Has Obama Lied About His Support of Israel All Along?

“LOOK AT MY DEEDS”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Sep. 13, 2015) —During his July 2008 campaign tour of the Middle East, Barack Hussein Obama said that “Israelis could be certain of his commitment to Israel’s security by looking at ‘my deeds.'”

Upon his unannounced visit to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, Obama placed a note, later made public, referencing himself in every paragraph.  “Protect my family and me,” was his first prayer request.  There was no mention of a desire for peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians.

Despite Obama’s gesture, not everyone there at the time believed that he had Israel’s best interests at heart.

However, news reports quoted Obama as vowing to “bring the two sides together ‘starting from the minute I’m sworn into office.'”

An Associated Press article stated that the then-presidential candidate lied about having been a member of the Senate Banking Committee, which had passed a bill “to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon,” in Obama’s words.

“Obama does not serve on the banking committee,” reported AP Special Correspondent David Espo on July 24, 2008.

Just prior to the 2008 presidential election, The Los Angeles Times reported on video footage it had been provided by an unnamed source “on the condition that it not be shown to anyone else.”  The video reportedly depicts Obama at a farewell dinner for Rashid Khalidi, who was departing his teaching position at the University of Chicago for Columbia University, where he is now Professor of Modern Arab Studies.

Khalidi’s position is named after former Columbia professor Edward Said, with whom the Obamas are pictured having dinner in 1998 in an article at the Electronic Intifada website, referenced in an article published on March 23, 2008 by Israel National News.

Khalidi has written books entitled, “Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. has Undermined Peace in the Middle East,” PLO Decision-Making During the 1982 War,” and “The Origins of Arab Nationalism.”

Said’s last major speech, given at the University of California at Berkeley in 2003, the year he passed away, can be read here.

In an October 29, 2008 article about the video which The Los Angeles Times refused to air, The New York Times reported that “The video shows a gathering in Chicago for Rashid Khalidi, a teacher, writer and Obama friend who is critical of Israel. Mr. Obama spoke at the dinner, where other speakers likened Israel and Israelis to terrorists.”

The New York Times quoted The Los Angeles Times as having stated that Obama’s address at the farewell dinner indicated that he had hosted Khalidi at “dinners at his home.”

In an April 2008 article about the farewell dinner, The Los Angeles Times described Khalidi as “an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights.”

Of Obama’s remarks that evening, the newspaper wrote:

A special tribute came from Khalidi’s friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi’s wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It’s for that reason that I’m hoping 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.”

The paper then reported that Obama’s conversations with his “Palestinian American friend,” Khalidi, “have ended” in the wake of his quest for the presidency.

However, The Times described a “warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor’s going-away party” which “have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.”

“Their belief is not drawn from Obama’s speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed,” The Times continued.

Khalidi and his wife, Mona, founded the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), whose mission is to “strengthen the Arab community in the Chicago area by building its capacity to be an active agent for positive social change. As a grassroots nonprofit, our strategies include community organizing, advocacy, education, providing social services, leadership development, cultural outreach and forging productive relationships with other communities.”

The AAAN Arab Women’s Committee has hosted an attorney “with expertise in Islamic law” as a guest speaker on the topic of “marriage and divorce.”

Khalidi is also editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and founder of the Center for Palestine Research and Studies.

Four weeks after Obama announced his candidacy, editorial writer Nicholas D. Kristof said of him, “He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics — and more likely to be aware of their nationalism — if he once studied the Koran with them.”

Kristof later wrote that “the bare-faced lies about Obama — that he is a secret Muslim, that he was born in Kenya, that he took the oath of office on a Koran — to be ferocious abuses of the political process.”

In its March 23, 2008 article, Israel National News reported that “anti-Israel activist” Ali Abunimah wrote at Electronic Intifada:

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.

‘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!'”

The EI’s headline on Friday read “EU-US trade deal mustn’t stifle calls for Israel boycott, say unions.”

Ali Abunimah is mentioned in 2,878 postings at EI as of this writing, and a search reveals that he is a co-founder of the website. He has expressed disappointment in and criticism of Obama for allegedly supporting Israel politically since occupying the White House.

Abunimah is a frequent guest on the Democracy Now! radio show and has appeared on Chris Matthews’ “Hardball” on MSNBC and mainstream radio stations in New York, Chicago and Pittsburgh.

On June 4, 2009, Obama spoke at the University of Cairo, telling his audience, “I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

Obama has extolled the alleged qualities of Islam since his occupation of the White House.  “I am one of them,” he said of those who have had relatives of the Islamic faith.  Obama’s reported father and stepfather were both Muslims, and Obama claims he lived in Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country, between the ages of 6 and 10.

