President Biden on Friday picked up a copy of a book that described Israel as a colonial power in the face of Palestinian resistance despite his repeated support for the Jewish state.
The New York Post reported that Biden was spotted by the press leaving Nantucket Bookworks holding a copy of “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017” by Columbia University professor emeritus Rashid Khalidi.
“I do not speak to the Post (or the Times for that matter), so this is not for publication, but my reaction is that this is four years too late,” Khalidi told the Post of Biden holding his book.
The newspaper noted it did not agree to any terms conditioning Khalidi’s response as off the record or on background.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Khalidi and the White House.
The book argues 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.”
It was not clear if Biden purchased the book or if it was given to him.
Khalidi, who is of Palestinian and Lebanese descent, called the first Trump administration a “mouthpiece” for Israel and has criticized Israel over the humanitarian toll in Gaza after Hamas killed about 1,200 people inside Israel Oct. 7, 2023, in addition to kidnapping hostages, including Americans.
“It’s perfectly unclear, reading the Israeli press, what their political objective is. I mean, ethnic cleansing. That’s not a political objective. They’re doing that.
They’re driving the population of the Northern Gaza Strip into the Southern Gaza Strip. But what their political objective is, is, to me, entirely unclear, in the writings of, as far as one can tell, from the Israeli press,” he said on the “Intercepted” podcast in November 2023.
Biden has repeatedly declared his support for Israel but has been criticized by Israeli supporters for putting conditions on U.S. aid to the Middle East ally and pausing shipments of heavy munitions to Israel earlier this year.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian supporters, who nicknamed Biden “Genocide Joe,” have increasingly criticized him and Netanyahu over civilian casualties in Gaza. Biden has also reportedly criticized his Israeli counterpart behind closed doors, the Post reported.
The book, published in 2020 before Trump brokered relationships between Israel and five Muslim countries, criticized Trump for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day war. In the book, Khalidi wrote about Israel’s alleged discriminatory policies against Palestinians.
This guy has been helping Israel this whole time and we are supposed to believe he isn’t because of strategic placement of a book?