Obama Funneled Cash to Former PLO Operative's Anti-Israel Foundation

In 2000, Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative who justified Palestinian terrorism as contributing to "political enlightenment," threw a fundraiser for his friend Barack Obama.

Rashid Khalidi today is a professor at Columbia University and is a close associate of Barack Obama. Free Republic member No Quarter reported more on this relationship:

Khalidi has direct ties to Obama. These are not imagined. Before getting his job at Columbia University Rashid Khalidi was a Middle East professor at the University of Chicago, where he befriended none other than US presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama. In 2000 Khalidi held a successful fundraiser for Barack. I am not saying or inferring or suggesting that Obama did anything wrong in letting Khalidi hold a fund raiser. But I am willing to bet that it will become an issue in the general election. Barack also played a role in getting funding for Khalidi’s Arab American Action Network during his tenure on the board of the Woods Fund. That is another unexplored black hole.

Rashid Khalidi (on left) poses with friend, Imad Moustapha, Syria's envoy to the US. (Imad Moustapha Blog)

Although he is described as a former PLO operative, via Free Republic, this is what Rashid Khalidi has to say about Palestinian terrorism against Jews:

On Palestinian violence. Khalidi glorifies anti-Israel violence as contributing to “political enlightenment”[vii] and unsurprisingly admires those who carry it out. His loyalty to Palestinian terrorist groups run so deep that he actually dedicated his 1986 valentine to the PLO, Under Siege, to “those who gave their lives . . . in defense of the cause of Palestine and independence of Lebanon.”[viii] The book whitewashes PLO violence against Israelis and Lebanese, as well as the Syrian occupation.

A couple of weeks back Atlas Shrugs posted information that Obama and former Weather Underground honcho William Ayers, who sat with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund, funneled money to Khalidi's foundation:

A top official at the Pentagon during former-President George H. W. Bush's Administration and a former CIA intelligence officer maintains that Barack Obama and former Weather Underground honcho William Ayers funneled money to Professor Rashid Khalidi, a known terrorist sympathizer.

Khalidi serves on the faculty of Columbia University in New York and is best known as the professor who invited Iranian President Ahmedinejad to visit Columbia University after he finished his speech at the United Nations. According to confidential sources, Khalidi has direct ties to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), a group on the US State Department's list of known terrorist groups.

"One source for this information was once a top military figure in the 1990s. He doesn't take making allegations lightly. If he says something happened, believe me, it happened," said syndicated radio talk show host Laurie Roth.

"Another source is a former agent for the Central Intelligence Agency, who is an expert in counterterrorism," said Roth, who broke the story on her show Friday night.

World Net Daily reported that as director of the Woods Fund board in Chicago Barack Obama granted Khalidi's controversial anti-Israel group the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, $40,000 in 2001 and $35,000 in 2002.

This news seems to fit with what we are getting to know about the Illinois senator.
Hat Tip BG

UPDATE: Tom Maguire sees that the LA Times is reporting on the Obama-Khalidi connections:

It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.

A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."

It looks like those dinners with Barack paid off for the Khalidi's.
$75,000 is no chump change.