-founder of the Arab group, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, is a harsh critic of Israel who reportedly worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization when it was labeled a terror group by the State Department.

Khalidi held a fundraiser in 2000 for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
,,,,,,

In addition to questions about his relationship with Khalidi, Obama may face increased scrutiny over his ties to William C. Ayers, a member of the Weather Underground terrorist group that sought to overthrow the U.S. government and took responsibility for a string of bombings in the early 1970's.

Obama served on the Woods Fund board alongside Ayers (who is still on the board). Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has written about his involvement with the Weather Underground's bombing of U.S. governmental buildings including the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.

Although charges against him were dropped in 1974 due to prosecutorial misconduct, Ayers told a newspaper reporter several years ago that he had no second thoughts about his violent past. "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough," Ayers told The New York Times in an interview published, ironically, on Sept. 11, 2001.

In his memoir, Fugitive Days, Ayers wrote: "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon" - though he continued with a disclaimer that he didn't personally set the bombs but his group placed the explosives and planned the attack.

Besides serving with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's senatorial campaign fund and has served on panels with Obama at several public speaking engagements.>
http://www.jewishpress.com/print.do/3028 3/Obama_Served_On_Board_That_Funded_Pro% 2DPalestinian_Group.html

Tags: 2008, Hillary, obama (all tags)

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Re: Swift-boating fellow Dems

More guilt by association garbage.

Over on TPM they are organizing thousands of letters to the TN Republican Party for posting something along these lines. Over here you are gleefully swift-boating a fellow Dem. Doesn't it bother you to be such flaming hypocrites after spending years complaining about Repub smears of Clinton, Gore, and Kerry?

If you want change, stop acting like Republicans.

by upper left 2008-02-27 10:49PM | 0 recs

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Re: Swift-boating fellow Dems

this is what you get when the media decides to abandon its role.

have you seen the nafta video from ctv , if that gets to ohio voters , he should wave it good bye.

maybe obama should stop running a campaign based on deceit.

at some point you would get caught.

all this politics of hope , new politics is just garbage.

by lori 2008-02-27 10:56PM | 0 recs

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Re: Swift-boating fellow Dems

Could you please source this? I am not aware of the video but would like to take a look see. If it is as damaging as you imply it should be disseminated.

by Fleaflicker 2008-02-28 04:22AM | 0 recs

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Re: Swift-boating fellow Dems

It is quite evident that, because Hillary is AIPAC's pocket and supports all of their positions, right wing extremists would prefer to see her as president, not Obama.

Consequently, I would personally take as a grain of salt these videos which are correctly seen as swiftboating attempts.

by shergald 2008-02-28 05:42AM | 0 recs

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Never mind

I found it!

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/st ory/CTVNews/20080227/dems_nafta_080227/2 0080227/

The videos are on the right side of the article.

by Fleaflicker 2008-02-28 04:30AM | 0 recs

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Re: Here is your "catastrophe"

There is no guilt by association. The diarist is just ignorant of Palestinian history, but there is no doubt that he/she would support the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948. That incident is celebrated or mourned by the Palestinians as the "Nakba," translated as the "catastrophe." Here are some pictures of that ethnic cleansing. If it looks anything like what the Serbs did to the Korsoans in the late 1990s, which we all watched on TV, it is only because that incident was also an ethnic cleansing.

by shergald 2008-02-28 05:11AM | 0 recs

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These two statements are not the same

Your words: <<[O]bama serving as a paid board director of a group that calls Israel's existance a "catastrophe.">>

The story (if true): <<Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director on the board of a nonprofit organization that granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe.">>

by bigdcdem 2008-02-27 11:22PM | 0 recs

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Re: These two statements are not the same

This diary is silly at best. First, it claims that being proPalestinian is somehow antiIsrael or worse, antiSemitic because it fails to accord with the right wing Zionist perspective. That perspective is that anyone who advocates for Palestinian rights to freedom and self-determination is sinful.

