156 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized BiographyThe $40,000 grant from Obama’s Woods Fund to the AAAN constituted about a fifth of the
Arab group’s reported grants for 2001, according to tax filings obtained by WND. The $35,000
Woods Fund grant in 2002 also constituted about one-fifth of AAAN’s reported grants for that
year. The AAAN, headquartered in the heart of Chicago’s Palestinian immigrant community,
describes itself as working to “empower Chicago-area Arab immigrants and Arab Americans
through the combined strategies of community organizing, advocacy, education and social
services, leadership development, and forging productive relationships with other
communities.” It reportedly has worked on projects with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant
and Refugee Rights, which supports open borders and education for illegal aliens. AAAN co-
founder Rashid Khalidi was reportedly a director of the official PLO press agency WAFA in
Beirut from 1976 to 1982....
Khalidi’s wife, AAAN President Mona Khalidi, was reportedly WAFA’s English translator
during that period. Rashid Khalidi at times has denied working directly for the PLO but
Palestinian diplomatic sources in Ramallah told WND he indeed directed WAFA. Khalidi also
advised the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference in 1991...
While the Woods Fund’s contribution to Khalidi’s AAAN might be perceived as a one-time run
with Obama, the presidential hopeful and Khalidi evidence a deeper relationship. According to
a professor at the University of Chicago who said he has known Obama for 12 years, the
Democratic presidential hopeful first befriended Khalidi when the two worked together at the
university. The professor spoke on condition of anonymity. Khalidi lectured at the University of
Chicago until 2003 while Obama taught law there from 1993 until his election to the Senate in- 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, a fact not denied by Khalidi. Speaking in a
joint interview with WND and the John Batchelor Show of New York’s WABC Radio and Los
Angeles’ KFI Radio, Khalidi was asked about his 2000 fundraiser for Obama. “I was just doing
my duties as a Chicago resident to help my local politician,” Khalidi stated. Khalidi said he
supports Obama for president “because he is the only candidate who has expressed sympathy
for the Palestinian cause.” Asked about Obama’s role funding the AAAN, Khalidi claimed he
had “never heard of the Woods Fund until it popped up on a bunch of blogs a few months ago.”
He terminated the call when petitioned further about his links with Obama. Contacted by phone,
Mona Khalidi refused to answer WND’s questions about the AAAN’s involvement with
Obama. (Aaron Klein, “Obama worked with terrorist; Senator helped fund organization that
rejects ‘racist’ Israel’s existence,” WorldNetDaily, February 24, 2008)
OBAMA AND THE CHICAGO ARAB UNDERWORLD: ATA “THE RAT”
In addition to such figures as Khalidi, Obama also came into contact with the gangsters, grafters,
hoodlums, and other sociopaths who populate the wormy underside of the Chicago Arab
community. We will talk in a coming chapter about the Syrian-Levantine Antoin Rezko, his fellow
Levantine Nadhi Auchi, and the renegade Iraqi Electricity Minister Alsammarae. Here we will refer
to a smaller fish, but a very significant one: Ali Ata, who was caught up in the FBI dragnet of
Operation Board Games around the Illinois Combine for graft and corruption, which has a division
for every ethnic group in Chicago. Ali Ata, now a convicted felon, gets us very close to Obama: all
the way to Obama’s godfather and moneybags Antoin Rezko, and all the way to Illinois Governor
Rod Blagojevich. Here we begin to see what kind of perks might emerge as by-products of Obama’s
role in helping get money for the US-controlled factions of the PLO: