Nov. 2, 2008 (World News Trust) -- Earlier
this week, John McCain once again attacked his presidential campaign
opponent Barack Obama on the basis of his association with another
individual. In this case the individual was Rashid Khalidi. Mr.
Khalidi's sin? He's a Palestinian who has been critical of Israel.
Obama's sin? Speaking at a dinner five years ago held in honor of Mr.
Khalidi.
Other
speakers at the dinner were critical of Israel, accusing the state of
committing terrorism against the Palestinian people, leading McCain to
compare the dinner gathering to "a Neo-Nazi outfit," and thus implying
that criticism of Israel's crimes is equivalent with racism.
The Los Angeles Times reported last
April on the Obama's presence at the dinner, noting that "a young
Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of
terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S.
support of Israel." Another speaker noted that "Zionist settlers on the
West Bank" shared one thing with Osama bin Laden; they were both
"blinded by ideology."
Obama,
who has vigorously portrayed himself as a staunch supporter of Israel,
said at the dinner that his talks with Mr. Khalidi and his wife Mona
had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own
biases" and expressed hope 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."
Mr. Khalidi is a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University in New York.
The McCain campaign last Tuesday criticized the L.A. Times for
withholding a videotape of the dinner. A campaign spokesman said, "A
major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that
could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi."
The L.A. Times explained
that it "did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by
a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release
it."
McCain himself lashed out at the L.A. Times for choosing to not release the videotape, accusing the paper of bias and comparing the dinner to a "neo-Nazi outfit."
"I'm
not in the business of talking about media bias," McCain said, "but
what if there was a tape with John McCain with a neo-Nazi outfit being
held by some media outlet? I think the treatment of the issue would be
slightly different."
McCain's choice for vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, also criticized Obama's
attendance at the dinner. "Among other things, Israel was described
there as the perpetrator of terrorism rather than the victim," she
said. "What we don't know is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs
on a country that he professes to support."
She also accused the L.A. Times of
bias. "It must be nice for a candidate to have major news organizations
looking after his best interests like that," she said. "We have a
newspaper willing to throw aside even the public's right to know in
order to protect a candidate that its own editorial board has endorsed."
The Obama campaign responded by
emphasizing that Obama "has been clear and consistent on his support
for Israel, and has been clear that Rashid Khalidi is not an adviser to
him or his campaign and that he does not share Khalidi's views." They
also observed that McCain is the chairman of the International
Republican Institute, which gave $448,000 to the Center for Palestine
Research and Studies. Khalidi was a founder of that organization.
Obama
campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt returned the criticism, saying, "Instead
of giving lectures on media bias, John McCain should answer why, under
his own chairmanship, the International Republican Institute repeatedly
funded an organization Khalidi founded." the McCain campaign responded
by noting that "it is obvious that Khalidi and Obama are close friends,
whereas McCain and Khalidi have never even met."
What's
remarkable about the whole affair is the deeply embedded racism it
reveals in both candidates' campaigns and in the media.
Take
the McCain campaign position that any association with Mr. Khalidi is
somehow sinful, and criticism of Israel's crimes against the
Palestinian people abhorrent. This is a deeply anti-Semitic
position -- for Arabs are Semitic peoples, too -- in that the underlying
assumption is that Palestinian terrorism against Israelis is rightly
condemned, but even the suggestion of Israeli terrorism against
Palestinians regarded as a "slur" against Israel.
Or
take the Obama campaign's response, and how quickly they were to
disavow Khalidi, essentially confirming that the McCain camp would be
right to consider it worthy of criticism were Obama to share his views
and even criticizing McCain in turn for chairing a group that gave
money to Khalidi's organization. The Obama camp's response, in other
words, served only to reinforce the underlying assumption of the McCain
campaign.
Khalidi himself has observed the trend for criticism of Israel to be equated with anti-Semitism. In an article he wrote in The Nation magazine
last May, he said, "It is considered by some to be a slur on Israel and
Zionism, and indeed tantamount to anti-Semitism, to suggest that these
events sixty years ago [leading to the creation of the state of Israel]
should be the subject of anything but unmitigated joy."
To
Palestinians, these events are called al-Nakba--the expulsion.
"Palestinians presumably do not have the right to recall, much less
mourn, their national disaster if this would rain on the parade of
celebrating Zionists everywhere," Khalidi wrote. "The fact that the
1948 war that created Israel also created the largest refugee problem
in the Middle East (until the U.S. occupation of Iraq turned 4 million
people into refugees) must therefore be swept under the rug. Also
disregarded is the obvious fact that it would have been impossible to
create a Jewish state in a land nearly two-thirds of whose population
was Arab without some form of ethnic cleansing."
This truth, of course, was well recognized by the early Zionist leaders.
Explaining
the origin of the state Sarah Palin describes as the "victim" rather
than the "perpetrator," former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami,
in a recent article in Foreign Affairs,
explains how Israel was born in 1948 with "the often violent expulsion
of 700,000 Arabs as Jewish soldiers conquered villages and towns
throughout Palestine." Ben-Ami notes that "the Zionists committed more
massacres than the Arabs, deliberately killed far more civilians and
prisoners of war, and committed more acts of rape." This policy of
terrorizing the Arab population of Palestine for the purpose of
ethnic-cleansing "helped demarcate the boundaries of the new state."
