Aaron Klein, original author of the piece at the World Net Dailly, emailed me this morning to say:

I never state anywhere he [Obama] funded any Palestinian terrorist or even worked with one.

This is good news and largely debunks the myth itself. Klein makes clear he never claimed Khalidi is or was a terrorist. This is also good news to me, because his original article is ambiguous on this score.

Klein then asked me to change the headline of this diary. I declined to do this, because I have received emails, citing Klein's story, that claim Obama funded Palestinian terrorism. Taking Klein at his word that this allegation was not his intent, we easily debunk the myth in those emails. So you can tell your right-wing family, friends, and colleagues that Aaron Klein -- the very author of the piece they are circulating so widely -- categorically rejects the assertion that Obama funded a Palestinian terrorist organization or even worked with one.

I now proceed to debunk Klein's specific accusation in his subtitle:

Klein's accusation is entitled

Obama worked with terrorist

Senator helped fund organization that rejects 'racist' Israel's existence.

The "terrorist" in the main title referred to by Klein is Ayers of the Weathermen. (That is not the focus of this diary since others have addressed this aspect already in other dailykos diaries.)

I want to focus on the provocative subtitle: "Senator helped fund organization that rejects 'racist' Israel's existence."

Quick easy debunking: nowhere in the text of the incendiary World Net Daily article does Klein present evidence that AAAN, the funded organization, "rejects Israel's existence." The article merely claims that AAAN's founder, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, publicly called Israel "racist."

So did Obama, even if he didn't fund terrorism, help fund the goal of "rejecting Israel's existence"? Or of calling Israel "racist"?

I quote at length the beginning and a few paragraphs from a very long article:

The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist [Ayers] granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe"... The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group. In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, for which Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.

....

The AAAN, headquartered in the heart of Chicago's Palestinian immigrant community, describes itself as working to "empower Chicago-area Arab immigrants and Arab Americans through the combined strategies of community organizing, advocacy, education and social services, leadership development, and forging productive relationships with other communities."

....

Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-Israel line. The group co-sponsored a Palestinian art exhibit, titled, "The Subject of Palestine," that featured works related to what some Palestinians call the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948. According to the widely discredited Nakba narrative, Jews in 1948 forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands - some Palestinians claim over one million - Arabs from their homes and then took over the territory.

I looked at the grants from the Woods Fund in their Annual Report for 2001:

This is their mission statement from that document:

"Woods Fund of Chicago is a grantmaking foundation

whose goal is to increase opportunities for less advantaged

people and communities in the metropolitan area, including

the opportunity to shape decisions affecting them.

The foundation works primarily as a funding partner with

nonprofit organizations. Woods supports nonprofits in their

important roles of engaging people in civic life, addressing

the causes of poverty and other challenges facing the region,

promoting more effective public policies, reducing racism

and other barriers to equal opportunity, and building

a sense of community and common ground"

The letter of the President that year (page 8) was titled

"INCREASING THE PARTICIPATION OF THE LESS ADVANTAGED IN PUBLIC POLICY"

Here's the grant on page 21:

"ARAB AMERICAN ACTION NETWORK

Toward the salary of a community organizer in a new initiative to develop

leadership capacities of Arab youth and women on Chicago’s southwest side 40,000"

The grant in 2002, was similar:

"ARAB AMERICAN ACTION NETWORK

First installment of a two-year grant for a neighborhood-based community organizing project on Chicago’s southwest side targeted at developing the leadership capacity of Arab youth and women 35,000"

Page 30 of 2002 Annual Report

These annual grants were one of more than a hundred grants given each year and about 1% of the funds granted. Whether Obama sincerely scrutinized every individual in every organization involved in more than a hundred grants each year and should be personally responsible for the statements of what every speaker said at each organization's dinners and events, is, I think, a stretch. I also don't think Obama should be responsible for the content of all of the works of art of an art exhibit sponsored by the organization merely because he was on the board of directors of an institution that gave that organization a grant for community development.

Remember the grant was for the salary of a community organizer to develop leadership capacities of Arab youth in disadvantaged southwest Chicago. And unless you think that Arabs in America should never be eligible for grants, I'm not sure I see what the concern is.

