When this presidential campaign got off to a start, all anyone could talk about was Iraq.

Now, as the race winds down, the campaigns seem to be spending more time talking about the Palestinians, an often-marginalized group that has played a surprisingly prominent role in the election.

Hamas political aide Ahmed Yousef kicked things off in April by expressing support for Obama.

That prompted a fund raising pitch from McCain who plainly stated: "If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly."

Then came the unusual campaign of Ibrahim Abu Jayab, a 24-year-old Gaza City resident who uses Skype to cold-call US voters and ask them to vote for Obama.

"I'm Ibrahim Abu Jayab from Gaza Strip," he said in one call, according to the AP. "I support the Senator Obama from Gaza Strip. I think the Senator Obama achieve the peace in the world and in my area. For the peace, please elect Senator Obama. Thank you very much."

(The whole idea of Palestinians with bad English calling US voters from Gaza must give Obama campaign officials serious indigestion...)

You can watch Ibrahim in action in this clip from last March:

Now, in the waning days of the campaign, McCain is using a six-month-old Los Angeles Times story to try and question Obama's relationship with Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi.

The story notes that Obama spoke at a farewell party when Khalidi left the University of Chicago for a new teaching job at Columbia University in New York.

The LAT article notes that several speakers at the party made critical comments about Israel (with one comparing Jewish settlers in the West Bank to Osama Bin Laden, for instance).

When he spoke at the party, Obama urged people to find common ground.

Even so, McCain is waging a last-minute campaign to force the LAT to release the full video of the event.

(The LAT said it won't show the tape because it made a promise to the source not to release the video.)

As McCain pressed the attack, it came out that a pro-democracy group McCain chaired gave at least a half million dollars to a Palestinian group Khalidi helped oversee.

The group, IRI, is trying to distance itself from the donations and suggesting it was all a mistake.

But why should people be afraid of Rashid Khalidi?

The issue is being pushed most aggressively by conservative National Review writers who note that Khalidi has compared Israel's policies to South African apartheid (a politically-charged analogy also pushed by former President Carter), the he has voiced support for a "one state solution" (an idea again gaining credence among Palestinians who fear a two-state solution is no longer possible), and that he helped advise Arafat during peace talks.

Sarah Palin is pushing the notion that Khalidi was a spokesperson for the PLO (a group that Palin inaccurately refers to as the Palestinian Liberation Organization as opposed to the Palestine Liberation Organization).

So it seems worth mentioning that Mahmoud Abbas, the current PA president who meets with Bush and Israeli leaders, is chairman of the PLO, that Israel now conducts full, open peace talks with the PLO, and that Arafat (after considerable prodding in 1993) and the PLO explicitly recognize Israel's right to exist.

"Rashid Khalidi is an American academic of extraordinary ability and sharp insights," Scott Horton writes on his Harper's Magazine blog. "He is also deeply committed to stemming violence in the Middle East, promoting a culture that embraces human rights as a fundamental notion, and building democratic societies. In a sense, Khalidi’s formula for solving the Middle East crisis has not been radically different from George W. Bush’s: both believe in American values and approaches."