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.
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, the New York Post reported.
“I do not speak to the Post (or the Times for that matter), so this is not for publication, but my reaction is that this is four years too late,” Khalidi told the Post of Biden holding his book.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.
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President Biden, left, walks out of Nantucket Bookworks with son Hunter Biden, grandson Beau and daughter-in-law Melissa Cohen Biden in Nantucket, Mass., Friday. Biden holds the book “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” by Rashid Khalidi. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
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.
President Biden with his family on Nantucket Island. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
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.
“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.
President Biden holds the book “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” by Rashid Khalidi as he walks out of Nantucket Bookworks in Nantucket, Mass. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
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He also praised the first intifada by Palestinians against Israel, which occurred from 1987 to 1993 and left more than 2,000 people dead, the Post wrote.
“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,” the book says.