To the Editor:
Reviewer Daniel Pipes (Bookshelf, Jan. 15) was apparently distressed by my book Under Siege: P.L.O. Decisionmaking During the 1982 War, not at all surprising for someone who comments on my use of the term "the Palestinian polity" by saying that "no such thing exists."
Pipes' distress, however, has led him to take liberties which are inexcusable for someone with purportedly "scholarly" interests. Among other things, he takes quotes out of context (the term "P.L.O. civilian population" cited on p. 169 is an obvious proofreading mistake; on pp. 66, 69, 71, 134, 147, 167, 168, and every other occasion I distinguish between the P.L.O. and the civilian population, as any ordinary reader would have noted); he twists the book's arguments beyond recognition (far from trying to substantiate the "claim that the PLO really won the 1982 conflict," the book states on p. 2: "As for the Palestinians, they too have been major losers," and on p. 4 refers to the P.L.O.'s "defeat in Lebanon"); and he consistently distorts references (e.g., my reference to Leningrad was to the fact that a siege increases the solidarity of the beleaguered civilian population).
His worst falsification is that he misrepresents the book's main points, and in the process ignores the fact that every important Palestinian document was checked in interviews with U.S. and French diplomats. Indeed some of the points Pipes questions, such as the magnitude of the Israeli forces committed to the Lebanese campaign (with the full backing of the U.S., pace Pipes), are taken from Israeli sources, in this case a book by the current president of Israel and former chief of military intelligence, Chaim Herzog.
Unable to disprove any of my arguments, Pipes resorts to impugning my credentials, a McCarthyite tactic which is nothing less than intellectual terrorism. Despite his shrill attack on my work, and on Columbia University Press for publishing it, there is a scholarly Palestinian point of view, and a Palestinian people. After all, who fought the Israeli army in Beirut for 70 days in the summer of 1982, and who is the focus of all the current obfuscation over the "peace process"?
Prof. Rashid Khalidi
Columbia University
New York
