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Long before Khalidi became notable and while Barak Obama was still a kid, Khalidi was interviewed in Beruit once the the Los Angeles Times and bthen by two separate New York Times reporters, these interviews took place in 1976, 1978, and 1982. I have been to all three paperas and read the stories. Khaldi is cited as a spokesman for and employee of the PLO. I have put the exact quotations and citations into the article. I know that Khalidi has denied this. someone needs to put up that citation. But I cannot imagine a justification for ignoring the evidence in these three old news stories. The LA Times and the NY Times do make mistakes, But, the same erroroneous description of a source by three reporters in three separate years? hard to believe. Historicist ( talk) 13:52, 2 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
1) The Los Angeles Times is backing its 1976 description of Khalidi as a PLO spokesman with a new story describing Khalidi as, “a renowned scholar on the Palestinians who in the 1970s had acted as a spokesman for Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization.” [1]
2) A truly persuasive report has surfaced on martin Kramer’s blog. [ http://sandbox.blog-city.com/khalidi_of_the_plo.htm#update3] It comes from Pacifica Radio. [2] According to Kramer:
Khalidi is given an affiliation by the narrator five times, as follows (with the elapsed time in parentheses): • "Rashid Khalidi, interviewed in Beirut, is an official spokesperson for the Palestinian news service Wafa" (7:34)
• "PLO spokesperson Rashid Khalidi" (11:45)
• "Rashid Khalidi, official spokesperson for the PLO" (21:00)
• "Rashid Khalidi, interviewed at the headquarters of the PLO in Beirut" (29:57) • "Rashid Khalidi is the leading spokesperson for the PLO news agency, Wafa" (32:51) I listened to the program (Kramer has the link) and found his citations to be accurate.
I believe that these two items should be added to the article as footnotes and that the lead of the PLO Connection section should read as the Los Angeles Times reads: “acted as a spokesman for Yassir Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization.” With Khalidi’s denial at the end of the section. The Los Angeles Times did not print something like this at this moment in time without serious consideration.
Historicist (
talk) 20:53, 3 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
There is a graph there that begins saying his statements on pal/israel have been his "most controversial." No argument on that from me. But the next sentence reports that khalidi believes Mandatory Palestine in 1948 was "occupied." This may be one of the least controversial positions on the matter to hold -- it's one of the few areas of total agreement between israelis and palestinians (we get into controversy over what should have happened afterward). The following statement about relative territorial control between Israel, Egypt and Jordan at the end of 1948 is again not particularly controversial or even notable. Can anyone explain why this odd digression is here? I'm considering shortening drastically or deleting.
What follows in this section should also be drastically shortened. The bit on his view on "resistance to occupation" should be distilled to this: "Khalidi believes international law gives Palestinians a right to fight occupation. A New York Sun editorial criticized Khalidi's stance, arguing he does not sufficiently distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. In an interview discussing this editorial, Khalidi objected to the Suns characterization of his position and said the paper had taken his statements on international law out of context."
If i had my druthers i would delete the bit on his criticism of a possible future payment of reparations by arab states for land confiscated by Israel. It's hard to understand without a lot of knowledge of the back story, refers to something that might hypothetically happen some day, and isn't particularly notable or controversial otherwise. Bali ultimate ( talk) 22:20, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Rashid Khalidi has a long and significant connection with the PLO, one that goes back decades before the current presidential cmpaign. This page needs an objective discussion of this connection. In particular his employment by the PLO as a spokesman from between 1976 and 1982 is supported by the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. It ought not to be arbitrarily removed. Instead, Khalidi's denial of the employment (a denial which came only two decades later) should be indcluded along with statements from responsible sources that are skeptical about the denial. 2) his involvement with the PLO at Madrid needs an objective section. 3) his involvement with the PLO in the 1970's which gained him unparallelled access to the leadership upon which he based important writings needs an objective section. While I understand that people are feeling heated about Obama (whom I have personally supported actively for President,) editors need to step back and keep the page objective Historicist ( talk) 19:00, 2 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
With regards to verifying contents, you can see some content scanned online if you google for "Khalidi of the PLO" (the website is called Sandbox). I'm merely mentioning it as a convenience link, not neccessarily as a RS. Andjam ( talk) 11:37, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
User:Historicist has initiated a neutrality check on this article. His grievance is the removal of a new subsection he created, "PLO Connection," which he first added to the "Public Life" section, then promoted up the page to "Family, Education, and Career." It read as follows:
He's now warning on my user page that the dispute will be "submitted for arbitration" though he's refused thus far even to discuss it on this talk page.
Hoo boy. [Appears willing to talk now]
At any rate, I want to make very clear here why the new section is a non-starter. It appears at first to be sourced to a range of decades-old primary sources used to support the argument that Khalidi worked for the PLO. This in itself would present a SYN/NOR problem, but on closer inspection it becomes apparent that Historicist has merely presented as primary sources material alluded to by two opinion pieces from partisan publications: for Historicist's claim that "Khalidi has denied that he ever worked for the PLO," we have a 2004 op-ed, "Arafat minion as professor," published in the right-wing tabloid The Washington Times; for Historicist's claim that "Others have found his denial unconvincing," we have an American Spectator op-ed from last week, "The PLO's Professor," which Historicist is setting up as a rebuttal to a claim supposedly made four years earlier. The latter in fact contains nothing whatsoever about Khalidi's "denials"; it addresses the issue only in terms of recent Obama statements. According to the old 2004 Washington Times piece, Khalidi "dismisses the allegation that he served as a PLO spokesman." This latter piece is an all-out hystericist screed, according to which "'Professor' Rashid Khalidi has been shilling for terrorists since the early 1980s"; even if Historicist were to quote it accurately, which he has not, it would have absolutely no place in a BLP as a source for controversial claims.
