A curious kind of friendship: Barack Obama's dubious record on Israel

National Review, May 19, 2008 by Mark Hemingway

ON April 21, Barack Obama found himself at a diner in Scranton, Pa. The Illinois senator hadn't been available to the press in ten days, so a reporter approached him.

Perhaps Obama was in a bad mood because he foresaw a drubbing--the next day, Pennsylvanian primary voters went for Hillary. Or maybe he just didn't like the reporter's question: "Senator, did you hear about Jimmy Carter's trip? He said he could get Hamas to negotiate."

Looking down at his breakfast, the senator snapped back, "Why can't I just eat my waffle?"

The week before, two important things had happened. One, Obama had declined to condemn Carter's meeting with Hamas, though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had opposed the trip. Two, the Palestinian terrorist group took the unusual step of endorsing him. When asked about the endorsement, Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, was flattered that Hamas compared his candidate to JFK: "We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it's flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps." Republican nominee John McCain quickly took note. "We need change in America, but not the kind of change that wins kind words from Hamas," he said.

The day following Wafflegate, Obama told the press it was a "bad idea" for Carter to meet with Hamas, as it gave the group "a legitimacy that was unnecessary."

It's understandable that Obama would rather do just about anything than talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Questions about Obama's support for Israel have percolated in Jewish publications and elsewhere for more than a year, and now they threaten to spill over into the mainstream media. In March, speaking to reporters in Texas, Obama defended his record: "Nobody has ever been able to point to statements that I made or positions that I've taken that are contrary to the long-term security interests in Israel and in any way diminish the special relationship we have with that country." Trouble is, this claim is simply not true.

Obama has been battling the perception that he is insufficiently supportive of Israel since last year, when he told the Des Moines Register, "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people." An Iowa Democrat and member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), David Adelman, called Obama's comments "deeply troubling." Obama claimed the remark was taken out of context, but the Politico noted that talk of Obama's comment was one of many reasons that a "real, if kind of inchoate, skepticism" dominated discussions of Obama at AIPAC's annual policy conference in March of last year.

Whatever the context of that specific remark, many subsequent revelations have given ample reason for skepticism: Obama has repeatedly claimed to support Israel, but his record doesn't jibe with his rhetoric. Last year, he announced he would vote against an amendment in the Senate declaring Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps--which has long supported Hezbollah terrorists and otherwise abetted the murder of Israelis--a terrorist group. The resolution passed 76-22, with the support of Hillary Clinton, Illinois senator Dick Durbin, and a host of other reliable liberals. Obama missed the vote while campaigning in New Hampshire, but he attacked Clinton on the issue, saying the non-binding amendment might exacerbate tensions with Iran.

What's more, his life is marked by ties to anti-Israeli causes.

A recent report in the Los Angeles Times detailed Obama's close relationship with Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. In the late 1970s Khalidi worked with WAFA, the official news agency of the Palestinian Liberation Organization; during this period, the PLO and its factions engaged in acts of terrorism. In 2005 Khalidi gained national attention when he argued that, under international law, Palestinians have a right to violently resist Israeli occupation.

While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi co-founded the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), an organization with a history of churning out anti-Israeli propaganda. AAAN's current projects include "The Arab American Oral History Project." The group's website asks, "Do you have photos, letters or other memories you could share about Al-Nakba-1948?" "Al Nakba" translates as "the catastrophe," and 1948 is the year in which Israel became a state.

Khalidi held a fundraiser for Obama's failed congressional bid in 2000, while Obama was a state senator representing the liberal Hyde Park area of Chicago. In 2003, Obama attended a tribute dinner for Khalidi where, according to the Los Angeles Times, a speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden.

The largess flowed in both directions. From 1999 to 2002 Obama served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund, a grant-making foundation with assets of $68 million whose nominal goal is "to increase opportunities for less advantaged people and communities in the [Chicago] metropolitan area." According to tax forms and annual reports, in 2001 and 2002 the Woods Fund gave AAAN a total of $75,000 in grants. Bill Ayers, a former (and unrepentant) member of the left-wing terrorist group the Weather Underground, sat on the board with Obama.