Obama's Ties to Rashid Khalidi and the Arab American Action Network

Obama's Ties to Rashid Khalidi and the Arab American Action Network

• During his Illinois state senate years in the mid- to late 1990s, Barack Obama was a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, where he became friendly with Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Khalidi was once an operative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the political apparatus of Yasser Arafat, the godfather of 20th-century terrorism and the most prolific Jew-killer since Adolf Hitler. Obama and his wife were regular dinner guests at Khalidi’s Hyde Park home.
• Characterizing Israel as a “racist” state and “basically an apartheid system in creation,” in 1995 Khalidi and his wife founded the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), noted for its contention that Israel’s creation in 1948 was a "catastrophe" for Arab people. In 2001 and again in 2002, the Woods Fund of Chicago, with Obama serving on its board, made grants totaling $75,000 to the AAAN.
• In 2003 Obama attended a farewell party in Khalidi’s honor when the latter was preparing to leave Chicago to embark on a new position at Columbia University. At that event, Obama paid public tribute to Khalidi as someone whose insights had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.” Khalidi later told the largely pro-Palestinian attendees that Obama deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat, stating: “You will not have a better senator under any circumstances.”