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Title: The Pen and the Sword by Edward W. Said, David Barsamiam ISBN: 1-56751-030-2 Publisher: Common Courage Press Pub. Date: September, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A great start but an incomplete portal
Comment: Said's work is complex, intertextual and far reaching. Barsamian's interviews are a enlightening yet they are an incomplete portal to the work and impact of Edward Said. Don't get me wrong, the conversations with David Barsamian squarely place Said as a player in an often oversimplified discussion of a very complex issue - Palestine.
One of the more controversial, yet not often discussed topics is the role of the PLO in general and Arafat's in particular to the future of Palestine. The role of Arafat is not to be underestimated - he has singlehandedly represented (or at least singlehandedly represented himself as the voice of a nation) the interests of the Palestinian Arab. What are we to do with Arafat? More importantly, what at the disparate Palestinian Arabs going to do about Arafat? That is one of the key questions Barsamian and Said takes up here. If an organization that was built on "Liberation" is involved in Administration - is it a good thing? Are the players in this case qualified to perform Administration? If not, should others be considered to carry the banner. Ironically, you can draw a metaphor here that is patently Jewish. Moses did the liberation but Joshua took the Jews to the "promised land" - mind you, I am not making any comparisons of Arafat to Moses or the notion of the "promised land" as 100% legitimate - I am merely agreeing with Said that a second look might be advantageous.
One of the major points is the notion that there will never be normalization of relations unless the relationship is a relationship of equals:
"We are now on a new stage. What the Israelis want is a normalization of relatiohips between Israeland the Arab states including the Palestinians. Of course I'm all for normalization. But I think real normalization can only come between equals. You have to be able to discriminate between tutelage and dependency on teh one hand and independence and standing up as a co-equal with your interlocutor. We haven't done that. That's why I think it's the most important political task for the coming decade." p. 167.
How much simpler can it be?
Miguel Llora
Rating: 5
Summary: Introduces Said's Thought
Comment: This little book is about 170 pages and made up of about five interviews from between 1987 to 1994 with Edward Said, the leading Palestinian intellectual, interviewed by David Barsamian, the producer and host of "Alternative Radio," famous for his collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky.
Said discourses on, among other topics, the role of culture in shaping literature, the pro-imperialist inclinations of V.S. Naipaul, the simultaneous anti-imperialist and anti-liberation outlook of Joseph Conrad, why Albert Camus is portrayed as having been an anti-colonialist when he was, in fact, quite the opposite, Western stereotypes about Arabs, why it is possible to have an honest discussion of Israel's flaws in the Israeli media but not in the United States, and the decline of the American left. Occasionally, he gets, well, a bit recondite, but he is often very interesting and I like him very much.
But he is at his best when discussing the Palestinian movement and its leadership, Arafat and the PLO, with whom he was on close terms before the 1993 Oslo accords. The thoughts in this book are from when the "peace process" was in its infancy but not much has changed, in spite of all the new agreements and changes of government in Israel. He discuses the PLO leadership's corruption, opportunism, utter ignorance of the U.S., Israel and anything else outside the Arab world, preference for acceptance into the high society of Washington, London and Paris instead of attending to the grassroots struggles of their people. He points to Arafat's resistance to pressures for internal PLO democracy as the reason for his acceptance of the Oslo accords, which gave the PLO control over a portion of the Gaza strip, which has become an ubelievable hellhole as a result of deliberate Israeli policies (Israel's responsibility for its condition is never noted in the U.S. media, as Said notes), so Israel seized at the chance to give some of it to Arafat; and accepted the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories as "legal", allowed Israel to continue building in Jerusalem and expanding "greater Jeruslem" to include all of the central West Bank, expropriating and robbing Palestinians as they go about it, Israeli retaining complete control over the settlements, the Jordan valley, the water and all the other resources, the economic policies, and a veto over all decisions passed by the Palestinian parliament. Arafat's basic duties are to pick up garbage and arrest and punish all persons whom Israel thinks threaten its "security," a very elastic concept, that includes a great many non-violent persons.
It is this "limited autonomy" that the PLO leadership has said, and the quite honest and decent persons who repeat everything that they say, will eventually evolve into a genuine Palestinian nation. Of course, as Said says, it will probably evolve into a state, but only in the same sense that the bantustans of apartheid South Africa were a state for its black inhabitants. This has not been, of course, the version of events of the PLO leadership, Yossi Sarrid, Ehud Barak, Amos Oz, Anthony Lewis, "Peace Now," nor genuine supporters of the Palestinians who have been supporting the "peace process" for whatever reason. These latter brethren, Said notes, seem to have completely put in the back of their minds that the Israeli prime minister who signed the Oslo accords, Yitzhak Rabin, was a man who had helped ethnically cleanse Palestinians back in 1948, who directed the reign of terror against the Palestinians during the intifadah, who was conducting mass atrocities and housing expropriations of Palestinians at the time of the signing of the accords and immediately escalated them afterwards, who, in July 1993, bombed hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, including many Palestinians, towards Beirut, in order, as he told the Knesset to put pressure on the Lebanese government to bend to Israel's demands.
As Said says, the Labor party has been and is every bit as racist and oppressive towards the Palestinians as Likud, which lacks the sophistication and appearance of moderation of Labor that endears it to the Anthony Lewis-Daniel Schorr type liberals. Said has been somewhat isolated in Palestinian circles because of his opposition to the "peace process." Hopefully, for their own sake, in light of the current horrible events in the territories, they will start listening to them.
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Title: Peace And Its Discontents : Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process by Edward W. Said ISBN: 0679767258 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 03 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Culture and Imperialism by Edward W. Said ISBN: 0679750541 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 31 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Musical Elaborations by Edward Said ISBN: 0231073194 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1993 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Beginnings: Intention and Method by Edward W. Said ISBN: 023105937X Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: March, 1987 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: After the Last Sky by Edward W. Said, Jean Mohr ISBN: 0231114494 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $24.50 |
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