Kramer Creams Obama

There is nothing at all surprising about Barack Obama's reluctance to embrace the surge for freedom in Iran. As I've shown, he received his primer on the Middle East from Rashid Khalidi, who facilitated Obama's formation as a Palestine-centric Third Worldist. In this view of things, only the situation of the Palestinians deserves to be described as "intolerable" —the word Obama used in Cairo—and action is promised only to them. Iranians are defrauded and assaulted by the bizarre dictatorship of the "Supreme Leader" and his Basiji minions? America, Obama says, is "watching." Why? Obama's master plan for the Middle East is supposed to commence with his entry to Jerusalem as the messiah of peace, godfather of the Palestinian state. Everything is supposed to follow from that.

Well, the Middle East doesn't revolve around the Palestinians,

Read it all.

Khalidi's New Book and Old Story

Rashid Khalidi has a new book out. SOWING CRISIS: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East.

I learned this about it from James Traub in the NYTimes and I added my comments in italics:

...Khalidi, who holds the Edward Said chair of Arab studies at Columbia and is a major pro-Palestinian voice in American scholarship, [and that is an understatement] argues that Washington’s drive for hegemonic control over the geostrategic and oil-rich axis of the Middle East stretches back three-quarters of a century, and has continued unabated to this day. [and Columbus, I hope he knows, discovered America. this a scholar is?]

Khalidi’s central argument is that the Bush administration’s interventionist posture toward the Middle East is no mere post-9/11 aberration, but represents an especially bellicose expression of a longstanding campaign...just as the threat of Communism was wildly exaggerated 50 years ago, so, these days, “the global war on terror is in practice an American war in the Middle East against a largely imaginary set of enemies.” [imaginary?!]

Most histories of America’s role in the Middle East, like Michael B. Oren’s Power, Faith and Fantasy,” focus on the naïveté and misguided idealism of a nation much given to moral crusades. Khalidi ­looks to interests rather than principles. His ­story of America’s active role in the Middle East begins in 1933, when the consortium known as Aramco signed an exclusive oil deal with Ibn Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia.

[well, I hope he read this from four years ago and this as well:

According to some sources, King Ibn Saud was interested in a plan for a Jewish state that was formulated by his adviser and confidante, British archeologist and diplomat Harry St. John Philby (father of cold war spy Kim Philby). This plan was put to Chaim Weizmann and other Zionist leaders. Eventually the US administration became interested. At the beginning of July 1943, US Secretary of State Cordell Hull gave Colonel Henry Hoskins (not Harry Hopkins, as stated in some accounts) a directive from Roosevelt ordering him to proceed to Saudi Arabia to ascertain whether Ibn Saud "would enter into discussions with Dr. Chaim Weizmann or other representatives selected by the Jewish Agency for the purpose of seeking a solution of basic problems affecting Palestine acceptable to both Arabs and Jews?"

Hoskins met King Abdul Aziz on Aug. 14, 1943, but according to Hoskins, Saud rebuffed the Philby plan and what he claimed was Weizmann's proposal to bribe him. Later, Roosevelt met Saud in February 1945. On board the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake of the Suez canal, President Roosevelt tried to persuade Saud to acquiesce to a plan for Jewish emigration to Palestine, but Saud was adamant in his opposition. One week before his death, in a letter dated April 5, 1945, Roosevelt promised King Saud that he, as president of the United States, would take no hostile action against the Arabs and that the United States would not change its basic policy toward the Palestine issue without prior consultations with both Arabs and Jews. (and see the letter there)]

...is it true, as Khalidi al­leges, that President Truman favored Israel, and ultimately agreed to recognize the country, because he had more pro-­Jewish than Arab voters to answer to? Only by check­ing a footnote does the reader learn that this comment, which Khalidi quotes twice, comes from an American diplomat who may not have been in the room when Truman is said to have uttered it. [ah. scholarship]

But the most pressing question “Sowing Crisis raises is not whether American behavior in the Middle East has been consistently self-serving and expansionist. It is whether Arab failure is, at bottom, a consequence of that behavior. [that is an interesting point to be pursued]

and he ends off:

Since Khalidi inadvertently caused Barack Obama some grief during the presidential campaign when it came out that Obama attended a party in 2003 for a man some Republicans called a “ter­rorist professor,”the president is un­likely to dis­play this book in public. But he ­should read it, not so much to chasten his sunny view of our recent past in the Middle East as to be reminded how very hard it is to make progress in a region where memories are long, and practically everything is blamed on the United States (or Israel).

