http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=57231

ELECTION 2008
Obama worked with terrorist
Senator helped fund organization that rejects ‘racist’ Israel’s
existence
Posted: February 24, 2008
5:44 pm Eastern

By Aaron Klein
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

Sen. Barack Obama

JERUSALEM – The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barack
Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist
granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the
establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense
immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education
to illegal aliens.

The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University
professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi
is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of
Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine
Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism
and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.

In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes itself
as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to the
Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, for which Khalidi’s wife, Mona,
serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for
$35,000 in 2002.

Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002,
according to the Fund’s website.  According to tax filings, Obama
received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and
2000.

Obama served on the Wood’s Fund board alongside William C. Ayers, a
member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of
the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol
in 1971.

Ayers, who still serves on the Woods Fund board, contributed $200 to
Obama’s senatorial campaign fund and has served on panels with Obama at
numerous public speaking engagements. Ayers admitted to involvement in
the bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s.  He is a
professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The $40,000 grant from Obama’s Woods Fund to the AAAN constituted about
a fifth of the Arab group’s reported grants for 2001, according to tax
filings obtained by WND.  The $35,000 Woods Fund grant in 2002 also
constituted about one-fifth of AAAN’s reported grants for that year.

The AAAN, headquartered in the heart of Chicago’s Palestinian immigrant
community, describes itself as working to "empower Chicago-area Arab
immigrants and Arab Americans through the combined strategies of
community organizing, advocacy, education and social services,
leadership development, and forging productive relationships with other
communities."

It reportedly has worked on projects with the Illinois Coalition for
Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which supports open boarders and education
for illegal aliens.

The AAAN in 2005 sent a letter to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson in
which it called a billboard opposing a North Carolina-New Mexico joint
initiative to deny driver’s licenses to illegal aliens a "bigoted attack
on Arabs and Muslims."

Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-Israel
line.

The group co-sponsored a Palestinian art exhibit, titled, "The Subject
of Palestine," that featured works related to what some Palestinians
call the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" of Israel’s founding in 1948.

According to the widely discredited Nakba narrative, Jews in 1948
forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands – some Palestinians claim over
one million – Arabs from their homes and then took over the territory.

(Story continues below)

Historically, about 600,000 Arabs fled Israel after surrounding Arab
countries warned they would destroy the Jewish state in 1948. Some Arabs
also were driven out by Jewish forces while they were trying to push
back invading Arab armies. At the same time, over 800,000 Jews were
expelled or left Arab countries under threat after Israel was founded.

The theme of AAAN’s Nakba art exhibit, held at DePaul University in
2005, was "the compelling and continuing tragedy of Palestinian life …
under [Israeli] occupation … home demolition … statelessness …
bereavement … martyrdom, and … the heroic struggle for life, for
safety, and for freedom."

Another AAAN initiative, titled, "Al Nakba 1948 as experienced by
Chicago Palestinians," seeks documents related to the "catastrophe" of
Israel’s founding.  

A post on the AAAN site asked users: "Do you have photos, letters or
other memories you could share about Al-Nakba-1948?"

That posting was recently removed.  The AAAN website currently states
the entire site is under construction.

Pro-PLO advocate held Obama fundraiser, describes Obama as ‘sympathetic’

AAAN co-founder Rashid Khalidi was reportedly a director of the official
PLO press agency WAFA in Beirut from 1976 to 1982, while the PLO
committed scores of anti-Western attacks and was labeled by the U.S. as
a terror group. Khalidi’s wife, AAAN President Mona Khalidi, was
reportedly WAFA’s English translator during that period.

Rashid Khalidi at times has denied working directly for the PLO but
Palestinian diplomatic sources in Ramallah told WND he indeed worked on
behalf of WAFA. Khalidi also advised the Palestinian delegation to the
Madrid Conference in 1991.

During documented speeches and public events, Khalidi has called Israel
an "apartheid system in creation" and a destructive "racist" state.  

He has multiple times expressed support for Palestinian terror, calling
suicide bombings response to "Israeli aggression." He dedicated his 1986
book, "Under Siege," to "those who gave their lives … in defense of
the cause of Palestine and independence of Lebanon." Critics assailed
the book as excusing Palestinian terrorism.

While the Woods Fund’s contribution to Khalidi’s AAAN might be perceived
as a one-time run in with Obama, the presidential hopeful and Khalidi
evidence a deeper relationship.

According to a professor at the University of Chicago who said he has
known Obama for 12 years, the Democratic presidential hopeful first
befriended Khalidi when the two worked together at the university. The
professor spoke on condition of anonymity. Khalidi lectured at the
University of Chicago until 2003 while Obama taught law there from 1993
until his election to the Senate in 2004.

Khalidi in 2000 held what was described as a successful fundraiser for
Obama’s failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, a
fact not denied by Khalidi.

Speaking in a joint interview with WND and the John Batchelor Show of
New York’s WABC Radio and Los Angeles’ KFI Radio, Khalidi was asked
about his 2000 fundraiser for Obama.

"I was just doing my duties as a Chicago resident to help my local
politician," Khalidi stated.

Khalidi said he supports Obama for president "because he is the only
candidate who has expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause."

Khalidi also lauded Obama for "saying he supports talks with Iran. If
the U.S. can talk with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, there is no
reason it can’t talk with the Iranians."

Asked about Obama’s role funding the AAAN, Khalidi claimed he had "never
heard of the Woods Fund until it popped up on a bunch of blogs a few
months ago."  

He terminated the call when petitioned further about his links with
Obama.  

Contacted by phone, Mona Khalidi refused to answer WND’s questions about
the AAAN’s involvement with Obama.

Obama’s campaign headquarters did not reply to a list of WND questions
sent by e-mail to the senator’s press office.

Obama, American terrorist in same circles

Obama served on the board with Ayers, who was a Weathermen leader and
has written about his involvement with the group’s bombings of the New
York City Police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol in 1971 and the
Pentagon in 1972.

"I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough," Ayers told
the New York Times in an interview released on Sept. 11, 2001

"Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,"
Ayers wrote in his memoirs, titled "Fugitive Days." He continued with a
disclaimer that he didn’t personally set the bombs, but his group set
the explosives and planned the attack.

A $200 campaign contribution is listed on April 2, 2001 by the "Friends
of Barack Obama" campaign fund. The two taught appeared speaking
together at several public events, including a 1997 University of
Chicago panel entitled, "Should a child ever be called a ‘super
predator?’" and another panel for the University of Illinois in April
2002, entitled, "Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?"

The charges against Ayers were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial
misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

Ayers is married to another notorious Weathermen terrorist, Bernadine
Dohrn, who has also served on panels with Obama. Dohrn was once on the
FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted List and was described by J. Edgar Hoover as
the "most dangerous woman in America." Ayers and Dohrn raised the son of
Weathermen terrorist Kathy Boudin, who was serving a sentence for
participating in a 1981 murder and robbery that left 4 people dead.

Obama advisor wants talks with terrorists

The revelations about Obama’s relationship with Khalidi follows a recent
WND article quoting Israeli security officials who expressed "concern"
about Robert Malley, an adviser to Obama who has advocated negotiations
with Hamas and providing international assistance to the terrorist
group.

Malley, a principal Obama foreign policy adviser, has penned numerous
opinion articles, many of them co-written with a former adviser to the
late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, petitioning for
dialogue with Hamas and blasting Israel for numerous policies he says
harm the Palestinian cause.
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