Rasheed Khalidi in "The Iron Cage"
"To revisit one of the most important of these myths about the infant state of Israel, the number of Arab armies that invaded Israel after it's establishment is described in a range of standard accounts as ranging from five to seven. However, there were only seven independent Arab states in 1948 (some hardly independent, and some hardly sates in any meaningful sense of the word), two of which,Saudi Arabia and Yemen, did not even have regular armies and no means of getting any armed forces they might have had to Palestine.Beyond his, of the five Arab regular Arab regular armies, one(That of Lebanon) never crossed the international frontier with Palestine,two(those of Iraq and Transjordan) scrupulously refrained from crossing the frontiers of the Jewish state laid down in the United Nation plan as per secret Jordanian understandings with both Britain and the Zionist leadership and thus never "invaded" Israel, and one ( that of Syria) made only minor inroads across the new Israeli state's frontiers.The only serious and long lasting incursion into the territory of the Jewish state as laid under the partition plan was that of the Egyptian army. Meanwhile the fiercest fighting during 48 war took place with the Jordanian army during multiple Israeli OFFENSIVES into area assigned by the UN to the Arab state. This story of an invasion by multiple, massive Arab armies, and other legends, is not just an important element of the Israeli myth of origin: it's a nearly universal myth."
(Thanks VAA)
'<span>Rashid Ismail Khalidi (Arabic: <span>رشيد خالدي</span>), born 1948, a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East, is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University,<sup></sup><span>[</span>1<span>]</span> and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.'</span>
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_Khalidi
Add this to the long list of myths.
ReplyDelete<span>Thanks Mara, I'll post it later..</span>
ReplyDeleteKhalidi just blows massive holes into the Israeli myths. The Khalidi family has a large library in Jerusalem still preserved, within it one can find the entire record of many things that happened during this time period.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.khalidilibrary.org/indexe.html
The adviser who never was
ReplyDeletePhilip Weiss
What I find crushing is that Khalidi was a friend/neighbor of Barack Obama in Chicago, indeed Obama described him as a teacher at Khalidi’s going-away party in 2003; and and of course in 2008 Khalidi was specifically targeted during the campaign and essentially purged from any possible advisory role. That’s an American tragedy. Here’s an intellectual with tremendous insight involving one of the most important foreign-policy problems that face us, with a unique connection to a rising politician, and poof, he’s gone, thanks to the Israel lobby. Here’s Barack Obama throwing Khalidi under the bus:
“[Khalidi] is not one of my advisors; he’s not one of my foreign policy people. His kids went to the Lab school where my kids go as well. He is a respected scholar, although he vehemently disagrees with a lot of Israel’s policy…To pluck out one person who I know and who I’ve had a conversation with who has very different views than 900 of my friends and then to suggest that somehow that shows that maybe I’m not sufficiently pro-Israel, I think, is a very problematic stand to take…So we gotta be careful about guilt by association.”
Guilt. And what is Khalidi guilty of? Vision–about the crisis that Obama now finds himself facing in Israel/Palestine. From The Iron Cage:
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/01/the-advisor-who-never-was.html
Interesting it still there. In 1982 war on Lebanon ,The IDF completely destroyed the Palestinian archive centre in Beirut ( Accidentally ) , Haifa and Yafa previously held much of the Palestinian archives , after the ethnic cleansing , that disappeared too ( I presume they accidentally stole the archive) . I hope Kalidi's private library will not accidentally disappear .
ReplyDeleteWhat Khalidi is "guilty" of is bringing the facts out clearly. He removed the rubbish of what happened in the region since the inception of the colonial enterprise. He is guilty of telling the truth, and Obama is guilty of covering up what is taking place for political expedience.
ReplyDelete