10-04-2016, 06:00 AM
Said sadly died quite young in September 2003, of leukemia from which he had long suffered, in NYC, long his adopted home. He was born in Jerusalem in 1935, but could not by Israeli law return nor be a citizen of where he was born. He was a Christian Arab Palestinian in exile. Though he taught comparative literature at Columbia University, he is best known for his lectures and books on what he named Orientalism [how the West invented in their own minds the 'East' in order to make it 'OK' to colonize, dehumanize, and exploit the lands, mineral wealth, and peoples.] He was such a brilliant thinker and a gentle man, but he had to have a red button in his apartment to call the local police station due to the constant death threats he received for his viewpoints. If one is interested in reading only one book by Said, may I suggest his most famous one entitled 'Orientalism'.
He did not live long after 9-11-01 and was very ill in those last two years, so did not write too much on those events....but he did some and felt that it was only a continuation of a theme he had long seen dating back more than several hundred years.
Speaking on "Power, Politics and Culture: the U.S. and the Middle East,"Â the renowned Palestinian-American academic was the special guest at a Feb. 28 program sponsored by Chapman University's peace studies program. In his remarks, Said traced the historic connections between the U.S. and the Arab world and the dehumanizing images of Muslims dominating the media since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
"I have lived in the U.S. for 50 years,"Â he told the audience, "and I have never felt so isolated in light of the mass arrests and discrimination. I don't know a single Arab or Muslim who doesn't feel he/she has been put in the enemy camp. If one speaks Arabic in public or reads a document in the Arabic language, one is under suspicion."Â
Asserting that the U.S. media have become an arm of the military, Said noted that it is easier for the government and the press to trash Arabs than to acknowledge the real reasons underlying the Arab/Islamic world's resentment toward Washington.
"U.S. criticism is muted over Israel's barbaric treatment of the Palestinians,"Â averred the Columbia University professor of English and comparative literature. "Even though U.S. foreign policy is accountable to its citizens, it is easier to criticize the Arabs as the villains than to admit the actions that have generated this intense hatred."Â
Although Americans took an interest in the Arab world after huge petroleum deposits were discovered in the 1930s, Said said, antagonism between the two grew because Arabs became known in the U.S. mainly for being opposed to the state of Israel.
After the 1967 war, he added, popular conceptions of Muslims as addicted to incest, slavery, abnormal sexuality and a permanent war against infidels became accepted in this country.
Said recalled his own encounter with the ridiculous heights to which this animosity rose after his publisher asked him to prepare a list of Third World authors whose works might be translated into English. Many of the writers he suggested were accepted, Said said, but when he questioned the exclusion of Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz he was told that Mahfouz's "works are in Arabic and Arabic is a controversial language."Â
Another absurdity Said pointed out was an American commentator's asking the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. if Mahfouz's having been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature was objectionable.
Since the end of the Cold War, Said continued, the U.S. has been the most important force in the Arab world because of its concerns that a steady flow of oil to the West be maintained. Since 1967, however, he emphasized, Israel has occupied Palestinian territorya fact universally condemned outside the U.S. Nonetheless, Washington continues to subsidize this occupationwhich as of this year, he noted, is the longest military occupation in modern history.
In the process, he said, in the name of fighting Israel, Arab regimes declared martial law and committed barbaric acts against any domestic opposition. As civic and secular cultures were suppressed, he explained, extremism and fanaticism became the alternative outlet in the Arab world.
In an aside, Said recalled that, when he was a child growing up in pre-1948 Palestine and Egypt, Jews were considered Arabs with a different religion.
After 1948, however, he said, the state of Israel covered up the story of the dispossessed Palestinians, while conjuring up an image of a tiny Jewish state threatened by its Arab neighbors.