But, before we go, let's take just another look at that Ibn Saud-Roosevelt conversation:

Ibn Saud traced the Arab title to Palestine back to the Canaanites, from whom the Jews took the country. He flatly called the Canaanites "arab" because they came from the Arabian Peninsula. A critic pointed out that the Jews may have come from there, too, although Ibn Saud would scarcely call them "Arab." Nor would scholars check Ibn Saud's calculation that the Jews had ruled Palestine for less than four centuries. Westerners who added up Ibn Saud's own disputable figures got 627 years; the King got 380.

Ibn Saud's letter included an indictment of Joshua as a war criminal. His version of what happened at the siege of Jericho differed from standard Biblical texts. Ibn Saud had Joshua commanding: "Burn ye all that is in the city and slay with the edge of the sword both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep, and burn the city with fire and all that is therein."

My source? Time Magazine, October 1945

and from here:

The king—from whose country Jews had been expunged during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad twelve centuries earlier—said that "the Arabs and the Jews could never cooperate, neither in Palestine nor in any other country. His majesty called attention to the increasing threat to the existence of the Arabs and the crisis which has resulted from continued Jewish immigration and the purchase of land by the Jews. His Majesty further stated that the Arabs would choose to die rather than yield their land to the Jews." The public record contains no indication that the king saw any contradiction between his belief that the Arabs of Palestine would rather die than give up their land and the fact that some of those same Arabs were selling their lands to Jewish buyers.

Charles E. Bohlen, a prominent American diplomat who was a member of Roosevelt's official party, wrote in his memoirs that the king also raised another point about Palestine that is not mentioned in Eddy's account or the joint memorandum. "Ibn Saud
gave a long dissertation on the basic attitude of Arabs toward the Jews," Bohlen wrote in "Witness to History." "He denied that there had ever been any conflict between the two branches of the Semitic race in the Middle East. What changed the whole picture was the immigration from Eastern Europe of people who were technically and culturally on a higher level than the Arabs. As a result, King Ibn Saud said, the
Arabs had greater difficulty in surviving economically.

The fact that these energetic Europeans were Jewish was not the cause of the trouble, he said; it was their superior skills and culture."

Interesting.

I'm Not Rashid Khalidi...

...And so my op-eds you won't read in the New York Times. And I haven't has a letter in for a while. Therefore, my comments on his op-ed, What You Don’t Know About Gaza, you'll have to peruse here.

So, here we go:

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points [that Rashid has picked out for. what is uncomforable for him and his viewpoint, you won't find herein] that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip [was there an attack, at anytime, now or previously, by Hamas? or is Israel's defensive actions always portrayed by Khalidi as "attacks"?].

THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. [not really. the older generation made a choice in 1947, in the main, to support an Arab, local and Middle Eastern, attempt to thwart a UN Resolution of compromise and partition and eliminate thereby the nascent Jewsih state.] The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They ['they' are, who? the families? today's majority of the population?] were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948. [and they supported the fedayeen 1950-56 and the PLO 1964 on, always using violence to try to solve their political clash with Israel]

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. [they lived, also, for a few months, too, in Novemeber 1956-March 1957 and it was better than the Egyptian occupation previously and afterwards] Israel is still widely considered [er, how "wide" is that? you and your radical progressive friends?] to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. [not exactly. where did all those Hezbollah & Iranian rocketry come from? how did tons and tons of ammunition, arms and explosives get in?] As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. [nope]

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. [gee, I wonder why] Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation. [psst, Qassams are life-threatening, too]

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights. [Germans also exercvised their democratic rights in 1933 and elected Hitler & Nazis to power. do we applaud? did that stop the British from bombing the hell out of them for supporting a government that launched a world war?]

THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed. [er, were they on a picnic? singing at mosque choral practice or engaged, as is their wont, to commit terror?]

WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, [no proof of that Rashidi my boy] have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. [true, but all the Qassams are aimed exclusively at civilian targets unlike Israel's troops] Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip. [it also could have happened if Hamas really wanted to arrive at a negotiated peace agreement ratehr than the leimination of Israel]

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” [by which, of course, he meant "defeated" in the sense of using violence to achieve political goals]

An Overlooked Press Released: He Can Do No Wrong

On Tuesday, November 4th, the Caucus for a New Political Science issued a statement defending Rashid Khalidi. I missed it. But, it should be registered for history. We should know what is "progressive political science" and who are they that practice such.

PRESS RELEASE *** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HEADLINE: Caucus for a New Political Science
Issues Statement, Defends Rashid Khalidi
CONTACT: Nicholas Kiersey

The Caucus for a New Political Science issued a statement today condemning recent efforts by John McCain and Sarah Palin to impugn the integrity of Dr. Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University.

Founded at the American Political Science Association’s 1967 annual meeting in Chicago, the Caucus is the oldest organized grouping of progressive political scientists in the United States. The Caucus is united by the idea that Political Science as an academic discipline should be committed to advancing progressive political development.

Today’s statement follows below.

Statement:

The Caucus for a New Political Science (CNPS) hereby expresses its outrage at Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign's efforts this week to impugn the integrity of Dr. Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. Khalidi is one of the world's leading scholars of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Palestinian history. As academics who rely on scholarship like Khalidi's for our own research and teaching, we simply cannot let these slurs pass unremarked.

In her efforts to discredit Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, Governor Palin tried to suggest that Khalidi is "yet another radical professor" in Obama's circle of friends and associates. This, of course, by way of questioning Obama's patriotism and fitness to serve as President of the United States.

Palin's comments are, at best, suggestive of a deep-rooted ignorance of Middle Eastern affairs. More troubling still, they point to a tendency to engage in a politics of demonization and the possibility of a systematic chilling of academic freedom and freedom of speech, the likes of which we have not seen since the era of Joseph McCarthy.

Khalidi is a scholar of the relationship between cultural identity and political power. In a world where terrorism has become such an irresponsibly used catch-phrase, we need level-headed politicians who are unafraid to examine their own cultural biases. Rashid Khalidi's scholarship on the objectification of and prejudice against Arab culture in Western discourse provides an exemplary set of tools in this mission. That a scholar like Khalidi should have become the target of such ignorant rhetoric as demonstrated by Senator McCain and Governor Palin last week is both embarrassing and disgraceful.

Sincerely, The Caucus for a New Political Science (CNPS)

Nicholas J. Kiersey, PhD
Assistant Professor, Political Science
Ohio University, Chillicothe

Christine Kelly, PhD
Associate Professor
Dept Political Science
William Paterson University

Jennifer Leigh Disney, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
Winthrop University

Mark Kaswan, C.Phil.
Department of Political Science
University of California, Los Angeles

Michael McIntyre, PhD
Assistant Professor
International Studies
DePaul University

Foad Izadi,
Doctoral Candidate and Instructor
Manship School of Mass Communication
Louisiana State University

Yoav Peled, PhD
Department of Political Science
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, Israel

Ed Webb, PhD
Political Science & International Studies,
Dickinson College

Stephen Bronner, PhD
Professor, Political Science
Rutgers University

John Ehrenberg, PhD
Professor of Political Science and Department Chair
Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus

Hamideh Sedghi, PhD
Visiting Scholar
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Harvard University

Sheila Collins, PhD
Director, MA in Public Policy and International Affairs
Department of Political Science
William Paterson University

Sanford Schram, PhD
Professor, Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research
Bryn Mawr College

Gerard Huiskamp, PhD
Chair, Associate Professor of Political Science
Wheaton College