In 1990, the Associated Press reported that Obama was taken to Indonesia by his mother at the age of two and attended schools there “through the fifth grade.”

Obama has met at least twice with the president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which believes in “uniting refugee families.”  On Thursday, the White House announced that the U.S. will accept in the coming fiscal year approximately 10,000 Syrian refugees who have fled their country as a result of the Syrian civil war brought about by the 2011 Arab Spring, a five-fold increase over previous years.

The Iranian nuclear agreement announced on July 14 does not preclude Iran from enriching uranium, a key fear of Israel and its surrounding countries.  As Obama has concurrently each year directly addressed the Iranian people, calling for greater freedoms in their daily lives, that nation has continued to publicly execute women for attempting to defend themselves, torture captives while they are imprisoned, and shoot protesters of the regime dead in the streets.

In his 2012 address to the Iranians, Obama decried the Iranian government’s  creation of a “Cyber Army” to collect the personal information of internet users.

Some have suggested that Obama has done the same in the U.S. to counter any dissent or questions about his eligibility and background.

Iran continues to call for “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”

Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have experienced strained relations, particularly earlier this year when Netanyahu announced that he would address the U.S. Congress over the looming Iranian nuclear “deal.”  Just after Netanyahu’s re-election, which former Obama campaign operatives sought to derail, an Israeli news source reported, “Israeli officials in Jerusalem said on Wednesday that the Obama Administration is acting in a manner that is more hostile to Israel than European governments.”

Of that development, former PLO operative Walid Shoebat commented, “Obama is hostile towards Israel but not towards Iran. This shows what agenda Obama has, and what side he is on.”

Some in the Arab world believe that Obama has been disingenuous toward the Palestinians and Muslims in general.

In March 2010, during discussions with Netanyahu about Israeli settlement expansion in eastern Jerusalem, Obama reportedly stormed out in anger, leaving Netanyahu and his aides alone in a scene described by Fox News as “awful” by an unnamed congressman.

In 2007, Obama scoffed at Hillary Clinton and others who voted in favor of a resolution naming Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. On Friday, Fox News announced that the al-Quds Force, a division of the Revolutionary Guard said to be “exporting terrorism,” entered into a secret pact for an increased Russian presence in Syria shortly after the Iran nuclear deal’s framework was negotiated.

According to Fox News, a unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has been working with the National Security Agency (NSA) to determine the source of chemical-weapons attacks in Syria two years ago.

In April, The New York Times reported that “simmering tensions” between Obama and Netanyahu over the Iranian agreement prevented Obama from visiting the Israeli Prime Minister but prompted him to become “engaged in an aggressive effort to assuage the concerns of American Jewish groups and pro-Israel members of Congress over the nuclear agreement with Iran, and to limit the potential political fallout for Democrats of what has become a bitter rift in the American and Israeli relationship.”

A former ambassador to the U.S. from Israel, Michael Oren, has been excoriated by a writer at The Huffington Post for claiming in his new book, Ally, that Obama “abandoned Israel.”  American-born, Oren served as Israeli ambassador to Washington between 2009 and 2013.

On June 16, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that in the book, Oren “claims antagonism towards Benjamin Netanyahu akin to historic hatred of Jews” on the part of the Obama regime.

On Jun 17, HuffPo columnist Alan Elsner wrote, “Israel seems blind to the fact that its problem is not poor PR or biased reporters or ‘self-hating Jews’ or a ‘hostile’ President of the United States. The problem lies with the policies of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history — a government that wants to continue to build settlements, maintain and deepen the occupation and has no serious plan or intention to make peace with the Palestinians.”

Major media reviews of Oren’s memoir include The New York Times’s description as “illuminating” and the term “provocative” by Newsweek.

In 2011, after receiving complaints and even threats from Muslim groups, the Obama regime agreed to review and later revise intelligence and military training manuals, eliminating terms and phrases the groups found to be objectionable or which the FBI deemed “stereotypical.”

On Friday, Reuters reported that the White House was attempting to arrange a meeting with Netanyahu in November after the Iranian negotiations had “driven an already rocky relationship between the Obama and Netanyahu governments to a new low.”

Iran is a supporter of the terrorist group Hezbollah, which has described Israel as a “Zionist enemy.”  Upon his election to the Iranian presidency, Hassan Rouhani “sent messages to Syrian President Bashar Assad and Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, reaffirming support for the two allies.”

On Sunday, an AP report from Jerusalem began, “Seeking to sell his nuclear deal with Iran to a skeptical Israeli public, President Barack Obama has repeatedly declared his deep affection for the Jewish state. But the feelings do not appear to be mutual.”