For most people, “it’s never too late to educate yourself about Palestine!” would be a reasonable statement, but it doesn’t apply to Joe Biden. After over a year of supporting Israel’s annihilationist campaign against Gaza, which has left at least 44,000 dead, over 100,000 injured and almost 2 million displaced, the President was spotted leaving a bookshop in Nantucket last week with a copy of Palestinian historian Rashidi Khalidi’s The 100 Years' War Palestine:A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017.

First published in 2020, Khalidi’s book has become a touchstone account of the colonisation of Palestine, from the origins of the Zionist movement onwards, and shot to the top of the national bestseller lists in the months following October 7. Summarising his argument, Khalidi writes in the book, “The modern history of Palestine can best be understood in these terms: as a colonial war waged against the indigenous population, by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will.”

It is a comprehensive, nuanced and thoroughly researched work of history, but you would hope that the US President would already have a solid grasp of the issues it covers. Maybe reading Khalidi will inspire Biden to a last-minute crisis of consciousness, renounce his lifelong commitment to Zionism and spend the rest of his days wracked with guilt over what he’s done, but – as Khalidi himself pointed out – it’s “four years too late.”

His son, the playwright and screenwriter Ismail Khalidi, was also less than impressed, writing on Twitter: “Hey, @JoeBiden, get my father’s book out of your blood soaked hands, you genocidal maniac.” It’s still unclear whether Biden bought the book himself, whether it was a staged publicity stunt (although intended to convey what, exactly?) or whether a bookstore employee thrust it into his hands as a sly act of protest. He probably won't read it and it probably wouldn't matter if he did: Obama was extremely well-read on the history of Palestine – he was taught by Edward Said and was friends with Khalidi himself – yet still handed Israel what the State Department described as “single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in US history”.

Far outstripping Obama, Biden has consistently been one of the most pro-Israel figures in American politics, and it’s unlikely that reading one book now would change his mind. Still, it’s unfortunate he didn’t make more of an effort to engage with the Palestinian perspective before he provided unconditional support to Israel as it carries out a genocide.