Middle East studies in the News

Panic in Obama Camp over Jewish Vote [incl. Rashid Khalidi]

by Thomas Lifson
The American Thinker
October 20, 2008

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/panic_in_obama_camp_over_jewis.html

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/5889

In a clear sign of desperation, the Obama campaign has called a halt to all debates before Jewish groups with representatives of the Republican Jewish Coalition. The Jewish Journal reports:

Barack Obama's campaign has decided advisers and representatives of the Democratic nominee for president will no longer debate officials from the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).

This prohibition led Wednesday to the canceling of a debate scheduled for Sunday at Valley Cities Jewish Community Center in Van Nuys organized by the Council of Israeli Community in Los Angeles. Larry Greenfield, California director of the RJC, said he still plans to show up. His counterpart, former Rep. Mel Levine, who is a Middle East adviser for Obama, will not participate in what would have been his fourth debate with Greenfield.

The Jewish intellectual tradition is built upon the foundation of vigorous disputation as the path to the truth. It would appear that with so many awkward questions about Obama's friendship with Rashid Khalidi, his 20 years in Reverend Wright's church, and his many anti-Israel foreign policy advisors, the Obama campaign is unable to withstand sustained scrutiny.

The website Mere Rhetoric comments:

The Obama campaign is saying that they won't debate because of the RJC's "continual dishonesty." Which would already be incoherent if the RJC was actually being dishonest - in democracies, debates are exactly how we settle these things. But it's an especially disingenuous move given how the RJC's accusations are demonstrably true.

So far as we know, this ban does not affect the two debates in South Florida this week scheduled between American Thinker's Richard Baehr and Ira Foreman of the National Jewish Democratic Committee

Thursday, Oct. 23, 7:30 am- 9 am at the Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee blvd. West Palm Beach, Florida

Topic: What's a Jew to do?

Thursday, Oct. 23, 7:30 pm, Temple Sinai, 18801 N.E. 22nd Avenue, North Miami Beach, Florida -- town hall meeting

You do not have to be Jewish to attend either event, or a member of the Temple Sinai congregation to attend event in the evening.

Note: Articles listed under "Middle East studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique.

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