Senator helped fund organization that rejects 'racist' Israel's
existence



    JERUSALEM, Feb. 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The board of a nonprofit
organization on which Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside
a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab
group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and
supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses
and education to illegal aliens, according to Aaron Klein, Middle East
correspondent for WND.com.



    The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University
professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is
a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian
terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation
Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was
labeled by the State Department as a terror group.



    In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes
itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, 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.



    Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11,
2002, according to the Fund's website. According to tax filings, Obama
received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2001.



    Obama served on the Wood's Fund board alongside William C. Ayers, a
member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the
U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in
1971.



    Ayers, who still serves on the Woods Fund board, contributed $200 to
Obama's senatorial campaign fund and has served on panels with Obama at
numerous public speaking engagements. Ayers admitted to involvement in the
bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s. He is a professor at
the University of Illinois at Chicago.



    The AAAN in 2005 called a billboard opposing a North Carolina-New
Mexico joint initiative to deny driver's licenses to illegal aliens a
"bigoted attack on Arabs and Muslims."



    Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-Israel
line.



    The group co-sponsored a Palestinian art exhibit, titled, "The Subject
of Palestine," that featured works related to what some Palestinians call
the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948.



    Media Contact: M. Sliwa Public Relations, 973-272-2861 / 212-202-4453,
media@msliwa.com

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