Quick Takes: <i>News You May Have Missed</i>

Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

By: Aaron Klein

Published: December 2nd, 2009

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Van Jones, President Obama’s controversial former “green jobs” czar, serves on the advisory board of an independent environmental organization actively working with the White House, this column has learned.

Jones resigned in Septemberafter this reporter and Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck exposed that Jones founded a communist revolutionary organization and signed a statement that accused the Bush administration of possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

Jones is one of 20 advisers to the University of Colorado-based Presidential Climate Action Project, or PCAP, which draws up climate-policy recommendations for the White House and has been working with members of the Obama administration.

Last September the PCAP released a lengthy proposal to guide the environmental policies of the 44th U.S. president during his first 100 days in office, regardless of whether Obama or Sen. John McCain won the election.

William S. Becker, the PCAP’s executive director, confirmed in an e-mail to this reporter that his group is “about to propose a new and more assertive strategy for President Obama to raise the bar on the U.S. climate goal, with or without Congress.”

Becker said his group’s initial proposals have received a “very positive reception from the moment we delivered [the 100-day proposal] last November to John Podesta, co-chair of Obama’s transition team.”

“We continue to work with some colleagues inside the administration, as well as continuing to push for bold action from the outside,” he said.

Becker said the White House “adopted quite a few of our recommendations or variations of them.” He cited a few examples of the influence of the PCAP on Obama’s recent environmental initiatives.

New Obama Czar Serves On J Street Board

President Obama’s new anti-Semitism czar serves on the board of a controversial Israel-lobby group accused of working against the Jewish state.

Hannah Rosenthal, a former Health Department regional director under the Clinton administration, settled into her position last week as the State Department’s new special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. She previously headed the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella U.S. Jewish organization.

Rosenthal, however, serves on the board of J Street, a lobby group that is mostly led by left-leaning Israelis and receives funds from Arab and Muslim Americans. J Street supports talks with Hamas, a terrorist group whose charter seeks the destruction of Israel. The group also opposes sanctions against Iran and is harshly critical of Israeli offensive anti-terror military actions.

Even the Israeli government has been distancing itself from J Street, with its ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, refusing to attend its annual dinner in October. Israeli embassy spokesman Yoni Peled told the Jerusalem Post that his government has some “concern over certain [J Street] policies that could impair Israel’s interests.”

Rosenthal had also previously penned an opinion piece in The New York Jewish Week in which she claimed a mainstream Israel-solidarity rally in Washington, D.C., was being “dominated by narrow, ultraconservative views of what it means to be pro-Israel.”

The rally took place at the height of the Palestinian intifada, and included speakers Sen. Harry Reid, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Israeli minister Natan Sharansky. Reid called on “all who share our vision and hopes to continue to spread a message of peace: shalom, salaam, peace.”

The Weekly Standard, meanwhile, took note of quotes in which Rosenthal seemed to imply Israeli policies were to blame for anti-Semitism.

“I’ll tell you point-blank: I have two grown daughters, and I didn’t think that my kids were going to have to deal with some of the same anti-Semitism that I did as the daughter of Holocaust survivors,” Rosenthal said. “It’s a scary time, with people losing the ability to differentiate between a Jew, any Jew, and what’s going on in Israel.”

Party Crashers Tied To Khalidi

The Virginia husband and wife who allegedly crashed a White House state dinner are tied to Rashid Khalidi, a pro-Palestinian professor who excuses terrorism and has been a close associate to President Obama.

Michaele and Tareq Salahi met Obama in a receiving line at last week’s event, with a “deeply concerned and embarrassed” secret service stating it never checked whether the two were on the White House guest list.

Tareq Salahi served on the board of the American Task Force for Palestine, where Columbia University Professor Khalidi served as vice president. The American Power blognoticed both Salahi’s and Khalidi’s names have been scrubbed from the Task Force website, although Salahi’s bio still comes up on a Google cache search of the site.

Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel. He 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 labeled by the State Department as a terror group.

Khalidi in 2000 held what was described as a successful fundraiser for Obama’s failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Obama also sat on the board of the Woods Fund, which in 2001 provided a $40,000 grant to Mona Khalidi’s Arab American Action Network. The fund provided a second grant to the network for $35,000 in 2002. Obama sat on the board with Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers.

In 2003, Obama delivered an in-person testimonial for Khalidi, who at the time was departing the University of Chicago for a new teaching position at Columbia University in New York. At the 2003 event, poetry reportedly was read comparing Israelis to Osama bin Laden and accusing the Jewish state of terrorism.

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.com. He appears throughout the week on leading U.S. radio programs and is the author of the book “The Late Great State of Israel.” Follow Klein on Twitter under the name “AaronKleinWND.”

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About the Author: Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m (CHANGE TO 7-9 p.m.). His website is KleinOnline.com

Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

New Obama Czar Serves On J Street Board

Party Crashers Tied To Khalidi

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