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The Khalidi Chronicles—the McCain connection (UPDATE #2)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 29, 2008

Republican Jews, and other McCain supporters, have been paying a lot of attention to Barack Obama’s relationship with Rashid Khalidi. But John McCain has his own affiliation with the Palestinian-American academic and activist.

McCain has been chairman of the International Republican Institute since 1993, an organization which “advances freedom and democracy worldwide by developing political parties, civic institutions, open elections, good governance and the rule of law.” And in 1993, the Center for Palestine Research and Studies – an organization which Khalidi co-founded and was a member of its board of directors from 1993-1998, started conducting opinion polls in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with the help of funding from IRI.

In fact, in 1998, the IRI’s second largest grant of $448,873 went to CPRS for survey work in the West Bank, according to IRI’s Form 990. That seems remarkably similar to a Republican Jewish Coalition criticism of Obama: The Democratic presidential nominee served on the board of the Woods Fund, which provided a $40,000 grant in 2001 and a $35,000 grant the following year to the Arab American Action Network, a group co-founded by Khalidi. The organization – whose president at the time was Khalidi’s wife, Mona – “works to improve the social, economic and political conditions of Arab immigrants and Arab Americans” in the Chicago area.

What’s the difference? RJC executive director Matt Brooks argued there were a couple of them. Brooks said there was nothing wrong with serving on a board that gave a Khalidi-affiliated organization funds – the issue, he said, was the type of organization being funded. He pointed to a report that the AAAN sponsored an art exhibit at DePaul University entitled “The Subject of Palestine,” which featured works related to what Palestinians call the “Nakba” or “catastrophe” of Israel’s founding in 1948. That exhibit took place in 2005, three years after Obama left the Woods Fund board.

Brooks further emphasized that he was more concerned about the personal relationship between Obama and Khalidi, and whether Obama agreed with Khalidi’s opinions about the Middle East.

Khalidi is considered a moderate by Palestinians and many in the pro-Israel community. The L.A. Times article notes that he has called killing civilians a “war crime,” although he’s also long been critical of Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Obama and Khalidi became friendly as professors at the University of Chicago in the 1990s and neighbors in Hyde Park, and the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama’s unsuccessful congressional bid. Obama also attended a farewell dinner for Khalidi in Chicago in 2003, prior to his move to Columbia University, in which he said that his conversations with the Khalidis were “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases,” according to an April Los Angeles Times article, which obtained a video of the dinner. The paper reported back in April that the dinner also included the recital of a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and criticizing U.S. suppport of the Jewish state.

This week, there has been renewed interest in that videotape from certain corners of the media and blogosphere – culminating in Tuesday’s demand by McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb that the L.A. Times publicly release the tape. He also charged the publication with “intentionally suppressing information.” The Times responded that it obtained the tape from a source on the condition that it not be publicly shown, and the paper “keeps its promises to sources.”

UPDATE: On Wednesday, Sarah Palin jumped into the fray over Khalidi. “It seems that there is yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years,” said the Republican vice presidential nominee on Wednesday at an event in Bowling Green, Ohio.

“This is important because his associate, Rashid Khalidi … in addition to being a political ally of Barack Obama, he’s a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization,” she said.

McCain also brought up the connection in a Miami radio interview.

Khalidi has denied being a spokesperson for the PLO. He did work for the Palestinian press agency Wafa in the 1980s and served as an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at the Madrid peace talks in 1991.

Obama has specifically addressed his relationship with Khalidi during the campaign. At an appearance at a Florida synagogue back in May, he said in response to a question: “I do know him and I have had conversations. 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.”

He continued, “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…So we gotta be careful about guilt by association.”

UPDATE #2: Jake Tapper of ABC News has a statement from IRI confirming that it did provide money to CPRS, while saying it does not recall “any contact with Khalidi.

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Checking the footnotes

By Eric Fingerhut · October 28, 2008

It’s the last week of a very long campaign, so nothing can go unanswered – even an ad’s footnotes.

