Two discrete but related stories are likely not welcome news for Barack Obama. The first is this one concerning $33,000 in illegal donations from the Palestinians in Gaza. (You may recall an earlier story about phone banking for Obama from Gaza.)

Then there is this story: Obama’s Muslim outreach advisor was forced to resign after it was discovered that he “briefly served on the board of Allied Assets Advisors Fund, a Delaware-registered trust. Its other board members at the time included Jamal Said, the imam at a fundamentalist-controlled mosque in Illinois.” According to the report:

The eight-year-old connection between Mr. Asbahi and Mr. Said was raised last week by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, which is published by a Washington think tank and chronicles the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, a world-wide fundamentalist group based in Egypt. Other Web sites, some pro-Republican and others critical of fundamentalist Islam, also have reported on the background of Mr. Asbahi. He is a frequent speaker before several groups in the U.S. that scholars have associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

What to make of this? First, clearly there are Palestinian activists (or actual Palestinians in Gaza) who think Obama is their best bet. It is not surprising since he for years tried to ingratiate himself with Palestinian activists and had (at least before he started running for President) a longstanding relationship with Rashid Khalidi. It is a separate question whether he really is going to live up to their hopes and aspirations for a more pro-Palestinian president. Second, he tends to feed the hopes of these activists and, at the very least, create an ambiguity about his views, when he refuses to directly condemn terrorist aggression and speaks with shades of moral equivalency.

The bottom line I think is that Obama, as he has done with so many other interest groups and activists (e.g. environmentalists, good government types), has led many people (with conflicting views) concerned about the Middle East to believe he is sympathetic to their cause. When he then does things or says things to other groups which seem to contradict those assurances neither side knows what to make of him. And both wind up wondering what he believes and how decisive he will be when it eventually will come down to disappointing one side or the other. And that concern goes well beyond Palestinians and Jews.

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