Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. And his views are, more or less, those of his master’s. Still, he has been able to carve out for himself, by sheer civility, a reputation for moderation and unpredictability to which Said never really aspired. The stone-throwing incident at Lebanon’s border with Israel was Said’s inner child speaking. Khalidi would not do that. But, when the crunch comes (and the crunch has been coming for the Palestinians at least since Arafat exploded Bill Clinton’s initiative where Ehud Barak made his historic and never-to-be-made-again offer at Camp David seven years ago), Khalidi is a soldier. And an exile soldier, at that.
So, unlike the Palestinians who have seen Hamas at its ugliest, Khalidi equivocates. Then, of course, he blames what he doesn’t quite call the Palestinian civil war on the United States and Israel. The U.S. should have done this...Israel should have that... Khalidi’s usual paeans to his people’s own agency is completely forgotten.
Martin Kramer is a senior fellow at the Olin Institute of International Affairs at Harvard University and an eminent authority on the Middle East (and on Middle Eastern studies in America; see and buy his devastating Ivory Towers on Sand). Lucky him! He listened to Khalidi on an NPR interview. It’s interesting how “moderate” apologists for the Palestinian ultras are spinning the Gaza enormity. Read Kramer and listen to Khalidi on Sandbox.blog-city.com.
