Book Description
A prominent Palestinian's searching, anguished, deeply affecting autobiography, in which his life story comes to be the story of the recent history of his country.
Sari Nusseibeh’s autobiography is a remarkable book—one in which his dramatic life story and that of his embattled country converge in a work of great passion, depth, and emotional power.
Nusseibeh was raised to represent his country. His family’s roots in Palestine traced back to the Middle Ages, and his father was the governor of Jerusalem. Educated at Oxford, he was trained to build upon his father’s support for coexistence and a negotiated solution to the problems of the region.
But the wars of 1967 and 1973 spelled the beginning of the end for the vision of a unified Palestine—and Nusseibeh’s response to these events, and to those that followed, gives us the recent history from a Palestinian point of view as no book has done. From his time teaching side by side with Israelis at Hebrew University through his appointment by Yassir Arafat to administer Arab Jerusalem, he holds fast to a two-state solution, even as the powers around him insist that it is impossible. As Palestine is torn apart by settlements and barricades, corruption and violence, Nusseibeh remains true to the ideals of his youth, determined to keep hold of some faint hope for the life of his country.
Once Upon a Country is a book with the scope and vitality of an old-fashioned novel—one whose ending is still uncertain.
Customer Reviews:
A moderate Palestinian's story.......2007-08-23
If you want to understand the immense gulf between Israel and Palestine even among moderates, read this book.
Once Upon a Peace Maker!.......2007-08-08
This is a truly important book for anyone wishing to understand fully the Arab / Palestinian - Israeli conflict. It sheds tremendous light on very important events, thus far not fully presented from the Palestinian side, especially that of the non rejectionist Palestinian camp. Sari Nusseibeh is a truly visionary man with tremendous courage and is a highly gifted activist and indeed very clever politician despite his own denials.
I have thoroughly enjoyed, and was often moved by, the first half of the book which dealt with the history of Nusseibeh's family and contained his even handed description of the events leading to 1948 and all the way through the 1967 war and his subsequent return to live in Palestine with his British wife. Nusseibeh's portrayal of the lives of the Palestinians between the wars of 1948 and 1967 was very helpful.
In the second half of the book Nusseibeh hammers in, over and over again, on the tacit unspoken alliance of the extremists on both sides and shows how Israel supported the creation of Hamas as a counter weight to the Fateh and PLO. He coherently and very persuasively presents the thought process that he went through to move from the one state solution to the two state solution and demonstrates very effectively the threats that prolonging the conflict would cause to it.
Nusseibeh was often right at the center of things or at least presents himself as such; we see him as a leading figure in standing up to the Israelis and to the Islamists, we see him as the key engine behind the first intefada, or uprising, and we see him winning the respect and approval of Yasir Arafat. In this, second, half, this book moves from being a truly exceptional account of the personal and family history more into an aggrandizing politician's memoir. This should not reduce nor detract from the tremendous personal sacrifice and commitment Nusseibeh made to his cause.
I have heard of the peace work of Dr. Nusseibeh and read some of his articles and interview for some years and while I admire him more than any other Palestinian public figure, this book troubled me in a number of ways. Unlike the other three Palestinian memoirs, originally written in English, that I have read (Gada Karami, Fay Kenfani & Edward Said) Nusseibeh sought to justify every action he has ever taken, to defend his various historic positions and to settle the scores with those of differing views. Most unlike the other three biographies, the book contained virtually no retrospective sole searching whatsoever and important topics such as his obvious passion and skill for politics vs. his academic eccentric persona were packaged for the purpose rather than thought through. Nusseibeh repeatedly simply presented himself as the reluctant professor, yet left us wondering about his very savvy organizational, political and survival skills. He seemed to know exactly how to deal with wily old Arafat, Hamas, the Israeli intelligence and the various factions of the PLO yet retain the freedom to advance his own agenda as well as build important relationships with Israelis.
The tremendous heights, in which, Nusseibeh holds his father, a former Governor of Jerusalem, ambassador and member of cabinet gives the feeling of an immature biography lacking in the distance to be objective. Indeed the first half of the book contains rework of the some of the father's own unpublished memoirs. Obvious points such as the father's commitment to an idealistic form of pan Arabism, albeit non Bathist and non Nasserist, and Nusseibeh own movement into being Palestinian nationalist, seeing Palestine being in natural alliance with Israel did not cause him to reflect further on the role and thinking of his father. A respectful critique and contrast of the views would have enhanced and not hindered the understanding of his father and need not be disloyal to his memory.
Most grating perhaps is the competitiveness displayed with other Palestinian peace advocates and the various attempts at discrediting them. This was particularly evident in describing the efforts that led to the Geneva Accord, which Nusseibeh referred as the plan by the name of the Israeli negotiator, thus marginalizing the Palestinian partner. At some point Nusseibeh clearly fell out with Hanan Ashrawi and Dr. Barghouti, both articulate advocates of the Palestinian cause and for peace and coexistence with Israel, he made his disdain of them very obvious and has not troubled himself to analyze their positions even in retrospect.
A genuine peacemaker and a pleasure and privilege to read.......2007-07-24
In the Palestinian struggle against an apartheid, territorially hungry (manifest-Zioinst-destiny) Israel, there has been a shortage of local leaders of wisdom, character, and good fortune. This shortage has been partially circumstantial and partially managed by Israel who has been "sowing the wind" for decades by imprisoning moderates and secretly cultivating Islamist extremists. That Nusseibeh has managed to be spared assasination by Israel or others is fortunate for everyone. We may hope that just as modern Israel has risen from the ashes left in the ovens of the shoah, a viable modern Palestine will emerge from the ordeal of Israeli presecution and imprisonment, and Nusseibeh's voice might be revered as both prophetic and instrumental. Otherwise, we might well see a second shoah (of the sort for which, unfortunately, many end-times enthusiasts seem to hanker). We must hope, indeed we should pray, that Nusseibeh's humanitarian good will and good sense are not too late and that his voice, now seemingly crying in the wilderness, will not have been a waste of breath.
Interesting and enlightening, but ..........2007-07-05
Well written history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from somewhat of a unique perspective. The author had a very different experience with some of the primary events of the conflict - not up close and personal a la Arafat, but certainly not man-on-the-street. Dr. Nusseibeh has been a broken record set on "peace," but events have conspired to not let his message get across. An interesting look at a mostly unfortunate series of events.
The NY SUN sums it up a lot better than the reviewers below. .......2007-06-17
First off let's start by exposing who Nusseibeh really is:
He's a double-talker. Saying one thing in English and another in Arabic.
* Helped organize the first Palestinian Intifada, 1987-1993
* Seeks the ultimate destruction of Israel
* Supports Palestinian suicide bombings against Jews
He has appeared on Al-Jazeera TV supporting the Palestinian "right of return" and the "stages" strategy towards the eventual annihilation of Israel. This has been Nusseibeh's modus operandi for some time: pursuing a sequence of small, pragmatic steps - each arguably justifiable as purported attempts to mitigate hostilities - but whose ultimate objective is to bring about Israel's destruction.
He does not condone bombings against Jewish civilians, and sees the terrorist attacks and martyrdom operations.