Stephen S. Smith, PhD
Professor of Political Science
Winthrop University

Jacob Segal, PhD
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York

Jacinda Swanson, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Western Michigan University

Victor Wallis, PhD
Professor
Liberal Arts Dept
Berklee College of Music

Bruce E. Caswell, PhD
Associate Professor
Political Science Department
Rowan University

Joe Kling, PhD
Professor of Government
St. Lawrence University

Amy Linch
PhD Candidate
Department of Political Science
Rutgers University

David Lempert, Ph.D., J.D., M.B.A., E.D. (Hon.)
Member, California Bar

John Berg, PhD
Chair, Government Department
Suffolk University

Beate Sissenich, PhD
Assistant Professor
Indiana University

R. Claire Snyder-Hall, PhD
George Mason University
Director, MAIS Program
Director of Academics, Higher Education Program
Associate Professor of Political Theory

Bron Tamulis
Graduate Student
University of California--Irvine

Nancy Love, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
Penn State

Adolph Reed, PhD
Professor, Political Science
University of Pennsylvania

Jeff Goodwin, PhD
Professor of Sociology
New York University

Brian Caterino, PhD
Independent Scholar

William F. Grover, PhD
Professor, Political Science
Saint Michael's College

Tanya R. Austin
Illinois State University

Joseph G. Peschek, PhD
Professor of Political Science
Hamline University

Bruce E Wright, Ph.D
Professor Emeritus of Political Science
California State University, Fullerton

Margaret E. Farrar, PhD
Associate Professor of Political Science
Augustana College

Laura Olson, PhD
Professor
Lehigh University

Immanuel Ness, PhD
Professor
Department of Political Science
Brooklyn College /City University of New York

Benjamin Arditi, PhD
Centro de Estudios Politicos
Facultad de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales
UNAM
Mexico

Meredith L. Weiss, PhD
Department of Political Science
University at Albany, State University of New York

Alethia Jones, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Public Administration & Policy
and Department of Political Science
University at Albany, State University of New York

Kevin B. Anderson, PhD
Professor of Political Science, Sociology, and Women's Studies
Purdue University

Patricia Siplon, PhD
Professor
Department of Political Science
Saint Michael's College

Beverly A. Gaddy, PhD
Associate Professor, Political Science
University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg

Roberto Alejandro, Professor
Political Theory
University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Open Air prison Camp?

Rashid Khalidi:

characterized Gaza as an "open air prison camp."

Well, there is a fence on one side but that's to protect Israelis from above-ground land-based terror (it doesn't help against Qassams or tunnels).

The fence on the south keeps that out of Egypt who doesn't desire their presence.

And then, there is the unfenced sea.

Just Who is "The Settler From Brooklyn"?

Martin Kramer makes a great observation:-

...Christopher Hitchens [a columnist for Vanity Fair]...announces that the Khalidi family "hold[s] a celebrated house and position in the city [of Jerusalem] since approximately the time of the Crusades. I have had the honor of being invited to this very house. If Rashid chooses to state that he doesn't care to be evicted from his ancestral home in order to make way for some settler from Brooklyn who claims to have God on his side, I think he has a perfect right to say so."

Let us leave aside the typically English schoolboy enchantment with assumed Arab aristocracy (please, don't get me started). Rashid Khalidi was himself born and raised in... Brooklyn. Here is testimony from a witness: "I lived in Brooklyn and watched young Rashid and his brothers grow, even held him as an infant while listening to his father, Ismail, talk about Palestine and the diplomatic issues he dealt with." On the maternal side, Rashid's roots in Brooklyn go back a good ways: "His grandmother," he is reported to have told an audience, "who immigrated to America from Lebanon was a member of First Unitarian Church in Brooklyn." His mother and father married in that church, and he attended Sunday school there.

So were Khalidi to forgo the familiar pleasures and privileges of Columbia University for the rigors of Jerusalem, wouldn't he also be a settler from Brooklyn?

Just to clear: I myself was born in the Bronx and grew up in Queens.