Summary
Israeli general, chief of military intelligence, Hebrew University professor and, in Said’s words, the principal propagandist in Israel against everything Arab and especially Palestinian, whose Arab Attitudes to Israel Said calls the canonical Israeli study of Arab attitudes and whose The Position of Israel in the Israeli-Arab Conflict (1967) supplies the long cultural-superiority passage Said quotes in Chapter Three (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.268, p.271).
Details
- Harkabi was chief of military intelligence until he was dismissed in 1959 by Ben Gurion; he later became a professor at the Hebrew University and an expert Arabist (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.268 / printed p.247, Chapter Two note 31).
- Said’s Chapter Two text names the canonical Israeli study of Arab attitudes as one by General Harkabi, without a first name (PDF p.111 / printed p.90); the notes give his Arab Attitudes to Israel (Jerusalem: Keter Press, 1972) and his virulently anti-Palestinian book, in Said’s description, Palestinians and Israel (Jerusalem: Keter Press, 1974), distributed gratis in the United States by the Israeli embassy; Said adds that Harkabi had recently become a dove and a supporter of the Peace Now movement (PDF p.268, Chapter Two note 31).
- In Chapter Three Said quotes at length, without naming him in the text, a well-known Israeli military figure and Arabist writing about a year before the 1967 war on what of the Arabs’ is appropriate to imitate, answering through cultural superiority (PDF p.170 / printed p.149); Chapter Three note 10 identifies the passage as Harkabi, The Position of Israel in the Israeli-Arab Conflict (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1967), p.84 (PDF p.271 / printed p.250).
- In Chapter Four’s notes Said calls Harkabi the most expert proponent of the view under discussion, whose books are standard reading for the Israeli army and routinely distributed by Israeli embassies and consulates in the West, citing Palestinians and Israel again (PDF p.273 / printed p.252, Chapter Four note 26).