Contents

Edward Said, Dead at 67: A Mighty and Passionate Heart By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
A Transcendent Vision: The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said By GEORGE NAGGIAR
A Monument of Justice and Human Rights: A Tribute to Edward Said By MUSTAFA BARGHOUTHI
Edward Said: A Well-Reasoned Voice By MICKEY Z.
Edward Said: A Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized By OMAR BARGHOUTI
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss By LENNI BRENNER
The Legacy of Edward Said A Voice for Truth, Justice and Peace By TANWEER AKRAM

also see Dignity, Solidarity and the Penal Colony By EDWARD SAID, written on 25th September 2003

Edward Said, Dead at 67
A Mighty and Passionate Heart
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

A mighty and a passionate heart has ceased to beat.

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.

Few more than Edward Said, for me and so many others beside. How many times, after a week, a month or more, I have reached him on the phone and within a second been lofted in my spirits, as we pressed through our updates: his trips, his triumphs, the insults sustained; the enemies rebuked and put to flight. Even in his pettiness he was magnificent, and as I would laugh at his fury at some squalid gibe hurled at him by an eighth-rate scrivener, he would clamber from the pedestal of martyrdom and laugh at himself.

He never lost his fire, even as the leukemia pressed, was routed, pressed again. He lived at a rate that would have felled a man half his age and ten times as healthy: a plane to London, an honorary degree, on to Lebanon, on to the West Bank, on to Cairo, to Madrid, back to New York. And all the while he was pouring out the Said prose that I most enjoyed, the fiery diatribes he distributed to CounterPunch and to a vast world audience. At the top of his form his prose has the pitiless, relentless clarity of Swift.

The Palestinians will never know a greater polemical champion. A few weeks ago I was, with his genial permission, putting together from three of his essays the concluding piece in our forthcoming CounterPunch collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. I was seized, as so often before, by the power of the prose: how could anyone read those searing sentences and not boil with rage, while simultaneously admiring Edward's generosity of soul: that with the imperative of justice and nationhood for his people came the humanity that called for reconciliation between Palestinians and Israeli Jews.

His literary energy was prodigious. Memoir, criticism, homily, fiction poured from his pen, a fountain pen that reminded one that Edward was very much an intellectual in the nineteenth- century tradition of a Zola or of a Victor Hugo, who once remarked that genius is a promontory in the infinite. I read that line as a schoolboy, wrote it in my notebook and though I laugh now a little at the pretension of the line, I do think of Edward as a promontory, a physical bulk on the intellectual and political landscape that forced people, however disinclined they may have been, to confront the Palestinian experience.

Years ago his wife Mariam asked me if I would make available my apartment in New York, where I lived at that time, as the site for a surprise 40th birthday for Edward. I dislike surprise parties but of course agreed. The evening arrived; guests assembled in my sitting room on the eleventh floor of 333 Central Park West. The dining room table groaned under Middle Eastern delicacies. Then came the word from the front door. Edward and Mariam had arrived! They were ascending in the elevator. Then we could all hear Edward's furious bellow: "But I don't want to go to dinner with *******, Alex!" They entered at last and the shout went up from seventy throats, Happy Birthday! He reeled back in surprise and then recovered, and then saw about the room all those friends happy to have traveled thousands of miles to shake his hand. I could see him slowly expand with joy at each new unexpected face and salutation.

He never became blase in the face of friendship and admiration, or indeed honorary degrees, just as he never grew a thick skin. Each insult was as fresh and as wounding as the first he ever received. A quarter of century ago he would call, with mock heroic English intonation, "Alex-and-er, have you seen the latest New Republic? Have you read this filthy, this utterly disgusting diatribe? You haven't? Oh, I know, you don't care about the feelings of a mere black man such as myself." I'd start laughing, and say I had better things to do than read Martin Peretz, or Edward Alexander or whoever the assailant was, but for half an hour he would brood, rehearse fiery rebuttals and listen moodily as I told him to pay no attention.

He never lost the capacity to be wounded by the treachery and opportunism of supposed friends. A few weeks ago he called to ask whether I had read a particularly stupid attack on him by his very old friend Christopher Hitchens in the Atlantic Monthly. He described with pained sarcasm a phone call in which Hitchens had presumably tried to square his own conscience by advertising to Edward the impending assault. I asked Edward why he was surprised, and indeed why he cared. But he was surprised and he did care. His skin was so, so thin, I think because he knew that as long as he lived, as long as he marched onward as a proud, unapologetic and vociferous Palestinian, there would be some enemy on the next housetop down the street eager to pour sewage on his head.