Then there's the complete BS included.. the NYSun covers it well:
In Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life, Sari Nusseibeh misses no opportunity to denigrate and delegitimize Israel through sharp, short, often subtle yet always false readings of history.
His text is marred by countless factual errors and inaccuracies that cast a serious doubt on the validity of his personal narrative, not to mention the wider historical and political picture he seeks to paint.
But Mr. Nusseibeh is not someone to be bothered by the facts. His text is marred by countless factual errors and inaccuracies that cast a serious doubt on the validity of his personal narrative, not to mention the wider historical and political picture he seeks to paint.
--The British foreign secretary who made the famous declaration (in November 1917) on "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" was Mr. Arthur James Balfour, not " Lord Alfred Balfour," and the declaration was made in a letter to Lord Rothschild, not to Chaim Weizmann.
--Lawrence of Arabia had nothing to do with the Anglo-Hashemite correspondence that led to the "Great Arab Revolt" of World War I, and the person with whom the British plotted the revolt was Emir Hussein ibn Ali (later King Hussein of the Hijaz), not his son Emir Faisal (misrepresented by Mr. Nusseibeh as " Sheikh Faisal Hussein").
--Neither did the British ever promise Faisal (or Hussein for that matter) the headship of the Arab kingdom that would be established on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
--General Edmund Allenby did not occupy Palestine with his Mule Corps but rather with the powerful Egyptian Expeditionary Force, and the Ottoman potentate Djemal Pasha did not surrender to the British in 1917, as it was only in late September 1918 that Allenby scored his culminating victory, in the Battle of Megiddo.
--Sheik Izz al-din al-Qassam, the Syrian religious fanatic operating in Palestine in the mid-1930s, was not hanged by the British but killed in action.
--The Higher Arab Committee (established in 1936) comprised 10, rather than six, members and Jaffa's Arab population in 1948 didn't amount to 200,000 people, but to about a third of this figure.
--The Dome of the Rock was built by Caliph Abdel Malik ibn Marwan and not Mu'awiya, and Caliph Omar did not capture Jerusalem in 638 C.E. after the bloody conquest of Baghdad and Cairo for the simple reason that both cities were established long after the Muslim capture of Jerusalem. And so on and so forth.
If the Arabs reverted to violence, as they occasionally did, it was invariably the Jews' fault, according to Nusseibeh. The 1929 massacres, for example, in which 133 Jews were slaughtered by their Arab neighbors, and hundreds more were wounded, were but "a nasty backlash among Muslims" to Zionist nationalist aspirations regarding the Wailing Wall; just as Arafat's war of terror was a logical reaction to Ariel Sharon's short stroll along the Temple Mount. But then, why should Muslims act differently when Jews, who have no valid claim to Palestine, let alone to the Wailing Wall - "a most likely candidate for being the wall of a fortress built for Roman legions" - make outrageous demands on this holy Muslim site.
This absurd assertion -- part of a lengthy historical fabrication of Jerusalem's history posted on the homepage of Al-Quds University, an institution headed by Mr. Nusseibeh -- is hardly different from the countless misrepresentations and distortions contained in "Once Upon a Country." It is also congruent with the persistent Palestinian denial of the existence of King Solomon's Temple, and by extension the Jewish millennarian attachment to Jerusalem and the land of Israel. Small wonder that in 2002 he was appointed PLO Commissioner for Jerusalem affairs by Arafat, who in the Camp David summit of September 2000 had told President Clinton that the Temple had been located in Nablus rather than in Jerusalem. To judge by the gist of "Once Upon a Country," Arafat could not have made a better choice.
Book Description
The tale of a simple act of faith between two young people - one Israeli, one Palestinian - that symbolizes the hope for peace in the Middle East.
In 1967, not long after the Six-Day War, three young Arab men ventured into the town of Ramle, in what is now Jewish Israel. They were cousins, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes; their families had been driven out of Palestine nearly twenty years earlier. One cousin had a door slammed in his face, and another found his old house had been converted into a school. But the third, Bashir Al-Khairi, was met at the door by a young woman called Dalia, who invited them in.
This act of faith in the face of many years of animosity is the starting point for a true story of a remarkable relationship between two families, one Arab, one Jewish, amid the fraught modern history of the regio. In his childhood home, in the lemon tree his father planted in the backyard, Bashir sees dispossession and occupation; Dalia, who arrived as an infant in 1948 with her family from Bulgaria, sees hope for a people devastated by the Holocaust. As both are swept up in the fates of their people, and Bashir is jailed for his alleged part in a supermarket bombing, the friends do not speak for years. They finally reconcile and convert the house in Ramle into a day-care centre for Arab children of Israel, and a center for dialogue between Arabs and Jews. Now the dialogue they started seems more threatened than ever; the lemon tree died in 1998, and Bashir was jailed again, without charge.
The Lemon Tree grew out of a forty-three minute radio documentary that Sandy Tolan produced for Fresh Air. With this book, he pursues the story into the homes and histories of the two families at its center, and up to the present day. Their stories form a personal microcosm of the last seventy years of Israeli-Palestinian history. In a region that seems ever more divided, The Lemon Tree is a reminder of all that is at stake, and of all that is still possible.
Customer Reviews:
Good book, we read it in class.......2007-10-14
It's a good fairly objective book (although it's pretty much impossible to be truly unbiased in anything). It's definitely good at getting on two sides of this multifaced beast of an issue to cover. You'll never find a book on the Arab-Israeli conflict that everyone agrees on, NEVER, some people will always think Israel had a spotless and sin free birth despite the facts, and others will never admit the Arabs made mistakes and had selfish non-altruistic motives. For such a sticky situation, this book does well.
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew and the Heart of the MIddle East.......2007-10-03
This book is a poignant story of the people drawn up into the Arab-Israeli conflict. It takes the premise that both sides have committed atrocities and both sides have been victimized. It does so by following both a Palestinian and Jewish family, linked together by residence of the same home during different periods. Each family learns to understand the other, but still a inpenetrable barrier remains between them.
The Lemon Tree.......2007-10-02
THE LEMON TREE, by Sandy Tolan, is a historical perspective of the Palestine/Israel problems viewed from two lives, one Arab man and one Israeli woman. Their factual stories are given from the history of the land and the divisions made by outside influence. The U.N. and Great Britian were very involved in the partition and resettlement of the people of this area.
The two personal lives were intertwined by having consecutive lives in one house as "one home" for the two families. Both of these lives reflect on people of great faith, great education, and great involvment in the situation.
The author uses much research, factual relativity, and impartiality to his report. A very complicated situation exists and the book allows the information to understand the impossibility of the area and future peaceful settlement.
