taken from shadow's bulletin
The attacks on Rashid Khalidi deserve widespread condemnation. I noted with disgust that Sarah Palin wasn't even able to pronounce his name correctly when she attacked Barack Obama for having known him. I doubt she could even identify Gaza on a map. Such ignorance would be worthy of contempt in someone running for mayor of a city of more than 50,000 people anywhere in America. It's unbelievable in someone who is running to be the next in line PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.


Rachid Khalidi is a FUCKING born in NY, American citizen. A mild-mannered historian, well respected by his peers, a leader in scholarship on the Middle East, who teaches in one of America's most prestigious universities. The main front of the McCain campaign's attack is that he was active in the peace process. The McCain campaign, because he has an Arab name, are raising the spectre of terrorism and Al Qaeda. The opposite is true of Khalidi. If anything he is very moderate. I find all of his statements on politics that I have read to be very restrained and very much in the mold of the Anglo-American point of view on a two-state solution.


This virulent racism and xenophobia directed towards anyone of Arab, or Middle Eastern in origin, or who is of the Muslim faith, it's just unbelievably disgusting to me. It isn't right when it is directed at any other group of people and it isn't right now. And the McCain campaign's openly exploiting the fact that people are too ignorant to distinguish between 99% of the world's 1 billion Muslims and the various people of Middle Eastern origin and fundamentalist terrorists... they deserve to lose and to be held up to future generations as creating one of the most openly racist election campaigns in American history.