After Joe Biden stepped out of Nantucket Bookworks on Friday, he and his son Hunter looked like they’d just been caught shoplifting:

Maybe it was because Biden was clutching a copy of Rashid Khalidi’s book The Hundred Years War on Palestine.

During his Thanksgiving visit to Nantucket, Biden said:

I’m thankful for a peaceful transition of the presidency. And I’m thankful for the fact that, I think, with the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbors and a little bit of luck, we’re going to get some more progress in the Middle East. And I’m really thankful for being able to get the first piece done on Lebanon. There’s a lot to be thankful for.

If Biden had the guts to visit Gaza, maybe he’d stop slapping himself on the back and making vacuous remarks about ‘progress.’

Rob Eshman writes:

American Jews and Israel supporters should take a page from Biden, rather than lambast him, and read Khalidi’s book, now.

“Reading Khalidi,” Aziza Hassan, executive director of the Muslim-Jewish dialogue group NewGround, said in an email, “is one important step toward nuanced thinking and productive engagement. There is nothing more important right now if we seek to move together toward something better.”

“There is no better or more important introduction to this history from the Palestinian perspective than Khalidi’s book,” Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund, wrote in an email.

“From the Palestinian perspective” is the key. Most American Jews — the vast majority of whom are supportive of Israel — are raised with only one narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and are therefore unable to understand, or even consider, why Israel engenders so much opposition on college campuses, in the media, and abroad. Like the Passover story of the child who does not know what to ask, too many American Jews can’t even fathom that there is a different point of view, based on a different experience and interpretation of the same historical events. [Continue reading…]