A biased view of the Middle East conflict.......2007-08-23
Although when I began The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan, I believed this book would be a balanced and nuances work about the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. The book opens with a description of a home which had been built and inhabited by Palestinians and in which Israeli Jews live after the 1948 war. Great, I thought! We'll see two sides of the dreadful tensions and violence in the region. I was disappointed by the time I finished reading because Tolan loads the argument in favor of the dispossessed Palestinians, barely mentioned the horrific consequences of suicide bombings and attacks on innocent civilians. One example is the reference to the problems in Gaza. Tollan describes the attacks by Israel as violent and gratuitous on the Gazans, and actually suggests that the rockets Hamas fired into Israel (after the Israelis pulled out) are harmless. Surely, the author doesn't believe that the intention of Hamas was to fire "harmless rockets" into enemy territory. Throughout the book, we see very little about the wars the Arab nations began, especially the one that immediately followed the establishment of the state of Israel. The 1967 war was initiated by the Israelis, true, but Egyptian forces were massed on the border. If that wasn't provocation, I don't know what is.
I am not sorry I read the book. I enjoyed much of it, and I was certainly more sympathetic with many Palestinians who suffered so much after having read Tolan's presentation of their lives and losses. The book would have been more successful for me had it been more balanced and honest.
The Lemon Tree.......2007-08-07
This is an excellent book - extremely well documented. It affords the reader greater understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It arouses sympathy for those who have suffered injustice - also admiration for people on both sides for their resilience and determination to seek the truth. This book also inspires a feeling of hope through the compassion shown between Jew and Israeli. Would that more people could strive for understanding and peace!
Book Description
They met in 1990 during the first Palestinian uprising—one was an American Jew who served as a prison guard in the largest prison in Israel, the other, his prisoner, Rafiq, a rising leader in the PLO. Despite their fears and prejudices, they began a dialogue there that grew into a remarkable friendship—and now a remarkable book. It is a book that confronts head-on the issues dividing the Middle East, but one that also shines a ray of hope on that dark, embattled region.
Jeffrey Goldberg, now an award-winning correspondent for The New Yorker, moved to Israel while still a college student. When he arrived, there was already a war in his heart—a war between the magnetic pull of tribe and the equally determined pull of the universalist ideal. He saw the conflict between the Jews and Arabs as the essence of tragedy, because tragedy is born not in the collision of right and wrong, but of right and right.
Soon, as a military policeman in the Israeli army, he was sent to the Ketziot military prison camp, a barbed-wire city of tents and machine gun towers buried deep in the Negev Desert. Ketziot held six thousand Arabs, the flower of the Intifada: its rock-throwers, knifemen, bomb-makers, and propagandists. He realized that this was an extraordinary opportunity to learn from them about themselves, especially because among the prisoners may have been the future leaders of Palestine.
Prisoners is an account of life in that harsh desert prison—mean, overcrowded, and violent — and of Goldberg's extraordinary dialogue with Rafiq, which continues to this day.
We hear their accusations, explanations, fears, prejudices, and aspirations. We see how their relationship deepened over the years as Goldberg returned to Washington, D.C., where Rafiq, quite coincidentally, had become a graduate student, and as the Middle East cycled through periods of soaring hope and ceaseless despair. And we see again and again how these two men—both of them loyal sons of their warring peoples—confront their religious, cultural, and political differences in ways that allowed them to finally acknowledge a true, if necessarily tenuous, friendship.
A riveting, deeply affecting book: spare, impassioned, energetic, and unstinting in its candor about the truths that lie buried within the animosities of the Middle East.
Customer Reviews:
brilliantly perceptive and very sad.......2007-09-18
I read it in 2 nights. It is truly brilliantly perceptive and indescribably sad - he, like so many, see no solution, not really, despite his theme of coexistence. By now there's so much hatred on both sides, so much misunderstanding, so much blood shed unnecessarily, that any happy end is virtually impossible.
Ruth Weiss, Author, Germany
Not a Prisoner: Just Captivated.......2007-06-24
I didn't think that I would be interested in a political kind of book, but this is really a personal story that taught me alot about the middle east and war and peace. What I really liked is that Mr. Goldberg thinks that there is hope. I have given it for gifts and people love it.
deeply personal and informative.......2007-06-13
not only is this book deeply personal to the author but also to this reader.He put into the words that I never could the feeling that I have for Israel and the Jewish People.He explains Zionism for what it really is and means and not for what the pc crowd has twisted it to be.
Having also had dialogue with a muslim that I called friend for over more than 40 years I can attest to the great divide between us.it is hard for most people to understand that different cultures do not think alike regardless of what facts are presented.
other readers have found hope in this book which I am afraid I do not share.
A Must Read.......2007-04-22
Jeffrey Goldberg has written an absolutely facinating book. His unique perspective and the access that has been granted him to interview Muslim leaders, makes his book a "must read" for all those interested in Middle East tensions and problems.For the people, like myself, who are despairing of ever seeing peace in that region, Mr. Goldberg brings back hope that we can learn to understand and appreciate our differences and celebrate our similarities.
Friends of sorts . . ........2007-04-09
Self-categorized on the book jacket as "Current Affairs," this book had me expecting an analysis of Israeli-Palestinian relations, the word "prisoners" in the title no more than a metaphor. In fact, a large part of the book takes place in an actual prison, and while it has much to say about Israeli-Palestinian relations, it is more correctly a memoir of an American Jewish journalist attempting to understand the nature of the conflict that has prevailed in that part of the Middle East since 1948. Finding the political in the personal, he tells of his own beginnings as a youthful Zionist living on Long Island and his years in Israel as his ideals are put to the test working on a kibbutz and then serving in the military police at a desert prison, where he first meets and attempts to befriend a Palestinian prisoner, Rafiq.
Later, working as a journalist based first in Jerusalem and then in Washington DC, the author travels often to Gaza and the West Bank to talk with Palestinians, many of them released prisoners, including his friend Rafiq. His conversations with Rafiq become a commentary on an accompanying account of the interlude of hope for resolution in the Oslo talks, the eventual collapse of the peace process, and the rise of suicide bombings. On both levels, it is a search for common ground that is as elusive as peace itself. The author clings to the hope that where friendship is possible between two men who cannot agree on anything else, coexistence is possible between Arabs and Jews.
This is a well written book that immerses the reader in the deeply bitter and violent conflict that has raged in this corner of the world for decades. The greater part of the book is peopled by Palestinians, each specifically drawn as they reveal themselves to the author, and representing a host of political points of view, from the reasonable to the extreme. Meanwhile, as the author's initial Leon Uris-fed idealism fades, the Israelis themselves are often portrayed as far less than admirable. Leavening the darkness inherent in his subject, the author often finds a kind of grim humor, frequently at his own expense, as he struggles to bring the light of reason to what becomes increasingly a litany of folly on all sides. Very much New Yorker style writing in its use of a personal perspective and its slow-moving, meandering structure, "Prisoners" makes for fascinating and rewarding reading. However, do not expect to be uplifted or reassured by its vision of a world mired in mutual distrust and hatred.
Book Description
In April 2002, the Israeli army reoccupied Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters. A tank blocked Raja Shehadeh's road; Israeli soldiers seized his brother's home and used him as a human shield during a search, as his frightened wife and children watched. When the Birds Stopped Singing reveals the rage and terror of daily life in these dire circumstances, showing how time passes for people imprisoned in their own homes, how they cope with being forbidden to cross the neighborhood to help a sick relative or dying friend. A chronicle of lives that somehow endure under impossible circumstances, Shehadeh's diary is a compelling and important document of a problem that seems increasingly beyond solution.
