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Edward Said, A Palestinian Warrior of Intellect
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| Palestinian |
"It falls to us, disciples of the humane vision that Edward Said helped to construct, to deconstruct the false barriers that prevent its realization, to imagine a world in their absence and to, in the words of his fittingly final exhortation to us, enter the contest of values, definitions and cultures so as to bring that world to fruition. And when we do, we will have torn down the symbolic-and, yes, in Palestine, physical-walls that so inhumanely separate us from each other, elevated the universal rights of all human beings to freedom and equality and built the greatest possible monument to the life and labor of Edward Said, whose beautiful mind helped us dream what, alas, his eyes could not see."
George Naggiar
NEW YORK - Palestinian intellectual Edward Said has died in New York aged 67 after a battle with leukaemia, a colleague at Columbia University said.
"I spoke to Mrs Edward Said and she told me he has passed away this morning at a New York hospital," said Hamid Dabashi, chairman of Columbia's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department.
"Over the past three decades he was the most eloquent spokesman for the plight of the Palestinians," Dabashi said.
Said was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He had suffered from leukaemia at least since the early 1990s.
Known for his groundbreaking research in the literary field and his incisive political commentary and music criticism, Said was one of the United States’ most prominent intellectuals.
His writing regularly appeared in the Guardian of London, Le Monde Diplomatique and the Arab-language daily al-Hayat.
Through his writing and his speeches, the Palestinian Christian academic became a leading voice in the struggle of his countrymen for self-determination.
A life in exile
He was born in 1935 in Jerusalem - then part of British-ruled Palestine – but Said spent almost all his adult life in the United States.
In 1948, he and his family were dispossessed from Palestine and settled in Cairo.
Said first came to the United States as a student. He received a bachelor's degree from Princeton in 1957 and a master's and PhD from Harvard, in 1960 and 1964 respectively.
Most of his academic career was spent as a professor at Columbia University in New York, but he also was a visiting professor at such leading institutions as Yale, Harvard and Johns Hopkins.
Due to his advocacy for Palestinian self-determination and his membership of the Palestine National Council, Said was not allowed to visit Palestine until recently.
His writing, translated into 14 languages, includes 10 books, among them, Orientalism (1978), a runner-up in criticism for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The World, the Text and the Critic (1983); Blaming the Victims (1988) and Cultural Imperialism (1993). His most recent book, Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process, was published in 1995.
A thrower of rocks
Said was consistently critical of Israel for what he regarded as mistreatment of the Palestinians.
He prompted a controversy in 2000 when he threw a rock toward an Israeli guardhouse on the Lebanese border.
Columbia University did not censure him, saying that the stone was directed at no one, no law was broken and that his actions were protected by principles of academic freedom.
He wrote two years ago after visits to Jerusalem and the West Bank that Israel's "efforts toward exclusivity and xenophobia toward the Arabs" had actually strengthened Palestinian determination.
"Palestine and Palestinians remain, despite Israel's concerted efforts from the beginning either to get rid of them or to circumscribe them so much as to make them ineffective," Said wrote in the English-language Al-Ahram Weekly, published in Cairo.
Critic of Arafat
After the signing of the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, Said also criticized Yasir Arafat because he believed the PLO leader had made a bad deal for the Palestinians.
He said in a lecture at Tufts University that Arafat and the Palestinian Authority "have become willing collaborators with the (Israeli) military occupation, a sort of Vichy government for Palestinians."
He lived to see a musical partnership with Argentina-born Jewish pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim bear fruit. The West-Eastern Divan orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians played an ecstatically received concert in Rabat, Morocco last month, the 80-piece ensemble's first date in an Arab country.
Barenboim and Said, who founded the orchestra together, said at the time they hoped the concerts would help to bring friendship, peace and security between Palestinians and Israelis.
Not a refugee
Israeli scholar Justus Reid Weiner published an article in the American magazine Commentary accusing Said of dramatising his own background to enhance his credentials as a spokesman for the Palestinians. Weiner said Said claimed he was driven out of Palestine while actually his family was living in the Egyptian capital Cairo before the founding of Israel.
Said replied by saying he had never described himself personally as a refugee. He said he had always maintained he spent much of his youth in Egypt and Lebanon, but that many of relatives were dislodged from Palestine as Israel came into being.
He wrote in the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly, "I have been moved to defend the refugees' plight precisely because I did not suffer and therefore feel obligated to relieve the sufferings of my people." |
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| Palestinian |
My dear brothers and sisters, below is a short, but deeply powerful and
moving statement from Professor Said's daughter, Najla. Let us please
redouble our efforts, think smarter, work harder, for even longer hours,
tell our stories even louder and particularly write to and in our local
communities and newspapers. Let Professor Said's death be a catalyst for us
all, as it surely has been--even more so than usual--for me. For anyone
wanting to do something, I am happy to help in any way that I can and I
myself can always use the help in my work at aaper, http://www.aaper.org.
Best to all and let us finally free Palestine.
George S. Naggiar
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> thank you for your thoughts and love for my father. to answer your
> question about services, they will be private, open to only close
> family and friends (which many of you are) rest assured, there will
> be countless memorial services held over the next few months, and i
> would be so touched to have anyone and everyone there.
>
> in his last days my father wept openly for palestine and his loss of
> articulacy and energy to write and write and write. he encouraged
me,
> from his bed, to "continue the struggle, continue...get over your
> petty personal differences with your colleagues and write and
perform
> and continue continue unceasingly. its in your hands"
>
> this was meant for our entire generation and it is important for me
> to convey this to you because i certainly cant shoulder the burden
> myself.
>
> i am amazed that this is coming out so articulately, as i
> am weeping
> as i write.
>
> much lovelovelove
> najla said |
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| Palestinian |
By RAMZY BAROUD
Suddenly, I am immersed in overwhelming loneliness. “Edward Said passed away this morning,” a troubling e-mail message stared me in the eyes. I knew that such a moment was inevitable. The honorable man was stricken with Leukemia and had suffered for years. His eyes sunk deeper into his handsome face with every lecture he gave. I knew that his untimely death was approaching.
The last message I exchanged with the Columbia University Professor was awhile back. I requested an interview and he said he would be happy to conduct one. But he asked for a month before conducting the interview, for he was about to undergo “very rigorous chemotherapy treatment” at a New York hospital. I imagined the courageous man absorbed in pain. The mere thought sickened me. We never conducted the interview.
Edward Said stood for everything that is virtuous. His moral stances were more than a wealth of essays, books, prose and music. It was manifested more evidently in his gentle, kind persona. He wrote whenever he managed to get hold of a pen. In his seemingly weakest moments of pain and struggle with the spreading cancer, he taught us strength and preached endurance.
Edward Said was an extraordinary intellectual. His intellectual capabilities, thoughtfulness and genius were inimitable. And because of that, he was a target for those who wish to silence every voice that utters the tabooed word of truth. Said’s words dug deep into our hearts, broke the boundaries of culture, religion and politics. He tackled our humanity before reaching out to our minds. Palestinians are not the only ones who are mourning Said’s death. Of this I am sure.
In his touching memoir, Said spoke of his long life legacy of being “Out of Place”. As a Palestinian denied the chance to live freely in his homeland, he circled the globe, from the Middle East to Europe to the United States, where he spent most of his life, so vividly and eloquently conveying the pain of his people in a way no other intellectual had.
Many tried to exploit the man’s unscarred reputation, dishonestly building a name for themselves. An unknown Israeli writer rose to become a celebrated “intellectual” when he broke the news that Edward Said was not a refugee. Justus Reid Weiner’s “revelations” made him a hero in the eyes of those who never cease to demand Professor Said’s expulsion from his position at Columbia University, where thousands of Americans were privileged to learn a side of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that was hardly conveyed anywhere. “I have been moved to defend the refugees’ plight precisely because I did not suffer therefore feel obliged to relieve the suffering of my people,” Said responded so graciously to his accuser. Weiner and his supporters were quickly discarded and the giant intellectual carried on with his mission, swimming against the current of the mainstream.
But those living and dying in isolation, so desperate in their attempt to let the world know of their atrocious destiny under a wicked Israeli occupation, those scattered in their refugee camps across Palestine and Middle East are the ones that will miss Professor Said the most. Unlike many of us who chose to be so careful not to offend, Said was unrivaled in his honesty. He tackled issues that were too “politically incorrect” to confront. It is no wonder Said was adored by the people as much as the authorities detested him. On more than one occasion, his books were banned in the Middle East, even in the West Bank and Gaza. But being “Bookless in Gaza” was hardly enough to dishearten Said. His lashing out at the Zionist ideology and its involvement in shaping America’s foreign policy was deliberately and shrewdly misapprehended as “anti-Semitism.” But the might of Said’s logic always prevailed, and will continue to prevail, even in his death.
Refugee or not, the tireless professor of Columbia University is dead. He passed away on a New York morning, not like any other. He left us with a legacy that makes us proud that he was a Palestinian, with a heart that beat with endless humanity.
As I finished reading the message conveying the poignant news, I was relieved that I had already thanked him, on behalf of my father, my mother, my grandparents and my children and the rest of the 5 million refugees awaiting their return to Palestine. “Thank you professor. You stood courageously for us, while many denied that our pain was even legitimate, or that it deserved to be eased.”
Edward Said was never out of place, despite the title of his memoir. He always had a special place in our hearts, and there, he shall remain.
About the Author: Ramzy Baroud is the editor-in-chief of Palestine Chronicle
Source: The Palestine Chronicle - www.palestinechronicle.com |
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| Palestinian |
By DR. HANAN ASHRAWI
What consolation is there for the passing of a great man? He does not leave behind a great void—rather a heaviness of spirit, a weight almost unbearable that mercilessly seems to crush the heart and render each breath an ordeal.
But Edward Said was not just a great scholar, a brilliant mind, a creative artist, an ardent nationalist, an advocate of justice, a free spirit, an unrelenting force for integrity, an uncompromising fighter on behalf of human dignity, and all the other sets of superlative depictions that he so aptly deserves.
Edward was amazingly human, vulnerable in his larger-than-life status to all the personal pain and doubts that beset ordinary mortals, and never too self-preoccupied to let you gain entry to his life unnoticed.
He had a spring in his step and an almost-electrical spark in his gestures as he lectured us on literary criticism on an early visit to AUB, with Edward not much older than his student audience, Beirut, late 1960’s.
He had a tremor in his voice and excitement in his tone as he articulated the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, imbuing it with Palestinian authenticity and universal applicability, Algiers 1988.
He had sorrow in his heart at the passing of his friends—Iqbal Ahmad, Ibrahim Abu Lughod—and he grieved openly at their loss.
He had tears in his eyes when he told us that he had just been diagnosed with Leukemia, London 1991/92.
He had a ring to his laughter and a sparkle to his smile when he celebrated friendships that he never failed, nor they him—Abdel Muhsen Qattan, Shafeeq el-Hout, Hasib Sabbagh, Said Khoury, Rashid Khalidi, Daniel Barenboim, and many, many more.
He had a sharpness to his anger and moral indignation at the “indignity” of Oslo and the immorality of corruption in leadership.
He had a thunderous impatience with the obtuseness and deliberate ignorance of most Western media who insisted on reducing reality to an inane sound byte or a tepid dose of processed language.
He had a gentle identification with the oppressed and an intimidating rage against the oppressor, a warm embrace for the victim and a cold rejection of the culprit, a love for the post-apartheid South Africa and all that its struggle stood for, and a total loathing for discrimination, racism and the degradation of human life and rights.
He had the sharpest of ironic wits with which to deflate the most pompous of fools who were foolhardy enough to think that they could deceive or sustain their vacuous sense of self-importance.
He had the warmest sense of pride and love when talking about Wadi’ and Najla, the children who always filled his life, and Mariam, the gentle wife whose love was never in question.
He had a raging thirst for the recognition and validation of a human narrative to vindicate the almost unbearable suffering of the Palestinian people and to render them part of an inclusive human experience.
He had the integrity and compassion to extend recognition to the horrific suffering of the Jewish people and the unspeakable pain of the holocaust, and simultaneously to demand of Israel recognition of its own culpability for the plight of the Palestinian people.
He had the courage to seek solutions and alternatives, constantly on the lookout for a younger leadership, a mentor for those with promise.
He had the good humor not to take himself too seriously, accepting the burden of his fame and public adulation with humility, and granting his name to numerous Boards of institutions including MIFTAH and PICCR.
He had the restlessness of spirit that was singular to those whose “here and now” were too vast and swift to be accommodated by mundane space and time.
He had the energy of a man aware of his mortality, squeezing life out of every second, refusing to allow the dreaded disease to frame his space and time or to form his “context.”
Edward had a global/human context, a Palestinian context, a personal context. To me, he was mentor, brother, close friend. He was notes on my dissertation, phone calls on the Palestinian condition, hurried meetings in conferences or other public events around the world, and those rare relaxed visits in New York or Ramallah.
He was the Edward taking time off to have a home-cooked meal, sitting with the family around the table on the veranda overlooking the western hills of Ramallah, nibbling at food and conversation in a relaxed almost sleepy manner, shedding the intensity of his greatness for the luxury of being “at home” with friends.
Edward may have been “out of place” as his personal narrative encapsulated this unique form of Palestinian displacement, but he has always been “in place” for those of us who dared to take his genius and friendship for granted.
In addition to the unbearable burden of his death, we have to bear the knowledge that we had never been prepared to accept it.
For a man who has been described as “the conscience of Palestine,” his ultimate absence requires the greater affirmation of all that he had represented, both in the consciousness of a nation and in the hearts of those who loved him.