The American Spectator op-ed might be used in a more limited way (i.e. as a source for some of the partisan back-and-forth going on in light of the presidential campaigns), but Historicist is grossly misrepresenting its contents.
Above all, anything about the "PLO connection" controversy needs to be dealt with – succinctly, neutrally, and for G-d's sake accurately – in the section on the presidential campaigns, since this is the grounds for its notability. No more COATRACKing, no more trying to show who's telling the truth through original-research-primary-source-hobby-horse-synthesis sections.-- G-Dett ( talk) 20:08, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Just to clarify - are you demoting articles by the New York Times and LA Times to "primary source" status because they're about Khalidi, not about the election campaign? Thanks, Andjam ( talk) 11:42, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Rashid Khalidi was twice described as a spokesman for the PLO in Lebanon, once by the Los Angeles Times in 1976 and once by the New York Times in 1978. In no other news agency's reports, and in no other reports by the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times, was Khalidi ever described as working for the PLO. According to The Washington Times in 2004, Khalidi described these two as instances of misattribution. Khalidi was cited dozens of times throughout that period by other news organs, who described him variously as "Rashid Khalidi of the Institute of Palestinian Studies," "a professor of political science who is close to Al Fatah," "a Palestinian academic who is an observer at the PNC," "a professor of political science at Beirut's prestigious American University," "a Georgetown University analyst," and "a Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut."
Here, from the Campus-watch.org files, is an article sparked by the brouhaha over the funding sources for the Said Chair referring to "former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi," [3]
It's the sort of thing that was being said at the time, and this is the kind of material that the Washington Times reporter was covering when that paper interviewed Khalidi in 2004 and he denied the PLO connection. We pretty much all believed him. After all, the accusation was based on a single news story, and Tom Friedman is capable of getting an identifier wrong.
The issue has been brought up since. I believe that it got back into the papers (at least, the Daily Princetonian,) when Rashid was considered and nixed for a job at Princeton.
It has also been published as a matter of fact by reputable people and academic presses:
Barry Rubin, Judith Colp Rubin, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 78, 119, describe Khalidi as:"PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi," "former PLO spokesman."
"The son of a diplomat, Rashid Khalidi first served his people as an official in the Beirut nerve center of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)."
Rubin, Troen and Lassner are serious and distinguished people who do not write such things without evidence. Indeed, these two books are by individuals whose scholarship is so highly regarded (note: one may disagree with their politics, but all four authors have high reputations for the accuracy of their information) that both books should be included in the article as sources along with the news articles.
I feel similarly about last Thursday's LA Times article describing Khalidi as an LA Times spokesman. That was the LA Times speaking ex cathedra and flatly stating that Khalidi held such a position in the relevant period.
The difficulty with the blogs that G-Dett threatens to add to the page, is that they published not only in the heat of a political campaign, but before Martin Kramer presented this fresh evidence. I can show you a thousand sources that say that the Trojan war is a myth invented by Homer. They were, of course, all made obsolete by Schliemann. Once he did the dig and gazed on the face of Agamemnon anyone who used one of those old sources to establish that the stories were mere Homeric allegations would have been laughed out of the room. G-Dett's attempt to bring these bloggers into the picture is similarly obsolete.
A formal refutation of Khalidi's affiliation with the PLO by someone who had examined the LATimes, NYTimes, and Radio Pacifica stories and undertaken to refute them based on some sort of close reasoning would, of course, be different. But to G-Dentt I say, you are like a man who ignores Schliemann to tell us that Homer's stories are baseless.
Why do I care? I don't like to be played for a fool. Rashid has spend years denying this charge. Most of us are in the way of believing that our colleagues are not liars. I and pretty much everyone I know believed him. Not we discover that he was lying. And I am ticked.
In conclusion. It is incorrect to assert that this allegation was new with this campaign. It has been out there for years. What the campaign did was to "inspire" people, (Republicans, presumably,) to scour the archives for proof. With an LA Times article, two NY Times articles and that remarkable Pacifica Radio interview, they found it.
