According to Columbia University Professor of History Rashid Khalidi, Americans have the right to kill Indians with their weapon of choice: long distance sniper rifle from a concealed position, machine gun at close range, package bomb, or suicide bomb belt. Khalidi specifies that this right does not apply to the murder of civilians. However, every Americans of immigrant, nonnative ancestry has the right to kill on sight every uniformed individual working as a guard in an Indian-owned casino, every Indian serving in the Uniformed Services of the United States, and every native American employed as an officer of the law or security guard whether on reservation land or elsewhere in the United States.
Edward Said, a Columbia University Professor of Linguistics, explained Khalidi's brilliant employment of a linguistic sleight of hand technique. "By labeling the original inhabitants of the land, the American Indians, "an occupying power" on what is, after all, their ancestral homeland, Khalidi brings into question the right of the Indians to continue to live in their reservations in Arizona, the Dakotas, and elsewhere. It is an extremely useful technique, akin to the equally useful "big lie," which Khalidi also employs effectively in his writing."
"What you have to understand," Said continued, "is that if scholars like Khalidi and I who hope to destroy the native American people restrict ourselves to the facts, it becomes very difficult to convince the world that the native Americans have no right to exist."
Khalidi affirmed Said's position. "The problem with the native Americans," he said in an interview form his new office on the Columbia Campus, "is that their right to continue to live on their ancestral lands seems self-evident. The only way to undermine the perceived right of, say, the Zuni to continue to occupy Taos Pueblo, where they are known to have lived for hundreds of years, is to completely change the language of the conversation."
"We must ignore the fact that the Zuni were there first and have the only legitimate claim to that land by asserting that it is the Zuni are a foreign, occupying force in Taos. Because the Indians are the occupying power, we have the right to shoot them."
Asked whether he expected some people to take exception to his habit of playing fast and loose with the truth, Khalidi answered, "When I say something that people are likely to find objectionable, such as endorsing terrorism, I protect myself from criticism by doctoring the text that appears on my WEB site."
When asked why he supported shooting only the uniformed Zuni, Khalidi, speaking in Arabic, answered, "It is important to be conscious of the public relations aspect of the problem. Certainly, if we are going to claim Taos for ourselves, we must eventually kill all of the Zuni. However, if we suggest killing unarmed women and children the world may not take our side in the matter. On the other hand, if we merely sit quietly and talk about our right to evict the Zuni from their land, the world is very unlikely to pay much attention."
"The great advantage of terrorism," Khalidi continued, "is that it not only grabs the attention of the world, it makes the world cower. If we blow up enough Zuni police officers with suicide bombs, world opinion will call for peace at any price. They will allow us to drive all the Zuni from Taos and call it a peace process. We will then be in a position to begin attacking the Navajo to drive them from their ancient pueblos as well."
Professor Said concurred, but pointed out that other groups would do well to emulate Professor Khalidi's methods.
"Once the Zuni are driven from Taos," Said said, "I suggest that the Muslim peoples begin to plant terror bombs in Seville and Granada as part of a campaign to drive the Spanish and Portuguese occupying powers from the Iberian Peninsula."
When asked if this would work everywhere in the Mediterranean, Professor Said admitted that it would be difficult in some places. "No matter how big the lies we tell and no matter how cleverly we twist the language, no one is ever going to believe that Israel is an occupying power or that the Jews are foreign interlopers. The fact is that the Jews have the best right of any people to live in Judea, Samaria, the Galilee is simply is simply too well documented to deny. We will be able to reclaim Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Greece, India, most of Italy and Hungary for Islam, but we must face the fact that the Jews have the only right to the land between the river and the sea."
Said maintains, however, that the technique will work elsewhere. "Did you know that a Muslim army sacked Rome in the year 846? We are going to label the Pope a war criminal, bring in snipers to shoot Roman police officers from concealed positions, and demand that the Italian occupiers leave the city to it's rightful Muslim owners."
In actual fact: Rashid Khalidi, newly appointed to the Edward Said Chair at Columbia University, speaking on June 7, 2002, at a conference of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee did endorse terrorism and state that Palestinians have the right to murder any uniformed Israeli.
His remarks cannot be found at the WEB site of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, which has excised those paragraphs from its posting of his speech.
The real story was broken by the New York Sun on July 23, 2003