HOW BARACK OBAMA LEARNED TO LOVE ISRAEL

[They are both now gone, but one of the familiar sights a decade or so back that one would see on street corners near Columbia were the engaged conversations of Sidney Mortgenbesser and Edward Said (pictured with Obama at the website below). Sidney was a very dear friend and mentor during my graduate student days and Said was a passionately honest advocate for Palestinian rights, who first alerted me to the fact that there is more than one narrative to be told over there. Incidentally, Robert Fisk is in NYC and speaking tonight, was interviewed last night by Laura Flanders on Radio Nation (Air America) :

http://www.lauraflanders.com/pages/radionation.html

Fisk has a new book out: http://www.robert-fisk.com/home_page.htm

The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. As a journalist who has lived there (Beirut based) for nearly 3 decades, he has ominous cautions for us to consider.

Ed Kent]

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UPDATE FROM THE
ELECTRONIC INTIFADA

http://electronicIntifada.net
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Opinion/Editorial:
HOW BARACK OBAMA LEARNED TO LOVE ISRAEL
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 4 March 2007

On March 2, Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack
Obama gave a speech that proved that when it came to
supporting Israel he is "as strong as Clinton, as
supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani" in the words
of one Israeli journalist. Obama blamed Palestinians for
the failure of peace efforts and uttered no criticism of
Israeli policies. Yet once upon a time Obama supported
Palestinian rights and an even-handed US approach to
solving the conflict. EI co-founder Ali Abunimah who has
met the candidate half a dozen times over a decade
analyzes the speech and traces Obama's path into the
hardline pro-Israel camp.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6619.shtml
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