Last week, the McCain campaign pointed to a story in The Los Angeles Times describing a going-away party in Chicago for Khalidi that Obama attended. The campaign insinuated that Obama is somehow connected to Islamic terrorism.

However, with McCain as chairman, IRI gave an organization headed by Khalidi several grants during the 1990s, including one grant in 1998 worth nearly $500,000.

Today, Harper’s magazine reports that R. Bruce McColm, who served as president of IRI from 1993 to 1995, said that McCain was personally involved in the allocation of the grants and never expressed any concern about Khalidi’s reputed radical tendencies.

Rashid Khalidi was well known for his criticism of Yasir Arafat. He never was a spokesman for the PLO and was a professor at the Institute for Palestine Studies and a professor at American University in Beirut. He was the founder of the Center for Palestine Research and Studies. … The Clinton administration wanted the various NED-related institutes to begin working on the West Bank. All our proposals had to be approved at board meetings with John McCain in attendance and in agreement. John did think highly of these grants[...]

Over time, the center conducted over 30 polls for the IRI. My understanding was that grants extended far beyond my tenure to l998. It was always my understanding that Khalidi was directly involved in the research. We were impressed by the initial polls and analysis. So obviously IRI continued to believe in their work after I left. Ironically, it was Khalidi’s academic background and his known coolness to the PLO that attracted our interest. How strange to see the McCain campaign use Khalidi as a “type of terrorist” with whom Obama hangs around.

No word yet from the McCain campaign as to whether it intends to apologize for smearing Khalidi to score cheap political points.

(Via ABC’s Jake Tapper)

Eric Alterman and Adam Serwer make good points about the McCarthyism at work when a noted Palestinian scholar is smeared as a “neo-Nazi.” (Adam: “In fact, if you are Palestinian, I would suggest that you stay away from other Palestinians so no one thinks that you’re doing something suspicious. Don’t bunch up in a group or anything.”) But there’s something else worth adding. In short, the assimilation of Muslims into American society should be properly seen as a national-security issue.

Perhaps the biggest strategic disadvantage Al Qaeda faces in attacking the U.S. “homeland” (how I hate that word) is that the terrorist movement doesn’t, by and large, have any appeal for American Muslims. Al Qaeda gets a more robust hearing in European countries with Muslim diasporas and where Muslims are treated like second-class citizens. That sense of discrimination and alienation is a breeding ground for murderers like Mohammed Siddique Khan, the Leeds-born mastermind of the July 2005 London Underground attacks. The U.S., by contrast, provides the greatest measure of integration and economic opportunity for Muslims of any Western country.

And that’s where Khalidi comes in. He is a distinguished scholar who is not, and has never been, an extremist. His views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as John Judis points out, are fairly congruent with those of the Israeli left. McCain is analogizing him to a “neo-Nazi” because Khalidi is an Arab, and he knows that millions of right-wingers around the country harbor racist beliefs about Arabs. That’s the real meaning of the “Vote McCain, Not Hussein” chants. And America goes there at its own peril: to alienate American Muslims is not only to betray American values, it’s to deprive America of one of its most important national-security protections. And these people have the nerve to say they’ll keep America safe?

In April, The Los Angeles Times published a story that included a description of a videotape of a 2003 party for Khalidi as he was preparing to leave his job at the University of Chicago for his current gig at Columbia University. Obama, then an Illinois state senator, was at the party and gave a moderate speech about bringing opposing sides together, according to the Times.

In an interview this morning with Radio Mambi, a popular Spanish-language radio station in South Florida, McCain apparently seized on a 2005 New York Sun report alleging that former Weatherman and fellow Chicagoan William Ayers was also at the party.  This was not reported in The Times story.

McCain also claimed that Khalidi was a spokesman for Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, a charge Khalidi has denied. McCain joined other conservatives in calling on the Times to release the video.

However, the newspaper says the videotape was shared on the condition that it not be released. To release it would signal to all future potential sources that The Los Angeles Times will give them up at the first sign of pressure.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin happily jumped on the bandwagon today, referring to The Times as the Obama campaign’s “pet newspaper.” (No word yet on how The New York Times is taking this news.)

The whole thing is clearly a distraction. If McCain is really concerned about Khalidi, he should explain why the International Republican Institute, which McCain chaired at the time, gave an organization headed by Khalidi a grant of nearly $500,000 in 1998.

But the convergence of Obama, Ayers and someone with an Arabic name is a perfect bundle for McCain, particularly in South Florida — home to lots and lots of Jews. People weren’t really buying the Ayers-Obama tie, but with Khalidi in the mix, the new implication is: Obama is connected to Ayers, a former domestic terrorist; both are connected to a Muslim who reputedly was connected to the PLO, which was viewed by Israel as a terrorist organization. Ergo, Obama is connected to Islamic terrorism. Throwing a representative of the elite liberal media into the narrative doesn’t hurt either.

However, if McCain really wants people to believe that Obama has connections to terrorism, he should stop pussy-footing around the issue and come out and say it –  so the American people can judge the merits of the claim openly and honestly.