Edward, dear friend, I wave adieu to you across the abyss. I don't even have to close my eyes to savor your presence, your caustic or merry laughter, your elegance, your spirit as vivid as that of d'Artagnan, the fiery Gascon. You will burn like the brightest of flames in my memory, as you will in the memories of all who knew and admired and loved you. 
 

September 26, 2003

A Transcendent Vision
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
By GEORGE NAGGIAR

"I urge everyone to join in and not leave the field of values, definitions, and cultures uncontested." 

Edward Said's life and work is a story of transcendence of the cultural and spatial barriers that so often thoughtlessly divide humanity. Born in Jerusalem, the capital of the three great monotheistic faiths and a city that he once called "a seamless amalgam of cultures and religions engaged, like members of the same family, on the same plot of land in which all has become entwined with all," he would live most of his late life and finally leave us in New York City, the capital of the modern world and where men and women from every corner of the earth converge to form a modern amalgam of peoples unlike anything ever known before. There could have been no more fitting places for the beginning and end of the life's journey of Edward Said.

In between, Said's journey would take him from Palestine to Egypt to the United States and around the world. At home nowhere and everywhere, Said described his condition as one of exile, perpetually without a home, or out of place, to use the title of his brilliant memoir. Nowhere more, however, than in his exile, was Said the symbol of his people, whose dispossession his life reflected and for whom he so eloquently advocated in works like The Question of Palestine, After the Last Sky, The Politics of Dispossession and Peace and Its Discontents. Through these writings and others, Said introduced the Palestinian people and narrative to an American-and international-audience as Zionism's all-too-often unrecognized victims. In so doing, he was widely known as one of the Palestinian people's most passionate advocates for peace, reconciliation and coexistence with Israeli Jews on the basis of justice and equality.

From that vision, he would never waver, even when it was most unpopular to do so. During the Oslo "Peace Process," he was a tireless and persistent critic, famously calling the Accords themselves a "surrender" by the Palestinian leadership and predicting with tragic foresight that they would delay, not advance, the day of Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation. Throughout the process, he called for the resignation of President Arafat and the emergence of a genuine grassroots domestic and international movement for Palestinian rights, which he understood would ensure progress towards a meaningful Palestinian-Israeli peace. Nevertheless, for his honesty and unwillingness to be blinded to Palestinian economic, political and human realities by the distorting veneer of the language and images of peace, he earned the derision of even many in his own community for supposedly "opposing peace" or "being unrealistic."

But with the predictable conclusion of the Oslo process in a storm of violence causing mutual Palestinian-Israeli suffering, which now, at best, will only further postpone the process of Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation, new movements emerged within Palestine and internationally that were based on precisely the discourse and strategy that Said had advocated all along. In Palestine, a Palestinian National Initiative, of which he was a central part, had been born and posed a new alternative to the failed strategy of endless negotiations based on unequal power. It was a truly grassroots effort that respected democracy, treated the needs of the Palestinian people and spoke in language of genuine peace and reconciliation with Israel. Throughout the world, including in the United States, the struggle of the Palestinian people had become, to use his words, "a byword for emancipation and enlightenment." In solidarity with them, divestment campaigns had been launched, boycotts of Israeli goods had been initiated and people from around the world had gone to Palestine to stand with the Palestinians in the moments of their greatest vulnerability. 

In a fitting homage to him, at his final convention of the American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee (ADC), the leading Arab-American organization, he received a roaring standing ovation for a speech in which he, among other things, lambasted the Palestinian Authority for its failure to recognize the basic dignity, not to say moral beauty, of the very cause that its ostensible mandate was to advance. In the turn of the course of history, in the inspiring and humane language and vision of his speech, in his physical position on the podium and in the applause of the crowd for him, it was clear that Said had at last become what he had always been-the true symbol and leader of his people.

But it is a testament to the universality of his thought and the range of his interests as a scholar and human being that Said was not limited in his writings and advocacy to the one struggle with which he was both personally and nationally affiliated. Indeed, his great influence and reputation was based in large part on his other work, particularly on his reinterpretation and re-presentation of histories of formerly colonized peoples of the world, work which was foundational in the fields of both Post-Colonial Studies and Critical Race Theory. 

