Topic: WorldNetDaily
Among the numerous guilt-by-association attacks WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein has hurled at Barack Obama was that Obama served on the board of a charitable organization that "granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform." That group was headed by "Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi."
Apparently, Khalidi is not as extreme as Klein made him out to be. From an Aug. 3 Newsmax article by Ken Timmerman:
Since 2004, The State Department has provided $340,000 in taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), co-chaired by Columbia University professor Rashid Khalili [sic], who served as a spokesman for late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat at a time when the PLO was still considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.
While both Klein and Timmerman made an attempt to play up Kahlidi's purported extremist views -- and Klein never mentioned Khalidi's State Department funding at all -- neither offered any evidence that the money given to his organizations by either the Obama-linked group or the State Department was used for any extremist causes.
Further, Timmerman's article -- which specifically calls out former Bush adviser Karen Hughes as awarding money to "radical Islamist organizations," pretty surprising from the pro-GOP Newsmax -- cites Steven Emerson as the source of its allegations; Timmerman describes Emerson as a "respected terrorism expert." Er, not so much.
