The Iron Cage
Ezra Klein suggests that people might want to stick it to the smear artists by purchasing a copy of Rashid Khalidi’s The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. It seems like a good idea. Publisher’s Weekly calls the book “A first-rate and update-to-date historical and political analysis of the Palestinian predicament.” Anthony Lewis says “Khalidi uses history to provide a clear-eyed view of the region and assess the prospects for peace. He strives successfully for even-handedness.”
What’s more, it costs just $10.20 and it’s eligible for Amazon Prime. I just placed my order.
UPDATE: Note that when you can’t get Marty Peretz to jump on your Arab-bashing bandwagon, you’ve got a bit of a problem:
Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post has an article about the Times’ refusal to make the clip public. But the news story reports exactly what Obama did say about Khalidi, and frankly it is utter pabulum. Read for yourself.
I assume that my Zionist credentials are not in dispute. And I have written more appreciative words about Khalidi than Obama ever uttered. In fact, I even invited Khalidi to speak for a Jewish organization with which I work.
I would never assume that anyone’s Zionist credentials are not in dispute when wading into this sort of territory. You’d be surprised who can get labeled an anti-semite when someone decides that’d be a good way to advance their political gambit of the day.
52 Responses to “The Iron Cage”
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October 31st, 2008 at 1:01 pm
IGNORANCE is just another name for Republican.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Do a bloggingheads with him, after the election.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:13 pm
It’s a genuinely good book, and kudos to Yglesias and Klein for recommending it. Both The Iron Cage and Palestinian Identity – Khalidi’s earlier book on Palestinian history – are great for anyone looking to get a better understanding of Israel/Palestine.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
marty peretz is an anti-semite!
October 31st, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Bought it yesterday, started reading it on the train, and now I’m about 80 pages into it. Highly recommended, even if you end up paying retail like I did.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:24 pm
It’s not available for Kindle, probably becasue the book’s publishers are in the tank for Obama and don’t want the book to get out.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:32 pm
More evidence that the smear is just a smear and that there are no serious Republican intellectuals. Just hacks who are now trying to out hack each other in mere nastiness. “Look at me, boss! I’m more willing to say anything that anybody you’re paying now.”
October 31st, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Done.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:40 pm
“It’s not available for Kindle, probably becasue the book’s publishers are in the tank for Obama and don’t want the book to get out.”
Khalidi is also in the tank for Obama since he cleverly wrote a fair book about Israel/ Palestine in order to hide Obama’s anti-semitism that he got from having viewed Khalidi’s person.
Reverend Wright is also in the tank. He deliberately became a black preacher in order to make it harder for Michael Goldfarb to argue that Obama is an anti-semite. This was a scheme he hatched with the help of Hillary and John Edwards’ mistress.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I would never assume that anyone’s Zionist credentials are not in dispute when wading into this sort of territory. You’d be surprised who can get labeled an anti-semite when someone decides that’d be a good way to advance their political gambit of the day.
Oh please oh please oh please let Farty Peretz get smeared as an anti-Semite!!!! Oh God please, let that pompous, flatulent, racist, self-regarding P.O.S. finally be on the receiving end of the Zionist slander machine…
October 31st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
This line of attack really goes to show how much all of that “democratic reform in the Arab world” talk was a mere pretext.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:44 pm
It’s even more disgusting when you realize that McCain was chairman of the International Republican Institute, and gave Khalidi nearly half a million dollars in grants to fund his work in the mid-90s. Now, because it might benefit his electoral chances, he smears the man. That is one heaping helping of hypocrisy that McCain is dishing out.
McCain’s trashing of a respectable U.S. citizen who had NOTHING to do with the elections, all for political gain, is just one more thing that renders him unfit to be President.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:52 pm
marty peretz is an anti-semite!
No, not outrageous enough. The accusation will be that Mary Peretz is clearly a Nazi sympathizer who favors a second Holocaust.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Of course, it matters about shit what Marty Peretz or Jeff Goldberg or that guy in Harper’s wrote about Rashid Kalidi, because noone who might be swayed by this reads TNR, The Atlantic, or Harper’s.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:56 pm
The fact remains that Khalidi is controversial, as even university papers admitted in these 2005 reports:
peekURL.com/z96t4qf
peekURL.com/zosoez2
October 31st, 2008 at 1:57 pm
In other words, someone who might be swayed by this is likely to say “I don’t care what that Jew says, I can’t vote for Obama because Obama doesn’t support Israel.”
October 31st, 2008 at 2:03 pm
No no, 24ahead, if you’re going to do a Gary Ruppert imitation it’s “The fact is that [something stupid].”
October 31st, 2008 at 2:05 pm
The fact remains that Khalidi is controversial, as even university papers admitted in these 2005 reports:
Then maybe McCain shouldn’t have given him all that money.
October 31st, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Am I the only pedant who is annoyed by someone (Khalidi in this case) who is “semitic” being called anti-semitic?
Is there no constituency any more for terminological accuracy? Can’t we say “anti-Jewish” or “anti-Israel” or “anti-Zionist”?