I do see why a right-wing hit machine would want to hype this though.

And the argument is, because that organization was founded by a Palestinian Arab who has typical (and I would argue, wrong-headed) Palestinian Arab views, that Obama is a closet Palestinian terrorist sympathizer.

So what about Rashid Khalidi? Was he a member of the terrorist Palestinian Liberation Organization? Not directly, according to Israel. We know this because he served on the 1991 "guidance committee" at the Madrid Conference where Israel refused to negotiate with anyone directly associated with the terrorist organization but did negotiate with people "in communication with" the PLO.

In other words, Khalidi was considered non-violent and non-terrorist enough for Israel to sit down at a negotiating table with him. Israel has a strict policy of not negotiating with terrorists who deny its right to exist. Yet Israel sat down with Khalidi in 1991, ten years before the Woods Funds gave the organization Khalidi co-founded a grant to build the leadership skills of local disadvantaged Arab youth.

Let me be clear: I have no doubt that Khalidi sympathizes with a pro-Palestinian agenda and even apparently considers violence against Israeli soldiers "legitimate under international law"(although he has condemned violence against Israeli civilians). As I am strongly pro-Israel and support Israel's right to exist within secure boundaries free of violence, this concerns me. I'm reminded that Israel has only taken territory in defensive wars and that when it removes itself from occupation (as it did recently in Gaza), missiles rain down on innocent civilians in its borders. I am fully aware that Israel's security fence, checkpoints, and military occupation are necessities to protect its citizens from mass murder and that Israel will withdraw from the vast majority of the West Bank (as it did in Gaza) the instant it is granted a right to exist in peace.

In fact, I'm confident that Obama shares my pro-Israel views on this, as evidenced by his recent letter to our Ambassador to the United Nations on the situation in Gaza (emphasis mine):

January 22,2008 Dear Ambassador Khalilzad: I understand that today the U.N. Security Council met regarding the situationn in Gaza, and that a resolution or statement could be forthcoming from the Council in short order. I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution in this matter that does not fully condemn the rocket assault Hamas has been conducting on civilians in southern Israel for over two years. All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this. Gaza is governed by Hamas, which is a terrorist organization sworn to Israel's destruction, and Israeli civilians are being bombarded by rockets on an almost daily basis. That is unacceptable and Israel has a right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians. The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks against Israel, and should make clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against such actions. If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all. Sincerely. [signed] Barack Obama

United States Senator

Not that Obama agrees with every decision of the Israeli Government (nor do I), but I believe he understands that Israel, like all nations of the world, has the international legal right to self-defense against those actively bringing war to destroy it (such as Gaza under Hamas).

I think to hold Obama accountable for Khalidi's views is far-fetched. Obama sat on a board that gave one of more than a hundred grants for two years to an organization to pay for the salary of a community organizer "in a new initiative to develop leadership capacities of Arab youth and women on Chicago’s southwest side." That organization was founded by a man with typical, though reprehensible, Palestinian Arab views. (Actually, the more I read about Khalidi the more I would argue that his views are less reprehensible than many Arab intellectuals, many of whom DO advocate violence against innocent civilians. Thanks to klizard for pointing this out to me.)

Klein argues at World Net Daily that Khalidi once held a fundraiser for Obama and therefore Obama can be held accountable for his views. I think to link Obama with Khalidi is as much of a stretch as linking him with Farrakhan, as was discussed at the recent Obama/Clinton MSNBC debate. It's the imputing of another man's views to Obama by a quite tenuous connection to him. There is no evidence that Obama ever did anything to fund the "rejection of Israel's existence" or to declare Israel "racist."

Think of it this way. Let's say McCain was on the board of a charity that gave funds to hundreds of organizations. One organization was "toward the salary of a community organizer in a new initiative to develop leadership capacities of pro-life youth in Phoenix Arizona." Now let's say that that organization was run by the wife of a man at Operation Rescue, an organization that advocates bombing abortion clinics.

Should McCain then be considered a terrorist? Or unworthy of being President?