AIPAC's Lack of Cojones About Senator Obama

Last week during the Shavuot holiday I spoke to some people who were present at Senator Barack Obama's speech at AIPAC. Before he spoke attendees were reminded that Obama was their guest and that he should be treated as a respected guest, a not so hidden warning not to confront Obama with the truth about his false support of Israel. But once he made his pronouncement of an undivided Israeli capitol of Jerusalem. Of course he waited till after he left the convention to back off that pledge. AIPAC has never shirked its responsibility to confront people with an Anti-Israel record, why then is it showing a lack of cojones about Senator Obama?

Obama has hired almost every anti-Israel adviser possible for his Foriegn relations team. Before he came on to the national stage The Senator ran on a Marxist party line (DSA) that was Anti-Israel. Those are aren't debatable charges like the Muslim thing, they are sustainable provable documented facts. I KNOW that the Senator is a very smart man who, as Jimmy Carter before him, thinks that he knows better than anyone and doesn't NEED to learn from experience and history and I KNOW that frightens the hell out of me.

Appeal to AIPAC
Jeffrey T. Kuhner

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential ambitions are imperiled by his emerging Jewish problem. Traditionally, Democrats win the overwhelming majority of the Jewish vote. Ronald Reagan received the highest support among Jews of any Republican presidential candidate in his 1980 victory against President Jimmy Carter - 39 percent. For Mr. Obama to triumph in November, he will need to win at least 70 percent of the Jewish vote.

Hence, he recently addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. In that speech, Mr. Obama said he is a "true friend" of Israel. He pledged that, as president, he will be tough against Iran. The presumptive Democratic nominee even expressed his support for Jerusalem to remain in Israeli hands as an "undivided" city - angering many on the left who want East Jerusalem to form the capital of an independent Palestine. He is now quickly backtracking on this position.

Mr. Obama's words, however, do not match his deeds - or his disturbing past associations with anti-Israel, radical pro-Palestinian activists. The Los Angeles Times recently reported on Mr. Obama's longstanding, close ties with Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University.

During the 1970s, Mr. Khalidi worked at WAFA, the official news agency of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Led by Yasser Arafat, the PLO at the time was a terrorist group that committed atrocities against Israeli civilians. While teaching at the University of Chicago, Mr. Khalidi helped found the Arab American Action Network (AAAN). The AAAN is an avowed anti-Israel organization that denounces the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. Mr. Khalidi sponsored a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama's (eventually unsuccessful) efforts to win a congressional seat in 2000. According to the Times, in 2003, Mr. Obama attended a dinner paying tribute to Mr. Khalidi. A speaker at the event compared Israeli settlers on the West Bank to Osama bin Laden.

Also, from 1999 until 2002, Mr. Obama was on the board of the Woods Fund, a foundation that provides grants to disadvantaged groups in the Chicago community. In 2001 and 2002, the Woods Fund approved $75,000 in grants to the AAAN. In other words, Mr. Obama had links with a virulent anti-Israel group and participated on a board that helped finance it.

His campaign's chief military adviser, Gen. Merrill McPeak, believes the pro-Israel lobby runs American foreign policy. In his twisted mind, the real reason the Bush administration invaded Iraq was because of the pernicious influence of American Jews and evangelicals - who allegedly place the interests of Israel above those of the United States. Asked in a 2003 interview with the Oregonian why the administration decided to topple Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, Gen. McPeak answered: "New York City. Miami. We have a large vote ... here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it." Mr. Obama disavowed the comments, but he has kept Gen. McPeak on his campaign.

It is troubling, to say the least, that Mr. Obama sees nothing wrong with affiliating with rabid anti-Zionists, who view Israel - the Middle East's only pro-Western democracy - as the root of evil in the region. His former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a man who was Mr. Obama's close friend and mentor for nearly 20 years, is a radical leftist who champions black liberation theology. It seeks to fuse militant Christianity with Marxism. Its goal is to advance an anti-Western, anti-American, "anti-imperialist" agenda. In the eyes of Mr. Wright, and many on the far left, Israel has become the new British empire - a racist, imperial power that subjugates Palestinians and threatens its neighbors.

Mr. Obama's defenders insist this is all "guilt by association." He maintains he has never uttered a word questioning Israel's legitimacy as a state nor has he claimed that there is an all-powerful, subversive Jewish lobby. But why is he surrounded by so many people who loathe Israel and distrust the Jews? Why has he been endorsed by Hamas, whose goal is to destroy the Jewish state? Why does George Galloway, the antiwar British member of Parliament, who was on Saddam's payroll and defends Hezbollah, support Mr. Obama?

Last year, Mr. Obama opposed the nonbinding Senate resolution declaring Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization - an organization that arms, funds and trains Hezbollah in its murderous campaign against Israelis. He thus acts very much in ways his dubious associates admire.

Mr. Obama's solution to the emerging Iranian threat to Israel is more talk, sanctions and diplomatic bargaining - the very policies that have enabled Iran to outmaneuver the international community for the last decade. His major foreign policy proposal is to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. This would play right into Tehran's hands, and leave a strategic vacuum in Mesopotamia that would be immediately filled by Iran.

Iraq's massive oil wealth would fall under Tehran's influence. An American defeat would embolden Iran's mullahs to continue their quest for regional domination. This is bad for America - and the Jews.

And maybe that's precisely why so many Israel-haters support Mr. Obama.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist for The Washington Times.