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Little Green Footballs - LA Times Still Hiding Video - Protest Scheduled

There will be a protest outside the offices of the Los Angeles Times this morning at 10am Pacific. Details on this page: Picket LA Times.

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Little Green Footballs - Martin Kramer on Rashid Khalidi and Barack Obama: Kindred Spirits

Were we to see the videotape, it might give us some sense of how far down the road Obama went in that [anti-Israel] direction—and not all that long ago. It would be interesting to know, for example, if there was reference to Iraq. In 2003, when Khalidi’s friends gave him his goodbye party, he was deep into propagandizing against the Iraq war. Among his arguments, he included this one:

This war will be fought because these neoconservatives desire to make the Middle East safe not for democracy, but for Israeli hegemony. They are convinced that the Middle East is irremediably hostile to both the United States and Israel; and they firmly hold the racist view that Middle Easterners understand only force. For these American Likudniks and their Israeli counterparts, sad to say, the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend: It enabled them to draft the United States to help fight Israel’s enemies.

This argument against the war was not at all unusual on the faculty of the University of Chicago at the time. Another professor of Middle East history, Fred Donner, gave it blatant expression on the pages of the Chicago Tribune, calling the Iraq war “a vision deriving from Likud-oriented members of the president’s team—particularly Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith.” So perhaps it is not surprising that Obama, in his October 2002 antiwar speech, declared:

“What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”

No mention of Cheney or Rumsfeld—and no need to mention them, to a constituency that knew who was really behind the push for war, and why. (Later, the same argument would figure prominently in The Israel Lobby, co-authored by another Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer.)

Obama, when pressed during an appearance before a Jewish audience, admitted that “I do know him [Khalidi] because I taught at the University of Chicago.” This sounds wholly innocuous; I also know Khalidi because I taught at the University of Chicago—twice, in 1990 and 1991, when I had an office on the same hall. Obama continues: “And I do know him and I have had conversations.” Well, even I’ve had conversations with Khalidi. (A former Chicago graduate student who must keep meticulous records writes to me that he spotted me on December 6, 1990, at the Quad Club lunching with Khalidi.) Nor does it mean much if Khalidi introduced Obama to Edward Said; Khalidi introduced me to Edward Said in New York in November 1986.

The difference is that while I came away from these encounters convinced that Khalidi’s purported moderation was a sham, and have said so, Obama went the other direction, maintaining their friendship right up to Khalidi’s send-off from Chicago, to which he contributed an encomium. Which is why I’d really like to see that videotape. I’m just curious which of Rashid Khalidi’s virtues I somehow missed, and Barack Obama saw.

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Little Green Footballs - McCain Demands That LA Times Release Hidden Tape

The John McCain campaign is demanding that the Los Angeles Times release the videotape of Barack Obama toasting former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, at a party attended by radical Palestinian activists and former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn...

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Little Green Footballs - LA Times: 'We Keep Our Promises'

You’re not going to believe this one.

I certainly don’t.

McCain campaign accuses L.A. Times of ‘suppressing’ Obama video.

“The Los Angeles Times 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,” said the newspaper’s editor, Russ Stanton. “The Times keeps its promises to sources.”

This is excuse #4 from the LA Times. It took them three days to come up with this.

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Little Green Footballs - Quotes from the LA Times Suppressed Obama Video?

Doug Ross has received a tip from a reader he says has been reliable in the past, with some inside information on the videotape that the Los Angeles Times continues to hide:

Saw a clip from the tape. Reason we can’t release it is because statements Obama said to rile audience up during toast. He congratulates Khalidi for his work saying “Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine” plus there’s been “genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis.”

It would be really controversial if it got out. That’s why they will not even let a transcript get out.

Caveat: I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this. However, it certainly would explain why the LA Times is suppressing the video.