Customer Reviews:
Very Powerful Account of Palestinian Ordinary Citizens.......2006-10-05
This book should be read by all of the Western world to gain a perspective on the ordinary citizen living in the Occupied territory of Palestine. So often, I don't think we actually realize what "Occupation" means and how much power remains in Israel's hands even when there is not an actual occupation of a specific city. The author helped me understand the Oslo Accord and how it failed to bring justice to the region.
This account ( using a diary format) really brings home what curfew means to daily life and the fear which comes when soldiers invade without regard to human feelings. Although written in 2003, I'm sure this holds true in 2006, and certainly makes me more attentive to news coming out of their continued struggle.
Outstanding and very powerful book.......2005-10-27
This book left me horrified at what is going on in the Middle East. It is even worse than I thought - and I thought I knew a lot about the situation already. Raja's day to day account, written in the form of a diary, gives a first hand account of what it is like to live under Occupation.
This is hell on earth; and we in America are financing it all, with our 3 billion dollars a year that we send to Israel in military aid.
The greatest threat to World Peace lies here, and we are paying for it.
Average.......2004-04-09
(...)I purchased "When the Birds Stopped Singing" without hesitation as I looked forward to his unique human rights and legal perspective as an adult during the intifada. While his writing style is still engaging, the content is not as strong. This small book is simply a collection of short diary entries that depict his daily experiences during the difficult times. While the situation itself is heart breaking, the entries become redunant with several descriptions of outrageous Israeli soldier behavior, Palestinian subjugation and rebellion, and the difficulties of living some semblance of a normal life under such circumstances. I did not find anything new or compelling in this book, rather I felt I was perusing a random personal journal that was likely never meant to be published. Shehadeh's human rights and legal perspective never seemed to emerge in his entries which left this as an average book that will likely only appeal to those who have not heard many personal accounts of Palestinian life during the intifiada.
life goes on.......2003-12-15
This book is about the siege of Ramallah and Shehadeh tells a heartbreaking story, with plenty of villians to go around. I expected that. To my surprise, what makes the book worth reading are the heroes. Not the Isreali soldiers. Not the PLO. Not Islamic Jihad or Hamas. The heroes of this book are the everyday people who actually try to live a normal life in the West Bank.
Book Description
-- A ForeWord Magazine "Book of the Year" Finalist--
Why does Hamas refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the state of Israel? Why do Israeli settlers in the West Bank insist that Israel has a legitimate right to that territory? What makes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so intractable? Reflecting both Israeli and Palestinian points of view, this provocative volume addresses the two powerful, bitterly contested, competing historical narratives that underpin the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Compelling contributions by Israeli and Palestinian authors show how the intertwined reckonings of the historical past--history's double helix--provide powerful ammunition for current battles. Just when a resolution of the conflict might seem to be on the horizon, the gulf of history resurges to separate the contenders. Palestinians and Israelis remain locked in struggle, tightly entangled and enveloped by a historical cocoon of growing complexity, fundamental disagreement, and overriding miscalculation.
This book creates a dialogue among Palestinian and Israeli authors, who examine opposing versions of the historical narratives in the context of contemporary Israeli-Palestinian relations. In hard-hitting essays the contributors debate the two justifying and rationalizing constructions, laying bare the conflict's roots and the distorted prisms that fuel it. Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to make sense of today's headlines.
Customer Reviews:
On the wrong track.......2007-08-12
Narratives of conflict?
What's that supposed to mean? Does it mean that some folks have a bunch of anecdotes which they use to present a somewhat misleading picture of reality while others have a bunch of anecdotes which they use to present a horribly misleading picture of reality?
What we need are truths, not "narratives."
Yes, a bunch of people who committed crimes and fought as aggressors have "narratives." But that does not negate the reality of what happened. Sure, those families in the American South who fought to deny human rights to Black slaves have a narrative. And they suffered. But that would not get me or any other honest person to consider the emancipation of the slaves a catastrophe! The emancipation of the slaves was a triumph for human rights that has been a benefit to society as a whole. The victory over National Socialism was a similar triumph. The lifting of the siege of Jerusalem in 1948 was another such triumph. If we instead call it (or the existence of human rights for Jews in Israel) a "catastrophe," we're being both insulting and dishonest. And I think that some of the contributors in this book are encouraging such dishonesty.
In order to reduce strife, I think we do need to focus on truth. But that is not the same thing as accepting lies! I know that it is very difficult to admit that one is wrong if one wants to fight. But it is also difficult to admit that one is right if one wants to be diplomatic. And I think we need to strive to be more honest, and value truth whether one has been right or wrong.
There are some things in this book that I did find interesting. Mordechai Bar-On had some things to say about Israel from his perspective, and reasons why such people as Flapan or Zertal are unlikely to be taken seriously by most Israelis. In addition, he makes the excellent point that some Arabs like Israeli revisionist history because they feel it admits the truth of some Arab claims (I might call it the truth of some Arab falsehoods). Instead, he thinks that Arabs ought to see it as a call to try some revisionist history of their own, and reconsider some of the more dubious things they've tended to agree upon in the past.
Does this one good point make the book worth two stars rather than one? Definitely not. Its entire theme is no good.
It's hard to hear the other side.......2007-01-02
This is a very useful book for anyone who wants to understand the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Each side tells the story in a way that blends fact, emotion, and a particular point of view. It's hard to build relationships with others when we don't have an understanding of how differently they view reality.
Average customer rating:
- Nauseating
- Perspectives on Orientalism
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Revising Culture, Reinventing Peace: The Influence of Edward W. Said
Manufacturer: Interlink Publishing Group
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ASIN: 1566563577 |
Book Description
Throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century, Columbia University professor Edward W. Said's work has been recognized as a major influence on literature, cultural studies, and Palestinian nationalism. President of the Modern Language Association, pianist, and confidant to world leaders, he is the author of seventeen books, including the seminal Orientalism, which has shaped and reshaped academic disciplines and political movements, spanning continents and linking formerly disparate intellectual pursuits.
Customer Reviews:
Nauseating.......2005-12-09
Well, I read the first six Harry Potter books. And Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters sure do seem scary. So do, as Ibn Warraq characterizes them, Edward Said and the Saidists. But there is a difference. Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters are fictional characters. Ed Said was real, and the Saidists are real people. What they write is typically fiction. But they are real people with real motives for what they do.
I'm not sure why the Saidists who contributed to this book perpetrated these articles. It would be nice to know, of course. After all, I want to be sure that I never do anything remotely resembling this, and so it would be good to know just what these folks were thinking.
Most people would agree that human beings ought to have a right to buy land and live on it. Obviously, those who applaud Said can't really agree, given their implict approval of Said's racist opposition to human rights for Levantine Jews. But I found nothing in this book that was useful in explaining what it was they really wanted or why.
The book starts out with Richard Falk who says that Ed Said made "indispensable contributions" to the life of independent inquiry. And he insists on honoring Said. Well, I think that of all the people who have ever had anything to do with academia, Ed Said is the least worthy of being honored. In my opinion, not even Trofim Lysenko did as much damage to the academic community as did Said.
As Ibn Warraq has shown in his article, "Edward Said and the Saidists," while "Orientalism" (an infamous book by Said) "is worthless as intellectual history," it has inhibited research on the Orient by Western scholars. I agree with Warraq that Said's work "has made the goal of modernization of the Middle Eastern societies that much more difficult." In my opinion, Said's works are riddled with outrageous ad hoc untruths. In fact, I suspect that Said has more copies of untruths in print than any other human in history. These untruths are there to support otherwise hopeless arguments for denying Levantine Jews the rights of life, liberty, property, and refuge.
Later in the book, Marc Ellis has a thirty-five page article. Typical of the way he misrepresents reality is his straw-man claim that folks such as Elie Wiesel believe that Jews "are incapable of hate." However, that's absurd. Wiesel has indeed discussed the fact that Jews have rarely resorted to cruelty. But that in no way means that Jews are incapable of hate, or that Wiesel believes them to be so. Most humans, including most Jews, are capable of hate. One example is in Yaacov Lozowick's book, "Right to Exist." Lozowick cites a young Jewish girl who managed to write in her diary in 1941 that she knew "there are also good Germans. They should be killed last." Now, that was truly nasty of her. Still, hate alone does not translate into evil acts. Such acts require both motive and opportunity. Lozowick points out that there were some opportunities after World War Two, but these were rarely taken advantage of. And that supports what Wiesel says, not what Ellis wants us to believe. I would add that Jews have had a long history and tradition of avoiding violence, in part because for centuries, there were no Jewish armies (often, Jews were even denied the right to possess weapons). And that even in modern times, Jews have been strongly motivated to avoid unnecessary violence. Yes, Jews have defended themselves when attacked. But that is very different from gratuitous oppression of one's neighbors.
Naseer Aruri has an article in which he asks whether "Zionism is a movement of national plundering or a movement of a persecuted people acting according to a humane ethic, seeking compromise and peace." Obviously it is the latter, and it is sickening to see him imply that it is the former.
John Sigler also has an article, where he quotes Said as saying that "a national movement whose provenance and ideas were European took a land away from a non-European people settled there for centuries." This is a major assault on both facts and logic. The national movement was of the Jewish people. The capital of these people was already in Jerusalem. There were very few Jews in the lightly-populated Levant when modern Zionism began, because of the discrimination against them. But once Jews became emancipated, they did start moving to the Levant in larger numbers. Yes, many came from Europe. But they did not take land away from a non-European people. They bought land at high prices, and by doing so attracted more non-Jews to the region, and improved human rights there to boot!
Justus Reid Weiner wrote a relatively mild article about Said in Commentary in 1999, in which he exposed a few of Said's lies about his personal history. I think this article may have given some people the false impression that the worst that can be said about Said is that he is alleged to have falsified a few minor things. And sure enough, there is a disgusting article by Muhammed Shuraydi that tries to defend Said even on this!
My advice is to avoid this book.
Perspectives on Orientalism.......2002-05-08
This is an interesting series of essays on the work of Edward Said, with many perspectives on the issues of Orientalism, and the reactions to it, both in the West and in the Arab world. The many distortions and attacks of Said's work are reviewed and clarified, as the question of Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict looms in the background. Steady as she goes.
Book Description
In the summer of 1998, Daniel Gordis and his family moved to Israel from Los Angeles. They planned to be there for a year, during which time Daniel would be a Fellow at the Mandel Institute in Jerusalem. This was a euphoric time in Israel. The economy was booming, and peace seemed virtually guaranteed. A few months into their stay, Gordis and his wife decided to remain in Israel permanently, confident that their children would be among the first generation of Israelis to grow up in peace.
Immediately after arriving in Israel, Daniel had started sending out e-mails about his and his family’s life to friends and family abroad. These missives—passionate, thoughtful, beautifully written, and informative—began reaching a much broader readership than he’d ever envisioned, eventually being excerpted in The New York Times Magazine to much acclaim. An edited and finely crafted collection of his original e-mails, If a Place Can Make You Cry is a first-person, immediate account of Israel’s post-Oslo meltdown that
cuts through the rhetoric and stridency of most dispatches from that country or from the international media.
Above all, Gordis tells the story of a family that must cope with the sudden realization that they took their children from a serene and secure neighborhood in Los Angeles to an Israel not at peace but mired in war. This is the chronicle of a loss of innocence—the innocence of Daniel and his wife, and of their children. Ultimately, through Gordis’s eyes, Israel, with all its beauty, madness, violence, and history, comes to life in a way we’ve never quite seen before.
Daniel Gordis captures as no one has the years leading up to what every Israeli dreaded: on April 1, 2002, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared that Israel was at war. After an almost endless cycle of suicide bombings and harsh retaliation, any remaining chance for peace had seemingly died.
If a Place Can Make You Cry is the story of a time in which peace gave way to war, when childhood innocence evaporated in the heat of hatred, when it became difficult even to hope. Like countless other Israeli parents, Gordis and his wife struggled to make their children’s lives manageable and meaningful, despite it all. This is a book about what their children gained, what they lost, and how, in the midst of everything, a whole family learned time and again what really matters.
Customer Reviews:
An honest witness to the struggle of Israel .......2004-12-09
Daniel Gordis is a Jewish writer and educator. When he brought his family to Israel for a year he did not know the dramatic turnabout they would come to face. The terror- war which the Palestinians launched when the Clinton brokered peace - process broke down in late September 2000 means his family is exposed to a kind of violence they had never imagined. In clear and informative E- mails to friends he tells the story of this year of what his family goes through. A person of the liberal left, a super- tolerant idealist he comes to understand that it is not enough for one side to want peace, but rather that both sides must. He becomes more passionate in his defense of Israel when he understands that really it is a country subject to aggression fighting for its own life . He too confronts the hard questions of his own family members, his childrens' suspicions that they are being sacrificed on the altar of their parents idealism. This book is important precisely because Gordis is clearly such a ' man of peace and good- will'. And because it shows how complicated and difficult the struggle of Israel is for life and peace.
A moving story.......2004-10-31
Yes, this is a splendid account of what it has been like for the Gordis family, moving to Israel from California. And it's worth reading.
But why did I read it? It was because I'd seen an article by Gordis called "Take Off That Mask." The article was in the form of a letter, sent at Purim to Jill Jacobs, a graduating rabbinical student. The letter began, "Dear Jill," and I simply had to read it. Jill was quite properly concerned about human rights in Israel, not just for Jews but for everyone. But when she wrote about it, she came up with something quite controversial that eventually got a reply from Gordis. He pointed out that Jill was showing an unjustified certainty that Israel was simply Wrong, and that she was claiming that Israel had better options that were manifest to any moral person. And that her writing showed a dangerous and myopic irresponsibility, as well as a lack of love for Israel. Well, after reading all that, I simply had to read "If a Place Can Make You Cry."
