As'ad AbuKhalil

AbuKhalil was born in 1960 and raised in Beirut. One biographical entry gives his birthplace as Tyre, Lebanon, while another says Beirut; the available entries therefore differ on the precise location of his birth.[3][4] His father’s family was Shi'ite Muslim and his mother was Sunni Muslim, and his father served as secretary-general of the Lebanese parliament. The biographical accounts describe AbuKhalil as having grown up in a privileged household, while one quotes him calling himself part of “the lower echelon of the spoiled brats.”[3][4]

His political outlook was influenced by the plight of Palestinians, Marxist philosophy, and his experiences of Lebanon’s intercommunal strife beginning in 1975, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the heavy bombardment of Beirut in 1982. The biographical entry characterizes his outlook as committed to social and political justice and skeptical of politicians and great powers.[3]

AbuKhalil earned a B.A. in political science in 1981 and an M.A. in the same field in 1983 from the American University of Beirut. He moved to the United States for graduate studies in 1983 and received a Ph.D. in comparative government from Georgetown University in 1988.[3] A separate biographical entry says he became a U.S. citizen in 1989.[4]

AbuKhalil taught at Tufts University, Georgetown University, and George Washington University before beginning at California State University, Stanislaus, in 1993. He has also been described as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and as a former scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.[3][4] A 2018 book identifies him as a professor of political science at Stanislaus and a weekly columnist for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.[2]

His work focuses particularly on Lebanon, Palestinians, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and U.S. involvement in the Middle East. He has worked as a freelance Middle East consultant for NBC and ABC, appeared on CNN and PBS’s The NewsHour, and served as a regular commentator on Arabic-language Al Jazeera.[3]

In September 2003, AbuKhalil launched the Angry Arab News Service blog. A biographical entry reports that it received between 30,000 and 35,000 hits per month, about half from the United States, but does not state when those figures were measured.[3] In 2012, The Times of Israel reported that the blog publicized material from an essay by Syrian opposition figure Mouaz al-Khatib, including a reference to Saddam Hussein’s achievement of “terrifying the Jews.”[5]

AbuKhalil also contributed a chapter to the 2018 book Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions. In that debate, he argued that Palestinian armed resistance could deter Israeli military action and provide leverage, while acknowledging that armed struggle had involved mistakes, setbacks, and violations. He maintained that its effects were incremental and cumulative, compared it with struggles in Vietnam and Algeria, disputed an argument for mass nonviolent resistance, and challenged the reliability of some polling about Gaza residents’ desire to leave. These are positions advanced by AbuKhalil in a debate with other contributors, not independently established findings.[2]

AbuKhalil’s books include Historical Dictionary of Lebanon (1998), Bin Laden, Islam, and America's New “War on Terrorism” (2002), and The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power (listed as 2004 in one biographical entry). The publication year for The Battle for Saudi Arabia is inconsistent in the available entries: another discussion refers to it as a 2005 book.[3][4]

The Historical Dictionary of Lebanon, published by Scarecrow Press, is cataloged as an English-language volume of 269 pages, with bibliographical references on pages 235–268. Its alphabetized entries cover people and subjects including politicians, cultural figures, political parties, militia groups, and population groups; its bibliography draws on sources in English, French, German, and Arabic.[4][6] A chapter bibliography in the Library of Congress Federal Research Division’s Lebanon: A Country Study lists AbuKhalil’s 1985 article “Druze, Sunni, and Shi'ite Political Leadership in Present-Day Lebanon” among works relevant to Lebanese society and religion.[7]

The Library of Congress study, researched in December 1987 and published in 1989, credits AbuKhalil with a chapter titled “The Society and Its Environment.” The chapter describes late-1980s Lebanon as deeply fragmented by civil conflict, foreign military intervention, displacement, and disagreements over social autonomy. It argues that modernization and social change had not been matched by an expansion of political representation, and that sectarian divisions and competing national identities contributed to conflict. The chapter’s account states that “a unified national society could not be said to exist” at the time.[7]

Bin Laden, Islam, and America's New “War on Terrorism” examines the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and traces U.S. Middle East policy from the Cold War onward. Reviewers quoted in a biographical entry praised its analysis of links between U.S. domestic and foreign agendas concerning Islam and Muslims.[4] The Battle for Saudi Arabia examines the contest between the Saudi royal family and the Wahhabi clerical establishment, as well as the United States’ relationship with the kingdom; the entry says AbuKhalil proposed replacing the royal family with a democratic government and notes that reviewers differed in their evaluations of the book.[4]

AbuKhalil’s long-form work includes books on Lebanon, U.S. Middle East policy after the September 11 attacks, and Saudi Arabia.[3][4] He also wrote chapters on Lebanese society and government for the 1989 Library of Congress country study.[7]

His Angry Arab News Service, launched in 2003, extended his political commentary to an online audience. An Encyclopedia.com biography judged that his lasting significance might lie in his early use of blogging for commentary on the Middle East; that is the entry’s assessment rather than an independently measured consensus.[3]

AbuKhalil’s statements about Zionism and Israel have been the subject of criticism. In a 2019 report on campus rhetoric, the Anti-Defamation League quoted tweets in which he called Zionism “racism and sexism,” wrote that it “isn’t only racism; it also is sexism, colonialism, bigotry, and homophobia,” and stated, “Zionism is always racism.” The ADL presented those examples as inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric and as involving antisemitic themes; these are the organization’s assessments.[1] The report also said AbuKhalil had expressed the view that BDS was not stringent enough.[1]

The Jewish Virtual Library attributes to AbuKhalil the statement, “The real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel,” followed by the assertion that justice and freedom for Palestinians are incompatible with Israel’s existence. It identifies the source as his February 17, 2012, article “A Critique of Norman Finkelstein on BDS” in Al-Akhbar.[8] In a 2015 essay, Ruth R. Wisse likewise attributed to him the statement that “Justice and freedom for the Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the state of Israel,” but the essay does not identify the original source or setting for the quotation.[9]

The ADL reported that on October 7, 2023, AbuKhalil tweeted, “Palestine has never been as within reach,” and predicted that Arabs would be “magnanimous in victory against Israel,” adding that the return of Palestinian refugees would be orderly. The ADL discussed the remarks in an article about professors’ responses to Hamas’s October 7 attacks.[10] After Iran’s April 13, 2024 attack on Israel, the ADL reported that AbuKhalil expressed shame “that Iran did what all Arabs could not do.” The organization said its English rendering was produced using Google Translate; its article did not link to the original statement.[11]

A Jewish News Syndicate opinion article also attributes to AbuKhalil the view that the “real aim” of BDS is to bring down Israel and quotes the claim about Palestinian justice and freedom being incompatible with Israel’s existence, without specifying the original venue or date of the remarks.[12] The available accounts thus include politically contentious attributed statements, with some reporting relying on translated material or not supplying an original source. They should be read with those source and context limitations in mind.