About the Author: Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council & the Secretary General of the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue & Democracy (MIFTAH).
Source: AMIN - http://www.amin.org/ |
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| Cyrus King |
| May you see a free palestine from heaven Said.:( |
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| Palestinian |
By ILAN PAPPE
We, who supported the Palestinian cause, have been orphaned with the untimely death of Edward Said. For Israeli Jews, like myself, he was the lighthouse that navigated us out of the darkness and confusion of growing in a Zionist state onto a safer coast of reason, morality and consciousness.
I am sorry I only met Edward in 1988, but I feel fortunate for the time we did spend together. His insights of, and inputs on, the global reality in general and the Palestine one in particular will guide us all for many years to come. But above all, we shall miss Edward's unique ability of articulating in the public sphere the evil inflicted upon the Palestinians in the past against the continued effort in the Western media of sidelining, if not altogether eliminating, the plight and tragedy of Palestine. There is no one who could easily feel his place on that stage -- no one who could in few sentences associate so clearly the wrongs of the past with the tragedy of the present in the land of Palestine.
The academic and intellectual world would equally be disorientated without his original thoughts and conceptualization on the West's relationship with the world. We should be grateful, nonetheless, that so many of our colleagues went in his footsteps as he so brilliantly deconstructed the power bases and more sinister interests behind the knowledge production in West on the Orient in general and the Middle East in particular.
For those of us who knew him more personally, we have all lost a dear and genuine friend, with whom one could talk about the most abstract philosophical issues and with the same ease move to more mundane problems in life -- which usually paled in comparison with his endless and brave struggle against his fatal illness.
Something of this mixture and balance was also in his books. He will be remembered, and justly so, for "Orientalism" and the works that followed shaping and contributing to the post-Colonialist and Cultural Studies. But I will also cherish the "The Politics of Dispossession" -- these short and lucid interventions, quite often immediate reactions to a recent crisis or juncture in the life of Palestine and the Palestinians, but always contextualizing the event and Said's thoughts within the much more broader view on the march of history.
A few weeks ago we had our last meaningful conversation -- on the phone -- in which he beseeched me, as he did others I am sure, not to give up the struggle for relocating the Palestinians' refugee issue at the heart of the public and global agenda. He stressed the need to continue the effort of changing the American public opinion on Palestine and he was very hopeful and encouraged by he what recognized as a significant change in European public opinion.
Edward probably left more than one spiritual and moral will to us. The one I am taking is the one above. In his memory and out of respect to his intellectual genius as well as to his moral courage, we should regroup our energies and reorganize our efforts to impress on the world that there will be no justice and no peace in Palestine, no stability in the Middle East and no tranquility in the US relationship with the Muslim world, without the return of Palestinian refugees to their home, the end of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the building of a state in Palestine that would respect human and civil rights, as did Edward all his life.
May his soul rest in peace.
About the Author: A senior Israeli academic at the Department of Political Science and M.A, University of Haifa and the author of many books relating to the conflict.
Source: AMIN - http://www.amin.org/ |
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| Palestinian |
By HATIM KHATIB
When we had no one to defend us, he was always our defender, our night in shining armor; a formidable talent; a peerless intellectual.
I often imagined Said to be a loner defending the Palestinians in the West for decades against hoards of anti-Palestinians of all colors (Zionists, Orientalists, Christian Fundamentalists, corrupt Arab governments and Arabs, Arab self-haters, and sell-outs); a prime lion sending packs of hyenas back into their holes.
With his sheer zeal for the truth, he was always triumphant, always a winner; never at a loss for a powerful, convincing proof; always serenely cerebral, phenomenally riveting. Said may never have misused, misplaced, misappropriated a single word. How could he? A master of masters in every intellectual endeavor.
He was called a Renaissance man, a multi-cultural man, an aesthete, arguably the best, most important thinker of our time, more often than any other. Said’s worth was not just in his intellectual supremeness or in his academic achievements, but more remarkably in his burning compassion for his people, the Palestinians, and for humanity.
How often I wished I had sat in one of his classes, even if just once. This irreplaceable Palestinian, this inimitable scholar, this incomparable human, and above all, this gentle man, has just passed. I once shook his hand. I wish I had kissed it. Dr. Said, you will be missed.
Source: The Palestine Chronicle – www.palestinechronicle .com |
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| Palestinian |
| LONG LIVE PALESTINE |
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| Arafuct |
:wtf:
Free Free Lebanon! |
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| DrummeRaver86 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Arafuct
:wtf:
Free Free Lebanon! |
word..free lebanon! |
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