The Republican Jewish Coalition on Tuesday released the last in its controversial series of advertisements attacking Barack Obama for his foreign policy views and advisers, which will appearing in Jewish newspapers later this week. The ad was essentially a round-up of the “greatest hits” from the previous eight ads, asking “Concerned about Barack Obama? You should be,” calling the Democratic presidential nominee “dangerously naive,” and charging that “history has shown that a naive and weak foreign policy has resulted in tragic outcomes for the Jewish people.”

But what caught the National Jewish Democratic Council’s eye was the first footnote in the ad (which has since been corrected). In backing up the assertion that Obama opposed legislation labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organziation, it cited an article from the Annenberg Institute’s FactCheck.org entitled “McCain misrepresents Obama’s stand on naming Revolutionary Guard as terrorists.”

The RJC claim in the ad is accurate – Obama did vote against the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which would have designated the Iran Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group. The Factcheck.org article, though, points out that Obama has said he does favor designating the IRGC as a terrorist group – and supported another piece of legislation that would have done so – but felt the Kyl-Lieberman bill was “saber-rattling” against Iran.

“Oops," said Brooks when the mistake was pointed out to him Tuesday afternoon. He said it was a simple “clerical error” that “doesn’t change the underlying facts” on the issue. The RJC does “comprehensive research” on both sides of the positions it takes, he said, and the citations got switched. Less than two hours after he spoke to JTA about it, the ad posted on the RJC’s Website had already been corrected.

Meanwhile, the NJDC, which called the RJC “remarkably sloppy,” has directly responded to the RJC with its final ad of the election cycle. Entitled, “The Facts about the Republican Jewish Coalition’s dishonest campaign,” the advertisement responds directly with “the truth” to RJC ads which it says falsely attacked Obama’s positions on the IRGC and Jerusalem – and concludes with the tagline “The RJC Should Be Ashamed.”

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John and Sarah Shmoe?

By Eric Fingerhut · October 27, 2008

“‘O’ & Joe or The Shmoes” – that’s the slogan on a new campaign button from the National Jewish Democratic Council.

For an $18 donation, you’ll get a button with caricatures of the four candidates and the slogan – with John McCain and Sarah Palin pegged as “The Shmoes.”

NJDC executive director Ira Forman said he was just injecting some fun into the campaign, but the Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks isn’t amused by the group’s use of the Yiddish term, which means a stupid or obnoxious person.

“It’s disrespectful, in bad taste and not appropriate,” said Brooks.

The RJC has been using some rough language of its own in the last few weeks – although none of it has been in Yiddish. The group has called Barack Obama “reckless,” “dangerous,” “weak,” and “naive,” in newspaper advertisements.

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Holocaust hype enters the elections

By Lisa Hostein · October 27, 2008

Just days after an email to 75,000 Pennsylvania Jews suggested that a vote for Barack Obama could cause another Holocaust, at least two of the signatories to the letter are distancing themselves from it.
This after the political operative who apparently wrote the letter was fired.

The letter, paid for by the state Republican Party, caused a huge uproar, with e-mails flying back and forth.

Both I. Michael Coslov, the campaign chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, and Sandra Schultz Newman, a former state supreme court justice, are distancing themselves from the letter, saying they hadn’t actually read its contents before signing on.

Coslov said he doesn’t think Obama is “right for the Jewish people, but I don’t think he’s going to cause another Holocaust.”

Newman issued an apology to those who had e-mailed her objecting to the letter.

“I regret that I did not carefully review the final draft before it was released with my signature,” she wrote. “Some of the language was inappropriate and intemporate. I apologize to anyone who was offended by this misguided e-mail.”

But another Republican salvo continued the theme over the weekend. The Republican Jewish Coalition mobilized volunteers to distribute leaflets in heavily Jewish neighborhoods in suburban Philadelphia. The glossy leaflets also referenced the Holocaust indirectly.

Featuring a photo of Obama speaking in Germany, the sheet said: “Concerned about Obama? You should be. History has shown that a naive and weak foreign policy has resulted in tragic outcomes for the Jewish people.”

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Political tidbits: Gallup poll reactions, Palin wig big in Brooklyn

By Eric Fingerhut · October 24, 2008

• A McCain supporter changes his mind in the voting booth and casts his ballot for Obama after talking to a group of Jewish women who convince him how historic Obama’s election would be. He also loans them his Dale Earnhardt jacket so they can cover up their Obama shirts and vote, according to Politico.
• Looking at yesterday’s Gallup poll, Shmuel Rosner, in Commentary, analyzes why Obama has gained ground in the Jewish community. Meanwhile, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald claims that Obama’s Jewish problem was a “baseless myth.”
• Should the Great Schlep have gone to Hillels? Jacques Berlinerblau wonders after noting that the Gallup poll found older Jews support Obama in slightly bigger numbers than younger Jews.
• Did Republicans, as Colin Powell charged on “Meet the Press,” spread the “Obama is a Muslim” rumor? Steven Waldman looks into that question in the Wall Street Journal, and finds that while John McCain is innocent, others aren’t.
  
• Hilary Leila Krieger looks at Obama’s Jewish political connections in the Jerusalem Post.
• Dennis Ross talks to Haaretz about being a surrogate for Obama in Florida.
• Just like in their television ad, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s new newspaper ad uses Hillary Clinton to attack Barack Obama, comparing Clinton and John McCain’s positions to the Democratic nominee’s stances on three issues and finding Obama the odd man out.
• The NJDC’s Aaron Keyak notes on the Huffington Post that Sarah Palin was campaigning with the senator who blocked a bill tightening sanctions on Iran.
• Jerry Stiller, Rhea Pearlman, Carl Reiner, Danny DeVito: They’re all old sitcom stars, and they’ve all cut pro-Obama ads for the Jewish Alliance for Change.
  
• Surrogates for the candidates debate at Jewish forums in Philadelphia and Palm Beach County.
  
• A London writer spends some time with some New Jersey Obama supporters who are worried the news is too good for their candidate.
• The Sarah Palin wig is a big hit in Brooklyn among Orthodox women, according to the New York Daily News.

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RJC turns to TV (UPDATED)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 20, 2008

Voters in Ohio, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania will see this television advertisement frequently over the next two weeks. The Republican Jewish Coalition has spent more than $1 million to run it in those four swing states.

The ad uses the tag line that the RJC has used in many of its controversial print ads: “Concerned about Barack Obama’s naive foreign policy? You should be.” But the ad itself is relatively non-controversial and straightforward. It uses clips from the July 2007 debate in which Obama said “I would” meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea – and Hillary Clinton’s subsequent criticism of Obama for that statement.

UPDATE: National Jewish Democratic Council executive director Ira Forman responded that he thought the ad was “milquetoast,” and felt Colin Powell’s endorsement yesterday of Obama and his foreign policy judgment would garner more attention than the RJC ads – which he called “spitting into the wind.”

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Obama campaign says no to RJC debates

By Eric Fingerhut · October 16, 2008

Angry about the advertisements that the Republican Jewish Coalition has been running this fall, Barack Obama’s campaign has decided its representatives won’t debate officials of the RJC.

The Los Angeles Jewish Journal reports that a debate scheduled for Sunday in Van Nuys has been cancelled, and the RJC states that a Philadelphia synagogue was told that an Obama surrogate would not debate the city’s RJC director and that it needed to find an alternative.

The RJC is responding by pointing out that Obama has said he would “engage” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and yet will not “engage the RJC.” Here’s their release.