"Israel has received disproportionate support ever since,"Â Said stated, "and when objections rise over this, it says it is about to be destroyeddespite the 200 to 500 nuclear warheads it possesses."Â
Ironically, Said was delivering his lecture on the first day of Israel's invasion of the Balata and Jenin refugee camps. "An American TV reporter frets over the danger to Israel while Palestinian civilians are murdered and rounded up like sheep,"Â he said in amazement. "This disproportionate relationship and preoccupation with Israel pushes Americans to treat Israelis like Olympians from on high. No anchorman asks [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, "ËœWhen will you give up terrorism...stop comparing Palestinians to cockroaches...or end the occupation?'
"It is bad enough to be robbed of your land,"Â said Said, "but to be criminalized for aspirations to resist occupation is maddening."Â
In the post-9/11 environment, he argued, the Bush administration wrongly confuses the terrorism of Osama bin Laden with the Palestinian people's struggle for liberation. Idiotic labels have been concocted by both sides, he concluded. The Arab/Muslim mind translates "U.S."Â as shorthand for "all our ills,"Â while the U.S. equates Arabs with terrorists.
Said's audience laughed as he said he prefers to call the so-called "clash of civilization"Â the "clash of ignorance."Â The West and the Arab/Muslim world are in two dynamic currents, he said, whose narrow encounters must be expanded.
The 1,000-seat auditorium was packed and an estimated 150 disappointed students were turned away. During the question-and-answer session, it seemed as if half the audience stood in line to query the erudite statesman.
The first questioner asked Said for his prescription for narrowing the gap between the West and the Arab/Muslim world.
"You must realize,"Â replied Said, that "East and West are constructs, not natural objects.
"The president has drawn a bellicose line across his axis of evil,"Â he continued. "You're either for us or against uswhich is so undignified. That is terrorism,"Â Said argued. "We are a society of immigrants from all over the world. That is what makes us strong. We shouldn't start a fictional identity and go to war. We don't even have a definition for terrorism at this point."Â
In response to a query about Washington's refusal to uphold most international protocols such as on land mines, the environment and an international criminal court, Said noted that the U.S. likewise is opposed to international monitors reporting Israeli abuses of the Palestinian population. "The U.S. said it was unbalanced to have monitors watching the Israelis,"Â he pointed out, "but so far, there are no Palestinians occupying Israeli land [who need to be monitored]."Â
Another questioner asked Said if, in light of the American media's mockery or denigration of Arab/Muslim guests who appear on talk shows, it would not be better to disengage than participate.
"The last time I was interviewed by Paula Zahn, now that she is a CNN star, she was incredibly rude,"Â Said responded. "I was ready to walk away. Your generation must speak up and gradually make reporters face facts.
"The right wing in this country attacks the media for being liberal,"Â he continued, "although I don't know what's liberal about it. If you listen to Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather, you haven't a notion of what's going on in the world. I did a survey at the end of the year 2000 on hundreds of stories dealing with the Israeli/Palestinians conflict. Only four of them mentioned Israel's military occupation. Since the U.S. supports Turkey, the destruction of its Kurdish minority is never mentioned. How many times have you seen a story critical of U.S. aid to Israel?
"In January, Israeli bulldozers demolished 50 to 70 houses in Gaza, leaving some 500 Palestinians homeless,"Â Said noted. "The next day, National Public Radio aired an Israeli officer's claim that the homes were uninhabited or were nests of terrorists targeting Israeli civilians. If the NPR reporter had known any geography of the area, he would have been aware that these weren't Israeli civilians but illegal settlements in Gaza.
"Don't leave it to the U.S. media to report accurate news,"Â he advised."You must challenge the moral high road Israel claims it follows. When it cries it is in danger, you must prove it is Sharon who is bombing and that it is the victims who stand firm who deserve aid.
"You must talk with the Israelis who resist Sharon's intolerable policies,"Â Said continued. "It is unconscionable that Colin Powell, the first African-American secretary of state, who knows full well what blacks went through in this nation's history, demands that the Palestinians must do more to stop terrorism. Large Jewish organizations are beginning to understand that what Sharon is doing is making them less secure. You must address them on this issue.
