The World Loves Obama - With Friends like these....

A Palestinian Authority newspaper reported that Arab residents of Gaza are randomly calling Americans at home in hopes of persuading them to vote for Democratic candidate Senator Barack Obama in next month's US presidential election.

The article in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, first noted and translated by Palestinian Media Watch, quotes a young man from the Hamas-controlled Gaza region as saying, "We dial random numbers and try to call people [in the United States] without knowing their identity or their affiliation...." He reportedly uses "Internet sites that allow making free calls... in order to use them for the campaign supporting Obama."

The Al-Hayat Al-Jadida article said, "Most of the Palestinians feel hatred towards USA, whose administrations have always stood by Israel...." The Gaza-based Obama campaigner, Ibrahim Abu Jayyab, "said that a large number of Palestinians dislike their activity..." Those PA residents "do not see any difference between the American politicians [Obama and Republican candidate Sen. John McCain] because of the hostility that they feel towards America," the report explained.

"But [Abu Jayyab's] hope is that their activity will have some impact [in support of Obama]," according to the newspaper report.

Abu Jayyab's freelance phone campaign for Obama in the last weeks of the American presidential race has not been the first time the Illinois senator has gotten such help. An Al-Jazeera TV report during the Democratic primaries featured Abu Jayyab as well, when he was busy organizing calls to American voters to persuade them to vote for Obama over then-candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Other types of assistance have also been forthcoming from Gaza. In July of this year, Pamela Geller of the Atlas Shrugs blog revealed documents purporting to show that the Obama campaign received nearly $30,000 from two brothers living in Rafiah, in Hamas-controlled Gaza, during 2007.

Earlier, during an April 2008 interview with WABC radio and WorldNetDaily, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's Gaza-based political advisor Ahmed Yousef said, "Actually, we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will [win] the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle."

At the time, McCain commented, "I think it is very clear... why [Hamas] would not want me to be president of the United States, so if Senator Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly."

Honesty hurts Obama

Outside of stump speeches, carefully scripted responses to reporters, and the endless recitation of talking points, there are a few moments when a politician, even a slick one, speaks from the heart. It is in these moments when true motivations and core beliefs are often revealed.
Such a moment occurred last week at the World Policy Forum in France, when Jesse Jackson said that "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" would lose some of their influence with Obama in the White House, and that "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would come to a close.

Embarrassed, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that "Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. is not an adviser to the Obama campaign and is therefore in no position to interpret or share Barack Obama's views on Israel and foreign policy."

Jackson reportedly acknowledged that he was not an adviser to Obama, but rather a "supporter." But the words he used to describe their relationship suggest that he thinks he is much closer to Obama than the Obama campaign would like the public to believe. "We helped him start his career," Jackson says. "And then we were always there to help him move ahead."

John McCain's campaign also reacted to Jackson's comments on Tuesday, saying: "Literally, nobody knows what Barack Obama's policies would be if he were elected president, but it's very concerning that people believe he will not be a friend to Israel."

Jesse Jackson's honesty only confirms the Jewish community's long standing distrusts of Obama and his policies towards Israel and with good reason.

"Barack is determined to repair our relations with the world of Islam and Muslims," Jackson said. "Thanks to his background and ecumenical approach, he knows how Muslims feel while remaining committed to his own faith. Bush was so afraid of a snafu and of upsetting Israel that he gave the whole thing a miss. Barack will change that because, as long as the Palestinians haven't seen justice, the Middle East will 'remain a source of danger to us all.'"

Despite Obama's attempts to hide or minimize his pro-Palestinian sympathies and associations with known radical Palestinians, he has surrounded himself with advisers who hold virulent anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic views. No wonder that extremists from Hamas to Ahmadinejad openly hope for his success in November.

Jews heading to the polls this November remember this: What makes Hamas and Iran so comfortable with Obama in the White House?