Washington, D.C. (October 15, 2008) – The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Executive Director Matt Brooks issued the following statement today:

“It has come to our attention that the Obama campaign has instituted a new policy of not debating representatives of the RJC at community candidates’ forums.  Forum organizers are being asked to provide surrogates not from the RJC.  Temple Sinai, in suburban Philadelphia, was told that Obama surrogate state Rep. Josh Shapiro would not participate with RJC Philadelphia Director Scott Feigelstein.  The synagogue was instructed to find someone else.  This is not the first time the Obama campaign has made such a demand of Jewish forum organizers.  We find it a curious paradox that Obama would engage Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad without preconditions, but the Obama campaign will not engage the RJC,” said Brooks. “Given how troubling Senator Obama’s record is on Israel, I guess he’s afraid to have a fair debate.”

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Political tidbits: Obama campaign won’t debate RJC, low turnout for the Schlep

By Eric Fingerhut · October 16, 2008

• The Obama campaign has decided its representatives won’t debate Republican Jewish Coalition officials, because they’re tired of the RJC’s negative ads, according to the L.A. Jewish Journal.
• CNN has the story of a “great schlepper” who ended up not only convincing his South Florida grandparents to support Barack Obama, but also spoke to more than 100 of their neighbors.
• Meanwhile, the London Daily Telegraph says only 200 people actually schelpped, and many found their grandparents were already supporting Obama.
  
• And some of Obama’s senior staffers are schlepping to Florida for the next few weeks – a signal the campaign thinks it can win the state, according to a Miami television station.
  
• The Jerusalem Post reports that Jesse Jackson says his comments on “Zionists” controlling American foreign policy were distorted – and that the Obama campaign has distanced itself from those remarks.
• Jewish historian Jonathan Sarna talks about the election and the Jewish vote with JUF News.
• The L.A. Jewish Journal interviews Obama’s California strategist, Mitchell Schwartz.
  
• The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg blogs that the angry crowds at McCain-Palin rallies remind him of those demonstrating against Yitzhak Rabin in the months before he was assassinated.
• Michael Oren, in Forbes, said it was “astonishing” to discover that the presidential candidates “differ significantly on virtually every issue” related to Israel, except for their “common commitment to Israel and the search for peace.”
• Newsweek’s Howard Fineman has decided the many polls of Jewish voters are wrong. How? He surveyed his high-school friends from Pittsburgh, gets a 9-1 margin for Obama and declares that non-Orthodox Jews are going to vote in much bigger numbers for the Democrat than everyone thinks.
• Campaigning for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton tells a Philadelphia JCC crowd that the economic crisis is heartbreaking, reports the AP.
• Bloomberg on the campaigns seeking American voters in Israel.
  
• Max Blumenthal and David Niewert at Salon claim Sarah Palin has ties to some radical right-wingers.
• M.J. Rosenberg wonders what Sarah Palin meant when she campaigned to be “Wasilla’s first Christian mayor” – since the incumbent was a Lutheran but his last name was Stein.
• Charley Levine, in the Jerusalem Post, would like to see a McCain-Biden ticket.
• Campaiging for John McCain, Joe Lieberman tells Ohio voters that he might even vote for Obama one day – but not this year, according to the AP. And he tells the Forward that he’s “at peace” with his decision to become an independent and back the GOP presidential candidate.
  
• More on the battle for Florida Jewish voters, from the Chicago Tribune.
• Ben Shapiro, on Townhall.com, challenges Alan Dershowitz to a debate over Dershowitz’s claim that both candidates are equal supporters of Israel.

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Political tidbits: Schlep talk, Coleman pulls negative ads

By Eric Fingerhut · October 13, 2008

• Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) says Yom Kippur convinced him to withdraw all his negative ads in his race against Al Franken.
  
• The New York Times looks at Andy Martin, the “man behind the whispers about Obama” who has a trail of anti-Jewish comments in his past.
  
• Newsweek says Sarah Palin is costing John McCain Jewish votes.
• “The People of the Button”: New York Rabbi Peter Schweitzer on the history of presidential campaign buttons in Hebrew, in the New York Times.
• Alan Dershowitz states that all the major party presidential and VP candidates are enthusiastic backers of Israel, so supporters of the Jewish state should base their voting decision instead on “more general considerarations” of who would be best for America and the world. The Green Party, though, is another story, he writes in the New York Daily News.
  