The more I thought about this interesting and thoughtfully written book, the more I realized that it deserved a jilllike response. Maybe something like, um:
Dear Daniel,
I'm a Pagan. I really enjoyed your book. I don't judge Israel. I don't think it is Wrong. And I don't know what it ought to do. Still, even though I know that many centuries ago, the Jews in that region killed Jezebel, I truly support Israel. And I hope that it will thrive in peace and that vast numbers of Israeli Jews will be walking out of Yom Kippur services during Yizkor.
I've thought about why Israel is rightfully Yours and not Mine. And here is my answer. There are millions of You. And just one of Me. And You wanted Israel and You outbid others and bought the land and made it bloom. That is why it is rightfully Yours.
Shabbat Shalom,
Jill
A personal and informative account of life in Israel.......2004-09-08
Began as e-mails back home to family, this book's strength is the description of day-to-day life in Israel through good times and bad. For the book, Gordis intersperses the letters with political commentary to give some context to the letters' time of writing. More personal than David Horovitz' A Little Too Close to God, it is similar in bringing the political and personal together as a family debates the wisdom of staying in Israel when the peace process goes bad. You will get drawn into experiencing the emotions and ambivalences the Gordis parents and children have about their life. Very readable!
For Those Who Have All the Answers.......2002-12-17
This is a MUST READ for anyone who thinks they have a solution to the problems in the Middle East. Rabbi Gordis doesn't present ideology -- rather, he gives us a dose of reality; of what he and his family face every day, along with constantly questioning the decision they made to remain in Israel. I've read a lot of negative comments regarding "putting his children in harm's way," but he is teaching his children what's to be valued, cherished and fought for -- not land, per se, as some have intimated but, rather, the ideal of one place on this earth that Jews can live -- one day, God willing, in peace. Israel serves its purpose not only as the one place Jews in peril can immigrate to, but as a place of inspiration and dedication. While Israeli and American parents both want the same thing for their children -- they should only be happy, have a successful career, a loving spouse, healthy children and NOT have to face going to war. Israeli parents, however, know there is something more -- that achieving these personal goals should not come at the expense or peril of the country's goals.
In the past, I have had opinions as to what Israel should or shoould not do to make peace, but this book highlights better than anything else what the daunting reality is vis-a-vis a solution. While we may all "pray for the peace in Jerusalem," the reality is that more than prayer is needed, and there may not be A single solution or long-term peace -- at least not without other Arab countries stepping in.
This is an extremely well-written, highly enlightening book, and the next time I hear anyone stating a firm opinion as to what Israel should do, I'm going to recommend they read this before the spout off again!
Profoundly Sad.......2002-12-03
I started "If A Place Can Make You Cry" expecting what the dust jacket promises -- the story of a family's move from California to Israel, from safety to war, why they did it and how it affected them (particularly the children). What I got instead was something very different, worth reading for the many questions it raises, but profoundly sad and dispiriting -- one man's journey from a religion and culture based on moral values to one based on land and security. As Gordis puts it toward the end of the book, "when you finally understand what is important to you, you have to be willing to fight for it." (266) The land of Israel itself becomes that important to Gordis, important enough that he is willing to stand aside and tolerate the suffering of innocent Palestinians (of which he admits there are many) in order to secure his family's safety. (See pages 186-87 for an explicit admission that he is sacrificing his values for security.) Maybe I would do no better in his place, but it still sad to watch.
Gordis will make you think about other interesting questions -- what does it mean to have a home? Can one live a meaningful Jewish life outside Israel? How does one justify where one lives (or doesn't live)? Gordis is of two minds on many of these questions -- for example, he states several times that he's not suggesting all Jews are morally obligated to move to Israel, but at the same time, he does in fact suggest that meaningful Jewish life is possible only if it is at risk (see, e.g., page 259). Gordis seems to be utterly befuddled by the idea of secular Israelis or secular Jews (for example, at pages 66-67, where he asks "what is the point?" of having this country if it's not religious) -- apparently ignoring the fact that there would be no State of Israel without the secular Zionists. (For an interesting look at combining secular values with the religious and cultural heritage of Judaism, read "From Jerusalem to the Edge of Heaven," by Ari Elon.)
It is not surprising that Gordis fails to offer any solutions to what are obviously very complicated problems. Where it seems to me that the book really fails is in the limited range of viewpoints it presents. Perhaps because the book originated in personal emails to family and friends, it consists almost entirely of Gordis' personal observations and angst, his own questioning of himself, his values and his actions. His wife and children are present only as foils, for Gordis to react to something they've said, done or experienced. I did not come away with any sense of who they are or what any of them really think. Secular, Orthodox and Palestinian viewpoints are barely mentioned (of these, the best represented are the Palestinians, interestingly enough, although mostly to illustrate Israeli failures). At the end, it's hard to say whether you've learned much about the state of Israel today or if you've just learned something about one man's viewpoint. And although that viewpoint develops somewhat over time, the constant hammering away at the same issues becomes tiring by the end by the book (again, if you read one email/chapter every few weeks, it probably wouldn't be nearly so bad).
Despite these significant qualifications, the book is generally well written, a quick read, and I am giving it extra credit for presenting a point of view we seldom get to see and for making me think about the questions he raises.
Book Description
In his latest book of interviews, Edward W. Said discusses the centrality of popular resistance to his understanding of culture, history, and social change. He reveals his latest thoughts on the war on terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and lays out a compelling vision for a secular, democratic future in the Middle East-and globally.
Edward W. Said, a renowned cultural and literary critic, was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, and was educated there, in Egypt, and in the United States. His books include Orientalism, The Question of Palestine, Covering Islam, Culture and Imperialism, and The Politics of Dispossession. He has also published a memoir, Out of Place. Mr. Said is University Professor of English and Comparative Lit-erature at Columbia University. In October 2001, he received the $200,000 Lannan Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement.
David Barsamian's interview books feature conversations with luminaries such as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Edward W. Said. A regular contributor to The Progressive and Z Magazine, Barsamian's most recent interview books include Propaganda and the Public Mind and Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire, available from South End Press. He is also the author of The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting. Barsamian is the producer of the critically acclaimed program Alternative Radio.
Customer Reviews:
Sane Politics in Israel/Palestine.......2004-10-06
Edward Said died on September 25, 2003, after a long battle with leukemia, and along with him the foremost voice for justice for Palestinians in the United States. The six conversations herein took place between 1999 and 2003.
Despite the gravity of the subject material, this is an interesting and enjoyable read thanks to Said's towering intellect and Barsamian's perceptive and incisive questioning. The result is a perspective of events in Israel and Palestine filled with truth and passion, almost directly opposite that which is too often reported, or not reported, in the mainstream press.
Said expresses an enthusiastic interest in Middle Eastern poets and their poetry. He also was himself a pianist, and he talks about being involved in several important projects bringing together Arab and Israeli musicians for concerts transcending the political divide. He and Barsamian cover other cultural ground, but obviously, the focus of the book is politics, specifically the plight of the Palestinians.