But what is perhaps this diarist's most naive mistake is the fact that the term "catastrophe" refers to the Palestinian Nakba, its translation for the past 60 years: the ethnic cleansing of roughly 800,000 Palestinians from over 470 Palestinian villages and towns in 1948, by the Haganah and IDF under Ben Gurion's orders. Those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians ended up in UN refugee camps all of the Middle East. Six months after its occurence, the UN passed Resolution 194: the right of these refugees to return to homes and lands in what had become Israel.

by shergald 2008-02-28 04:44AM | 0 recs

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Additionally,

you stated that he was a "paid director" of this board, which is true in 1999 and 2000, but may not have been true in 2001 and 2002 when the Woods Foundation approved money for this Arab Group. Obama's tax records don't show payment in those years, so it must be determined whether the Woods Foundation's website is accurate because, if it is, why did he not receive payment as a "paid director."

by bigdcdem 2008-02-27 11:30PM | 0 recs

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Re: Obama Served on Board Calling Israel

The Jewish Anti-Defamation League has repeatedly defended Obama from these ridiculous lines of attack. Not that it matters to you guys doing the rightwing's work for them.

by Skaje 2008-02-28 12:26AM | 0 recs

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Re: Obama the endorsements keep coming in

It is not just in the Middle East or in Arab countries. It is all over Europe, and it is called Obamamania or what seems to be an enthusiasm for Obama's candidacy and his message of change. So it is not just Arab countries; his support is widespread.

This enthusiasm could merely be a reaction toward the Bush administration's Neocon ventures in the Middle East and its carte blanc support of Israel, its 40 year military occupation, its propaganda machine, and its continuing ethnic cleansing and killing of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Well, this was at least the case until recently when Bush said, "the military occupation must stop" and there must be "contiguous Palestinian state." Since Olmert has already dismissed these ideas and has invoked further red herrings to avoid the Annapolis peace initiative (as it has all peace efforts since 1948), Bush is now inconsequential and efforts to annex the West Bank will continue.

Needless to say, the Israeli government is no longer interested in Bush and his antiIsraeli pronouncements of late.

by shergald 2008-02-28 04:32AM | 0 recs

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Re: Obama the endorsements keep coming in

Ha....

by shergald 2008-02-28 05:04AM | 0 recs

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Re: Support from Jewish/Israeli columnist

Here are words of support: from an Israeli columnist, describing the Ohio debate:

If anyone had any doubt that Hillary's campaign is trying to score points against Obama in the Jewish community - today she gave us the proof, publicly. "You asked specifically if he [Obama] would reject it [the endorsement] and there's a difference between denouncing and rejecting", she argued. Meaning - Obama is merely denouncing Farrakhan instead of rejecting the endorsement.

What was she trying to say - that Obama is somewhat anti-Semitic? Let's assume she was just thinking that Obama was playing politics and is trying not to offend Farrakhan's supporters while he denounces his views.

In any case, in this exchange Obama got the upper hand: "If the word 'reject' Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word 'denounce', then I'm happy to concede the point and I would reject and denounce [Farrakhan]" he said.

Obama spoke about this same issue a few days ago as he was meeting a group of Jewish activists in Cleveland. Some who attended the event and do not belong to his camp said he was very convincing. "At his best," one of them said. But in the debate he was even better and was able to score again on the same topic, elaborating on something of great importance to Jewish liberals.

Just recently we were all watching The Jewish Americans series on PBS, in which the story of Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement was front and center - and the part describing how the bond between black Americans and Jewish Americans was breaking was almost puzzling.

Obama, talking about Farrakhan - and about anti-Semitism among African-Americans, which he also denounced in his speech on Martin Luther King Day - touched a sensitive nerve when he was talking about one possibility that's inherent to his candidacy: he has the chance to restore the alliance between blacks and Jews.