Khalidi is a significant figure. His extended stint as a PLO spokesman at the height of the PLO terror attacks on international airline flights is a significant part of his career. The Presidential campaign is over. I'm going out to celebrate. But, for the record, the now-validated fact that Rashid was a PLO spokesman belongs on the man's web page. Historicist ( talk) 22:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
Thomas W. Lippman of the Middle East Institute, and a former diplomatic, national security, and Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post (1966-99, 2003), has published a letter in the November 1 edition of that newspaper. Lippman writes: The Post's defense of Rashid Khalidi ["An 'Idiot Wind,'" editorial, Oct. 31] was generally commendable, but in fairness to Sen. John McCain, it should be noted that Mr. Khalidi was indeed "a PLO spokesman." In the early years of the Lebanese civil war, Mr. Khalidi was the Beirut-based spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, and his office was a stop on the daily rounds of journalists covering that conflict. As we used to say in the pre-electronic newspaper business: Check the clips. Lippman informs me that he personally went around to see Khalidi as part of his reporting duties whenever he was in Beirut. --fini-- This is the point I was making above to G-Dett. Responsible people, like the Washington Post editorial Board (and me) took Rashid at his word. Now we have an equally reputable former Washington Post correspondent who corroborates the Radio Pacifica report. Lipmann says that he was in Rashid's office regularly while Rashid was PLO spokesman. Historicist ( talk) 22:48, 4 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
I have reverted Historicist's re-addition of the sentence, "Khalidi reportedly worked for the PLO in Beirut between 1976 and 1982." Virtually all of your references for this are primary sources. You are taking old newspaper articles and using them to advance your claim that he worked for the PLO. This is not only inappropriate and a violation of Wikipedia's policy on original research, but it also goes against WP:BLP. If he indeed worked for the PLO, we would have a majority of reputable news and "fact checking" organizations confirming this. We have to be very careful about what claims we make, especially alleging that someone worked for a terrorist organization. Please don't re-add the sentence again until there is a clear consensus here for you to do so. Thanks. Khoi khoi 05:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree Avi, all we have to do is attribute the source of allegation to conform to WP:NPOV and to include the denial of Khalidi. I have reworded the section to conform to these core wiki principles. Glen Twenty ( talk) 06:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
OK, with back-and-forths, arguments about tags, and warning templates being handed out, I have once again locked the article. Please work things out here. Thank you. -- Avi ( talk) 21:52, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
I've read that the radio documentary (available for download) identifies Khalidi as a PLO spokesman five times. I'm not a middle east expert though - does it qualify as a reliable source? Andjam ( talk) 11:47, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Now that the fury of elections has ended, I hope editors deeply concerned about Khalidi's connections with the PLO (which by 1974 had UN recognition) and Obama, can mosey on and edit with similar intensity the Victor G. Atiyeh page. The Oregon governor of Syrian descent sheltered Obama's Weatherman pal William Ayers while he was on the run, before becoming the Republic governor of that state. Atiyeh then became John McCain’s honorary campaign chairman in Oregon. Not a word of all this in his Wiki bio. Nishidani ( talk) 16:49, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Ladies and gentlemen, can we try and have this discussed without having to have the article locked down again? The issue seems to be that there are some who have found sourced describing Khalidi as a PLO spokesman, and others feel that the sources brought are primary sourced, and should not be used in BLP articles. A few points:
For the purposes of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, primary, secondary and tertiary sources are defined as follows:
* Primary sources are sources very close to the origin of a particular topic or event. An eyewitness account of a traffic accident written or narrated by the eyewitness is an example of a primary source. Other examples include archaeological artifacts; photographs; audio and video recordings; historical documents such as diaries, census results, maps, or transcripts of surveillance, public hearings, trials, or interviews; tabulated results of surveys or questionnaires; written or recorded notes of laboratory and field research, experiments or observations, published experimental results by the person(s) actually involved in the research; original philosophical works, religious scripture, administrative documents, patents, and artistic and fictional works such as poems, scripts, screenplays, novels, motion pictures, and television programs.
* Secondary sources are accounts at least one step removed from an event. Secondary sources may draw on primary sources and other secondary sources to create a general overview; or to make analytic or synthetic claims.
* Tertiary sources are publications such as encyclopedias or other compendia that mainly summarize secondary sources. For example, Wikipedia itself is a tertiary source. Many introductory undergraduate-level textbooks may also be considered tertiary sources, to the extent that they sum up multiple secondary sources.
Wikipedia articles should rely mainly on published reliable secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources. All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.
Primary sources that have been published by a reliable source may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. For that reason, anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. To the extent that part of an article relies on a primary source, it should:
* only make descriptive claims about the information found in the primary source, the accuracy and applicability of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge, and
* make no analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about the information found in the primary source.
Unsourced material obtained from a Wikipedian's personal experience, such as an unpublished eyewitness account, should not be added to articles. It would violate both this policy and Verifiability, and would cause Wikipedia to become a primary source for that material.
Tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources. Some tertiary sources may be more reliable than others, and within any given tertiary source, some articles may be more reliable than others. WP:Verifiability#Reliable sources describes the criteria for assessing the reliability of sources.
Appropriate sourcing can be a complicated issue, and these are general rules. Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are more suitable on any given occasion is a matter of common sense and good editorial judgment, and should be discussed on article talk pages.
As such, I do not think that removal of the information is appropriate, or even allowed, under the BLP policies as explained above. Are there any counterarguments? Thank you. -- Avi ( talk) 06:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Avi, as I've said above, the Washington Post Fact Checker has said, The McCain campaign has depicted Khalidi as a former "spokesman" for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Questioned about this claim, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers referred me to an April 10, 2008 story from the Los Angeles Times that reported that Khalidi "often spoke to reporters" on behalf of the PLO in the early 1970s while teaching at a university in Beirut. Khalidi has denied ever being a spokesman for the PLO, but this may be a question of semantics, revolving around whether he was a formal or informal spokesman. If we're going to add the LA Times link we need to take this into consideration as well. FactCheck.org states: "Khalidi, according to the story, taught at a university in Beirut in the 1970s, sometimes speaking to reporters on behalf of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (though he says he was never part of the PLO) and in the 1990s helped advise the Palestinian delegation during peace talks." ( [4]) This is why we need to be very careful when we use old newspaper articles from the 70s and 80s. Much of the information can be outdated, obsolete, and newer material can contradict statements previously made in them. The link from the Washington Post for example is a better way to go about adding this material. My problem with gathering all these old newspapers is that the main claim that he was part of the PLO is based on his work with Wafa. If I recall correctly there was a similar instance where a user was trying to add information contradicting historians on the Armenian Genocide. He provided original newspaper articles from 1915 as his source, trying to say "see, see, the experts are wrong!" Would that be acceptable according to WP:PRIMARY? I don't see how using these old articles is any different here. Khoi khoi 07:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 78, 119, describe Khalidi as:"PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi," "former PLO spokesman."
"The son of a diplomat, Rashid Khalidi first served his people as an official in the Beirut nerve center of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)."
Can we please recognize that we have three very reliable secodary sources for this. I am not familiar with Mr. Rubin's work, but S. Ilan Troen and Jacob Lassner are historians of the first rank, certainly regarded within the profession as highly as Khalidi. Not the sort of men to write something like this without substantial evidence. Historicist ( talk) 13:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)historicist
"The son of a diplomat, Rashid Khalidi first served his people as an official in the Beirut nerve center of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)."
Copying the Troen/Lassner quote into google will bring you to the proper page on books google. There you will find an admiring discussion of Khalidi's career indicating the significance of his association with the PLO in Beirut to the development of his politcal positions and scholarship. Historicist ( talk) 02:37, 19 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
The point remains very simple. We can't mine primary sources in order to resolve or throw our weight behind one side of a dispute between secondary sources. This is even more of a problem when (i) it's a BLP, (ii) the secondary sources are mostly marginal polemical blogs, and (iii) the subject disputes the very claims made by the side we're assembling primary sources to back up.
Furthermore, Historicist's gives undue weight to the dispute (by creating a prominent subsection to house a single sentence), as well as violating NPOV:
Khalidi reportedly worked for the PLO in Beirut between 1976 and 1982. [18][19] [20][21][22][23][24] However, Khalidi has denied that he ever worked for the PLO.[25]
That sentence strongly implies that Khalidi is lying.
Really, it's time to put this to rest. A neutral summary, without a subject header – something along the lines of "Several commentators, citing attributions from news reports in the 1970s, claim that Khalidi worked as a PLO spokesman in Lebanon. Khalidi maintains that he never worked for the PLO, and that such attributions were few, erroneous, and previously unknown to him" – will more than suffice.-- G-Dett ( talk) 12:46, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
With notes to follow each brief statement. Historicist ( talk) 17:56, 19 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
Note: Are we still stuck on this issue? G-Dett, is there a phrasing you'd be willing to accept that doesn't use "claim"? I note my mention of Ehud Yeari sometime ago. Jaakobou Chalk Talk 18:02, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
G-Dett, Wikidemon, I realize that this discussion had gotten very long. However, if you scroll up, you will see that I have already documented that discussion of the question of whether or not Khalidi worked for the PLO long predates the 2008 campaign. (before this campaign the evidence consisted primarily of the Thomas Firedman New York Times article from 1982). I could post more old news articles. More books. More citations. But I have already posted sufficient to establish that this did not begin with the recent campaign. And that it will not end now. And that scholars such as S. Ilan Toren consider the PLO connnection during the Lebanon period to have been an important part of the man's intellectual development. My comment was addressed not to these well-established matters, but to your suggestion that we refer to commentators who deny the evidence. Those commentators who came in for the campaign nave ceased to write about Khalidi. Others will continue to do so because the man has been the recurring subject of media interest since more or less the time he left Chicago for Columbia. Historicist ( talk) 18:27, 19 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
Proposed language, following present discussion: According to some contemporary news reports, Khalidi worked for the PLO in Beirut between 1976 and 1982. Khalidi dismisses the allegation that he served as a PLO spokesman, saying, "I often spoke to journalists in Beirut, who usually cited me without attribution as a well-informed Palestinian source. If some misidentified me at the time, I am not aware of it." Historicist ( talk) 12:57, 20 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
Proposed language combining yesterday's discussion with Nov. 5 discussion. I believe that this language is succinct, accurate, and fair to Khalidi. Khalidi reportedly worked for the PLO in Beirut between 1976 and 1982. Khalidi dismisses the allegation that he served as a PLO spokesman, saying, "I often spoke to journalists in Beirut, who usually cited me without attribution as a well-informed Palestinian source. If some misidentified me at the time, I am not aware of it." Historicist ( talk) 13:09, 20 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
• http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/04/22/news/12717.shtml • http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/04/25/princeton • http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i22/22a00701.htm • http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i36/36a00702.htm • http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i22/22a00701.htm • http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i17/17a00702.htm • http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/urban/education/features/10868/ • http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/190281 • http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-03-08/news/a-free-speech-war/1 • http://socialistworker.org/2005-1/533/533_16_RashidKhalidi.shtml • http://www.nysun.com/new-york/professor-khalidi-might-be-bound-for-princeton/9996/ • http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i26/26a01003.htm • http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/jul/08/20040708-083635-4366r/ • http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/civilrights/20050407/3/1371 Historicist ( talk) 00:24, 21 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
A suggestion for Wikidemon and Khoikhoi, rather than working to excise the part of Khalidi's career during which he demonstrably worked for the PLO, why not augment the other aspects of his distinguished career to make it appear as a youthful episode. Historicist ( talk) 15:42, 21 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | → | Archive 8 |
Long before Khalidi became notable and while Barak Obama was still a kid, Khalidi was interviewed in Beruit once the the Los Angeles Times and bthen by two separate New York Times reporters, these interviews took place in 1976, 1978, and 1982. I have been to all three paperas and read the stories. Khaldi is cited as a spokesman for and employee of the PLO. I have put the exact quotations and citations into the article. I know that Khalidi has denied this. someone needs to put up that citation. But I cannot imagine a justification for ignoring the evidence in these three old news stories. The LA Times and the NY Times do make mistakes, But, the same erroroneous description of a source by three reporters in three separate years? hard to believe. Historicist ( talk) 13:52, 2 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