/silly pedantic rant
October 31st, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Why is everyone beating the crap out of this straw man? The question is not whether Obama said nice words about Khalidi. The issue is whether he said some not-so-nice things about the Jews of Israel. And, we won’t get to find out because the LA Times won’t release the video.
The LA Times is in a tough position if they did promise their source they would bury the video. We’ll just have to take their word for that. I’m sure the LA Times would never intentionally mislead its readers without a really good reason.
So either way, thank you L.A. Times.
October 31st, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Bought the book. Thanks for the great suggestion.
October 31st, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I am utterly shocked at the notion that a professor might make arguments with whom others disagree. Surely this has never, ever happened before. What has happened to our schools?
October 31st, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I’ve heard that the wingnut kool-aid goes down pretty easy, lemme try it… MY is a self-hating Jew. Bwaaaaaahahaha!
October 31st, 2008 at 3:07 pm
One may be both semite and anti-semite.
The words are not etymologically related.
October 31st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/31/khalidi-refuses-answer-questions-fox-news/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,445745,00.html
I wonder where all those people who are complaining that the liberal media is unfairly investigating and harrassing Joe the Plumber are now?
And IMO there is a HUGE difference between JTP and Khalidi – JTP voluntarily puts himself up for the treatment when he decides to compaign for McCain, this guy doesn’t want anything to do with any of this.
October 31st, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Really??? Then where does the “semite” of “anti-semite” come from?
October 31st, 2008 at 3:44 pm
that’s ridiculous, shimon.
next you’re going to be telling us there’s no ’sin’ in ’sincere’.
but i’m guessing that you just put your point badly, and what you meant was something like:
‘the etymology of ‘anti-semite’ does not control its current meaning’.
i.e. the fact that etymologically it means something like ’someone opposed to any of the semitic tribes’ does not entail that it currently means that. currently, it means ’someone opposed to the jews’ or the like.
October 31st, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Shimon:
As nbt notes, they are very closely related etymologically. Of course we are all aware that the two terms are no longer very closely related semantically.
/more pedanticism
I need to get out more.
October 31st, 2008 at 3:50 pm
kid bitzer:
Sorry–missed your post or I wouldn’t have bothered with mine!
October 31st, 2008 at 4:37 pm
huh ?
‘anti-semite’ was coined in 19th century Europe by racists who never met an Arab in the lives.
It has nothing do with ’semites’ and never did.
October 31st, 2008 at 4:38 pm
One may be both semite and anti-semite.
The words are not etymologically related.
Wouldn’t it be easier if we just substituted the term “anti-jewish” for “anti-semitic”? Besdies from eliminating the confusion over how to describe Arabs who are hostile to Jews, it’s always seemed anachronistic to describe Jews as “Semites”.
October 31st, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I fully understand the McCain camp’s outrage at Obama’s hobnobbing with intellectuals. It gives Obama a clear advantage. If McCain had selected, e.g., Sarah Bellum instead of Sarah Palin, perhaps he wouldn’t be so defensive.
October 31st, 2008 at 4:44 pm
The fact remains that resorting to link-obfuscation when not blogwhoring your own site (Daniel ‘Crack’ Pipes? Really?) is really fucking sad. Obfuscation is better used to point to links that make fun of such sad, lonely bigots:
http://peekURL.com/zet1a7a
October 31st, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Am I the only pedant who is annoyed by someone (Khalidi in this case) who is “semitic” being called anti-semitic?
Am I the only pedant who is annoyed by someone who has no idea that the word “anti-semitic” was coined by “scientific racists” in the 19th century explicitly to mean “anti-Jewish,” that ever since it has meaned “anti-Jewish,” and that it has never been a term generally applied to prejudice against all Semitic-speakers (worth noting: most Jews are and were not even Semites in the sense of speaking a Semitic language – at the time was termed, they mostly spoke Yiddish, a Germanic Indo-European language) who takes it upon himself to lecture other people about correct usage?
That being said, Shimon, obviously the “Semitic” in the term “Anti-Semitic” arose from, you know, the term “Semitic” to refer to the languages of the Middle East like Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew. Because Jews were considered Hebrew-speakers (even though, at the time, most European Jews knew Hebrew only as a liturgical language), they were “Semites,” so “anti-semitic” became a “scientific” term for hating Jews. So, obviously, in origins, the use of the word had to do with “Semites,” but the term itself has always meant hating Jews.
October 31st, 2008 at 7:35 pm
sad, lonely bigots
His sadness and lonely bigotry actually makes me LIKE Lonewacko. It’s so desperately sad and lonely that I genuinely do feel sorry for him.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Matt: “You’d be surprised who can get labeled an anti-semite when someone decides that’d be a good way to advance their political gambit of the day.”
Cue SLC in 5…4…3…2…
November 1st, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Added to my amazon list… thanks for the suggestion.
November 1st, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I hope everybody is buying new copies of this book, since in the US authors get zippo on sales of used books. How does Khalidi benefit directly from those sales? And they aren’t tracked by publishers, either.
Myself, I ordered a new hardbound version from Powell’s Books. And that’s my other gripe. Why order from unionbusting Amazon, when you can order from a unionized independent bookstore? Really, I see no difference between shopping at Wal-Mart and shopping at Amazon.
Thanks.
mp
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