Edward Said Called "A Giant Among Midgets"

King Features Syndicate ^ | 10-06-03 | Reese, Charley

[Theodore R.]

A Giant Among Midgets

Last week, television news shows took note of the deaths of Donald O'Connor, an actor-dancer; of George Plimpton, a high-toned journalist; and of some rock 'n' roll singer I'd never heard of. Completely missing from the shows I scanned was any mention at all of the death of a giant in this era of mental and moral midgets.

I refer to Edward Said, a professor of literature at Columbia University; a Palestinian and a fearless champion of human rights; a musician and a music critic; and a writer of great note. Said died after a long and valiant fight against leukemia, a disease that never stopped him from writing, traveling and speaking until the very end.

Said was naturally reviled and bedeviled by the professional Zionists for his fearless defense of Palestinian human rights. But unlike some Zionists who fly the false flag of human rights (Elie Wiesel, for example) yet never say snot about the Palestinian suffering, Said was as concerned for Israeli human rights as he was for those of his own people. He was a fierce critic of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He was, in this ideologically divided world, a genuine intellectual and a genuinely compassionate man. He was a constant advocate of a vision of peace and reconciliation for both Palestinians and Israelis.

He was much-criticized when he opposed the Oslo Accords as being a surrender and a process that would lead to more clashes, but subsequent events proved him to have been exactly right. To be hated by both Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is probably the greatest endorsement a man of peace could wish for.

Said's books are not easy reads. He was a scholar, not a journalist, but if you really want to understand the world our politicians have gotten us entangled with, two of his books, "Orientalism" and "The Question of Palestine," are well worth the effort. All of his books are worth the effort.

Most of what is written about the Middle East in America is written by ideologues, primarily Zionist and some anti-Zionist. Such books are arguments and propaganda, not serious discussions. Said, despite the most vicious personal attacks by intellectual thugs, never wavered from his vision of a just peace and a reconciliation of both peoples with equal rights.

There aren't many people in the world whom I regret not knowing or not having known, but Said is certainly one of them. How I would have loved to just have sat around and listened to him. A great mind is indeed a beautiful thing, and frankly, there aren't that many of them these days. It is entirely understandable that they are unrecognizable by television talking heads.

One of Said's many valuable lessons, applicable to us all, is that you can defend a cause without buying into bad leaders or resorting to fanaticism. Once we start justifying the means because of what we think is a noble end, we become corrupt. One astute man I know said that people should realize there are no ends, only means. As Brother Dave Gardner would have said, that's a heavy thought, but the more you think about it, the more you realize that it's true.

Said believed that what divided the world was not religion, ethnicity or nationalism, but rather the will to power, that itch in some to control others and, in order to control them, to degrade them.

We are, whatever else, all members of the same human species, all occupying the same planet. God willing, maybe one day we will arrive at a consensus that the real enemy is those people itching to control others and their possessions. Such people always hide behind the "idealistic end," which, of course, never arrives. All that is real is the suffering inflicted by the means.

Said's passing has left a hole in the world, but all of the young men and women he inspired will no doubt carry on. Even though I never knew him, I miss him already.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2003 by King Features Syndicate, Inc. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Chi-townChief]

"One of Said's many valuable lessons, applicable to us all, is that you can defend a cause without buying into bad leaders or resorting to fanaticism."

Anyone have that picture of Said throwing rocks at Israelis handy?

[wizardoz]

Edward Said died on my birthday. I was so happy.

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[Catspaw]

Yeah--I posted the picture of the rock-throwing Said on this thread--it's the same Reese column.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/995909/posts

[Theodore R.]

I had never heard of Edward Said until reading this. Where and when did he throw rocks at the Israelis? Perhaps Mr. Reese is allowing his pro-Palestinian stance to cloud reality.

[Catspaw]

Edward Said throwing rocks at the IDF.

[backhoe]

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[Theodore R.]

A picture IS worth a thousand words here.

[Theodore R.]

Did Columbia try to remove him for his deception?

[Catspaw]

A bit more. This gives the date:

16 Tammuz 5760 - July 19, 2000

News
Professor Edward Said: The Closet Terrorist

by Yated Ne'eman Staff

The AFP News Agency published a photo depicting Professor Edward Said, a prominent professor at Columbia University in New York City and a former president of the U.S. Modern Language Association, throwing stones from Lebanon at IDF soldiers stationed at the Fatma Crossing in Metulla.

Said is a leading intellectual and internationally recognized critic whose opinions continue to impact east-west studies, particularly with respect to Israel and the Palestinians.

Said, whose writings often take issue with what he terms Western stereotypes that diminish Arabs as primitive and violent, acknowledged throwing stones at Israel's border fence, but he says it was a harmless act of joy. In a statement dated July 6 and faxed to Jerusalem from his Columbia University office, Said acknowledged he was the man in sunglasses tossing stones on July 3. "For a moment I joined in: the spirit of the place infected everyone with the same impulse, to make a symbolic gesture of joy that the occupation had ended," Said wrote.

Said was photographed among Lebanese who show up daily to celebrate Israel's troop withdrawal from south Lebanon by stoning the new fence between the countries. Israel has complained the stonings violate the U.N. resolutions that mandated the end of its 18-year occupation of south Lebanon. Since the troop withdrawal in May, several soldiers and others have been injured in the stonings.

Morton A. Klein, President of the Zionist Organization of America, stressed that "there is no such thing as `symbolic' rock throwing just as there is no such thing as a `symbolic' stabbing or shooting. Bullets, knives, and rocks can kill and maim. Eight Israelis have been killed, and thousands maimed, by Arab rock throwing attacks. If Edward Said threw rocks at people in the United States, he could face a lengthy prison term."

---

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

A Giant Among Midgets

He was a giant all right. I doubt Charley and I agree on what he was a giant of though.

I tend not to like people who think it is just fine to support terrorists. Charley thinks that they are kindered spirits.

I guess they are. To Charley at least.

[Cicero]

Charlie Reese, who wrote some good columns in the clinton years, has become so antisemitic it's painful. Said was, in fact, a very influential intellectual. So were Nietzsche and Heiddeger, but that doesn't make them either moral or admirable. The best you can say about Said is that he did an immense amount of damage.

[SJackson]

It's worth noting that those stones aren't pebbles. I've a friend with a four pounder which came in his car window, another with a large gear of some sort, they don't only throw rocks.

Anyone who agrees with Said's concept of stoning as protest should be perfectly comfortable if ELF, as a symbolic gesture, starts throwing concrete blocks on SUVs from expressway overpasses.

[twigs]

I have read one of his books and several articles. I have to admit he makes some good points, but then he goes on to level them with drivel. He incessantly whines about the media, the US government and academia in the pay of Zionists who have stacked everything against the Palestinians. Like I said, he does develop some thought-provoking points, but them ruins his overall arguments by constant appeal to his paranoia. And he's not a good writer. That's a problem, IMHO, because he was an English lit professor and was president of the MLA (Modern Language Association) at one time.

[rmlew]

Nope. They defended him.