1) The Los Angeles Times is backing its 1976 description of Khalidi as a PLO spokesman with a new story describing Khalidi as, “a renowned scholar on the Palestinians who in the 1970s had acted as a spokesman for Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization.” [1]
2) A truly persuasive report has surfaced on martin Kramer’s blog. [ http://sandbox.blog-city.com/khalidi_of_the_plo.htm#update3] It comes from Pacifica Radio. [2] According to Kramer:
Khalidi is given an affiliation by the narrator five times, as follows (with the elapsed time in parentheses): • "Rashid Khalidi, interviewed in Beirut, is an official spokesperson for the Palestinian news service Wafa" (7:34)
• "PLO spokesperson Rashid Khalidi" (11:45)
• "Rashid Khalidi, official spokesperson for the PLO" (21:00)
• "Rashid Khalidi, interviewed at the headquarters of the PLO in Beirut" (29:57) • "Rashid Khalidi is the leading spokesperson for the PLO news agency, Wafa" (32:51) I listened to the program (Kramer has the link) and found his citations to be accurate.
I believe that these two items should be added to the article as footnotes and that the lead of the PLO Connection section should read as the Los Angeles Times reads: “acted as a spokesman for Yassir Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization.” With Khalidi’s denial at the end of the section. The Los Angeles Times did not print something like this at this moment in time without serious consideration.
Historicist (
talk) 20:53, 3 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
There is a graph there that begins saying his statements on pal/israel have been his "most controversial." No argument on that from me. But the next sentence reports that khalidi believes Mandatory Palestine in 1948 was "occupied." This may be one of the least controversial positions on the matter to hold -- it's one of the few areas of total agreement between israelis and palestinians (we get into controversy over what should have happened afterward). The following statement about relative territorial control between Israel, Egypt and Jordan at the end of 1948 is again not particularly controversial or even notable. Can anyone explain why this odd digression is here? I'm considering shortening drastically or deleting.
What follows in this section should also be drastically shortened. The bit on his view on "resistance to occupation" should be distilled to this: "Khalidi believes international law gives Palestinians a right to fight occupation. A New York Sun editorial criticized Khalidi's stance, arguing he does not sufficiently distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. In an interview discussing this editorial, Khalidi objected to the Suns characterization of his position and said the paper had taken his statements on international law out of context."
If i had my druthers i would delete the bit on his criticism of a possible future payment of reparations by arab states for land confiscated by Israel. It's hard to understand without a lot of knowledge of the back story, refers to something that might hypothetically happen some day, and isn't particularly notable or controversial otherwise. Bali ultimate ( talk) 22:20, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Rashid Khalidi has a long and significant connection with the PLO, one that goes back decades before the current presidential cmpaign. This page needs an objective discussion of this connection. In particular his employment by the PLO as a spokesman from between 1976 and 1982 is supported by the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. It ought not to be arbitrarily removed. Instead, Khalidi's denial of the employment (a denial which came only two decades later) should be indcluded along with statements from responsible sources that are skeptical about the denial. 2) his involvement with the PLO at Madrid needs an objective section. 3) his involvement with the PLO in the 1970's which gained him unparallelled access to the leadership upon which he based important writings needs an objective section. While I understand that people are feeling heated about Obama (whom I have personally supported actively for President,) editors need to step back and keep the page objective Historicist ( talk) 19:00, 2 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
With regards to verifying contents, you can see some content scanned online if you google for "Khalidi of the PLO" (the website is called Sandbox). I'm merely mentioning it as a convenience link, not neccessarily as a RS. Andjam ( talk) 11:37, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
User:Historicist has initiated a neutrality check on this article. His grievance is the removal of a new subsection he created, "PLO Connection," which he first added to the "Public Life" section, then promoted up the page to "Family, Education, and Career." It read as follows:
He's now warning on my user page that the dispute will be "submitted for arbitration" though he's refused thus far even to discuss it on this talk page.
Hoo boy. [Appears willing to talk now]
At any rate, I want to make very clear here why the new section is a non-starter. It appears at first to be sourced to a range of decades-old primary sources used to support the argument that Khalidi worked for the PLO. This in itself would present a SYN/NOR problem, but on closer inspection it becomes apparent that Historicist has merely presented as primary sources material alluded to by two opinion pieces from partisan publications: for Historicist's claim that "Khalidi has denied that he ever worked for the PLO," we have a 2004 op-ed, "Arafat minion as professor," published in the right-wing tabloid The Washington Times; for Historicist's claim that "Others have found his denial unconvincing," we have an American Spectator op-ed from last week, "The PLO's Professor," which Historicist is setting up as a rebuttal to a claim supposedly made four years earlier. The latter in fact contains nothing whatsoever about Khalidi's "denials"; it addresses the issue only in terms of recent Obama statements. According to the old 2004 Washington Times piece, Khalidi "dismisses the allegation that he served as a PLO spokesman." This latter piece is an all-out hystericist screed, according to which "'Professor' Rashid Khalidi has been shilling for terrorists since the early 1980s"; even if Historicist were to quote it accurately, which he has not, it would have absolutely no place in a BLP as a source for controversial claims.
