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THE MOST PROMINENT HISTORIAN OF PALESTINE ON WHAT THE LAST YEAR HAS
MEANT  
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Rashid Khalidi, Noah Lanard
October 10, 2024
Mother Jones
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_ Professor Rashid Khalidi on Israel’s growing wars in the Middle
East and the United States’ complicity in them _

, Mother Jones illustration; Zuma (5)

 

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Last November, I asked Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of
modern Arab studies at Columbia University and the most renowned
Palestinian American historian today, about the lack of statements
from President Joe Biden expressing sympathy for Palestinians. At the
time, I was writing an article outlining Biden’s long-standing and
unusual unwillingness to challenge
[[link removed]] Israel.

“I don’t really think he sees the Palestinians at all,” Khalidi
replied. “He sees the Israelis as they are very carefully presented
by their government and their massive information apparatus, which is
being sucked at by every element of the mainstream media.”

The professional bluntness was typical of Khalidi. Throughout his
decadeslong career as an academic and public intellectual, he has not
shied away from lacerating fellow elites as he uproots deep
assumptions about Israel and Palestine. In doing so, he has made
himself a fitting successor to Said, the late Palestinian American
literary critic his professorship was named after.

Khalidi’s 1997 book, _Palestinian Identity: The Construction of
Modern National Consciousness_, was called a “pathbreaking work of
major importance” by Said. In the early days of the ongoing war,
Khalidi’s most recent book, _The Hundred Years’ War on
Palestine_, became_ _a _New York Times _bestseller. He is
currently working
[[link removed]] on
a study of how Ireland was a laboratory for British colonial practices
that were later employed in Palestine. At the end of June, he retired
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became a professor emeritus.

We spoke last Wednesday—one day after Iran launched ballistic
missiles at Israel following a series of Israeli escalations—to
assess the one-year mark of the current war.

_This interview has been edited for length and clarity._

__

Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University delivers a report to
the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council in 2017.Andy
Katz/Pacific Press/Zuma

A YEAR AGO, MORE THAN 1,100 PEOPLE WERE KILLED IN ISRAEL IN HAMAS’
OCTOBER 7 ATTACK. AT LEAST 41,000 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KILLED IN GAZA IN
RESPONSE. NOW, ISRAEL HAS INVADED LEBANON AND PROVOKED A WAR WITH
IRAN, WHICH LAUNCHED BALLISTIC MISSILES AT ISRAEL YESTERDAY. A YEAR
AGO, WAS THIS A NIGHTMARE SCENARIO?

It is a nightmare scenario, but we may be at the beginning of the
nightmare. This is potentially a multiyear war now. By the time this
is published, we will have entered its second year. But the risks in
terms of a regional confrontation are much, much greater than most
people would have assessed back in October 2023. This is potentially
going to be a world war, a major regional war, a multifront war. In
fact, in some respects, it already is.

AN ARTICLE IN THE _NEW YORK TIMES_ THIS MORNING STATED
[[link removed]] THAT
“DEMOCRATS CANNOT AFFORD TO BE ACCUSED OF RESTRAINING ISRAEL AFTER
TUESDAY’S MISSILE ATTACK.” THE US HAS ALSO SAID IT WILL WORK WITH
ISRAEL TO IMPOSE “SEVERE CONSEQUENCES
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IRAN. ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT THERE’S BEEN ESSENTIALLY NO WILLINGNESS
BY THE US TO USE ITS LEVERAGE OVER ISRAEL?

I have to say I’m a little surprised. Firstly, because every earlier
war, with the exception of 1948, was eventually stopped by the United
States, or by the international community with the involvement of the
United States, much more quickly than this one. You’ve had wars that
went on for a couple of months. But eventually, after backing Israel
fully, the United States stopped Israel. There’s absolutely no sign
of the United States doing anything but encouraging Israel and arming
and protecting them diplomatically. In historical perspective, this is
unique to my knowledge.

Secondly, it is a little surprising in domestic electoral terms. I
don’t think Biden and [Vice President Kamala] Harris have a whole
lot to worry about on their right. People who are going to vote on
this issue in one way are going to vote for [former President Donald]
Trump anyway. Whereas on his left, I think one of the terrible ironies
of this—we will only find this out after the election—might be
that Harris loses the election because she loses Michigan. Because she
lost young people and Arabs and Muslims.

To the left, there’s a huge void where some people are going to hold
their noses and vote for Harris. But some people will not vote for her
under any circumstances. And if that tips the margin in favor of
Trump, it will be one of the most colossal failures of the Democratic
Party leadership in modern history to not understand that there’s
lots of space to their left and there’s no space to their right.
They have hewed right, right, right on this—at least publicly.
Personally, I don’t understand that electoral calculation. 

I also go back to the first thing I said: I don’t understand how the
United States doesn’t see that the expansion of this war is
extremely harmful to any possible definition of American national
interests. 

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION AND ITS SUPPORTERS FAIL TO
UNDERSTAND IN TERMS OF THE COST TO THE UNITED STATES OF ENABLING THIS
WAR?

The administration and the entire American elite is in another place
from Americans, who reject the Biden policy, want a ceasefire, and are
opposed to continuing to arm Israel. That’s the problem. You have
this cork in the bottle. The bottle has changed. The cork hasn’t. 

The media elites, the university and foundation elites, the corporate
elites, the donor class, the leaderships of the political parties, and
the foreign policy establishment are way out in right field and are
completely supportive of whatever Israel does. They back Israel to the
hilt—whatever it does. And you are getting the same kind of mindless
drivel in the foreign policy world about an opportunity for
“remaking the Middle East” that we got before the 2003 Iraq
fiasco. 

Israel killed the guy they were negotiating with in
Tehran—[Ismail] Haniyeh
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They don’t say anything. You want a ceasefire? Haniyeh allegedly
wanted a ceasefire. Israel goes and kills the guy in Tehran. The US
doesn’t say anything. Not a peep. This is a high-level
provocation. 

[Harris] and the Democratic Party establishment have obviously made a
decision that they can spit at young people who feel strongly about
this.

You’re trying to bring about a ceasefire on the Lebanese border? The
Israelis kill the person they’re negotiating with. Not a peep. The
US says: _He was a bad guy. He killed Americans._ _Good thing_. 

I find it mind-boggling the degree to which the elite is blind to the
damage that this is clearly doing to the United States in the world
and in the Middle East—and the dangers that entails. I hear not a
peep out of that elite about the potential danger of Israel leading
them by the nose into an American, Israeli, Iranian, Yemeni,
Palestinian, Lebanese war, which has no visible end. I mean, where
does this stop? 

An Israeli Army tank moves near the border amid the ongoing conflict
between Israel and militant group Hamas.Saeed Qaq/SOPA/Zuma

HARRIS HAS DECLINED TO BREAK WITH BIDEN ON ISRAEL IN HER PUBLIC
RHETORIC. IF SHE’S ELECTED, DO YOU EXPECT A SIGNIFICANT SHIFT IN HER
APPROACH TO ISRAEL AND PALESTINE?

No, I do not. She had multiple opportunities to do a Hubert Humphrey
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disassociate herself from the president who just decided not to run
again. To allow a Palestinian speaker at the [Democratic National]
Convention, to meet with certain people, to modulate her virulent,
pro-Israel rhetoric, she hasn’t taken those opportunities. I don’t
expect that she will.

She and the Democratic Party establishment have obviously made a
decision that they can spit at young people who feel strongly about
this. They can ignore Arabs and Muslims, and then they can win the
election anyway. That seems to have been their decision. That might
change if their internal polling at the end of October shows she’s
losing Michigan. But it would be a little bit late.

HUMPHREY’S SPEECH WAS ON SEPTEMBER 30. SO WE’RE ALREADY PAST THAT.

And it was too late for Humphrey.

THE MAIN SUCCESS THAT BIDEN ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS POINTED TO AGAIN
AND AGAIN WAS PREVENTING A REGIONAL WAR. THAT HAS NOW COMPLETELY
FALLEN APART. YOU WERE IN LEBANON DURING THE 1982 ISRAELI INVASION
WITH YOUR KIDS AND YOUR WIFE, MONA, WHO WAS PREGNANT AT THE TIME. HOW
DOES YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF THAT INVASION INFLUENCE HOW YOU SEE
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN LEBANON TODAY?

It’s not deja vu for me. I actually feel it’s much, much, much
worse. I’m following along with all my relatives in Beirut, as I
have been following along with relatives in Palestine over the past
year, as they report on what’s happening to them and around them.
It’s similar, but it’s a lot worse. I think my kids are going
through the same thing, especially my daughters, who were little
children during the ’82 war.

And all of us are sitting in safety outside the Middle East. I’m
thinking of the family that we have who are still in Beirut. They’ve
been through war and misery and the collapse of Lebanon and various
phases of this war in the past. I know they are resilient. But it’s
really hard to experience it again and again and again. They went
through it in 2006 and now they’re going through it again.

It’s horrifying that nobody seems to read history or understand that
no good can come from this. Leave aside good for the
Lebanese—obviously, nobody in the Western elite cares about the
Lebanese or the Palestinians. There’s a degree of insensitivity,
which is shocking, but we’re used to it. But nobody even cares about
the Israelis. They are putting their head into a buzz saw in both Gaza
and Lebanon: a tunnel without end.

What do the Americans think they are doing, pushing, allowing, arming
Israel to do this vis-à-vis Iran, vis-à-vis Yemen, vis-à-vis
Lebanon, vis-à-vis the Palestinians? Where does this end for Israel?
They are getting themselves into a minefield out of which they will
not be able to extract themselves without enormous, terrible results
for them—and obviously infinitely more devastating results for
Lebanon and the Palestinians. 

I don’t understand the blindness of the United States in basically
encouraging Israel to commit harakiri. This cannot end well for them.
It’s not going to end well for anyone else. I’m not minimizing the
horror. It’s going to end worse, obviously, for Palestinians and
Lebanese. But what can they possibly be thinking in Washington? Or,
for that matter, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem?

Palestinians, including children who were injured in an Israeli
bombing, arrive at Nasser Hospital in the Gaza Strip. Ahmed
Zakot/dpa/Zuma

PERHAPS THE MOST HORRIFYING RESULT OF THE 1982 INVASION WAS SABRA AND
SHATILA
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ISRAELI SOLDIERS ASSISTED LEBANESE CHRISTIAN MILITANTS AS THEY
SLAUGHTERED THOUSANDS OF PALESTINIAN AND LEBANESE MUSLIMS INSIDE THE
SABRA AND SHATILA REFUGEE CAMPS. YOU AND YOUR FAMILY WERE STAYING IN A
FACULTY APARTMENT THAT MALCOLM KERR
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FOUND FOR YOU AFTER AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL TROOPS PULLED OUT OF
BEIRUT. COULD YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU SAW FROM THE BALCONY OF THAT
APARTMENT?

What we witnessed was the Israeli military firing illumination shells
over Sabra and Shatila after they had introduced militias that they
paid and armed to kill people on the basis of an agreement between
[Israeli Defense Minster Ariel] Sharon and the Lebanese forces. We
were a little shocked because the fighting had stopped a couple of
days before. The Israelis had occupied West Beirut. There were no
Palestinian military forces at all in Beirut. No fighters, no units,
nothing. The camps were defenseless, and the Americans had promised
the PLO that they would protect the civilian populations left behind
when the PLO evacuated its forces. 

So, we were quite perplexed. What is going with these illumination
shells being fired when it seemed completely quiet? We went to bed not
knowing the massacre had started. When we woke up, we found out from
Jon Randall and Loren Jenkins, who were working for the _Washington
Post_, what they had just seen.

A Pro-Palestinian demonstration encampment at Columbia University in
April 2024Yuki Iwamura/AP

WHEN WE SPOKE IN NOVEMBER, YOU HELD UP YOUR PHONE SO THAT I COULD HEAR
PRO-PALESTINE DEMONSTRATIONS PASSING BY YOU IN MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS.
EDWARD SAID HAD THE OPPOSITE EXPERIENCE DECADES BEFORE.

HE SAID HE WAS RADICALIZED BY BEING IN NEW YORK DURING THE 1967
ARAB-ISRAELI WAR AND TALKED
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SOMEONE IN MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS ASK, _HOW ARE WE DOING? _IT DROVE
HOME THAT ARABS AND PALESTINIANS EFFECTIVELY DID NOT EXIST._ _WHAT DO
YOU MAKE OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THAT SHIFT?

I was in New York in June 1967, and I remember people collecting money
for Israel in bedsheets outside Grand Central station. The same fervor
that Edward witnessed, I witnessed in ’67. There’s been an
enormous shift in American public opinion. The polling numbers are
unequivocally opposed to this war, opposed to Biden’s policy,
opposed to continuing to arm Israel.

We’ve seen it on campus. The campus has been shut down in response
to last year’s protests. We call it Fortress Columbia. You can’t
get a journalist onto the campus without two days’ notice, and even
then, it doesn’t work. Columbia has sealed the campus and installed
checkpoints to prevent the people of the neighborhood from walking
across the campus on what should be a public thoroughfare on 116th
Street. 

The protest movement has been shut down by repression, but the
sentiment is I’m sure still there. Most young people have an
entirely different view of this war—and of Palestine and
Israel—than their grandparents have. The difference is enormous and
striking, and I think it may be growing. The invasion of Lebanon will
do nothing to change the way people see things. I think it will just
reinforce it.

I’ve seen a sea change in the past couple of decades that I was at
Columbia. I arrived there in 2003, and sentiment was not favorable to
Palestine overall. I still had the sense that I had when I was an
undergraduate many decades ago that I was swimming against the tide of
opinion among students and faculty. That’s not the case anymore.
Two-thirds of the arts and sciences faculty voted no confidence in the
president because of her position on the protests. I couldn’t have
imagined something like that happening 25 years ago.

Palestinians bury the bodies of 80 victims at a mass grave in the Gaza
Strip city of Rafah.Mohammed Talatene/dpa /Zuma

DO YOU EVER FEAR THAT THE SHIFT IS ARRIVING TOO LATE? THAT BY THE TIME
AMERICA POTENTIALLY DECIDES TO HOLD ISRAEL ACCOUNTABLE, THERE MIGHT
NOT BE A PALESTINE LEFT TO SAVE BECAUSE THE WEST BANK HAS BEEN ANNEXED
AND GAZA HAS BEEN LEVELED?

Gaza has been leveled, and the West Bank has long since been annexed.
It’s been incorporated into Israel in practice for decades. Israeli
law operates in the West Bank for Israelis only. Palestinians are
being squeezed into smaller and smaller Bantustans, and Israel is
encouraging them to leave. But that doesn’t mean that Palestine is
gone. You still have as many Palestinians as Israelis within the
frontiers of Palestine. That’s not going to change. 

They still have a problem. How do you establish an entity involving
Jewish supremacy in a country where at least half of the population
are not Jews? I don’t see how they get out of that conundrum just
because they’ve devastated Gaza or just because they’ve annexed
the West Bank. 

They’ve created that conundrum and there’s no way out for them.
They either entirely annihilate the Palestinian population or drive it
out, which I don’t think is possible in the 21st century, at least I
hope not, or they come to terms with it. They’re not willing to do
that right now. They’re even less willing to do that after October
7. Public opinion has hardened in Israel for reasons that are
perfectly understandable.

But do I see that this is too late? No. I worry that no matter how
consequential the shift in public opinion is, the elite will hold on
stubbornly. And that it will take even longer than it took for public
opinion opposing the Iraq war or public opinion opposing the Vietnam
War to force elites that were dedicated and committed to mindless,
aggressive wars abroad to finally change their course. It took years
and years on Vietnam, and it took years and years on Iraq.

That’s what I’m afraid of—that the anti-democratic intent of the
elite, and of the party leaderships, of the foreign policy
establishment, and of the donor class will prevent a shift for many
more years than should be the case. If we had a really democratic
system, if we had a system where public opinion had as much of an
effect as money—which it doesn’t, unfortunately—then you would
have seen a change already. There’s no indication that there will be
a change for quite a while, regardless of who is elected in November.

Family, friends, and supporters of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas
protest on the Israeli coastal road outside Kibbutz Yakum.Ilia
Yefimovich/dpa/Zuma

A CONSEQUENCE OF TIMING THIS INTERVIEW TO COINCIDE WITH THE ONE-YEAR
MARK OF THE WAR IS THAT IT CAN OBSCURE WHAT CAME BEFORE. HOW SHOULD
THE REALITY OF DAILY LIFE IN GAZA IN THE DECADES LEADING UP TO OCTOBER
7 SHAPE HOW WE UNDERSTAND WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE PAST YEAR?

The people who have been fighting Israel in Gaza, for the most part,
are people who grew up as children under this prison camp regime
imposed on them by the Israelis and on the southern border by the
Egyptians. Most of them have never been allowed to leave Gaza. Most of
them have had all kinds of restrictions on everything they can do and
buy and say for their entire lives. And they’ve lived under an
authoritarian Hamas regime, which was quite unpopular in Gaza before
October 7. 

The people who have been fighting the Israelis are the people who
Israel’s prison camp has created. And what Israel has done in the
last year is far, far worse than anything it did in the preceding 17
years of the blockade. They killed over 2,300 people in 2014.
They’ve killed probably well over 50,000 in the past year, if we
count those buried under the rubble. The number is 41,600 as of today.
The numbers are hard to process.

The kids growing up now are going to be the successors to today’s
fighters, given that nobody’s offering them a future, given that
they’re going to live in misery for a decade if not longer, given
that Israel will dominate their lives in even more intense ways than
it had before. The people who grow up in that situation—some of them
are going to turn into even more ferocious fighters resisting Israel.

The same thing is happening in South Lebanon. People grew up in South
Lebanon being bombarded by Israel, and they became the fighters in the
’82 war. There’s a picture of [former Hezbollah leader Hassan]
Nasrallah fighting in ’82 as a young man. That experience of
constant Israeli attacks and the occupations of South Lebanon in ’78
and ’82 created Hezbollah. Even Ehud Barak
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as much. 

I’ve seen not one mention of the fact that the United States helped
Israel kill 19,000 people in Lebanon in 1982. And that might have been
a factor as important as what Israel was doing in creating Hezbollah
and in it turning against the United States. They considered the
United States responsible for Sabra and Shatila because it had
promised to protect the civilians—that no harm would come to the
civilians the PLO left behind. 

I fear that the United States’ full-throated support for what Israel
is doing may have the same effect in the 2020s and 2030s,
unfortunately. I’m not happy about any of this. I consider all of
these things disastrous. But I’m looking at them coldly. The things
that I’m talking about have produced what has passed, and what
we’re seeing now will produce, heaven forbid, possibly even more
horrible things in the future. Those who don’t read history and
don’t understand history are condemned to repeat it, but in a much
worse way, I’m afraid. 

_RASHID ISMAIL KHALIDI is a Palestinian-American historian of the
Middle East and until recently the Edward Said Professor of Modern
Arab Studies at Columbia University. He served as editor of the
Journal of Palestine Studies from 2002 until 2020, when he became
co-editor with Sherene Seikaly._

_He has authored a number of books, including The Hundred Years' War
on Palestine and Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern
National Consciousness; has served as president of the Middle East
Studies Association; and has taught at the Lebanese University, the
American University of Beirut, Georgetown University, and the
University of Chicago._

_NOAH LANARD_ is a reporter at Mother Jones. Reach him at
[email protected]

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* Rashid Khalidi
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* Gaza
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* U.S. foreign policy
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