It’s good to see that, in his final Christmas as president, Joe Biden is boosting the economy with a bit of Black Friday shopping. At a small business, too!
And he’s going out the same way he came in: by not-so-secretly telegraphing to Israel that it had better start behaving or finding some new geopolitical friends.
According to the New York Post, the president was spotted leaving Nantucket Bookworks in the Massachusetts resort town with a copy of a book by a former Columbia University professor describing the Palestinian “resistance” against Israeli “colonialism.”
“The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017,” by Columbia professor emeritus Rashid Khalidi, is meant to argue that “the modern history of Palestine can best be understood in these terms: as a colonial war waged against the indigenous population, by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will.”
Pay close attention to the book Biden is holding pic.twitter.com/KHJAQreJgQ
— Matt Wallace (@MattWallace888) November 30, 2024
The author, who is of Palestinian and Lebanese descent, said Biden picked up the tome “four years too late.”
Of course, it’s not difficult to see where he stands on the matter of U.S. politics; Donald Trump’s first administration, he said, was a “mouthpiece” for the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which he said led “the most extreme government” in the Jewish state’s history.
“Trump’s people abandoned even the shabby old pretense at impartiality. With this plan, the United States ceased to be ‘Israel’s lawyer,’ becoming instead the mouthpiece of the most extreme government in Israel’s history,” he wrote.
Are you glad Biden will be gone soon?
The book, Khalidi claims, lays out “a path based on equality and justice” which ends “the oppression of one people by another.
“Settler-colonial confrontations with indigenous peoples have only ended in one of three ways: with the elimination of full subjugation of the native population, as in North America; with the defeat and expulsion of the colonizer, as in Algeria, which is extremely rare; or with the abandonment of colonial supremacy, in the context of compromise and reconciliation, as in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Ireland,” he wrote in the 2021 book.
“If the elimination of the native population is not a likely outcome in Palestine, then what of dismantling the supremacy of the colonizer in order to make possible a true reconciliation? The advantage that Israel has enjoyed in continuing its project rests on the fact that the basically colonial nature of the encounter in Palestine has not been visible to most Americans and many Europeans.”
It’s unclear whether Biden bought the book for himself or still has the neurons remaining to process and retain any of its contents, but there you go.
Meanwhile, Khalidi — who does not trust the media — was apparently not circumspect when speaking about the book when contacted by the Post.
“I do not speak to the Post (or the Times for that matter), so this is not for publication, but my reaction is that this is 4 years too late,” he said.
The reason we know this meant-to-be-off-the-record quote is that Khalidi apparently didn’t notice the Post neither offered nor agreed to speak to him off the record. Whoops!
In addition, given that he’s from academia, he wasn’t especially circumspect about his feelings about violence toward Israel by Palestinians. Spoiler alert: not necessarily a bad thing!
For instance, the First Intifada, which is the term used to describe six years of riots and terrorism between 1987 and 1993, which led to over 2,000 dead before the Oslo Accords ended the violence.
“The First Intifada was an outstanding example of popular resistance against oppression and can be considered as being the first unmitigated victory for the Palestinians in the long colonial war that began in 1917,” he wrote.
As for the Second Intifada, which lasted from 2000 until 2005 and involved numerous suicide bombings against innocent Israelis by various terrorist groups: “[T]he Second Intifada constituted a major setback for the Palestinian national movement,” he wrote, because Israel decided it might not be a bad idea to construct a security fence around Palestinian enclaves to protect itself.
As for the terrorist — sorry, “resistance” — aspect, that’s apparently a bit less important.
The move comes days after Biden “brokered” a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon — a brokering which, according to multiple reports, involved blackmailing the Israelis into choking off aid if they didn’t play along with giving Biden one last W on the way out the door.
And, unsurprisingly, the people who should be mollified by a president willing to carry around a blatantly anti-Israel — if not perhaps even blatantly pro-terrorist — volume, weren’t:
Joe Biden was seen walking out of a bookshop carrying a copy of
“The Hundred’s Year War on Palestine” by acclaimed Palestinian-American Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi.
Does he think it is a manual for a 100 year war? This man can still read? pic.twitter.com/1XezX4AEKB
— Khalid Almaktari أبو عمرو (@KhalidMaktari2) November 30, 2024
President Joe Biden—the man funding and enabling Israel’s genocide of Palestinians—is seen holding The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 by Rashid Khalidi. pic.twitter.com/jDOtRJiN0C
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) November 30, 2024
It would be extremely funny if Joe Biden read one book for once in his miserable life and it changed his whole perspective but it’s clearly too late. He is a butcher, always will be. https://t.co/PKWMLO5iQh
— Free Palestine – End All Wars (@E_iversonii) November 30, 2024
Because of course. Like the author, the point is clear: These people don’t want a Palestinian state. They want Israel gone.
It’s understandable that Joe Biden doesn’t comprehend this, but why can’t the Democrats? At the very least, this Black Friday proved that Israel and the Middle East is getting a huge holiday gift, albeit about a month late: an administration that understands who the good guys and who the bad guys are.
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