Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2003, page 25

Special Report

 

At UCLA, Edward Said Discusses Iraq, Palestinian Memory

 

By Pat McDonnell Twair

“It is patently obvious that if Iraq were the world’s biggest exporter of oranges, we wouldn’t be going to war with it.”

So observed Dr. Edward Said Feb. 20 at the first forum of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations. The outpouring of requests for reservations to hear the greatest living Palestinian academic induced sponsors to move the venue to Royce Hall, which can accommodate up to 1,800.

Sporting a white beard, the elegant intellectual was greeted with a standing ovation as he approached the podium.

“This war has been planned for domination of the resources of the region and strategic control from the Gulf to the Caspian,” stated the author of 20 books and former member of the Palestine National Council.

Focusing on the topic of his speech, “Memory, Inequality and Power: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights,” Said stated the Israelis have done everything within their imagination to erase the Palestinian presence from the land they call Israel.

Palestinian cemeteries were systematically blown to bits, and villages plowed under. For all its efforts, however, Israel is still encumbered by a Palestinian memory.

“Since 1967,” Said said, “Israel intensified its drive to repress Palestinian institutional life. But the more Israel buries the Palestinian past, the more Palestinian memory thrives in cinema, in title deeds, old house keys, photographs, maps and newspapers of the period.

“The obstacles before the Palestinians can’t be overestimated,” he continued. Israel justifies its deadly human rights abuses against an indigenous population by defining anyone it kills as a terrorist.

“The Gazans are suffering a terrific toll just short of genocide,” Said told his audience. “All rights have been withheld in an effort to break the Palestinian spirit. The same tirade George Bush, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld carry on and on about Saddam Hussain’s assault on human rights can be made against Sharon.”

While Israeli spin doctors portray the struggle as one between equal forces, Said asked rhetorically: “How many Israelis have had their homes demolished by bulldozers, been stripped and searched, lived under curfews and robbed of their freedom of movement?

“Neither the Indians living under British rule nor black South Africans in the apartheid state have had to deal with rockets, bulldozers, tanks, helicopter gunship missiles, university closures, 300 checkpoints and the systematic destruction of their economy,” he said. “An average of 896 Palestinian trees have been uprooted daily since the onset of intifada II.”

Citing the work of Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi, who has documented a coherent Palestinian culture that existed long before Zionism, Said praised a Palestinian spirit that has become a symbol for progressive causes. This is manifested in divestment campaigns on American campuses and worldwide boycotts of Israeli products by non-governmental organizations.

No Israeli figure has articulated regret or responsibility for the victimization of the Palestinian people, he emphasized. “No power, no matter how horrific its past, should be exempt from censure if it practices starvation, torture and forced transfer. We live in a secular world—there simply is no way to legitimize bombing and maiming people because they don’t belong to the correct race.

“There can be no dispensation for a people who wreak havoc on others because of its earlier travails,” he continued. “Sharon claims that for biblical reasons Israel owns the land and no one can put restrictions on their actions in the West Bank.”

Said dismissed such claims as “sluggish balderdash.”

“Why can’t this be a homeland for the people who actually lived there?” he asked. “Everything we know of ancient Palestine is that Philistines, Canaanites and many others lived there, not just Jews. To say only one people lived there is a tragic misinterpretation.”

Said had alluded to this earlier, when he accused Israeli archeologists of having been complicit in remaking a past devoid of an Arab presence: “They provide a distant past in which certain cultures just moved away.”

Another problem Said addressed was the clash of two cultures, which he attributed to the British partition practice of “divide and quit.”

Drawing upon his own experience, the Columbia University professor of English and comparative literature said there is hope a future coexistence can replace present antagonism.

More than a decade ago, Said said, he met the world-renowned pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. Whereas after 1948, Said’s family was unable to return to his ancestral residence in Jerusalem, Barenboim’s family emigrated from Argentina to Israel at about the same time.

The two befriended each other and, as a consequence, Barenboim visited the West Bank several times to perform for culture-starved Ramallahns. The Israeli musician went so far as to take two talented Palestinian pianists under his wing.

This special friendship bloomed into the “East-West Diwan” in which chamber ensembles from Arab countries and Israel come together in Seville for a few weeks.

“Even though our politics are polarized,” Said noted, “an alternative model has come about in which Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions are merged in music.”

Concluding his remarks, Said said that “Despite the darkening sky, I am full of optimism. Ignorance of the other is no help, separation of people isn’t the solution.”

One year earlier, when Dr. Said delivered a major speech at Chapman College in the historic city of Orange, CA, the audience enthusiastically showed its respect for the ailing academic.

It was a different story at UCLA, however, where a couple of dozen hard-core Israel-supporters handed out anti-Said fliers and several middle-aged pro-Sharon women hovered inside the auditorium near the Q&A microphone.

At the Westwood campus, people scrambled toward two microphones as the audience roared its approval of Said’s speech.

The first person to take the microphone identified himself as Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller. He challenged Dr. Said by stating his figures were wrong, that 800,000 Palestinians had not been expelled in 1948.

“Your emphasis on memory is paralytic, your memory is mired in suffering,” charged the rabbi, who, we later learned, is affiliated with UCLA’s Hillel House.

While many shouted “What’s your question?” the agitated rabbi dared Said to sign some sort of statement recognizing Israel.

“You do your case a massive injustice,” Said patiently responded. “You didn’t voice the slightest regret over crimes that Israel refuses to admit. As for the 800,000 expelled, Yitzhak Rabin and David Ben-Gurion cited this figure. Ilan Pappé has written about it. Your tirade of half-truths didn’t mention illegal [Israeli] settlements. This is a savage war of oppression, and until that fact is faced, there can be no peace. The only paper I’ll sign is one to end the Israeli occupation.”

Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer based in Los Angeles.

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