Quotes from Rashid Khalidi

The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts…. If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. —GEORGE ORWELL, "POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE," 1946

In the words of one scholar, "by virtue of Israel's definition of itself as a Jewish state and the state's exclusionary policies and laws, what was conferred on Palestinians was in effect second-class citizenship." Most significantly, the martial regime under which the Palestinians lived granted the Israeli military near-unlimited authority to control the minutiae of their lives.57

the commissioners presciently warned that "if the American government decided to support the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, they are committing the American people to the use of force in that area, since only by force can a Jewish state in Palestine be established or maintained."82 The commission thereby accurately predicted the course of the subsequent century.

It was a dialogue of the deaf. The British refused to recognize the representative authority of the congresses or its leaders, and insisted on Arab acceptance of the Balfour Declaration and the terms of the Mandate that had succeeded it—the antithesis of every substantive Arab demand—as a precondition for discussion.

Like the characters in the short novel Men in the Sun, by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, however, they did not always find this route easy, for it often involved alienation, isolation, and, as when Palestinians attempted to cross frontiers with their refugee papers, even tragedy

Russia is not going to give up easily on Syria. They've had a relationship with that country since 1955. It's very close to them.

You have to be a soldier and a veteran, or a soldier who sacrificed your life for your country.