Ben-Ami
quotes then Israeli leader David Ben-Gurion as saying, "The Arabs of
the Land of Israel have only one function left to them -- to run away."
Ben-Ami adds, "And they did; panic-stricken, they fled in the face of
massacres in Ein Zeitun and Eilabun, just as they had done in the wake
of an earlier massacre in Deir Yassin. Operational orders, such as the
instruction from Moshe Carmel, the Israeli commander of the northern
front, 'to attack in order to conquer, to kill among the men, to
destroy and burn the villages,' were carved into the collective memory
of the Palestinians, spawning hatred and resentment for generations."
The
ethnic-cleansing of Palestine by the Jews "was in no small measure
driven by a desire for land among Israeli settlers," Ben-Ami observes,
noting in addition that "The hunger for land persists to this day."
Indeed.
The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the Jewish
settlements in those territories are illegal, a violation of
international law, and contrary to international treaties to which
Israel is a party, including the Geneva Conventions and the U.N.
Charter.
The "hunger for land" that "persists to this day" is also still accompanied by the policy of terrorizing the Palestinian people.
According to the organization Remember These Children, 1,050 Palestinian children have been killed since September 2000 compared with 123 Israeli children.
Catherine Cook of the Middle East Research and Information Project has noted that
"The majority of these children were killed and injured while going
about normal daily activities, such as going to school, playing,
shopping, or simply being in their homes. Sixty-four percent of
children killed during the first six months of 2003 died as a result of
Israeli air and ground attacks, or from indiscriminate fire from
Israeli soldiers."
That
trend continues. This year, four Israeli children were killed at by a
Palestinian gunman in a single incident in Jerusalem. In this same
period of time, 72 Palestinian children have been killed, most by
attacks from the Israeli Defense Force within the Palestinian
territories.
According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, since September 2000 4,871 Palestinians have been killed compared with 1,061 Israelis. According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, 32,744 Palestinians and 8,341 Israelis have been injured over the same time period.
U.S.
financial support for Israel is upwards of $3 billion annually. In
addition, the United States provides military and diplomatic support for Israel,
including the use of its veto power in the United Nations Security
Council to protect Israel against resolutions seeking to condemn it for
its crimes against the Palestinian people and its other neighbors.
During
the summer 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, for instance, the
United States vetoed a measure calling for a cease-fire, insisting that Israel
be given more time to finish its destruction of southern Lebanon and
further terrorize its people. Commenting on the Israeli actions, the
Israeli newapaper Haaretz noted that
"The tactic of pressuring civilians has been tried before, and more
than once. The Lebanese, for example, are very familiar with the
Israeli tactic of destroying power stations and infrastructure. Entire
villages in south Lebanon have been terrorized, with the inhabitants
fleeing in their thousands for Beirut."
The World Health Organization observed that
Israeli's air strikes against Lebanon had "caused widespread
destruction of the country's public infrastructure, including
hospitals, schools and road networks preventing the humanitarian
community from accessing vulnerable populations and civilians fleeing
war-affected areas." Israeli military operations "caused enormous
damage to residential areas and key civilian infrastructure such as
power plants, seaports, and fuel depots. Hundreds of bridges and
virtually all road networks have been systematically destroyed leaving
entire communities in the South inaccessible.
While
the Israeli siege of Gaza and illegal occupation and settlement of the
West Bank continue, and while the Palestinian people continue to be
terrorized under Israeli policies, the two leading candidates for the
presidency bicker over who is more worthy of condemnation for their
association with Rashid Khalidi.
The
media, for its part, has failed to challenge even one iota of the
fundamental racism inherent in the assumption that its a sin to
associate with a Palestinian who is critical of Israel, and the deep
anti-Semitism -- against Arabs -- inherent in the axiom that it is a "slur"
to consider Israel anything other than the "victim" in the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
John
McCain, in attempting to portray Obama as somehow racist against Jews
by comparing the dinner honoring Mr. Khalidi to a "Neo-Nazi outfit,"
revealed his own deep racism and contempt for the Palestinian people.
But
let the final word be for Barack Obama. If he were a man worthy of the
presidency, far from issuing denials and disavowals, his campaign would
rather embrace Mr. Khalidi and his views. Obama, unlike his opponent,
is willing at least to acknowledge his "own blind spots" and his "own
biases." That's a start. But it doesn't go nearly far enough for a man
seeking to lead the nation whose support for Israel is the single most
important mechanism in denying the Palestinian people their equal
rights and preventing a viable, sustainable peace in the Middle East
from becoming obtainable.
***
Jeremy R. Hammond is the editor of Foreign Policy Journal,
an online publication dedicated to providing news, critical analysis,
and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy from outside of the
standard framework offered by government officials and the mainstream
corporate media, particularly with regard to the "war on terrorism" and
events in the Middle East. He has also written for numerous other
online publications. You can contact him by clicking This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..