The American Spectator op-ed might be used in a more limited way (i.e. as a source for some of the partisan back-and-forth going on in light of the presidential campaigns), but Historicist is grossly misrepresenting its contents.
Above all, anything about the "PLO connection" controversy needs to be dealt with – succinctly, neutrally, and for G-d's sake accurately – in the section on the presidential campaigns, since this is the grounds for its notability. No more COATRACKing, no more trying to show who's telling the truth through original-research-primary-source-hobby-horse-synthesis sections.-- G-Dett ( talk) 20:08, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Just to clarify - are you demoting articles by the New York Times and LA Times to "primary source" status because they're about Khalidi, not about the election campaign? Thanks, Andjam ( talk) 11:42, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Rashid Khalidi was twice described as a spokesman for the PLO in Lebanon, once by the Los Angeles Times in 1976 and once by the New York Times in 1978. In no other news agency's reports, and in no other reports by the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times, was Khalidi ever described as working for the PLO. According to The Washington Times in 2004, Khalidi described these two as instances of misattribution. Khalidi was cited dozens of times throughout that period by other news organs, who described him variously as "Rashid Khalidi of the Institute of Palestinian Studies," "a professor of political science who is close to Al Fatah," "a Palestinian academic who is an observer at the PNC," "a professor of political science at Beirut's prestigious American University," "a Georgetown University analyst," and "a Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut."
Here, from the Campus-watch.org files, is an article sparked by the brouhaha over the funding sources for the Said Chair referring to "former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi," [3]
It's the sort of thing that was being said at the time, and this is the kind of material that the Washington Times reporter was covering when that paper interviewed Khalidi in 2004 and he denied the PLO connection. We pretty much all believed him. After all, the accusation was based on a single news story, and Tom Friedman is capable of getting an identifier wrong.
The issue has been brought up since. I believe that it got back into the papers (at least, the Daily Princetonian,) when Rashid was considered and nixed for a job at Princeton.
It has also been published as a matter of fact by reputable people and academic presses:
Barry Rubin, Judith Colp Rubin, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 78, 119, describe Khalidi as:"PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi," "former PLO spokesman."
"The son of a diplomat, Rashid Khalidi first served his people as an official in the Beirut nerve center of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)."
Rubin, Troen and Lassner are serious and distinguished people who do not write such things without evidence. Indeed, these two books are by individuals whose scholarship is so highly regarded (note: one may disagree with their politics, but all four authors have high reputations for the accuracy of their information) that both books should be included in the article as sources along with the news articles.
I feel similarly about last Thursday's LA Times article describing Khalidi as an LA Times spokesman. That was the LA Times speaking ex cathedra and flatly stating that Khalidi held such a position in the relevant period.
The difficulty with the blogs that G-Dett threatens to add to the page, is that they published not only in the heat of a political campaign, but before Martin Kramer presented this fresh evidence. I can show you a thousand sources that say that the Trojan war is a myth invented by Homer. They were, of course, all made obsolete by Schliemann. Once he did the dig and gazed on the face of Agamemnon anyone who used one of those old sources to establish that the stories were mere Homeric allegations would have been laughed out of the room. G-Dett's attempt to bring these bloggers into the picture is similarly obsolete.
A formal refutation of Khalidi's affiliation with the PLO by someone who had examined the LATimes, NYTimes, and Radio Pacifica stories and undertaken to refute them based on some sort of close reasoning would, of course, be different. But to G-Dentt I say, you are like a man who ignores Schliemann to tell us that Homer's stories are baseless.
Why do I care? I don't like to be played for a fool. Rashid has spend years denying this charge. Most of us are in the way of believing that our colleagues are not liars. I and pretty much everyone I know believed him. Not we discover that he was lying. And I am ticked.
In conclusion. It is incorrect to assert that this allegation was new with this campaign. It has been out there for years. What the campaign did was to "inspire" people, (Republicans, presumably,) to scour the archives for proof. With an LA Times article, two NY Times articles and that remarkable Pacifica Radio interview, they found it.
