The V24 undercover reporters interviewed Professor Rashid Khalidi, who served as a director for the PLO press agency during the 1980s under Yasser Arafat. He currently holds the position of the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, where he is known for his notorious pro-Palestinian views, which some consider extreme.
Barack Obama’s former church, where he attended for 20 years, has expressed support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Additionally, Obama has had a longstanding close relationship and financial ties with Rashid Khalidi, who is suspected of having ties to the PLO and is known for his anti-Israel sentiments.
Barack Obama directed thousands of dollars in cash to Rashid Khalidi’s anti-Israel Foundation during his tenure on the Woods Fund board.
During the undercover investigation, Professor Khalidi expressed his unwavering support for the Palestinian cause. He also expressed enthusiasm about seeing young Jews siding with the Palestinians amidst the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel.
VIDEO AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE!
Khalidi also commented that the campus Jewish Anti-Semitic task force was comprised of individuals he described as bigots, fanatics, right-wingers, and extremists.
He believes that it will be a long process for the country to distance itself from Israel, but he acknowledges a surprising shift happening today that he never expected.
Rashid Khalidi: It’s not just we’re living in New York City, which is the largest Jewish city in the world. It’s the place where Zionism got a huge lift with the Biltmore Program in 1942. It’s a city where there are very politicized elements of the Jewish community, very supportive of Israel. You go out to the south and the west of this country, and you have people who are even more fanatical of Israel, who are evangelical..
…Here, people will have maybe gone there (Israel) for their bar mitzvah or gone there on birthright or have a family there. There’s actually a physical human connection. So, they feel for Israel in ways, including people who are conflicted or who are pro-Palestinians. They still have a connection to Israel, a personal connection to Israel.
I have many students like that. They’re anti-zionist or they’re non-zionist, or they’re critical of Israel, and they’re very sympathetic… There is a strand of Christianity that really believes that the coming of the Messiah can only happen with the return of the Jewish people, the one in Israel, after which there will be rapture and whoever doesn’t make it out by Christ will be burned in hell, including the Jews.
But that’s their belief. It’s a very strongly held belief. It’s been around for more than 150 years. It started in England and spread to here as a specific reading of the- St. John the Divine, the last book of the New Testament. And that’s going to be an issue, I think, much longer than this division among the Jewish community.
I think that’s going to shift things in a better direction over time as older people get away and younger people. I mean, there are many, many families, Jewish families that are divided on a generational basis.
It’ll take a little time. You got to have some patience. It’s tough. It’s tough. I’ve been at this for a great long time. It looks very good to me in the sense that I’ve seen a shift that I never expected. It’s very bad because that has caused a backlash, which is what we are all feeling now. And in that moment of backlash, you just feel despair.
You read the papers, and you watch the politicians, and you see what’s happening on campus, and you see all this stuff coming now. But that’s mainly because things are changing in a positive direction. They’re so hysterical.
They’re like the little boy putting his finger in the dyke, trying to make the sea go back, whatever. I think that change is slowly coming. I mean, look at things like these unions. It has not been reported in the mainstream media, but three of the biggest unions in the United States are calling for a ceasefire.
United Auto Workers, the Nurses Union, and the Postal Workers Union, which represent, if you think about it, a lot of ordinary working class, diverse Americans all over the country. Well, those guys have taken a position against… They’re all Democrat, aligned with Democratic Party.
They’ve taken a position against the President. And that means that their base has seen things that the Israel lobby doesn’t want them to see. And that’s a sign of the times.
The black pastors put a full-page ad in The New York Times, calling for a ceasefire, five weeks ago, six weeks ago, when Israel and the Biden demonstration were and still are dead set against it. Again, that’s a sign of the times. You listen to The New York Times and you think, well, right-thinking people are against anti-Semitism and any support for the Palestinians is blah-blah-blah genocidal.
So there’s a lot of change happening at the grassroots, and it’s going to be fought. They fight back. Protests at Columbia University over the crisis in the Middle East.
WATCH:
There is a strand of evangelicals which really believe in the coming of the Messiah, it can only happen with the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, after which there will be rapture and whoever doesn't accept Christ will be burned in hell, including the Jews,"… pic.twitter.com/RouGvbxRmb
— V24_Investigations (@V24Investigates) April 15, 2024
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