JTA on Khalidi

Here's a piece from the JTA on Khalidi and the PLO, with a pretty blunt deconstruction of the assertion that he was ever a "PLO spokesman.

Now, however, in the dying, damning days of an election campaign, we’ve somehow been DeLoreaned back to the 1980s and contact with the group has become radioactive, even though the Israeli government, with full Bush administration blessing, is scrambling to come to a peace agreement with Mahmoud Abbas, who is still the PLO’s leader....

What everyone acknowledges is that Khalidi was an adviser to the Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid talks. That delegation - to a person - could not have had any formal affiliation with the PLO. Israel regarded the group as terrorist and its laws banned contact with its members; then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir made NOT being affiliated with the PLO it a condition of Israel’s agreement to participate. The names of the Palestinian team would have been vetted by Israeli intelligence.

I like some of the comments, too, particularly (on the serious side)

The McCain campaign has now essentially condemned academic freedom (Khalidi’s research into his major interest, the history of Palestinian nationalism) and the inclusion of Americans (even if their parents were born somewhere else) into the mainstream of American politics, which includes, sometimes at least, discussions of American foreign policy towards the Middle East.

and (on the lighter)

Pallin’ around with University professors…small potatoes. Giving Palestinian “terrorists” $500K of your grant money…priceless.

Bottom line, though is this one (from Doctor Biobrain, so it's both):

This kind of thing always cracks me up. For as much as Obama’s critics always pretend there is some LOOOONG list of bad people Obama associates with, they always cite the same two or three people. And even those people aren’t nearly as controversial as his critics pretend they are.

Precisely.

(hat tip (TPM)