Khalidi is a significant figure. His extended stint as a PLO spokesman at the height of the PLO terror attacks on international airline flights is a significant part of his career. The Presidential campaign is over. I'm going out to celebrate. But, for the record, the now-validated fact that Rashid was a PLO spokesman belongs on the man's web page. Historicist ( talk) 22:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
Thomas W. Lippman of the Middle East Institute, and a former diplomatic, national security, and Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post (1966-99, 2003), has published a letter in the November 1 edition of that newspaper. Lippman writes: The Post's defense of Rashid Khalidi ["An 'Idiot Wind,'" editorial, Oct. 31] was generally commendable, but in fairness to Sen. John McCain, it should be noted that Mr. Khalidi was indeed "a PLO spokesman." In the early years of the Lebanese civil war, Mr. Khalidi was the Beirut-based spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, and his office was a stop on the daily rounds of journalists covering that conflict. As we used to say in the pre-electronic newspaper business: Check the clips. Lippman informs me that he personally went around to see Khalidi as part of his reporting duties whenever he was in Beirut. --fini-- This is the point I was making above to G-Dett. Responsible people, like the Washington Post editorial Board (and me) took Rashid at his word. Now we have an equally reputable former Washington Post correspondent who corroborates the Radio Pacifica report. Lipmann says that he was in Rashid's office regularly while Rashid was PLO spokesman. Historicist ( talk) 22:48, 4 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
I have reverted Historicist's re-addition of the sentence, "Khalidi reportedly worked for the PLO in Beirut between 1976 and 1982." Virtually all of your references for this are primary sources. You are taking old newspaper articles and using them to advance your claim that he worked for the PLO. This is not only inappropriate and a violation of Wikipedia's policy on original research, but it also goes against WP:BLP. If he indeed worked for the PLO, we would have a majority of reputable news and "fact checking" organizations confirming this. We have to be very careful about what claims we make, especially alleging that someone worked for a terrorist organization. Please don't re-add the sentence again until there is a clear consensus here for you to do so. Thanks. Khoi khoi 05:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree Avi, all we have to do is attribute the source of allegation to conform to WP:NPOV and to include the denial of Khalidi. I have reworded the section to conform to these core wiki principles. Glen Twenty ( talk) 06:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
OK, with back-and-forths, arguments about tags, and warning templates being handed out, I have once again locked the article. Please work things out here. Thank you. -- Avi ( talk) 21:52, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
I've read that the radio documentary (available for download) identifies Khalidi as a PLO spokesman five times. I'm not a middle east expert though - does it qualify as a reliable source? Andjam ( talk) 11:47, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Now that the fury of elections has ended, I hope editors deeply concerned about Khalidi's connections with the PLO (which by 1974 had UN recognition) and Obama, can mosey on and edit with similar intensity the Victor G. Atiyeh page. The Oregon governor of Syrian descent sheltered Obama's Weatherman pal William Ayers while he was on the run, before becoming the Republic governor of that state. Atiyeh then became John McCain’s honorary campaign chairman in Oregon. Not a word of all this in his Wiki bio. Nishidani ( talk) 16:49, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Ladies and gentlemen, can we try and have this discussed without having to have the article locked down again? The issue seems to be that there are some who have found sourced describing Khalidi as a PLO spokesman, and others feel that the sources brought are primary sourced, and should not be used in BLP articles. A few points:
For the purposes of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, primary, secondary and tertiary sources are defined as follows:
* Primary sources are sources very close to the origin of a particular topic or event. An eyewitness account of a traffic accident written or narrated by the eyewitness is an example of a primary source. Other examples include archaeological artifacts; photographs; audio and video recordings; historical documents such as diaries, census results, maps, or transcripts of surveillance, public hearings, trials, or interviews; tabulated results of surveys or questionnaires; written or recorded notes of laboratory and field research, experiments or observations, published experimental results by the person(s) actually involved in the research; original philosophical works, religious scripture, administrative documents, patents, and artistic and fictional works such as poems, scripts, screenplays, novels, motion pictures, and television programs.
* Secondary sources are accounts at least one step removed from an event. Secondary sources may draw on primary sources and other secondary sources to create a general overview; or to make analytic or synthetic claims.
* Tertiary sources are publications such as encyclopedias or other compendia that mainly summarize secondary sources. For example, Wikipedia itself is a tertiary source. Many introductory undergraduate-level textbooks may also be considered tertiary sources, to the extent that they sum up multiple secondary sources.
Wikipedia articles should rely mainly on published reliable secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources. All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.
Primary sources that have been published by a reliable source may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. For that reason, anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. To the extent that part of an article relies on a primary source, it should:
* only make descriptive claims about the information found in the primary source, the accuracy and applicability of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge, and
* make no analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about the information found in the primary source.
Unsourced material obtained from a Wikipedian's personal experience, such as an unpublished eyewitness account, should not be added to articles. It would violate both this policy and Verifiability, and would cause Wikipedia to become a primary source for that material.
Tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources. Some tertiary sources may be more reliable than others, and within any given tertiary source, some articles may be more reliable than others. WP:Verifiability#Reliable sources describes the criteria for assessing the reliability of sources.
Appropriate sourcing can be a complicated issue, and these are general rules. Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are more suitable on any given occasion is a matter of common sense and good editorial judgment, and should be discussed on article talk pages.
As such, I do not think that removal of the information is appropriate, or even allowed, under the BLP policies as explained above. Are there any counterarguments? Thank you. -- Avi ( talk) 06:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Avi, as I've said above, the Washington Post Fact Checker has said, The McCain campaign has depicted Khalidi as a former "spokesman" for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Questioned about this claim, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers referred me to an April 10, 2008 story from the Los Angeles Times that reported that Khalidi "often spoke to reporters" on behalf of the PLO in the early 1970s while teaching at a university in Beirut. Khalidi has denied ever being a spokesman for the PLO, but this may be a question of semantics, revolving around whether he was a formal or informal spokesman. If we're going to add the LA Times link we need to take this into consideration as well. FactCheck.org states: "Khalidi, according to the story, taught at a university in Beirut in the 1970s, sometimes speaking to reporters on behalf of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (though he says he was never part of the PLO) and in the 1990s helped advise the Palestinian delegation during peace talks." ( [4]) This is why we need to be very careful when we use old newspaper articles from the 70s and 80s. Much of the information can be outdated, obsolete, and newer material can contradict statements previously made in them. The link from the Washington Post for example is a better way to go about adding this material. My problem with gathering all these old newspapers is that the main claim that he was part of the PLO is based on his work with Wafa. If I recall correctly there was a similar instance where a user was trying to add information contradicting historians on the Armenian Genocide. He provided original newspaper articles from 1915 as his source, trying to say "see, see, the experts are wrong!" Would that be acceptable according to WP:PRIMARY? I don't see how using these old articles is any different here. Khoi khoi 07:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 78, 119, describe Khalidi as:"PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi," "former PLO spokesman."
