FROM WND
E-mail addresses, phone numbers provided to ‘take urgent action’
JAFFA, Israel – A blog posting on Sen. Barack Obama’s official campaign site urges Americans to take action to secure the release of imprisoned terrorist fundraiser Sami Al-Arian, comparing the controversial former professor to Martin Luther King and
Malcolm X.
The posting is just a sampling of a large volume of racist, anti-Semitic and pro-Palestinian rhetoric published on the user-friendly MyObama community blog pages. The Obama campaign does not monitor all blog material, which is posted by registered users, but says it removes offending posts that are brought to the attention of the administrators.
In a blog post on Obama’s site titled, “We are all Palestinians,” user Ulf Erlingsson laments what he calls the “harsh” conditions of Al-Arian’s imprisonment – explaining he “lives in segregation … is not allowed any visitors and is given only two phone calls a month.”
The posting quotes Agha Saeed, chair of the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, comparing Al-Arian to King and Malcom X, who “symbolized the struggle for human rights in the fifties and sixties. Dr. Sami Al-Arian has come to symbolize the current struggle for human rights.”
Al-Arian is also labeled an “internationally recognized political prisoner.”
Obama’s site readers are called upon to “take urgent action. Just 3 phone calls and 1 E-mail to make a difference.”
The blog – first noticed this weekend by Little Green Footballs – goes on to list phone numbers or e-mails for Al-Arian’s jail, a civil liberties office at the Homeland Security Department and the attorney general handling the Al-Arian case. The posting gives specific instructions for what protestors should say when they call the various agencies.
The blog also links to a Free Al-Arian website for readers interested in learning more.
Al-Arian, a former university professor, was arrested in 2003 on multiple charges of funding terrorists, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization, which took credit for every suicide bombing in Israel since 2005. In 2006, Al-Arian accepted a plea bargain resulting in a conviction with conspiracy to aid Islamic Jihad.
Al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months in prison including time served. He was to serve the remainder of 19 months and then be deported, but he was held in contempt of court for refusing to testify in other related terrorism cases involving former associates. The contempt charges were overturned last year, but in March Al-Arian was subpoenaed to testify in front of another grand jury in a terrorist case, and he has so far refused.
The Al-Arian posting is joined by volumes of controversial rhetoric posted by registered users on Obama’s official campaign site. Some of the offending postings have been removed, while others still remain.
One recently removed posting claims Jews control the media:
“Jewish owners and managers of CNN, FOX NEWS, mainstream media and the press determine which person, which facts, which version of the facts, and which ideas shall reach the public,” read the blog.
Another post refered to Jews as “puppet masters” and “war criminals.”
Yet another posting, titled “The Israeli connection to 9/11,” claimed Israeli intelligence was involved in the mega-attack and planted “false flags” to blame Arab countries.
Other MyObama posts have warned of “Judeofacists and their Neocon comrades” who “already destroyed America … The entire Congress should be overthrown by revolution for having sold America to the Israelis.”
A popular topic on Obama’s site seems to be the so-called Israel Lobby.
An Obama site search under the key words “Israel lobby” brings up a large number of pages with titles such as “Bush uses Nazi history against Obama to pander to the Jewish lobby” and “The Israel Lobby: bad for the world.”
In one recently removed posting, titled, “How the Jewish Lobby works,” the page read, “No lobby is feared more” and claimed Jews “run the Federal Reserve Bank, US Homeland Security, and the US State Department.”
“If a politician does not play ball with the Jewish Lobby, he will not get elected, or re-elected, and he will either be smeared or ignored by the Jewish-owned major media,” read the posting.
Obama’s campaign did not return a WND e-mail request for comment before press time, but Obama spokesmen have previously stated the campaign cannot monitor all content but it promptly removes content brought to its attention that is deemed inappropriate or hateful.
A disclaimer on the MyObama blog section reads, “Content on blogs in My.BarackObama represents the opinions of community members and in no way should be interpreted as endorsed or approved by the campaign.”
Author Bill Levinson commented on the Israpundit blog, which documented some of the anti-Semitic postings: “The presence of these pages at BarackObama.com is entirely consistent with Obama’s toleration of hate mongers (Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright) and even his endorsement and solicitation of racists, anti-Semites, and/or Catholic-hating bigots (MoveOn.org, Al Sharpton, National Action Network).”
But the Patterico Pontific blog took a different tone in a recent posting, writing, “Assuming the content was posted by an Obama supporter…so what?
“Barack Obama attracts some anti-Semitic supporters. That’s hardly a surprise, nor is it obviously his fault. In my opinion, he’s been too cozy with supporters of the anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan. So criticize him for that. But the fact that he has anti-Semitic supporters, standing alone, says no more about him than the fact that there are white racists supporting John McCain.”
Del.icio.us : Al-Arian, Islam, News, Obama, Politics, Religion, Terrorist
Zooomr : Al-Arian, Islam, News, Obama, Politics, Religion, Terrorist
Technorati : Al-Arian, Islam, News, Obama, Politics, Religion, Terrorist
Flickr : Al-Arian, Islam, News, Obama, Politics, Religion, Terrorist
