Rashid Khalidi (University of Chicago)
Rashid Khalidi is, to put it bluntly, the latest pawn in the McCain campaign's attempt to character-assassinate Barack Obama by proxy.
Khalidi is a leading American public intellectual of Palestinian-Lebanese descent, a distinguished scholar of Middle East and Palestinian history and of American foreign policy in the region, and the director of Columbia University’s Middle East Institute. He's being thrust into the 2008 American presidential campaign, flailingly in these last days of flails, by right-wing bloggers and John McCain’s campaign who are implying, outrageously, that because Obama knew Khalidi, Obama is "anti-Israel" and has “terrorist” connections.
The slander—against both Obama and Khalidi—is designed to resonate with South Florida’s Jewish voters, who are favoring Obama by a 3-to-1 margin in a state McCain cannot afford to lose (but appears to be losing rather convincingly). It shouldn't work.
This is not only yet another example of the McCain campaign's scorched-character policy of attacking anything and everything it can to score a few incendiary hits, however fatuous the leaps and "associations." Worse: it typifies how anyone, no matter how distinguished, honorable and decorated a person may be (as Khalidi is, academically if nothing else), stands to be utterly demolished in the American press for representing a point of view at once critical of Israel and supportive of the Palestinian cause.
I say "anyone": I'm slightly mistaken here. The American press to a minimal extent, and to a far larger extent the Israeli press, is replete with examples of criticism of Israel and sympathy for Palestinians. But if the critic happens to be an Arab, or worse, a Palestinian, then beware the torrent of slanders, the charges of anti-Semitism, the charges of "Israel-hatred" and all that other rapid-fire fusillade of condemnation designed to silence, shame and discredit.
That's what's about to be inflicted on Rashid Khalidi. Shame on the blogging reactionaries who manufactured this demolition derby. Shame on the McCain campaign for grasping for the wrecking ball.
Don't be fooled. Here's a new profile of Rashid Khalidi and his "association" with Barack Obama.
Comments
This reminds me of a comment by Joe Biden:
“What do you talk about when you’ve got nothing to say?”
Another page out of the Karl Rove playbook: Throw as much mud against the wall as you can, and see if you can get any of it to stick.
Anybody besides me recall the flap back during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, when Andrew Young was forced to resign from his position in the administration due to a back channel, wholly unofficial meeting with a PLO delegation at some hotel?
Back then, even whispering that a two state solution might be a solution was to touch a third rail in the US diplomatic and partisan-political establishment. Today, both major political parties and the State Department staunchly support a two-state solution to the Palestinian situation.
Times change. People mature and broaden their horizons, individually and collectively.
Except for the media message crafters of the McCain/Palin 2008 campaign.
Bill from Saginaw
Shame? Shame on any of the American public who buys into this nonsense.