Tuesday, October 3, 2006
Martin Peretz jumps off from the same Rothchild piece I cited (Jewish Voice for Equivalency with Hizballah) to take on an even lengthier article by Rashid Khalidi (how did I miss that?): Historical Agents
In the Sunday Globe "Ideas" section (which was truly inspired when it was edited by TNR alumnus Alex Star), someone else--a real somebody (and I don't mean this sardonically)--has been summoned to wag his finger, too, at the Israelis at the end of their ten-day period of contrition and on the very eve of their Day of Atonement. And who has been mustered? Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. Where else?...
...Back to Khalidi. His article, an excerpt from his new book, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, is titled "Unwritten History." It makes the argument, stated in a large pull-quote, that "it is important to ascribe agency to the Palestinians, to avoid seeing them as helpless victims of forces greater than themselves--or as driven solely by self-destructive tendencies." But, in this 40 inches of type, he devotes barely ten to what the Palestinians did or failed to do on their own over the century of the conflict. Raising this question is a good thing to do...
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, p.44
Khalidi is a hypocrite. Those interested why I say that, as well as those interested in the history of Jerusalem, should read the article linked below. It deals with how certain Arab families, including the Khalidi family, profited from the systematic extortion of money and goods from the Jewish community of Jerusalem. The Arab oppression of the Jews of Palestine under the Ottomans bears comparison to the worst of Apartheid or Jim Crow. I find it amazing that someone like Khalidi, so focused on portraying Arabs as victims, so interested in portraying himself as a voice of the oppressed, has so little to say about his own family's history as corrupt oligarchs. (You can search the term Khalidi in the article to find the references.)
http://www.jcpa.org/jpsr/f94-jb.htm