President Joe Biden was photographed leaving a bookstore on Black Friday with a copy of a book on Palestine, prompting a skeptical reaction from its author, the New York Post reports.
Biden was seen leaving Nantucket Bookworks in Massachusetts with a copy of Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017, published in 2019 by Metropolitan/Henry Holt. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, which is a history of aggression against Palestinians over the past century, “A timely, cogent, patient history of a seemingly intractable conflict told from a learned Palestinian perspective.”
“I do not speak to the Post (or the Times for that matter), so this is not for publication, but my reaction is that this is 4 years too late,” Khalidi told the Post. The newspaper said it did not agree to keep the author’s comment off the record.
Biden has been widely criticized by advocates for the Palestinians over his support of Israel, which has been engaged in a war against the militant group Hamas since its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The war has taken more than 45,000 lives, most of them Palestinian.
Khalidi has previously criticized Biden over his support of Israel. Last month, in Mother Jones, Noah Lanard wrote that he had asked Khalidi in 2023 about the president’s views on Palestinians.
“I don’t really think he sees the Palestinians at all,” Khalidi told Lanard. “He sees the Israelis as they are very carefully presented by their government and their massive information apparatus, which is being sucked at by every element of the mainstream media.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
