I searched high and low at WorldNetDaily for their take on this story but strangely I couldn’t find any mention at all. Could someone post a link to the WND version? Since it is about 20 times as much money as was in the Obama story, I’m sure they covered it somewhere, right?

McCain forced to forgo illegal funds from Palestinian donors

Dear USArmybrat,

You might want to consider 'the truthiness' of your news sources (as Stephen Colbert likes to say). World Net Daily isn't generally considered a reputable source, as they are known for hyperbole and for sensationalizing and pushing stories with a certain slant, irregardless of fact-checking, often continuing to push those stories even after they've been debunked.

I googled this story using a few key words from the headline, and found most of the resulting hits were reprints or links to the WorldNet story. Only one major, reputable news agency reported on it, the Wall Street Journal Online, which published the following story on its blog yesterday.

[In my opinion, the additional information provided by the WSJ report substantially changes the context of the story. I would add that it sounds to me like these palestinian guys weren't motivated so much to help Obama get elected as they probably thought they found an easy way to make money -- not surprising where opportunities to do that in Gaza are pretty limited, so I hear.]

August 5, 2008, 5:13 pm

Obama Camp Routed Out Illegal Donations from Palestinians

Glenn R. Simpson reports on the presidential race.

Obama campaign officials said a trio of Palestinian brothers in the Middle East attempted last year to make $33,000 in illegal donations to the campaign via the internet.

The brothers sought to buy “Obama for President” T-shirts in some 97 attempts, 32 of which were initially successful.

They wrongly identified themselves as American citizens, campaign officials said, and listed their address as “GA”, the abbreviation for Georgia, when in fact they live in a refugee camp in Gaza, a rump city-state between Israel and Egypt that is under the control of Hamas.

The donations came in between Sept. 20 and Dec. 6 and virtually all of the money, about $33,500, was returned by December 6. But the refunds weren’t reported to the Federal Election Commission due to a technical error, campaign officials said.

The remaining $2,500 was refunded Monday. The refunds will all be reflected shortly in an amended report. New controls to prevent such attempts are now in place, the campaign said.