Sing a battle song (in the struggle against Israel)

Occasional TIWIT contributor, "Spectre," has been occupying himself these long autumn evenings with the screeds of unrepentant terrorist William Ayers and his wife and comrade Bernadine Dorhn.

He writes:

I was in interested to see whether the forwards written by Ayers and Dohrn [to the books Prairie Fire and Sing a Battle Song] expressed any regret or remorse for their activities in the sixties.  They did not.  As a matter of fact, aside from expressing remorse only on the "bombast" contained in the earlier books, they reiterate their communist beliefs and add a new hero of the revolution to their repertoire: Rashid Khalidi.

In Prairie Fire, the dedications page lists many "victims" of imperialism.  One of those freedom fighters is Sirhan Sirhan. Sirhan, as you no doubt recall, assassinated Bobby Kennedy. What you may not recall is that Sirhan was a Palestinian who was upset with Bobby Kennedy's support of Israel. The new reprint, Sing a Battle Song, acknowledges those dedications, and surprisingly adds that "political prisoners and prisoners of conscience," like Sirhan Sirhan, who they also glowingly refer to as "committed activists," remain "unconscionably" jailed today.

Download Prairie Fire dedications (.pdf)

I did not recognize many of the names, but a Google search on a couple of them confirms that revealed them to be murderers, kidnappers. etc,, lionized by Ayers and Dohrn.  Capital crimes are apparently excused if committed for the right cause -- the epitome of the end justifying the means.
 
The truly frightening thing is that Ayers and Dohrn are perhaps the major exposure Obama has had to those outside his own race. These people -- who decry the "institutional racism" ingrained in the US, rail against "white supremacy" and bash Jews every chance they get -- represent Obama's view of white and Jewish America. Think about it. With whom has Obama associated during his life? Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party. His white grandfather, who was friends with Davis and was, at least, sympathetic to communism. William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Jeremiah Wright. Father Phleger. Rashid Khalidi. The New Party.
 
Ayers influence on Obama is obvious: Obama believes the Palestinians have legitimate grievances. Obama and his advisors believe, as Ayers does, that Israel is an oppressive aggressor.

Here's a choice passage from Prairie Fire (p. 126) that Spectre sent along to me:

Zionist colonialism has cultivated a worldwide image as the besieged victim, the heroic victim holding off the barbarians, a semi-socialist state where strong and free sabras made the desert bloom, the refuge and guarantee against anti-Semitism. The reality is very different:

• The Zionist state is clearly the aggressor, the source of violence and war in the Mideast, the occupier of stolen lands…. It is racist and expansionist -- the enemy of the Palestinians, the Arab people, and the Jewish people.
• Israeli society internally reflects this imperialist reality; militarized, commercial and competitive.
• The myth of the kibbutz is a powerful one, but the kibbutzim never contained more than 5% of the Jewish population of Palestine or Israel, and are no evidence for Israel being a socialist country. Many of the kibbutzim are on land which Palestinian peasants were driven from, some directly exploit Palestinian labor. And they are all subsidized by Zionist funds.
• Zionism does not represent Jews. It is a racist ideology based on a claim that “God” chose a people superior to others. It has been consistently used as an alternative to class struggle and socialism for Jews, undermining Jewish progressive and working-class traditions.
• There is no basis for a claim that Zionism is a bulwark against anti-Semitism.

This line of thinking may help explain why Jesse Jackson recently said that the biggest change to expect from an Obama foreign policy would be to end "decades of putting Israel's interests first."

According to this article by between New York Post columnist Amir Taheri:

Jackson believes that, although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they'll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.

"Obama is about change," Jackson told me in a wide-ranging conversation. "And the change that Obama promises is not limited to what we do in America itself. It is a change of the way America looks at the world and its place in it."

Were the Los Angeles Times to release its videotape of Obama at the Rashid Khalidi dinner, we might know how much of Khalidi's anti-Israel worldview he shares.

But, the Times tells us, don't hold your breath.