In his seminal work, Orientalism, Said critically explored European-primarily French and British-representations of "the Orient." In examining these representations, Said exposed that "Western" "knowledge" of the Orient was less an accurate description of the peoples and culture of that place (if such generalities could themselves be meaningfully understood, which they could not) than both a preface to and later reinforcement of Western imperial rule over the Orient. 

In Culture and Imperialism, his sequel to Orientalism, Said would extend his analysis to other formerly colonized peoples from around the world, to "India, the subcontinent generally, a lot of Africa, Caribbean, Australia, parts of the world where there was a major Western investment, whether through empire or direct colonialism or some combination of both, as in the case of India." In so doing, he would dis- (or, more properly, un)-cover the often hidden power that lied within the culture of European-and any-imperialism, and celebrate the resistance of formerly colonized peoples to its rule. 

In both works and beyond, Said understood and taught that despite the dehumanization of and violence against the "Other" contained in colonialism and other forms of willful division, human history was an intertwined fabric, separated not by geographic, ethnic, national or religious barriers, but by deliberate delusions of the will to power. It was this will-and the structures of power and fawning intellectuals that are the predictable result of its employment- that his critical posture was almost instinctively directed against, as he himself once put it. In its place, he sought to build a world of what the great German critic, Theador Adorno, his intellectual hero, once called non-dominative difference. The critical study of history, society and culture that would bring that condition into reality was, for Said, the role of the intellectual. 

And that role, he fulfilled. In his various works, Said unified the disparate experiences of a seemingly separate and unconnected humanity, both by showing that no encounter between peoples, even of the most odious form, left the other side unaffected, and by raising in our minds the universality of so much of the human experience. It is a tribute to him that, even as he praised the virtues of the humanism that he so eloquently defended, his own insights contributed enormously to its depth. Would that we would have made those insights our own. 

But instead, today, we stand at the edge of a great valley that separates humanity (particularly Americans and the Arab/Islamic peoples of the world), cruelly dividing us into ethnic, racial and religious categories whose basis is neither history nor reason, but which, as Said taught us, obdurately betrays both. This gulf is not a natural or inevitable one, but one too often constructed for us by pusillanimous politicians and a media untrained in the art of critical practice. And its effects are to promote and thereby allow our consciences to accept an unacceptable violence of human against human-and the enormous suffering that is its handmaiden-that no just God or morality could countenance, much less sanction.

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 is President of the American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights. 
 
 

September 25, 2003

A Monument of Justice and Human Rights
A Tribute to Edward Said
By MUSTAFA BARGHOUTHI

It is with heartbreaking sorrow that the Palestinian National Initiative announce the tragic death of Edward Said who passed away yesterday after eleven years fighting leukemia. At this time our thoughts and love are with his family. We wish them strength and courage and assurance that Edward will be a man forever remembered not only for his incredible achievements but for his remarkable qualities as a friend. Though words may do little at such a time to assuage the pain and grief something must be said to pay homage to a man and a life we should truly celebrate.

A man with great courage and clear conviction Edward Said was a shining light in a confused world. As a true intellectual giant, Said inspired all fields with his accomplishments. The passion which infused his intellectual abilities presented him as a man with clear visions to be greatly admired, trusted and respected.

Though his beliefs and commitments presented him with many challenges his statements and many testimonies of outrage at the hypocrisies, contradictions, and indignities so rife in the world gave him the integrity and honesty for which he was renowned.

A prolific writer Said addressed all issues of culture, colonialism, imperialism, language and literature. As a Palestinian exile much of his political writing came from personal memories yet he remained objective and grounded not only affirming the Palestinian presence but also pointing toward a future where peace is possible. Among spokespeople for the Palestinian cause surely there was none so articulate, so inspiring, so admired.

For the Palestinian National Initiative, a movement striving for democracy in Palestine itself co-founded by Dr. Said, the death of this unique and most prominent leader, a man of values and integrity who truly believed in freedom and justice is a great loss. The Mubardara remain determined to follow in his foot steps, and remain committed to his vision, conveying all his hopes and values not just of a free Palestine, and free Palestinians but of freedom for all, the world over.

The sense of loss felt by the death of such a great intellect, gentleman and friend is immeasurable. His eminent work of decades and all that he stood for will remain forever a monument for justice, and human rights. As a man of courage, graciousness, hope and dedication, his memory will remain forever in our hearts.

