Webloggin » New Twist in Obama-LA Times Jew Bashing Party Video

Rashid Khalid, another radical associate of Barack Obama that idolizes Noam Chomsky and pals around with terrorists. (see below)

This is an update to an earlier story concerning the LA Times coverup of a video that captures Barack Obama toasting former PLO Operative Rashid Khalidi at a going away party.

Andrew McCarthy at NRO notes that the Times left some information out of their story:

Back in April, the Times published a gentle story about the fete. Reporter Peter Wallsten avoided, for example, any mention of the inconvenient fact that the revelers included Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife and fellow Weatherman terrorist. These self-professed revolutionary Leftists are friendly with both Obama and Khalidi — indeed, researcher Stanley Kurtz has noted that Ayers and Khalidi were “best friends.” (And — small world! — it turns out that the Obamas are extremely close to the Khalidis, who have reportedly babysat the Obama children.)

Nor did the Times report the party was thrown by AAAN. Wallsten does tell us that the AAAN received grants from the Leftist Woods Fund when Obama was on its board — but, besides understating the amount (it was $75,000, not $40,000), the Times mentions neither that Ayers was also on the Woods board at the time nor that AAAN is rabidly anti-Israel. (Though the organization regards Israel as illegitimate and has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism, Wallsten describes the AAAN as “a social service group.”)

Perhaps even more inconveniently, the Times also let slip that it had obtained a videotape of the party.

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs notes that the LA Times is hiding behind its own arrogance by claiming that concerned readers don’t need to see the video since they can read the story. Johnson wonders what is in the video that they don’t want us to see.

Gateway Pundit notes that Bill O’Reilly of Fox News also contacted the paper and they are still hiding behind the article while refusing to release the video.

We all know why the LA Times is sitting on this video, because it show Barack Obama to be a liar. He lied about Ayers, he lied about Dohrn and likely lied about his feelings concerning Israel.

Update: Discover the Networks gives us more information on Khalidi. Not surprisingly this is another associate of Barack Obama that idolizes a well known communist in addition to being a Jew bashing radical.

Khalidi has long cited the late Edward Said as his major academic influence. Following the latter’s death in 2003, Khalidi penned an obituary that valorized Said for “giving a voice to the voiceless” via his “eloquent espousal of the cause of Palestine.” In this context, Khalidi likened Said to another of his idols, Noam Chomsky:

“Like Noam Chomsky and very few others, he [Said] managed not only to reshape his own field of scholarly endeavor, but to transcend it, influencing other fields and disciplines, and going well beyond the narrow boundaries of the American academy to become a true public intellectual, and a passionate voice for humanistic values and justice in an imperfect world.”

As with Said before him, Khalidi’s involvement with the Palestinian cause goes beyond mere support. News reports — including a 1982 dispatch from Thomas Friedman of the New York Times — suggest that he once served as Director of the Palestinian press agency, Wikalat al-Anba al-Filastinija. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, was reportedly the agency’s main English-language editor between 1976 and 1982. Khalidi so strongly identified with the aims of the PLO, which was designated as a terrorist group by the State Department during Khalidi’s affiliation with it in the 1980s, that he repeatedly referred to himself as “we” when expounding on the PLO’s agenda. Additional evidence of Khalidi’s intimacy with the PLO can be seen in his involvement with the organization’s so-called “guidance committee” in the early 1990s.

Khalidi’s 1986 book, Under Siege: P.L.O. Decision-Making During the 1982 War, was dedicated to Yasser Arafat. Opening with a glowing tribute to anti-Israel fighters (”to those who gave their lives during the summer of 1982 … in defense of the cause of Palestine and the independence of Lebanon”), the book offered an airbrushed account of PLO-instigated violence against Israelis and Lebanese. By contrast, Syria’s brutal occupation of Lebanon elicited no criticism from the author.

In 1995 Khalidi and his wife founded the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), noted for its view that Israel’s creation in 1948 was a “catastrophe” for Arab people.