McCain's Ties to McCain Identified "PLO Spokesman"

    

Sen. John McCain chaired an organization that granted substantial funding to a Palestinian research group co-chaired by Mideast professor Rashid Khalidi, a harsh critic of Israel and apologist for Palestinian terror.

The report – first carried by the Huffington Post website – comes amid harsh criticism from McCain's campaign of Sen. Barack Obama
for his personal and financial ties to Khalidi.

The website documented how in the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several documented grants, including one worth about half a million dollars, to the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, or CPRS, a West Bank organization associated with Khalidi.

Unreported by the Huffington Post is that the CPRS, with which Khalidi was for a time moderately involved, is pro-Western and can be characterized as pro-Israel.

Its work has been condemned by the Palestinian leadership and by local terror groups as "Zionist propaganda."

In contrast, the Khalidi organization Obama helped fund as a board member for a nonprofit, alongside domestic terrorist William Ayers, has taken a flagrantly anti-Israel line. Khalidi's Arab American Action Network has hosted scores of Israel-bashing events, including at least one reportedly attended by Obama.     

A 1998 tax filing published by the Huffington Post found the McCain-led IRI group granted $448,873 to the CPRS. Also in 1993, seven months after McCain became IRI's chairman, his group funded several extensive CPRS studies, including over 30 public opinion polls and a study of "sociopolitical attitudes."

The CPRS, which bills itself as an independent Palestinian think tank, was founded in 1993 by seven Palestinian activists
, including Khalidi and Khalil Shakaki, who for a time was a visiting professor at several U.S. universities. Khalidi several years later terminated his involvement with the organization while Shakaki became CPRS chairman.

The group has conducted scores of polls that drew the ire of the Palestinian leadership, including in 1993 when it was tasked by McCain's group. One 1993 poll reviewed by WND showed most Palestinians were not fully confident in the fairness of elections that then-PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat had pledged to hold.

Another 1993 survey found most Palestinians wanted independent Arafat opposition groups to have more ability to freely express themselves. A number of other polls showed the Palestinians were unhappy with their leaders.

A particularly dramatic recent poll that contradicted years of Palestinian claims showed the vast majority of Arabs living in so-called refugee camps would accept compensation instead of "returning" to Israel.

This issue is particularly visceral since the Khalidi organization funded by Obama's nonprofit took the opposition position.

While Obama served on the Woods Fund with Ayers, the group in 2001 provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, for which Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.