On October 1, 2006, the Boston Globe published an article by Rashid Khalidi, “Unwritten History,” bemoaning the lack of a comprehensive Palestinian national historical narrative, before and after the so-called “Nakba” of the creation of the state of Israel. Khalidi offers a feeble excuse for the absence of historical records: “There is no Palestinian state to create and maintain a Palestinian state archive. There is no central repository of Palestinian records, and a vast quantity of private Palestinian archival material—a considerable portion of the patrimony of an entire people—has been either irretrievably lost in 1948 or was carried off by...