This will not necessarily get Obama the votes of every Jewish liberal in this country. But it is also one promise that no American liberal Jew can simply ignore.

by CaptCT 2008-02-28 05:18AM | 0 recs

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Re: Support from Jewish/Israeli columnist

It is glorious that Obama could show a balanced perspective, because it is quite obvious that if Israelis and for that matter, diaspora Jews, through support, allow the right wing Likudniks, a minority in Israel, to take Israel into the abyss of Apartheid in its quest to annex Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into a Greater Israel, it will be catastrophic for Israel.

These blind Likudniks represent the very worst of ethnocentrism and religious bigotry, accord only themselves rights (narcissism), and are willing to kill anyone (Palestinians) who get in their way. And they use propaganda masterfully, like the "security" meme or the "terrorist" meme, in order to deflect attention from what is happening on the West Bank and in Gaza everyday: killings of innocent civilians including children, Palestinian land confiscations, house demolitions, destruction of farmlands and orchards, or, in other words, the further ETHNIC CLEANSING that has continued after 1967.

Every year, by being squeezed of the ability to live and subsist, a hundred thousand Palestinians leave the West Bank and Gaza for other countries.

by shergald 2008-02-28 05:37AM | 0 recs

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Re: Support from Jewish/Israeli columnist

Stop trying to speak for all Jews, since you obviously support only the views of a minority, those who support AIPAC, ZOA, AJC, and the ADL, who are Likudnik pure and simple. These organizations and others support the complete dissolution of Palestinian rights to a homeland of their own on what was previously their ancestral lands, original Palestine.

Take a look at ZOA's site and then contrast it with the site of Jewish Voice for Peace. You will find out quickly what you yourself are.

Jimmy Carter's book has been praised by many American Jewish scholars for its relevancy and necessity. You can imagine that if you are not on the side of Nobel Peace prize winners like him and Bishop Tutu, you are on the wrong side.

My signature contains a video which I recommend that you see to understand the nature of what you present here as knowledge. You are apparently a right wing Zionist who approves of the daily killings of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, of people who continue to fight a military occupation, while their lands and lives are being stolen. As the rabbis from Rabbis for Human Rights (Israel) will tell you, there is nothing Judaic in your thinking. It would seem to me that it is you who hate Jews, those who support civil and human rights, equality, and justice.

by shergald 2008-02-28 07:42AM | 0 recs

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Re: "Catastrophe"

Is Ayers on the CampusWatch list, the right wing Zionist McCarthyite effort run by Daniel Pipes to ban professors from teaching in US colleges and universities if they teach anything that tells the truth about Israel?

If so, not knowing any more about him, he should probably be commended for his efforts to tell the truth about Israel and their disenfranchisement of the Palestinians and their decades long effort to wrest back some of their ancestral homelands, and their resistance of Israel's 40 year military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza earlier.

by shergald 2008-02-28 05:17AM | 0 recs

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Re: All Jews are not RIGHT WING ZIONISTS.

Fearing Obama because he may actually help to attain a real two state solution (as opposed to assisting the right wing in its West Bank annexation project) and finally bring peace to the Middle East is ridiculous. And to believe that most Jews likewise share your belief is even more so.

Let me ask. Do you think that Bush betrayed Israel because he announced as part of Annapolis that "THE MILITARY OCCUPATION MUST STOP" and there must be "A CONTIGUOUS PALESTINIAN STATE," presumably something different from the bantustans offered by the Kadima and Labor parties (Likud wants the whole banana, of course)?

by shergald 2008-02-28 07:51AM | 0 recs

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Re: All Jews are not RIGHT WING ZIONISTS.

Prior statements are of kind we always get from GIYUS Megaphonees. You know the "talking points,"

Why do hate Israel?
Why do you hate Jews?
You're an antiSemite (criticism of Israel)!
That's antiSemitic!

We've heard it all before, and it is old, real old.

You should instead ask yourself why do I condone the killing of Palestinians, their military occupation, the colonialization of the lands, etc?

by shergald 2008-02-28 10:02AM | 0 recs