• British newspapers love “The Great Schlep”: The Times of London talks to Jews visiting their families in Florida. So does The Guardian.
  
• Haviv Rettig in the Jerusalem Post argues that the Jewish Council for Education and Research videos (those featuring Sarah Silverman and retired Israeli generals) are actually hurting Obama in the Jewish community – because they’re not taking Jewish concerns seriously.
• Jonathan Rosenblum tells bubbe and zaide to ignore the grandchildren, in the Jerusalem Post.
• The latest on this weekend’s courting the Ohio Jewish vote, from the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
• What right-wing extremist groups has Todd Palin been “palling around” with? Menachem Rosensaft wants to know, in the Huffington Post.
  
• Liberals always threaten to move to Canada if a Republican wins the presidency? Where should conservatives threaten to go if Obama wins? Chris Wilson in Slate suggests Israel as one possibility.
• The Forward’s Brett Lieberman wonders if the Jewish community in Virginia could end up playing a crucial role in the election.
• Arab American Institute leader James Zogby criticizes McCain – and the Republican Jewish Coalition – for using “Arab” as a pejorative term.
• Rep. Robert Wexler is still a “heavy favorite” for re-election, but he has some “aggressive” opponents this year, writes the Palm Beach Post.
• Sarah Silverman talks to Keith Olbermann about “The Great Schlep,” but the best part of the interview is probably when Silverman tells Sarah Palin how she should have answered Katie Couric’s question about the newspapers and magazines she reads.

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Political tidbits: More guilt by association, a plea to stop talking about Israel

By Eric Fingerhut · October 10, 2008

• More guilt by association from the GOP, as he chairman of the Palm Beach Republican Party is e-mailing around a video of an eight-month old speech in which Louis Farrakhan calls Barack Obama “the messiah.” Obama already responded to this endorsement in a debate during the primaries: After some badgering from Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton saying that simply denouncing Farrakhan wasn’t enough, Obama said he would “reject” the Nation of Islam leader’s support.
• Some guilt by association for McCain and Palin, from Menachem Rosensaft in the Huffington Post.
  
• From Jesse Kornbluth in the Huffington Post ... Yom Kippur letter to Joe Lieberman’s rabbis, urging them to “talk to Sen. Lieberman about the hatred the McCain-Palin campaign is encouraging” – and complete with somewhat over-the-top allusions to Kristallnacht.
• Bradley Burston, in Ha’aretz, accuses Sarah Palin for stirring up prejudice and hatred when she talks about Obama.
• In the National Review ... Mona Charen argues that Sarah Silverman’s “Great Schlep” video is just one more example of Jews substituting liberalism for their religion – and blames the New York Times for going along with it.
• Shmuel Rosner, in Slate, urges the candidates to stop talking about Israel so much.
• Politico reports that John McCain didn’t disclose his affiliation with the U.S. Council for World Freedom as a freshman congressman; his campaign says he didn’t have to report the connection.
• In the L.A. Jewish Journal ... former AIPAC head Morris Amitay lays out why he supportd McCain.
• And former top Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross does the same for Obama.
  
• The Jewish Week talks to some undecided Jewish women about Sarah Palin.
  
• The Christian Science Monitor weighs in on Obama’s “struggles to attract Jewish voters.”
• A report on Obama’s Jewish outreach efforts in Pennsylvania, from the Jewish Exponent.
• Michael Gerson in the Washington Post on the importance of the Iran threat in making one’s choice for president.
• The National Jewish Democratic Council claims the Republican Jewish Coalition is lying in its new ad when it says Obama would be willing to meet personally with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Actually, the NJDC is wrong, because Obama did say that, at the YouTube debate last year (the questioner even puts a photo of Ahmadinejad on the screen when he asks the question) and he said it again two months later after the Iranian president spoke at Columbia University.

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