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Was Rashid Khalidi a PLO Spokesman?

Barack Obama's friend Rashid Khalidi, whose 2003 party may have involved some anti-Israel rhetoric, claims that he was never a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization.

But here's a good piece on that question (and a response to the other side). As background, Thomas Friedman, the NYT columnist, referred to Khalidi in 1982 as "a director at the Palestinian Press Agency, Wafa."

Now if someone misidentified me on the pages of the New York Times ? Tom Friedman, no less ? I'm sure I would be aware of it. So would you. Yet Khalidi did not seek a correction of Friedman's characterization at the time, although the Times regularly issues corrections of such mistakes, and presumably would have done the same for Khalidi.

...

Nor is there any reason to be certain that Tom Friedman erred in identifying Khalidi as he did ? certainly not because Khalidi claimed so twenty years later. I've been interviewed many times by journalists, and standard operating procedure . . . is to end by asking the interviewee how he or she wants to be identified. My personal inclination is to believe that Friedman is too professional not to have asked Khalidi, or to have called Khalidi "a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa" out of the blue.

Good args. And being a PLO spokeperson in 1982 is a *much* different job than it would be today; the PLO was a full-blown terrorist organization then, dedicated to "armed struggle" against Israel. and Arafat had been in exile for many years in 1982.

Add Khalidi to the growing list of Obama's questionable Obama affiliates. Khalidi, Rezko, Ayers, Dohrn, and of course Wright.

Full post as published by Expressio Unius on November 01, 2008 (boomark / email).