Writing in today’s Jerusalem Post, Campus Watch adjunct scholar Jonathan Schanzer reports on a recent conference call in which Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi spun conspiracy theories about an alleged Israeli “matrix of control":
Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO spokesman-turned Columbia University professor, is convinced that Israel has constructed a “matrix of control” in the Middle East. Khalidi once cited books and articles to back up his skewed views of Middle East history. Now he cites obscure Internet claims of an “occupation settlement industrial complex.”
On April 1, Khalidi gave a one-hour phone briefing to Brit Tzedek v’Shalom (The Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace) - a leftist organization based in Chicago. While occasionally sounding balanced and insightful, he launched into short rants throughout the call.
Notably, about eight minutes in, he began to froth about a “network of interests which is bound up with the maintenance of this matrix of control. The occupation settlement industrial complex - a network of companies that an Israeli Web site called ‘whoprofits’put together.” Based on this site, which published a disclaimer about the “accuracy, completeness, usefulness of any information and/or documents disclosed,” along with input from radical leftists like Jeff Halper and Palestinian apologists like Amira Haas, Khalidi claimed there are “hundreds of companies, hi-tech companies, that keep the databases on which Israel manages... the four million Palestinians... The telephone databases to the security companies that manage the checkpoints to the companies that build the roads... the settler-only roads.” And so on and so forth.