A fundamental argument Said makes repeatedly is that the situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories cannot be understood without an understanding of the events of 1948, when Israel was declared a state. In the ensuing war with Arab countries, 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and the same homeland that became Isreal, which they had occupied for millennia. More than 400 Arab villages were destroyed. Since then, Israel has denied any responsibility for these atrocities, using all kinds of propaganda. Today the Orwellianism has it that Palestinians were told to leave their homes by their leaders. Said expounds upon the completion of the conquest in the 1967 war.
Said states that since 1948, 78% of historic Palestine has become Israeli and that control of the remaining 22% is what the current fighting, the Second Intifada, is all about. Further, of this remaining 22%, Israel controls 60% of the West Bank, and 40% of Gaza. Illegal settlements continue apace, as does the pressure on the indigenous Palestinians.
It is pretty clear that the goal of Sharon's Likud government is the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, increasingly referred to euphemistically as "transfer." Much of what remains of historic Palestine is divided up into small, non-contiguous pockets of autonomy, Bantustans, often locked down under curfews and checkpoints. Said maintains that these circumstances are the result of the peace process, and not war. Since publication of this book, a "security fence" is being erected, ostensibly to protect Israel from suicide bombers, but which in practice further isolates and dispossesses Palestinians.
Said's voice is consistent and adamant that a solution must be peaceful coexistence between the two peoples. He bemoans suicide bombings, bad enough for their violence and carnage, but also as being counterproductive to finding a solution. He says, however, that to understand these bombings it is important to see them in the context of the desperate circumstances of the Palestinian people. Israel, for example, portrays itself as a victim, when in fact it is an oppressor. Almost all the fighting between the two sides has occurred in Palestinian territory, so it is ridiculous to assert, as Israel does, that it is only defending itself. Moreover, Palestinians have little more than stones for weapons, along with some small arms, while the Israelis have tanks, helicopters, jets, and all kinds of modern weaponry, supplied to them by the US military.
Although practically an aside, Said makes some poignant observations of George Orwell; observations you, like me I'll bet, perhaps have never considered in our adorations of Orwell. He agrees that Orwell was a prescient witness to injustice, but managed himself to remain disentangled from it. He was probably correct, declares Said, in his bleak assessment of where we're headed, but limited: "I don't think he's in touch with hope, with liberation, with critical engagement, with association or affiliation between people. The idea of human progress is quite outside his vision."
Among many other political considerations examined outside the specifically Palestinian, is a look at the psychology of "terrorism" for example, that are compelling and of a delightful perspicacity:
"Terrorism has become a sort of screen created since the end of the Cold War by policymakers in Washington, as well as a whole group of people...who have their meal ticket in that pursuit. It is fabricated to keep the population afraid, insecure, and to justify what the United States wishes to do globally. Any threat to its interests, whether it's oil in the Middle East or its geostrategic interests elsewhere, is all labeled terrorism...which is exactly what the Israelis have been doing since the mid-1970s so far as Palestinian resistance to their policies are concerned. It's very interesting that the whole history of terrorism has a pedigree in the policies of imperialists...Terrorism is anything that stands in the face of what "we" want to do. Since the United States is the global superpower, has or pretends to have interests everywhere...terrorism becomes a handy instrument to perpetuate this hegemony...people's movements of resistance against deprivation, against unemployment, against the loss of natural resources, all of that is termed terrorism."
Said's voice is consistent and constant in finding actions such as suicide bombings inexcusable and in seeking a peaceful, just resolution to the Palestinian question. Indeed, his writings are often banned in the Arab world because of this position. His voice is also that of an admirable and unique intelligence. He affirms Israel's right to self-determination, but grieves that Palestinians also do not enjoy this right, especially in light of the historical realities. He thinks the two peoples are too inextricably linked in too small an area for their separation to be realistically viable, and therefore favors a binational state. He spells out the circumstances where, however, a two-state solution might be a means to this end. This hope of a binational state, necessarily long-term, must be a peace between two equals, Said says, with equal rights, protections, and responsibilities, and not a peace imposed on the weaker party by the stronger.
Said's eloquent post-9/11 summing up of the world.......2004-05-11
"The Origins of Terrorism" is by far the most important chapter in this book. In it, Said points out that in spite of the oft-repeated American ideal of democracy, US policy has generally favoured whichever Middle Eastern despot has tended to uphold the interests of US oil companies. He then observes that Muslim fundamentalist terror has a basically Marxist root, in that it originates "in the sense of betrayal that many ordinary Muslims feel... living in poverty and desperation and ignorance. It's not difficult to start rallying people in the name of Islam." (page 107).
This is analysis at a level of rationality unthinkable for the likes of Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis, with their simplistic reduction of all the problems in the Middle East to the religion of Islam, the root of all evil.
Average customer rating:
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Resistance, Repression, And Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine And Jordan (Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East)
Frances S. Hasso
Manufacturer: Syracuse University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0815630875 |
Book Description
Examines gender, women's involvement, and sexuality in the ideologies and strategies of a transnational Palestinian political movement.
This book focuses on the central party apparatus of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the Democratic Front (DF) branches established in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Jordan in the 1970s, and the most influential and innovative of the DF women's organizations: the Palestinian Federation of Women's Action Committees in the occupied territories. Until now, no study of a Palestinian political organization has so thoroughly engaged with internal gender histories. In addition, no other work attempts to systematically compare branches in different regional locations to explain those differences.
Students of gender and Middle East studies, especially those with a specialty in Palestinian studies, will find this work to be of critical importance. This book will also be of great interest to those working on political protest movements and factional ties.
Book Description
This important and compelling collection of interviews conducted with Edward Said over the last three decades reveals the eloquent and unique voice of a fascinating figure, who is not only an outstanding cultural and political critic but also, as Nadine Gordimer has written, “among the truly important intellects of our century.”
In these twenty-eight interviews gathered by Gauri Viswanathan, Professor of English at Columbia University, from publications both here and abroad—Europe, India, Pakistan, the Arab world, and Israel—Said addresses an extraordinary range of subjects, political, artistic, and personal. The passion he feels for literature, music, history, and politics is powerfully conveyed in these interviews, which include Said’s views on the role of the critic in society, the origins of Orientalism, musical performance, the importance of teaching, Glenn Gould, Giambattista Vico, Joseph Conrad, Theodor Adorno, the Gulf War, Israel, the Oslo peace accords, the future of Palestine, political correctness and censorship, Saddam Hussein, and the idea of national identity. The scope of the subjects covered confirms what The Washington Post Book World has
stated, that Said “challenges and stimulates our thinking in every area.”
Said speaks with his usual incisiveness and candor, and these interviews show the evolution of his ideas and serve as a complement to his prolific life’s work.
Customer Reviews:
good politics.......2004-12-02
Said gives good insight into politics, especially in the middle east. I didn't enjoy the literature section as much because I wasn't familiar with the authors.
Instinctively drawn to power.......2002-11-18
Said says he's instinctively drawn to the other side of power, but it's funny to think about Oscar Wilde's axiom that whenever anybody says something true, the opposite of what they're saying is also true. Said is instinctively drawn to power. He's been president of the MLA, and he loves to hear his mouth run. He has no poetry, no humor, no art -- just relentless self-righteous upper-class whining. He makes millions a year with his poseur-politics, but he couldn't write a poem if he had until the sun burned out. He represents everything that is wrong with academia today -- from poetry we have turned to ideology, from humor and wit we have turned to self-righteousness. This man is simply incapable of taking anything lightly, or even turning a witty phrase. He is a pompous bore from an upper-class family. Anyone this drawn to power, and so utterly without style, cannot be taken seriously.