Mustafa Barghouthi is Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.
 
 

September 26, 2003

Edward Said
A Well-Reasoned Voice
By MICKEY Z.

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:

Thanks to popular culture, most Americans are taught to perceive Arabs as fanatical, yet inept, terrorists. Palestinians, so the conventional thinking goes, may not be the most fanatical but are certainly the most inept of the Arabs. Another equally voiceless group in this country is that of political dissidents. In a society where H. Ross Perot is accepted as an renegade outsider, true dissent is rarely discussed.

So, what can be said of Edward W. Said, a genuine political dissident who happens to have been born in Jerusalem when it was still in Palestine? An intellectual who suffered the pain of being uprooted from his home and forced to leave his homeland. Where is his voice heard? Upon first glance, Said's status as University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia and his authorship of such books as Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism may disguise the depth of his marginalization. It is only after reading this collection of interviews by Alternative Radio founder, David Barsamian that one realizes how much of Said's vision has been obscured. His contributions to a greater debate on culture's role in advancing imperialism have been documented (albeit, not widely enough). Sure, Culture and Imperialism does point the accusing finger of blame at long-ignored targets like Albert Camus and Jane Austen, but it is when Said aims his considerable intellect at issues like Israel's role in the chaos of the Middle East and the tacit complicity of the American press-and taxpayer-in that role that he provokes the most thought and emotion. Hence, what David Barsamian brings out through his insightful questioning in The Pen and The Sword is a glimpse of the heart behind the mind. With almost daily praise heaped upon Israel (and even Arafat) for "ending" the violence, it is practically cathartic to have Barsamian ask the difficult questions and hear Edward Said speak to the facts. Despite death threats from both sides of the battle, despite recently being diagnosed with leukemia, despite confronting a media that offers less criticism of Israel than the Israel's own newspapers, Said speaks the unspeakable with impunity. When discussing the well-hyped treaty-signing ceremony, Said sees it in these terms:

"The actual ceremony itself, if one watched it, and I did, I had been invited but refused to attend because for me it wasn't an occasion of celebration but an occasion for mourning, it was, I thought, quite tawdry. In the first place, there was Clinton, like a Roman emperor bringing two vassal kings to his imperial court and making them shake hands in front of him. Then there was the fashion show parade of star personalities brought in. Then, and most distressing of all, were the speeches, in which Israeli Prime Minister Rabin gave the Palestinian speech, full of the anguish, Hamlet's anxiety and uncertainty, the loss, the sacrifice and so on. In the end I felt sorry for Israel. Arafat's speech was in fact written by businessmen and was a businessman's speech, with all the flair of a rental agreement. It was really quite awful. And since he didn't even mention anything about the sacrifices of the Palestinian people, didn't even mention the Palestinian people in any serious way, I thought therefore that the occasion was an extremely sad one. And it seemed to me therefore that his speech, the occasion, the ceremony, and so on, seemed to be completely in keeping with the contents of the agreement, which themselves also make the Palestinians subordinate dependents of the Israelis, who will in fact continue to control the West Bank and Gaza for the foreseeable future." 

For me, it is equally sad to contemplate a society without the well-reasoned voice of Edward W. Said. Barsamian asks him of his future and Said's response resonates of controlled emotion:

"I try not to think about the future too much. One has to keep going. But in general, I feel much better about myself and my situation and my health. They're synonymous with each other. I think the big battle is to try not to make it the center of your every waking moment; put it aside and press on with the tasks at hand. I've got a lot to say and write, I feel, and I just want to get on doing that." 

Anyone interested in fostering a more equitable social structure owes it to Edward W. Said-and themselves-to not allow his courageous efforts to be in vain. Even those who may disagree with his dissertations can benefit from The Pen and The Sword. It is a book of rare quality and importance.

Mickey Z. can be reached at mzx2@earthlink.net.

September 26, 2003

Edward Said
A Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
By OMAR BARGHOUTI

To me, and to many around the world, I suppose, Edward Said's name will always be associated --above all other things -- with beyond-ness ... . He is (past tense can only be used with those of much humbler legacies) beyond death, as we've understood it, in the sense that the last tremor of his heart, normally coupled with cessation of life, or the beginning of the end of physical existence, failed in his case to introduce the next stage, the utter nothingness. It is an attribute of great men and women that their physical demise does not, indeed can not, entail their end. In our contemporary world, few will earn such a privilege as Edward Said has.

