It pains me to share the news of the passing of Professor Walid Khalidi. Professor Khalidi is the best teacher one could have; in his class at AUB, “the Arab World and the West” he taught us about the Nakbah and warned us about the pitfalls of emotional polemics in arguing for Palestine and cautioned us sternly against antisemitism. He rebuked a student who invoked the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and explained to the class that this forgery should never be mentioned in discussion about Israel or Zionism. I have been in touch with him more in recent years and saw him twice in Cambridge in the last three years. He had a remarkable memory and wrote his memoirs (in English). He shared with me one chapter dealing with British spy, Kim Philby, who Khalidi befriended when the former was correspondent of the Economist in Beirut. He refuted the notion that Palestinian fled their homeland voluntarily in 1948 in an article about Plan Dalet in 1961–decades before new Israeli historians. Condolences to his family, students, and all who care for Palestine. He devoted his entire life for Palestine and the history of Nakbah. He founded the Institute for Palestine Studies in 1963–the first Arab think tank. Albert Hourani used to say: nobody knows about the Nakbah more than Walid Khalidi. (With Walid Khalidi and dear friend, Hani Salam, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.)

Walid Khalidi is today 100-year old. He has lived through the years and decades of Palestinian suffering and dispossession. I was fortunate to have studied under professor Khalidi--both as undergraduate and graduate student at AUB. I visited professor Khalidi twice in the last two years, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His mind is as sharp as it was when he was my teacher in the last 70s and early 80s, and his memory is--literally--perfect. He has published in Al-Akhbar in the last few years, writing in his impressive Qur'anic Arabic. He still reads and writes a lot, as part of his daily routine. He is working on his memoirs (in English), and will deal with various aspects of Arab politics and his personal journey. He was a chief advisor to Saeb Salam in the 1958 civil war in Lebanon, and he is most proud of his decision in 1956 to resign from Oxford University in protest against the Tripartite war of aggression against Egypt. He told me about his first meeting with Nasser in 1956 and how the latter commented that he looked British. Walid answered by referencing his centuries-old ancestry in Jerusalem. He was one of the few people who could criticize Yasser Arafat to his face, but Arafat did not always take his advice. He talked to me about his friendship with Kim Philby. His account of the man is at variance with the Western depiction in which Philby is always portrayed as a bumbling drunk who could not take a step without falling. He said he never saw him during the years of friendship drunk except once shortly before his defection when he was under tremendous pressure. I am confident that Walid Khalidi who devoted his entire life to Palestine will continue to write about Palestine into his second century. (In this picture from 2024, Walid's nephew--and my very dear friend--Hany Salam, and me around Walid Khalidi).