The Public Intellectual.......2002-01-20
Edward Said certainly is a public intellectual. He is perhaps the most photographed and visible intellectual of our century. Whether he likes it or not he is a darling of the western media (which he disparages in his works) because whenever there is a controversy on the eastern side of the world stage he has something to say about it. He wants other modern intellectuals to be more like him, responsive to the world around them. I think this kind of public role has a good side(high level of public debate is a good thing) but also a detrimental side(a close relationship with day to day political changes makes one side with one or another point of view while the neutral vantage point is the traditional intellectuals role) which perhaps explains why so few intellectuals seek the limelight as Said does.
As for his two long works on western cultural history in the time of Imperialism(Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism) I find his analysis of texts and authors to be too narrowly bound to his stringent theories. His analysis of literary texts follows the same pattern every time. He seeks evidence in each text of the Imperialist attitude and proceeds from the scantest of details to speculate about authorial assumptions and limitations. All texts in his view are intimately bound to the historic moment from which they arose. A limited view which produces limited results.
Saids books are therefore studies of western representations of the east as found in texts and other media but are also more than that as he goes on to conclude that those attitudes are a contributing factor in the modern easts current predicament. This I think is the most troubling and unfortunate aspect of Saids work.
Said does come heavily endorsed by his colleagues. Reading the back of any of his books you might think he was the most important intellectual of our day. I think fewer share that assessment than might be imagined.
Power and Politics certainly go together. I think, however, Culture does not fit so neatly into the equation as Said would have you believe. The greatest authors and contributors to culture have always been those that stand apart and were more often than not quite at odds with the accepted notions of their day.
Truth and Respect.......2001-10-10
Once again, Edward Said forces respect shows the extent of his talent as cultural critic, political essayist and world observer. Few intelectuals today can pretend applying a holisitic and methodological approach to world affairs and classical music at the same time. I highly recommend this book.
Regarding the comment below by the nameless individual "nylawguy", i would just make the following remarks to reestablish the truth:
- Edward Said is no longer a member of the PLO since 1992; however, I do not see why being a member of the PLO is such a problem: PLO members have been received at the White House on countless occasions last time I checked
-Edward Said has not thrown stones at israeli soldiers since he was on the lebanese side of the border when he was pictured throwing a stone. Surprisingly enough, only the NY press made such a big fuzz out of that picture where evidently Edward Said did not aim at anyone
- If you read carefully the book, you'll see that Said is actually one of the most vocal critics of Hamas' tactics, although he clearly tries to understand what led a desperate population of several million embrace Hamas so overwhelmingly
I hope readers will take the time to read this book and draw their conclusions on their own
The Importance of Being Edward.......2001-08-24
For almost a quarter century, Edward W. Said, professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, public intellactual, and Palestinian freedom fighter par excellence has worked tirelessly to bridge the gap between the personal and the political. Whether he is arguing for an end to state sponsored torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prison camps, the need for more democratic reform within the Palestinian Authority, or Jane Austen as a mirror of the colonial enterprise, Said never fails to enlighten and inspire. Along with Noam Chomsky in this country and Pierre Bourdieu on the European Continent, he is that rare breed: the tenured intellectual within the Academy who is brave enough to stick his neck out of the ivory tower and reconcile theoretical constructs with the political reality on the ground.
In Power, Politics, and Culture, Gauri Vishwanathan, one of Said's colleagues at Columbia, has cast a wide net and gathered interviews from India, Pakistan, the Arab World and Israel. Remarkable for their conversational quality, these interviews reflect as much the interviewers' politics and social concerns as they do Said's responses to them. True to form, Said is never reluctant to throw down the gauntlet and challenge an interviewer. Speaking with Hasan M. Jafri of the Karachi (Pakistan) Herald, in an interview conducted soon after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued his famous death fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, Said pursues Rushdie's funfamentalist detractors with the same trademark energy he might devote to castigating a Shamir or a Netanyahu. To wit: " I am an absolute believer in absolute freedom of expression. As a Palestinian, I have fought Israeli attempts to censor my people in what they can write or read. A lot of our battle for liberation has to do with freedoms of thought and opinion and expression. I firmly believe in them. So, let me say, regardless of the reason, I believe there should be no censorship at all." He continues: "...I am very disturbed by the whole thing ( the Rushdie affair ) and I just wish that Salman Rushdie could lead a normal life.....It's a huge price to pay for an individual. He has lost the ability to be free. He can't move around as he wishes. He can't see his son. His second marriage failed while he was in hiding. I feel it shouldn't happen to anyone. Our world is big enough to have people like Salman Rushdie writing as they do and to debate what they say. But to condemn him to death and to burn his book and to ban it - those are horrible, horrible things." Incidentally, Pakistan was in the grip of anti-Rushdie riots after the announcement of the fatwa, but on Said's request The Herald printed all of his comments in Rushdie's defense.
His bete noir, The New Republic, gets similar treatment. In a panel discussion chaired by William McNeil ( formerly of the News Hour), and joined by both Christopher Hitchens and Leon Wieseltier, Said reads from a theater review published in that magazine. ...."Where did the follwing review appear: The description of a play at the American Repertory Theater in this town: 'The universalist prejudice of our culture prepared us for this play's Arab, a crazed Arab to be sure, but crazed in the distinctive ways of his culture. He is intoxicated by language, cannot discern between fantasy and reality, abhors compromise, always blames others for his predicament and, in the end, lances the painful boil of his frustrations in a pointless, though momentarily gratifying act of bloodlust.' " Said turns to Wieseltier: "I disagree with you Leon; I'm sorry, I don't believe that could appear about an Indian or an African in any other magazine in this country."
As an antidote to their prejudices about at least one Arab, Leon and his friends at TNR would be well advised to read Power, Politics and Culture. As for the Ayatollahs, they will surely have to. Anything Said says or does, as evidenced in these interviews, is an event in the Middle East. Before long, pirated editions of this book, in Persian, will be available in the myriad bookshops on Enghelab Avenue, the student ghetto outside Tehran University. Arabic copies will sell from Casablanca to Riyadh. In this country too, this volume will hold readers spellbound. Whether he is talking literary theory or street politics, Edward Said brings an immediacy to whatever it is he is discussing that is truly unique.
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- Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862
- Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence, 3d Edition
- Slaughterhouse: The Handbook of the Eastern Front
- SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- History: Fiction or Science
- US Army Survival Manual: FM 21-76
- Microbial Ecology: Fundamentals and Applications
- Parasitoids
- Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
- What Is the World Made Of
- The Man Who Risked His Partner
- Plantation Houses and Mansions of the Old South
- Straw Bale Details: A Manual for Designers and Builders
- Cacatuas
The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood
1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East
The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
A Tale of Love and Darkness