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And this:

Little Green Footballs - $150,000 Reward for LA Times Suppressed Video

Dirty Harry’s Place has a letter from Dune Capital Holdings, offering a $150,000 reward for the videotape of Barack Obama toasting former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi.

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Little Green Footballs - Khalidi Tape News: The Guest List

A PUMA blog has done some good investigative work, and pieced together a verified guest list for that party for Rashid Khalidi: The Khalidi Tape: Putting the Bits and Pieces Together with New Details.

Verified Information

Location:
Burbank Manor, 6312 W 79th St., Burbank, Illinois

Time:
Friday, August 1, 2003
6pm - Reception
7pm - Dinner and Reception

Those who attended:
1. AAAN (Arab American Action Network)
2. Not In My Name
3. Ali Abunimah (a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, who met Obama in 2000)
4. Bernadine Dorhn and Bill Ayers
5. Barack Obama
6. Mayor of Chicago Richard Daley
7. Rashid Khalidi
8. Mona Khalidi
9. Gihad Ali, a Palestinian spoken word poet
10. NPR Worldview host Jerome McDonnell (not McDonald as written in the e-mail)
11. Camilia Odeh (director of SWYC Southwest Youth Collaborative)
12. Sanabel debka troupe (traditional Palestinian dance group)
13. Hatem Abudayyeh
14. Others - Up to 50 to 500 guests

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The Corner on National Review Online

With the Los Angeles Times Khalidi tape in the news, I thought I’d post a link back to "Ayers-Khalidi Quotes," where I laid out evidence for the existence of a tight personal, intellectual, and political relationship between Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi.

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The Los Angeles Times’s Strange Notion of Journalistic Ethics by Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online

When it comes to insulting our collective intelligence, the Obamedia soundtrack of the ongoing campaign breaks new ground on a daily, indeed an hourly, basis. Still, the Los Angeles Times takes the cake.

Change you can believe in is a short hop from fairy tales you can be sold. In that spirit, the Times tells us, we’d really, really love to release the videotape we’re holding of that 2003 Khalidi shindig — the one where Barack Obama joined a motley collection of Israel-bashers, including the former terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, to sing the praises of Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for PLO master-terrorist Yasser Arafat. But alas, our hands are tied by journalistic ethics.

Of course the ever ethical Times would never try to skew election coverage in favor of a candidate it has recently endorsed (after blowing kisses at him for two years). Nor would the newspaper give its readers anything but a complete, accurate, and truthful account of an event like the Khalidi Bash that it deemed worthy enough to cover. You can take that to the bank. But, gosh-darn, it turns out that a “source” the Times won’t name supposedly provided reporter Peter Wallsten with the videotape on the solemn promise that the paper would never let it see the light of day … except to report on it as the Times saw fit.

If you believe that one, I’ve got a tax cut for you.

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The Weekly Standard

The LA Times refuses to release a tape in its possession showing Barack Obama at a party for Rashid Khalidi.

The Times is keeping this potentially damaging video of Obama under lock and key because of an agreement with the source who provided the tape, but Jennifer Rubin suggests at the very least the Times

should do a better job describing the scene. Why not a fuller account of what Obama actually said? Who else was sitting at Obama’s table? What did the original report mean by "the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor’s going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say"?

What is the L.A. Times Hiding? - Jeffrey Goldberg

I don't think it's entirely necessary for me to explain, once again, why I believe that Rashid Khalidi is not a danger to the Republic. I also don't think I have to rehearse the controversial idea that Barack Obama was not, in fact, the Hyde Park chapter president of the PFLP-GC. (That was Rahm Emanuel.) But there's a video out there of Obama saying kind things about Khalidi, and on the general principle that information in an open society shouldn't be kept secret and that the voters should make up their own minds about whether or not they trust certain candidates, this video should be set free. But a pro-censorship organization called the Los Angeles Times, which has the tape in its possession, is hiding it, for reasons it won't fully explain. And it's looking more and more ridiculous each passing day.

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