"One of the reasons I was an early opponent to the Oslo accords,"Â he explained, "was that they were a re-packaging of occupation that called for withdrawal from only 18 percent of the West Bank. Our leaders fooled themselves,"Â stated Said, a member of the Palestine National Council from 1977 to 1991.
"You don't negotiate with occupation,"Â he concluded. "You get rid of it."Â
He did not live long after 9-11-01 and was very ill in those last two years, so did not write too much on those events....but he did some and felt that it was only a continuation of a theme he had long seen dating back more than several hundred years.
Edward Said Addresses 9/11 Issues at Chapman University
By Pat McDonnell Twair
In a rare West Coast appearance, Edward Said discussed the widening gap between the U.S. and the Arab/Muslim world since Sept. 11.Speaking on "Power, Politics and Culture: the U.S. and the Middle East,"Â the renowned Palestinian-American academic was the special guest at a Feb. 28 program sponsored by Chapman University's peace studies program. In his remarks, Said traced the historic connections between the U.S. and the Arab world and the dehumanizing images of Muslims dominating the media since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
"I have lived in the U.S. for 50 years,"Â he told the audience, "and I have never felt so isolated in light of the mass arrests and discrimination. I don't know a single Arab or Muslim who doesn't feel he/she has been put in the enemy camp. If one speaks Arabic in public or reads a document in the Arabic language, one is under suspicion."Â
Asserting that the U.S. media have become an arm of the military, Said noted that it is easier for the government and the press to trash Arabs than to acknowledge the real reasons underlying the Arab/Islamic world's resentment toward Washington.
"U.S. criticism is muted over Israel's barbaric treatment of the Palestinians,"Â averred the Columbia University professor of English and comparative literature. "Even though U.S. foreign policy is accountable to its citizens, it is easier to criticize the Arabs as the villains than to admit the actions that have generated this intense hatred."Â
Although Americans took an interest in the Arab world after huge petroleum deposits were discovered in the 1930s, Said said, antagonism between the two grew because Arabs became known in the U.S. mainly for being opposed to the state of Israel.
After the 1967 war, he added, popular conceptions of Muslims as addicted to incest, slavery, abnormal sexuality and a permanent war against infidels became accepted in this country.
Said recalled his own encounter with the ridiculous heights to which this animosity rose after his publisher asked him to prepare a list of Third World authors whose works might be translated into English. Many of the writers he suggested were accepted, Said said, but when he questioned the exclusion of Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz he was told that Mahfouz's "works are in Arabic and Arabic is a controversial language."Â
Another absurdity Said pointed out was an American commentator's asking the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. if Mahfouz's having been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature was objectionable.
Since the end of the Cold War, Said continued, the U.S. has been the most important force in the Arab world because of its concerns that a steady flow of oil to the West be maintained. Since 1967, however, he emphasized, Israel has occupied Palestinian territorya fact universally condemned outside the U.S. Nonetheless, Washington continues to subsidize this occupationwhich as of this year, he noted, is the longest military occupation in modern history.
In the process, he said, in the name of fighting Israel, Arab regimes declared martial law and committed barbaric acts against any domestic opposition. As civic and secular cultures were suppressed, he explained, extremism and fanaticism became the alternative outlet in the Arab world.
In an aside, Said recalled that, when he was a child growing up in pre-1948 Palestine and Egypt, Jews were considered Arabs with a different religion.
After 1948, however, he said, the state of Israel covered up the story of the dispossessed Palestinians, while conjuring up an image of a tiny Jewish state threatened by its Arab neighbors.
"Israel has received disproportionate support ever since,"Â Said stated, "and when objections rise over this, it says it is about to be destroyeddespite the 200 to 500 nuclear warheads it possesses."Â
Ironically, Said was delivering his lecture on the first day of Israel's invasion of the Balata and Jenin refugee camps. "An American TV reporter frets over the danger to Israel while Palestinian civilians are murdered and rounded up like sheep,"Â he said in amazement. "This disproportionate relationship and preoccupation with Israel pushes Americans to treat Israelis like Olympians from on high. No anchorman asks [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, "ËœWhen will you give up terrorism...stop comparing Palestinians to cockroaches...or end the occupation?'
