Friday, November 07, 2008

A Native Jerusalemite Is Born In Brooklyn?

It seems that Edward Said is not the only one who manufactures stories about his family home in Jerusalem.

Martin Kramer, in response to Christopher Hitchens, writes that Rashid Khalidi has fabricated a similar story about his life as well. Contrary to Khalidi's claim that he has had--as Hitchens puts it--"a celebrated house and position in the city [of Jerusalem] since approximately the time of the Crusades", it appears that Khalidi is actually a Brooklyn boy.

One proof Kramer offers is a blogger who writes:
I lived in Brooklyn and watched young Rashid and his brothers grow, even held him as an infant while listening to his father, Ismail, talk about Palestine and the diplomatic issues he dealt with.
Further, Kramer quotes Khalidi who apparently told an audience about how his grandmother
immigrated to America from Lebanon was a member of First Unitarian Church in Brooklyn.
The thing is, that contrary to that detailed article by Justus Reid Weiner about Said, Kramer's case does not compare. First, it is one thing to quote an anonymous blogger's opinion--it is another to rely on his account about someone's life. Secondly, regardless of whether it is true that Khalidi was born and raised in Brooklyn, that does not necessarily contradict what Hitchens wrote:
Rashid Khalidi's family is a famous one in Jerusalem, long respected by Arab and Christian and Jew and Druze and Armenian, and holding a celebrated house and position in the city since approximately the time of the Crusades. I have had the honor of being invited to this very house. If Rashid chooses to state that he doesn't care to be evicted from his ancestral home in order to make way for some settler from Brooklyn who claims to have God on his side, I think he has a perfect right to say so.
Saying there is a house in the family is not negated by where Khalidi was born. On the other hand, Hitchens claim that Khalidi is a moderate who is scrupulous with the facts is a debatable point. There are a number of issues in the Hitchens article about Khalidi that should be addressed.

I just don't think that Khalidi's birthplace need be one of them.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I see nothing to debate about the erroneous assertion that academic jihadis Khalidi is a "moderate." His radical revisionist propaganda cloaked in a scholarly style speaks for itself.

Daled Amos said...

Sorry, I was not clear.

I agree there is nothing scrupulous or moderate about Khalidi. However, some people, such as Hitchens, claim that there is. Those are issues that will be debated for the simple reason that there are those that believe as Hitchens does.

However, the question of where Khalidi was born is just not an issue to me--at least not to the same degree as Said, who publicly made an issue of it.