He is beyond in the expansive reach of his intellect, from opera to Islam, from literature to philosophy, and quite a lot in between.

I shall focus here on one particular domain in Said that usually does not earn headlines in the western media: the deeply transforming effect of his philosophy of oppression and resistance. For Palestinians and all the oppressed in the developing or notworld, Said has been a unique inspiration for ethical resistance, for struggle against injustice, and for humanism translated to our respective languages and our idiosyncratic cultures and modes of thinking. Knowing ourselves, freeing our minds, taking pride in our culture as well as sharing that of others were always to Said the keys to emancipation.

Although I was never fortunate enough to be an actual student of his, I learned quite a lot from him, nonetheless. Beyond Orientalism and The Question of Palestine, I learned mostly from his dignifying and humanizing approach to the dehumanized. The following two personal anecdotes will reveal a part of this special aspect of Said's beyondness.

Remorse & Inspiration

Back in 1984, when I was president of what was then the Arab Club of Columbia University, I relentlessly sought ways to invite Edward Said to our events. He was, after all, our own, our pride, our celebrity, the unelected voice in the west of the voiceless Palestinians. I was aware of Said's persistent refusal to speak at "Arab" events, as he loathed "speaking to the converted," as he once explained. I tried to steel a moment from his perpetually busy office schedule to convince him that our events had attracted 95% Americans, mostly students who could not exactly be described as in love with Palestine -- those familiar with Columbia will know exactly what I am referring to -- but I could never get him to see me, or any of us, for that matter. And then -- you knew a 'then' was coming -- on one ordinary day I was leafleting the campus with a flier for an event we had planned, with a prominent Jewish American intellectual as keynote. I had a special style of leafleting, by the way: I taped the fliers in geometric shapes on the beautifully spacious steps leading to the Alma Mater, on the floors, and just about everywhere else where average students would not expect to see any fliers.

Edward Said happened to pass by with his early morning coffee and bagel. He saw me pacing, arranging my artwork with precision, symmetry and devotion, to attract the eyes that were not trained to see anything related to Palestine. I had a glimpse of him approaching and skimming one of the neatly arranged fliers, but I continued with my work as if I hadn't. He came up to me and jokingly asked: "What are you doing at 6:30 am littering the steps?" Quickly suppresing my overwhelming joy at having this nothing less than an aloof god speak to me, I nonchalantly answered: "Leafleting for an event." "Quite impressive," was his reaction to my cold-shoulder, which he had rarely experienced, especially coming from a Palestinian student. "Thanks to your enormous help, professor, we are doing very well with our information campaign," was my second verbal missile directed at him. We both knew that he had done nothing whatsoever until then to help us in any way or form. But only until then. In an apparent moment of guilt, he extended to me a warm invitation to meet him in his office -- shrine! -- that very same day. Thrilled, proud and above all speechlessly vindicated, I immediately swallowed my pride and accepted.

He had genuinely thought that we were doing classic anti-Israel events that addressed Arabs and their close supporters only. When he realized he was wrong, he had the courage to express it, in his own way. And from that moment on he played a decisive role in turning the tides at Columbia, promoting true debate on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, bringing into campus new perspectives and arguments that most students and faculty had not been exposed to.

Since then, Edward Said spoke at several of our events. In his typical charisma and distinguished intellect, Said always had a extraordinary blend of effects on our overcrowded audiences: electrifying, educating, charming, provoking, angering, engaging, and if an arrogant antagonist insisted on trying to nail him with false premises or warped argumentation (needless to say, such cases were far from rare at Columbia), he/she deserved the VIP treatment that was invariably served to them by Said: intellectual crucifixion, in public! Only one other genius in my long experience in student activism possessed such potent weapons of logical devastation: Noam Chomsky.

An unintended result of a series of our highly successful events, inspired by Said, was the skyrocketing of our organization's stature. We even used to quip at our new image as "one of the major organizations on campus," as other groups viewed us, not knowing that at best our highly committed and motivated membership roster hardly ever reached the two-digit territory!! In retrospect, it wasn't just Said's prominence that helped us, it was his spirit of resistance against all odds that profoundly inspired us, and, I must say, transformed some of us irreversibly. And I thought that only Lenin had the magic formula for transforming a handful of committed activists into an able and consequential force of change.

Principles First

After years of excellent relations, a storm was bound to arrive in our relationship with the Grand Palestinian. At the height of the first Palestinian intifada (1987 1993), some of the Zionist organizations on campus (god, we had too many!) decided to invite the head of the Israeli "legal" system in the occupied Palestinian territories, a decorated army general who was/is responsible for too many crimes to enumerate here. The Arab student association and several other progressive student organizations decided to campaign to prevent this military leader, who had "blood on his hands," as our thorough research had revealed, from speaking at Columbia. We had an intense internal debate on whether his speech would constitute incitement to violence, justification of racism, defence of murder committed by his army almost daily in Palestine, or ... simply an instant of free speech. We tried to persuade the organizers that such a speaker carried so much colonial and criminal baggage on his shoulders that his words were inherently seditious. We drew analogies to a far-right organization inviting, for instance, a former SS general. Though they were not amused by the analogy, some of them admitted that it was "a logically legitimate comparison." Nevertheless, we miserably failed in selling them the idea of disinviting him. We shifted to Plan B. We asked for equal representation on the panel of our side, "the other side" -- as they've often superciliously demanded in our events. We were rebuffed, mercilessly, I should add. Why should they feel any pressure from a tiny coalition of student groups who could not remotely measure up to the immense power they held and projected on campus? At that point, we were almost obsessed with trying to answer that question in a way that would surprise them, if not teach them a badly needed lesson in humility and moral consistency.

We consulted with our treasured gurus, Said, Chomsky, and the not-so-famous then, Norman Finkelstein. We had no idea at the time that the three were first-amendment aficionados! They replied in unexpected unison: no matter how criminal this general might be -- they all agreed he was -- his talk at Columbia could only be construed as a practice of freedom of speech, which we, the patent victims of censorship, ought to defend and promote. It was a cold shower to all of us, demoralizing and shaking. How could they not see the other side, how such a speech would in all certainty amplify the already hateful atmosphere around us on campus, how it could breathe new life into the alarming death threats that some of us had received. To them, the principle came first, above all other things, beyond emotion and transient indignation. Said even threatened to publicly criticize us if we pursued any path of censorship against the bloody general.

Of course we were compelled to change our tactics to accommodate that advice/obligation. We decided to picket outside the Law School auditorium, where the general was to speak, then walk into the hall, listen to him and finally challenge him head-on. But we decided to do it with style. We carefully hid our Palestinian flags and anti-occupation banners under our clothes and went into the hall after it was all full yes, it was revoltingly full!!and stood at the top level, all around the auditorium, awaiting the right moment to unfold them. It was a non-violent form of protest, we thought, that could not be remotely discerned as censorship. We had no plan, though, so we improvised.

When the general was finally introduced, he stood up and, fitting the image of a colonial viceroy, walked to the podium with deliberation, flanked by two massive bodyguards. We impulsively opened our banners and held them high. What would Said think of us now, I wondered. He would be angry, but proud, I immediately convinced myself. The general was particularly stung by the site of the large flag in my hands which at the time was entirely banned in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, partially due to his rulings. The very use of the combination of its colors, red, black, green and white, was enough to guarantee the perpetrator a tough military sentence. I was of course conscious of that. He nervously stepped back and whispered with the MC, a gentle rabbi who was more accommodating than the entire leadership of the Zionist groups on campus. Interpreting the general's retreat from the podium as a sweet little victory for us, we broke into chants. He was visibly fuming.

In a daunting development, however, a small army of the notoriously insensitive New York City police was in the hall and surrounding each one of us in a flying moment -- you would wish they reacted to crime with such lightening efficiency! I openly dared the MC to have us arrested thereby risking a definite breakdown in our mutual attempts at reconciliation. That desperate tactic to avoid arrest -- which could mean deportation of all of us who were foreign students -- surprisingly succeeded. He asked the police to stand by. After several rounds of the rabbi's polite pleas for quiet, which included promises to give us the floor after the speech, and our unyielding, yet orderly, chanting, amidst a state of collective shock that had struck the audience -- after all, it wasn't everyday that someone could so audaciously challenge such an omnipotent alliance of Zionist groups at Columbia -- the MC decided to negotiate with me to end the standoff. Since I had no mandate to speak on behalf of the group, I look from afar at my colleagues, and they instantly gave me a green light. They trusted me to reach a good compromise. What would Edward Said advise me to do in such a predicament, I asked myself. We met in the middle; the rabbi went up a few steps, I went down a few. I had every intention to stall, but at the same time I had to maintain my honesty and sense of responsibility in my negotiations with him. I did respect his integrity and occasional flurry of humanism. Ten minutes into our respectful dialogue, we reached an agreement.

The rabbi went to the small stage to inform his guest of the agreement. I crossed the hall to share with my colleagues the details.

And then, I held up my flag and went down to the podium. The rabbi announced the agreement on the microphone: "A representative of the protesting groups will speak for five minutes and then ask his group to walk out. Then, our distinguished speaker will finally get to deliver his speech, uninterrupted." The audience was now entering into clinical shock. Unable to hide my glee, I slowly mounted the stage and stood behind the podium to give my five-minute speech, basically trying to convince as many people as possible to walk out with us to protest the speaker's criminal record. Suddenly, the general got up and shouted: "I shall not accept this humiliation, standing next to a Palestinian carrying a flag." He carried his briefcase and walked out with his guards. Conscious of the meaning of this windfall, we feverishly started chanting. Some in the audience cried, some just left with their heads down. We, on the other hand, felt that our heads were going to hit the ceiling. Said must be proud, I thought. I was dead wrong.

When the news reached him, he ranted and raved. He immediately accused us of hurting our own cause, and he made well on his promise, he spoke out publicly against us. When I met him after that, he had cooled down, and we had a rational debate. He did admit that our act was "courageous," "effective" and "seemingly unavoidable," but wrong, nonetheless. I could live with that.

Despite his unapproachable aura, he was there when we needed insightful advice. Even when he wasn't with us, we summoned him in our minds when we needed a voice of reason and humanness to guide us. Now that he is physically gone, his voice, his words, his unfulfilled dream will literally live on, educating, enraging, provoking, enchanting and ultimately freeing us.

Omar Barghouti is a Palestinian doctoral student of philosophy (ethics) at Tel Aviv University. He is also a political analyst. His article "9.11 Putting the Moment on Human Terms" was chosen among the "Best of 2002" by the Guardian. His articles have appeared in the Hartford Courant, Al-Ahram and CounterPunch, among others. 

Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
By LENNI BRENNER

Only a few days ago, I sent out an e-mail flyer, announcing a November 25th New York panel discussion on CounterPunch's forthcoming book, The Politics Of Anti-Semitism. One of the speakers was going to be Edward Said, one of the contributors. Now he is dead. 

Will the event go on? Of course. That is what he would have wanted. Only now it will also have to be a memorial for him. 

When someone of his stature dies, even his enemies must go on record. What will his home town paper, the rightwing Zionist Jerusalem Post, write of him? Whatever they say, who cares? What will the New York Times say of one of the best regarded literary scholars in their city? For years they refused to have him write critiques for their wretched Book Review because he was anti-Zionist. Will they acknowledge that shameful fact? What will Arafat say of the man whose books he banned? 

There are now many Palestinians in the United States, writers like him, as devoted to their people's rights. But they will all say that he did more to explain their cause to the American people than any of them. Yet he was not a politician. 

We met in the early 80s. I'm a Jew who exposes Israeli Zionism, but I'm also deeply involved in American politics. One day we were discussing Democratic Party liberals. I warned him never to trust them until they are dead. I quoted examples, from personal conversations with them, of how cynical they are in their chase after Jewish campaign contributions and votes. He took it all in and then quietly said "Lenni, you have to understand that I'm a literary gent. I don't understand politics at all. I'm only in politics because I'm a Palestinian and I feel morally obliged to stand up for my people."

History and politics are my passions. Unfortunately that means that I've met endless numbers of intellectuals, of all political ideologies, including my own, who think they know more about politics than they do. But, if Edward made mistakes, I know it because he told me he did. 

Frankly, I'm an activist who, out of self-defense, also became a bit of a literary type. Indeed I've tried to model myself on Plutarch and Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, noted for his distrust of humanity. But, in the end, Edward's modesty and honesty overwhelmed me. And, while he certainly learned much in subsequent years, he never lost those two rare qualities. If anything, he perfected them. 

Lenni Brenner is the editor of 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis and a contributor to The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com

The Legacy of Edward Said
A Voice for Truth, Justice and Peace
By TANWEER AKRAM

Yesterday, I learned that Professor Edward Said is no more. Said was not only a scholar but an activist who worked tirelessly for peace and justice. His devastating critique of Western scholarship about Islam, Middle East, and the "Orient," exposed the ingrained basis of intellectuals in service of power interest, economic and political imperialism, and cultural domination. His work was inspired by his life long commitment to truth, justice, and peace. The writers of the Electronic Intifidahave written a moving obituary to this remarkable man.

I first learnt of Professor Edward Said when he came to give a guest lecture on "Culture and Imperialism" at Grinnell College, Iowa. Drawn by the erudition and impeccable logic of his arguments, I got hold of his books: Covering Islam, Orientalism, and The Question of Palestine. His detailed analysis of Western intellectual discourse and knowledge of texts shows how writers and intellectuals have wittingly and unwittingly served imperial interests. He supported his thesis by extensive study of both historic and current works on Islam, Arab civilizations, Palestine, Iran, Egypt, and India. His books were strong antidotes to the likes of Bernard Lewis and the distortions of CNN and Thomas Friedman. Later at Columbia University, I had the pleasure of attending Said's public lectures on the Middle East and on literature and imperialism. In mid 1990s, there was a special conference held in his honor but organized mostly by graduate students.

Said's knowledge, wit, and passion for truth will continue to inspire peace activists and genuine scholars. He represented what it means to be a great intellectual and a teacher, like Bertrand Russell or Jean Paul-Sartre. He stood for all Palestinians and peaceful coexistence of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, people of other religions, and those of no religious faith. He embodied the best values of Western and Arab civilizations. He used his knowledge for seeking justice. If he wanted he could have easily become a Minister or a high official. But he choose to work with the people, tell the truth, and expose the lies. He was a critic of the limitations of the Oslo process and the Palestinian authorities, including Yasir Arafat. He was dedicated to humanism and to a secularism vision of coexistence of Palestinians and Israeli Jews in historic Palestine.

The Associated Press' (AP) report of the news of Professor Edward Said's death, which appeared in the New York Times, does deserve a critical scrutiny because as media critic Ali Abunimah says, "it reflects, ironically, what Said fought against all his life."

The AP report said: "When it came to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Said was consistently critical of Israel for what he regarded as mistreatment of the Palestinians." It is interesting that the AP had to insert "for what he regarded as mistreatment" as if there is any question about the human rights abuse under Israeli occupation. Bishop Desmond Tutu has compared Israeli occupation of West Bank and Gaza to apartheid regime.

The AP report also stated: "In 2000, he prompted a controversy when he threw a rock toward an Israeli guardhouse on the Lebanese border." Indeed, Edward Said did throw a rock at Israeli army which had illegally occupied Southern Lebanon for years, killed over 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, and provided logistic support to terrorist Phalangist militias that carried out the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla. Throwing a rock at such an army would only be considered controversial in the twisted culture of intellectuals and academics serving Western imperialism. Said's decision to throw a stone at the Israeli army was a symbolic act of solidarity with the Lebanese and the Palestinian people who face the cruelty of Israeli army supported by arms and funds provided by the United States and other rich countries.

The AP report did not mention that Professor Said had received threats from various fanatical groups in the United States. Right-wing publications, such as the New Republic, and the Commentary, would regularly engaged in vilify Edward Said.

Said's Legacy

On learning Pierre Bourdieu's death, Said wrote:

"I wish I could have been with you in Paris today. Pierre's death is too poignant to experience alone in America at such a distance, so keenly felt is it by me and many others for whom his work and example were both inspiring and warm, particularly at a time when humanity has a shortage of champions, while the orthodoxy of virtue and power seem so unchallenged and, alas, so ascendant. It is Pierre Bourdieu's magnificently critical and oppositional spirit that we must hold on to and try, unceasingly, to perpetuate."

The same could be and should be said about Professor Edward Said, and perhaps much more. Said's death is our collective loss. Professor Said would be proud of the initiatives of the younger generation of Palestinian scholars and activists, and solidarity groups, such as ISM. His work and life sets an example to follow, in Palestine, in the United States, and elsewhere. His spirit will never die.

Tanweer Akram is an economist. His papers and reviews have appeared in Applied Economics, Journal of Emerging Markets, Bangladesh Development Studies, and Kyklos. He is a regular contributor to www.pressaction.com

Tanweer Akram Email: tanweer_akram@hotmail.com