"It is bad enough to be robbed of your land,"Â said Said, "but to be criminalized for aspirations to resist occupation is maddening."Â
In the post-9/11 environment, he argued, the Bush administration wrongly confuses the terrorism of Osama bin Laden with the Palestinian people's struggle for liberation. Idiotic labels have been concocted by both sides, he concluded. The Arab/Muslim mind translates "U.S."Â as shorthand for "all our ills,"Â while the U.S. equates Arabs with terrorists.
Said's audience laughed as he said he prefers to call the so-called "clash of civilization"Â the "clash of ignorance."Â The West and the Arab/Muslim world are in two dynamic currents, he said, whose narrow encounters must be expanded.
The 1,000-seat auditorium was packed and an estimated 150 disappointed students were turned away. During the question-and-answer session, it seemed as if half the audience stood in line to query the erudite statesman.
The first questioner asked Said for his prescription for narrowing the gap between the West and the Arab/Muslim world.
"You must realize,"Â replied Said, that "East and West are constructs, not natural objects.
"The president has drawn a bellicose line across his axis of evil,"Â he continued. "You're either for us or against uswhich is so undignified. That is terrorism,"Â Said argued. "We are a society of immigrants from all over the world. That is what makes us strong. We shouldn't start a fictional identity and go to war. We don't even have a definition for terrorism at this point."Â
In response to a query about Washington's refusal to uphold most international protocols such as on land mines, the environment and an international criminal court, Said noted that the U.S. likewise is opposed to international monitors reporting Israeli abuses of the Palestinian population. "The U.S. said it was unbalanced to have monitors watching the Israelis,"Â he pointed out, "but so far, there are no Palestinians occupying Israeli land [who need to be monitored]."Â
Another questioner asked Said if, in light of the American media's mockery or denigration of Arab/Muslim guests who appear on talk shows, it would not be better to disengage than participate.
"The last time I was interviewed by Paula Zahn, now that she is a CNN star, she was incredibly rude,"Â Said responded. "I was ready to walk away. Your generation must speak up and gradually make reporters face facts.
"The right wing in this country attacks the media for being liberal,"Â he continued, "although I don't know what's liberal about it. If you listen to Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather, you haven't a notion of what's going on in the world. I did a survey at the end of the year 2000 on hundreds of stories dealing with the Israeli/Palestinians conflict. Only four of them mentioned Israel's military occupation. Since the U.S. supports Turkey, the destruction of its Kurdish minority is never mentioned. How many times have you seen a story critical of U.S. aid to Israel?
"In January, Israeli bulldozers demolished 50 to 70 houses in Gaza, leaving some 500 Palestinians homeless,"Â Said noted. "The next day, National Public Radio aired an Israeli officer's claim that the homes were uninhabited or were nests of terrorists targeting Israeli civilians. If the NPR reporter had known any geography of the area, he would have been aware that these weren't Israeli civilians but illegal settlements in Gaza.
"Don't leave it to the U.S. media to report accurate news,"Â he advised."You must challenge the moral high road Israel claims it follows. When it cries it is in danger, you must prove it is Sharon who is bombing and that it is the victims who stand firm who deserve aid.
"You must talk with the Israelis who resist Sharon's intolerable policies,"Â Said continued. "It is unconscionable that Colin Powell, the first African-American secretary of state, who knows full well what blacks went through in this nation's history, demands that the Palestinians must do more to stop terrorism. Large Jewish organizations are beginning to understand that what Sharon is doing is making them less secure. You must address them on this issue.
"One of the reasons I was an early opponent to the Oslo accords,"Â he explained, "was that they were a re-packaging of occupation that called for withdrawal from only 18 percent of the West Bank. Our leaders fooled themselves,"Â stated Said, a member of the Palestine National Council from 1977 to 1991.
"You don't negotiate with occupation,"Â he concluded. "You get rid of it."Â
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass