Rashid Khalidi is ONE of MANY Obama's ANTI-ISRAEL ISLAMIC FRIENDS

UPDATE: Doug Ross has this quote from the video:

Obama said , “Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine” plus there’s been “genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis.

The controversy surrounding Senator Obama's friendship with Rashid Khalidi, and the tape being suppressed by the LA Times is overshadowing the important fact that Khalidi is just ONE of many Israel-Hating Islamic characters that Obama has allied himself with.

For example, these folks are connected directly to His Senate office or campaign:

• Cynthia K. Miller, treasurer of his senate campaign is a Member of a member Farrakhan's Nation of Islam

• Jennifer Mason, Obama's Director of Constituent Services is also a member of the Nation of Islam.

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• Nation of Islam members, including consultant Shakir Muhammad, held important roles in the Obama state senate campaign.

And they had their influence. When Obama first ran for the U.S. Senate, he gave militant responses to the Chicago Jewish News about Israel. Obama denounced Israel's fence--which he called a "wall" and "barrier to peace." He favored working with Yasser Arafat. When members of the Chicago Jewish community circulated his responses, Obama said that the answers were not his positions, but the work of a low-level intern. He submitted new answers. But that was a lie, an insider says. In fact, they were the work of Obama's Policy Director, Audra Wilson. Moreover, Obama told the insider that he blamed the Mideast conflict on the Jews:Barack told me that he felt that Jewish community was too inflexible, and that was why the situation in the Mideast could not be resolved.Source: Debbie Schussel

There are also some "Bigger Fish" in Obama's Crew of Anti-Israel Friends:

• The Khalid al-Mansour connection: According to former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton, Mansour "was raising money for" Obama's expenses at Harvard Law School. Mansour, a black American (né Don Warden), became adviser to Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talal, CAIR's largest individual donor. Mansour holds standard Islamist views: He absolves the Islamist government in Sudan of sponsoring slavery, he denies a Jewish tie to Jerusalem and he wrote a booklet titled "Americans Beware! The Zionist Plot Against S. Arabia." (Both Obama and Mansour deny Sutton's account.)

• The Kenny Gamble (also known as Luqman Abdul-Haqq) connection: Gamble, a once-prominent pop music producer, cut the ribbon to the Obama campaign headquarters housed in a South Philadelphia building he owns. Gamble is an Islamist who buys large swaths of real estate in Philadelphia to create a Muslim-only residential area. Also, as the self-styled "amir" of the United Muslim Movement, he has many links to Islamist organizations, including CAIR and the Muslim Alliance in North America. (MANA's "amir" is Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.)

• The Mazen Asbahi connection: The Obama campaign's first Muslim outreach coordinator resigned after it came to light that he had served on the board of a subsidiary of the Saudi-sponsored North American Islamic Trust, with Jamal Said, another unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Hamas funding trial. Asbahi has ties to CAIR's Chicago and Detroit offices, to the Islamic Society of North America, yet another unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas funding trial, and to other Islamist organizations.

• The Minha Husaini connection: The campaign's second Muslim outreach coordinator has an Islamist background, having served as an intern in the Muslim Public Service Network. Immediately upon her appointment by Obama, she met with a group of about 30 Muslims including such notorious figures as CAIR's Nihad Awad; the Muslim American Society's Mahdi Bray, who has publicly supported Hamas and Hizbullah; and Johari Abdul Malik of the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, who has advised American Muslims: "You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work." (Source Daniel Pipes)
  

So how can Senator Obama be pro-Israel and have so many anti-Israel buddies? Well One prominent Palestinian-American will tell you that he his hiding is true feelings toward the Jewish State.

Ali Abunimah is a Pro Arab Journalist and founder of the Electronic Intifada. He will tell you that Senator Obama is full of crap when he says that he is pro-Israel

If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected

He says that Obama has long been a friend of the Palestinian community, but he knows where the money is. He has changed his position because those in the Pro-Israel camp (American Jews?) have the money to get him elected. Below is a portion of what he has written for Electronic Intifada on the subject:

...Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

....The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"

Obama has also been close to some prominent Arab Americans, and has received their best advice. His decisive trajectory reinforces a lesson that politically weak constituencies have learned many times: access to people with power alone does not translate into influence over policy. Money and votes, but especially money, channelled through sophisticated and coordinated networks that can "bundle" small donations into million dollar chunks are what buy influence on policy. Currently, advocates of Palestinian rights are very far from having such networks at their disposal. Unless they go out and do the hard work to build them, or to support meaningful campaign finance reform, whispering in the ears of politicians will have little impact. (For what it's worth, I did my part. I recently met with Obama's legislative aide, and wrote to Obama urging a more balanced policy towards Palestine.

So folks you really don't need the LA Times video to figure out what Senator Obama said at this dinner, it was probably something horribly Anti-Israel like “Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine” or there’s been “genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis. Either way it is clear that those who love the Jewish State Should NOT be voting for him next Tuesday