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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 September 1999 Issue No. 445 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 September 1999 Issue No. 445
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Focus Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters With much malice aforethought
By Ghada Karmi *The Zionist need to deny Palestinian history knows no bounds and the latest example of this is the debacle over Edward Said's forthcoming autobiography. It is timely, then, to review the facts of this particular case.
A little known American Israeli "academic" called Justus Weiner, purporting to have researched Said's early life for three years, came up with what he described as evidence that Said had falsified some crucial details which are to appear in his book. Weiner published his allegations two weeks ago in an obscure New York publication called Commentary which describes itself as "the home of neo-conservatism and a true friend of Israel." Even before one considers their content, these allegations seem a little odd, since Edward Said's book had not even been published when they were investigated.
The article constitutes the third and most vicious attack on Said to be published in Commentary in the last decade. It might have remained as unremarkable as the rest but for the fact that the English newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, printed the story on 21 August following a leak to its owner, the pro-Israeli Conrad Black. The Telegraph gave it prominence in two articles with suggestive and highly damaging titles: "Palestinian exile Said 'falsified life story'", "Past catches up with refugee from truth" and "Said deconstructed".
The allegations are petty, ignorant and malicious: Weiner claims that Professor Said did not live in Jerusalem, did not go to school there and was not a refugee; he had a luxurious childhood in Cairo instead; the home he claimed to have lived in Jerusalem was registered in his aunt's and not his father's name; his mother was not even Palestinian and Said's exile is self-invented.
His main accusation against Said is that his attacks on Israel and recently also on Yasser Arafat arise from a need to overcompensate for his distance from "war, the Intifada, and even censorship."
Not surprisingly, right-wing Israelis applauded Weiner's research. The adviser to Israel's previous prime minister, David Bar-Ilan, who had also worked on The Jerusalem Post when it was owned by Conrad Black, was quick to say that he had always suspected Edward Said's intellectual integrity. Shlomo Riskin, the chief rabbi of the West Bank Jewish settlement Efrat and a fervent right-winger made this racist comment: "Truth and fiction converge very easily in this part of the world. Edward Said is taken seriously here."
These absurd accusations have been easily countered by Said himself (in his reply, Defamation, Zionist style, published in the last issue of Al-Ahram Weekly and elsewhere) and one can scarcely improve on his eloquence. However, they still raise several interesting, more general points. First, the author does not deny that Edward Said is a Palestinian from Jerusalem, but fails to explain why it is he cannot live in his country of origin now -- however and wherever he may have spent his childhood. Second, he admits by implication that even if Said himself "was not a refugee" in the narrow sense of the term, other Palestinians certainly were -- a fact most Zionists would rather avoid. In any case, if Said cannot return to live in his country of origin -- and he cannot -- then he is for all practical purposes a refugee, or at the very least a displaced person, which is much the same thing. Third, his house in Jerusalem, irrespective of whose family member's name in which it was originally registered, was certainly owned by the Said family. Yet now it is indisputably in Israeli possession and its current incumbents have never offered or paid compensation for it to its original owners. Whose is the greater fault?
Edward Said, like myself and five million other Palestinians displaced from their homeland, is nothing less nor more than a refugee. To be a refugee is to be driven from one's homeland and to be prevented from returning, exactly as we all have been. The term does not apply just to those who are living in destitute and impoverished camps under the control of another state. Would German Jews fleeing during the second world war and making comfortable lives in exile, for example, describe themselves as anything else?
If, according to Weiner and his ilk, Said's pedigree does not entitle him to a connection with Palestine, then how does that of, say, Ehud Barak compare? Does he have the necessary documentation to prove his line of descent from King David? And does that pass through Riga?
The truth is, of course, that Weiner's attacks, apart from their intrinsic pettiness and malice, are irrelevant to the fundamental issues of the Palestinian case. These remain the dispossession of the Palestinian people from their homeland and their right to return to it. Israel has cunningly and persistently fought against recognition of these facts which would otherwise fatally undermine the whole basis of the Zionist case.
Those of us forced to live in the West from childhood precisely because we were made into refugees when Israel was created fully understand how pro-Israeli bias on the official and popular levels has enabled Zionist propaganda to succeed. We also know only too well the hostile reaction that has faced those who have tried to counter it.
The attack on Edward Said in Commentary is but the latest skirmish in this war, even if the attempt to blacken his reputation is the most determined to date. This is not because he is the only Palestinian writing about the injustices of the Palestine case, but because he is the most effective commentator writing today. He has been able to engage, persuade and provoke and thereby achieve a shift in thinking about the Palestine issue more dramatic than anyone else before him. And that, for all those committed to the success of the Zionist project in Palestine (by no means all of them Jews), is not permitted. So he must be subdued by malice and misrepresentation, if not by outright lies -- always the best form of propaganda, as Goebbels pointed out.
The lesson for the rest of us is clear: as the moment of the Final Status talks on refugees draws near, we must not be intimidated by these tactics or deflected from telling the truth. If we are, then Weiner and all those like him will truly have won.
* The writer is a London-based Palestinian academic.
