From Occupied Palestine

The political legacy of Edward Said
IRENE GENDZIER
Logos, 20 December 2003

In the fall of 2002, before the U.S. led the invasion of Iraq, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz ran an article by Akiva Eldar on a meeting held in Washington for some members of the Pentagon. The host was Richard Perle, then Chair of the U.S. Defense Policy Board. The sponsor was an unnamed think tank. The subject was the future shape of the Middle East. The slide show depicted "Iraq: a tactical goal, Saudi Arabia: a strategic goal," as well as describing "Palestine is Israel, Jordan is Palestine, and Iraq is the Hashemite Kingdom."[2]

Remembering Edward Said
TARIQ ALI
New Left Review 24, October-November 2003

Edward Said was a longstanding friend and comrade. We first met in 1972, at a seminar in New York. Even in those turbulent times, one of the features that distinguished him from the rest of us was his immaculate dress sense: everything was meticulously chosen, down to the socks. It is almost impossible to visualize him any other way.

Palestinian, intellectual, and fighter, Edward Said rails against Arafat and Sharon to his dying breath
ROBERT FISK
Independent, 26 September 2003

The last time I saw Edward Said, I asked him to go on living. I knew about his leukaemia. He had often pointed out that he was receiving "state-of-the-art" treatment from a Jewish doctor and - despite all the trash that his enemies threw at him - he always acknowledged the kindness and honour of his Jewish friends, of whom Daniel Barenboim was among the finest.

A mighty and passionate heart
Edward Said, Dead at 66
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
CounterPunch, 25 September 2003

Edward Said died in hospital in New York City Wednesday night at 6.30 pm, felled at last by complications arising from the leukemia he fought so gamely ever since the early 1990s.

We march through life buoyed by those comrades-in-arms we know to be marching with us, under the same banners, flying the same colors, sustained by the same hopes and convictions. They can be a thousand miles away; we may not have spoken to them in months; but their companionship is burned into our souls and we are sustained by the knowledge that they are with us in the world.

Pen and the Sword: Edward Said
MICKEY Z
Znet, 25 September 2003

I just learned that Edward W. Said has died. Before reading how the corporate media will frame his obituary, I'll say this: The world is far more empty place today.

Almost a decade ago, I reviewed "The Pen and the Sword," a collection of Said interviews with David Barsamian, published by Common Courage Press.

While some of the references are dated, the message remains as I would state it today. Below is that review...a meager attempt at saying thank you for the work and spirit of Edward W. Said, a true inspiration:

Imperial perspectives
EDWARD SAID
Al Ahram Weekly, 24 July 2003

The great modern empires have never been held together only by military power but by what activates that power, puts it to use and then reinforces it with daily practices of domination, conviction, and authority. Britain ruled the vast territories of India with only a few thousand colonial officers and a few more thousand troops, many of them Indian. France did the same in North Africa and Indochina, the Dutch in Indonesia, the Portuguese and Belgians in Africa. The key element is imperial perspective, that way of looking at a distant foreign reality by subordinating it to one's gaze, constructing its history from one's own point of view, seeing its people as subjects whose fate is to be decided not by them but by what distant administrators think is best for them. From such willful perspectives actual ideas develop, including the theory that imperialism is a benign and necessary thing. In one of the most perceptive comments ever made about the conceptual glue that binds empires together, the remarkable Anglo-Polish novelist Joseph Conrad wrote that "the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion and or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish believe in the idea -- something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to."

Dignity and solidarity
EDWARD SAID
Al-Ahram Weekly, 26 June 2003

In early May I was in Seattle lecturing for a few days. While there I had dinner one night with Rachel Corrie's parents and sister, who were still reeling from the shock of their daughter's murder on 16 March in Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer. Mr Corrie told me that he had himself driven bulldozers, although the one that killed his daughter deliberately because she was trying valiantly to protect a Palestinian home in Rafah from demolition was a 60 ton behemoth especially designed by Caterpillar for house demolitions, a far bigger machine than anything he had ever seen or driven. Two things struck me about my brief visit with the Corries. One was the story they told about their return to the US with their daughter's body. They had immediately sought out their US senators, Patty Murray and Mary Cantwell, both Democrats, told them their story and received the expected expressions of shock, outrage, anger and promises of investigations. After both women returned to Washington, the Corries never heard from them again, and the promised investigation simply didn't materialise. As expected, the Israeli lobby had explained the realities to them, and both women simply begged off. An American citizen willfully murdered by the soldiers of a client state of the US without so much as an official peep or even the de rigeur investigation that had been promised her family.

Archaelogy of the roadmap
EDWARD SAID
Al-Aharm Weekly, 12-18 June 2003

Much the same point was made in the last days of May by Bush himself in the course of interviews he gave to the Arab media, although as usual, he stressed generalities rather than anything specific. He met with the Palestinian and Israeli leaders in Jordan and, earlier, with the major Arab rulers, excluding Syria's Bashar Al-Asaad, of course. All this is part of what now looks like a major American push forward. That Ariel Sharon has accepted the roadmap (with enough reservations to undercut his acceptance) seems to augur well for a viable Palestinian state.

Israel, Iraq, and the United States
EDWARD SAID
Al-Aharm Weekly, 10-16 October 2002

Many parts of Lebanon were bombed heavily by Israeli warplanes on 4 June, 1982. Two days later the Israeli army entered Lebanon through the country's southern border. Menachem Begin was prime minister, Ariel Sharon his minister of defense. The immediate reason for the invasion was an attempted assassination in London of the Israeli ambassador, but then, as now, the blame was placed by Begin and Sharon on the "terrorist organisation" of the PLO, whose forces in South Lebanon had actually observed a cease-fire for about one full year before the invasion. A few days later, on 13 June, Beirut was under Israeli military siege, even though, as the campaign began, Israeli government spokesmen had cited the Awali River, 35 kilometres north of the border, as their goal. Later, it was to emerge without equivocation that Sharon was trying to kill Yasser Arafat, by bombing everything around the defiant Palestinian leader. Accompanying the siege was a blockade of humanitarian aid, the cutting off of water and electricity, and a sustained aerial bombing campaign that destroyed hundreds of Beirut buildings and, by the end of the siege in late August, had killed 18,000 Palestinians and Lebanese, most of them civilians.

What Israel has done
EDWARD SAID
Al-Ahram Weekly, 18 April 2002

Despite Israel's effort to restrict coverage of its extraordinarily destructive invasion of the West Bank's Palestinian towns and refugee camps, information and images have nevertheless seeped through. The Internet has provided hundreds of verbal as well as pictorial eyewitness reports, as has Arab and European TV coverage, most of it unavailable or blocked or spun out of existence from the mainstream US media. That evidence provides stunning proof of what Israel's campaign has actually (has always) been about: the irreversible conquest of Palestinian land and society. The official line (which the US, along with nearly every American media commentator has basically supported) is that Israel has been defending itself by retaliating for the suicide bombings that have undermined its security and even threatened its existence. That claim has gained the status of an absolute truth moderated neither by what Israel has done nor by what in fact has been done to it.