The Khalidi Nonsense

*Sigh* So much nonsense: terrorist, socialist, PLO lackey. Nonsense.

So, now, to McCain Palin if you're a Palestinian interested in, oh, the well-being of your people, you are a bad person for Americans to converse with. Seriously? That's all it takes? For that to resonate at all, that means the base of the GOP really thinks that Palestinians in this country have to revoke any and all ties to their heritage? Really? Which group next? This is worse than McCarthyism since membership in the communist party was an act of one's one volition, while no one, and I mean no one, chooses their ethnic group into which they are born.

At any rate, to deal with it once and for all, I turn to Scott Horton, writing at Harper's, in a piece called "The New McCarthyism".

In the current issue of National Review, Andrew McCarthy continues his campaign to link the Democratic nominee to various and sundry Hyde Park radicals. This time it is “PLO advisor turned University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi,” who now heads the Middle Eastern Studies Department at Columbia University. Khalidi, we learn, makes a habit of justifying and supporting the work of terrorists and is “a former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat.”

There's more:

This doesn’t sound much like the Rashid Khalidi I know. I’ve followed his career for many years, read his articles and books, listened to his presentations, and engaged him in discussions of politics, the arts, and history. In fact, as McCarthy’s piece ran, I was midway through an advance copy of Khalidi’s new book Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East. (I’ll be reviewing it next month–stay tuned.) Rashid Khalidi is an American academic of extraordinary ability and sharp insights. He is also deeply committed to stemming violence in the Middle East, promoting a culture that embraces human rights as a fundamental notion, and building democratic societies. In a sense, Khalidi’s formula for solving the Middle East crisis has not been radically different from George W. Bush’s: both believe in American values and approaches. However, whereas Bush believes these values can be introduced in the wake of bombs and at the barrel of a gun, Khalidi disagrees. He sees education and civic activism as the path to success, and he argues that pervasive military interventionism has historically undermined the Middle East and will continue to do so. Khalidi has also been one of the most articulate critics of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority—calling them repeatedly on their anti-democratic tendencies and their betrayals of their own principles. Khalidi is also a Palestinian American. There is no doubt in my mind that it is solely that last fact that informs McCarthy’s ignorant and malicious rants.

And finally, in an example of what someone has called the McCain Circular Logic Firing Squad, the real mastermind behind Khalid's rise to prominence is revealed--McCain himself!:

Of course, Khalidi has been involved in Palestinian causes. McCarthy ought to ask John McCain about that, because McCain and Khalidi appear to have some joint interests, and that fact speaks very well of both of them. Indeed, the McCain–Khalidi connections are more substantial than the phony Obama–Khalidi connections McCarthy gussies up for his article. The Republican party’s congressionally funded international-networking organization, the International Republican Institute–long and ably chaired by John McCain and headed by McCain’s close friend, the capable Lorne Craner–has taken an interest in West Bank matters. IRI funded an ambitious project, called the Palestine Center, that Khalidi helped to support. Khalidi served on the Center’s board of directors. The goal of that project, shared by Khalidi and McCain, was the promotion of civic consciousness and engagement and the development of democratic values in the West Bank. Of course, McCarthy is not interested in looking too closely into the facts, because they would not serve his shrill partisan objectives.

On the McCain Circular Logic Firing Squad: Ultimately, the fact they share similar positions make the campaign completely reliant on the "cultural differences" "argument", the us vs. them rhetoric, the "real" American thing, the whole effort to call a truly self-made man an elitist, a term the Republican nominees can't even define.

UPDATE--Juan Cole of Informed Comment is surely angry over the Khalidi Nonsense. He says:

I know it may seem a novel idea to people like McCain and Palin, but it would be worthwhile actually reading Khalidi's book on the Palestinian struggle for statehood. (I urge bloggers interested in this issue to link to his book, which the American reading public should know).

At the least, read a whole essay Khalidi has written.

Far from being a knee-jerk nationalist, Khalidi has been critical of the decisions of the Palestinian leadership at key junctures in modern history.

McCain's and Palin's attacks on Khalidi are frankly racist. He is a distinguished scholar, and the only objectionable thing about him from a rightwing point of view is that he is a Palestinian. There are about 9 million Palestinians in the world (a million or so are Israeli citizens; 3.7 million are stateless and without rights under Israeli control in the West Bank and Gaza; and 4 million are refugees or exiled in the diaspora; there are about 200,000 Palestinian-Americans, and several million Arab-Americans, many living in swing vote states). Khalidi was not, as the schlock rightwing press charges, a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. He was an adviser at the Madrid peace talks, but would that not have been, like, a good thing?

Cole concludes:

McCain even compared the gathering for Khalidi that Obama attended to a "neo-Nazi" meeting! I mean, really. this is the lowest McCain has sunk yet.

McCain is bringing up Khalidi in order to scare Jewish voters about Obama's associations, and it is an execrable piece of McCarthyism and in fact much worse than McCarthyism since it is not about ideology but rather has racial overtones. Not allowed to pal around with Arab-Americans, I guess. What other ethnic groups should we not pal around with, from McCain's point of view? Is there a list? Are some worse than others?

Ironically, as the Huffington Post showed, while John McCain was chairing the International Republican Institute, he gave over $400,000 to Rashid Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank.

UPDATE 2--Josh Marshall gets pretty offended:

For McCain, personally, to compare Khalidi to a neo-nazi, it's just an offense McCain should never be forgiven for. It's right down in the gutter with Joe McCarthy and the worst of the worst. Khalidi is in this new McCain set piece for one reason -- as a generic Arab, to spur the idea that Obama is foreign, friendly with terrorists and possibly Muslim.

UPDATE 3--More intimations of McCarthyism and a confirmation of what I said at the top of the post, a situation where one must disavow one's own people:

So I basically have two observations: the bony finger of right wing McCarthyism now extends itself to Israel, so that any and all criticism of Israeli policy is suspect and potentially anti-American. Not only that, but anyone who knows or is friends with a Palestinian, or a critic of Israel, is potentially disloyal to Israel and therefore the United States. In fact, if you are Palestinian, I would suggest that you stay away from other Palestinians so no one thinks that you're doing something suspicious. Don't bunch up in a group or anything.

UPDATE 4--The Washington Post blasts McCain for his vile desperation:

To suggest, as Mr. McCain has, that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable -- especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults. To further argue that the [Los Angeles] Times, which obtained the tape from a source in exchange for a promise not to publicly release it, is trying to hide something is simply ludicrous, as Mr. McCain surely knows.

Which reminds us: We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over." That's good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign's increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.

Ah, the "idiot wind."

UPDATE 5--Andrew Sullivan offers this.

I have received countless emails from many students of Khalidi's who find the demonization of him as absurd as it is abhorrent. Somewhere in all this is the truth. But the complexities of a scholar's thought and record are not best explored in the heat of a campaign's final days.

The last sentence expresses an unfortunate truth: electoral campaigns are pretty much corrosive to sober reflection and analysis. (Politics as narcotic/Dionysian exercise?)