"The son of a diplomat, Rashid Khalidi first served his people as an official in the Beirut nerve center of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)."
Can we please recognize that we have three very reliable secodary sources for this. I am not familiar with Mr. Rubin's work, but S. Ilan Troen and Jacob Lassner are historians of the first rank, certainly regarded within the profession as highly as Khalidi. Not the sort of men to write something like this without substantial evidence. Historicist ( talk) 13:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)historicist
"The son of a diplomat, Rashid Khalidi first served his people as an official in the Beirut nerve center of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)."
Copying the Troen/Lassner quote into google will bring you to the proper page on books google. There you will find an admiring discussion of Khalidi's career indicating the significance of his association with the PLO in Beirut to the development of his politcal positions and scholarship. Historicist ( talk) 02:37, 19 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
The point remains very simple. We can't mine primary sources in order to resolve or throw our weight behind one side of a dispute between secondary sources. This is even more of a problem when (i) it's a BLP, (ii) the secondary sources are mostly marginal polemical blogs, and (iii) the subject disputes the very claims made by the side we're assembling primary sources to back up.
Furthermore, Historicist's gives undue weight to the dispute (by creating a prominent subsection to house a single sentence), as well as violating NPOV:
Khalidi reportedly worked for the PLO in Beirut between 1976 and 1982. [18][19] [20][21][22][23][24] However, Khalidi has denied that he ever worked for the PLO.[25]
That sentence strongly implies that Khalidi is lying.
Really, it's time to put this to rest. A neutral summary, without a subject header – something along the lines of "Several commentators, citing attributions from news reports in the 1970s, claim that Khalidi worked as a PLO spokesman in Lebanon. Khalidi maintains that he never worked for the PLO, and that such attributions were few, erroneous, and previously unknown to him" – will more than suffice.-- G-Dett ( talk) 12:46, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
With notes to follow each brief statement. Historicist ( talk) 17:56, 19 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
Note: Are we still stuck on this issue? G-Dett, is there a phrasing you'd be willing to accept that doesn't use "claim"? I note my mention of Ehud Yeari sometime ago. Jaakobou Chalk Talk 18:02, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
G-Dett, Wikidemon, I realize that this discussion had gotten very long. However, if you scroll up, you will see that I have already documented that discussion of the question of whether or not Khalidi worked for the PLO long predates the 2008 campaign. (before this campaign the evidence consisted primarily of the Thomas Firedman New York Times article from 1982). I could post more old news articles. More books. More citations. But I have already posted sufficient to establish that this did not begin with the recent campaign. And that it will not end now. And that scholars such as S. Ilan Toren consider the PLO connnection during the Lebanon period to have been an important part of the man's intellectual development. My comment was addressed not to these well-established matters, but to your suggestion that we refer to commentators who deny the evidence. Those commentators who came in for the campaign nave ceased to write about Khalidi. Others will continue to do so because the man has been the recurring subject of media interest since more or less the time he left Chicago for Columbia. Historicist ( talk) 18:27, 19 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
Proposed language, following present discussion: According to some contemporary news reports, Khalidi worked for the PLO in Beirut between 1976 and 1982. Khalidi dismisses the allegation that he served as a PLO spokesman, saying, "I often spoke to journalists in Beirut, who usually cited me without attribution as a well-informed Palestinian source. If some misidentified me at the time, I am not aware of it." Historicist ( talk) 12:57, 20 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
Proposed language combining yesterday's discussion with Nov. 5 discussion. I believe that this language is succinct, accurate, and fair to Khalidi. Khalidi reportedly worked for the PLO in Beirut between 1976 and 1982. Khalidi dismisses the allegation that he served as a PLO spokesman, saying, "I often spoke to journalists in Beirut, who usually cited me without attribution as a well-informed Palestinian source. If some misidentified me at the time, I am not aware of it." Historicist ( talk) 13:09, 20 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
• http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/04/22/news/12717.shtml • http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/04/25/princeton • http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i22/22a00701.htm • http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i36/36a00702.htm • http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i22/22a00701.htm • http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i17/17a00702.htm • http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/urban/education/features/10868/ • http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/190281 • http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-03-08/news/a-free-speech-war/1 • http://socialistworker.org/2005-1/533/533_16_RashidKhalidi.shtml • http://www.nysun.com/new-york/professor-khalidi-might-be-bound-for-princeton/9996/ • http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i26/26a01003.htm • http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/jul/08/20040708-083635-4366r/ • http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/civilrights/20050407/3/1371 Historicist ( talk) 00:24, 21 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist
A suggestion for Wikidemon and Khoikhoi, rather than working to excise the part of Khalidi's career during which he demonstrably worked for the PLO, why not augment the other aspects of his distinguished career to make it appear as a youthful episode. Historicist ( talk) 15:42, 21 November 2008 (UTC)Historicist