Edward Said (a Palestinian) said, “we are the victims of the victims.” The Price of Speaking Out on Israel: Edward told David that even though he had leukemia, “I’m on a half a dozen death lists in the Middle East.” “Palestinians are going through what Jews did before them.” Palestinians were told everything would change if they only recognized Israel and accepted Resolution 242. The Palestinians did, but then nothing changed. “If you prevent their representation [no equal rights] you don’t have to realize them.” “The United States has in a rather purposeful way been waging war on Palestinian civilians for the past forty years. So, any change of this sort strikes me as the tooth fairy, Oz, Pollyanna, Mr. Rogers, all rolled up into one.” He wrote that “even the kibbutz system, a socialist institution, is a form of apartheid” and “Palestine belongs only as Israel to the Jewish people and not to all the others who happen to live there.” “Israel has a history of escalating violence during negotiations and ceasefires. So, from October 1992 to September 1993 was among the worst periods of oppression in the West Bank.” Edward says there are 4.5 million Palestinians today, many in exile. Edward says the western media focuses on the negatives of Arab culture intentionally ignoring all Arab voices clamoring for change.
Edward says, “All the schools I went to as a boy were full of people of different races. The new divisiveness and the ethnocentrism that we now find is of relatively new vintage and is completely foreign to me. And I hate it.” “Why does one have to be on top of the other?” Spain, Britain and France pioneered the idea of overseas settlement and domination. Note that culture played a large role in maintaining empire; one’s “superior” culture is used to separate one from the colonized “Other”. Edward calls Israel “a theocratic, military state, a Sparta, that is imposed upon the region.”
Edward wrote a book on novelist Joseph Conrad and said Conrad wrote much on the “role of culture in imperialism” and how he “understood “how empire infected not just the people who were subjugated by it but the people who served it.” Edward says the problem with Conrad was that he only saw imperialism as inevitable, not living long enough to read the African, Caribbean and Asian writers imagining its alternative of liberation. Conrad didn’t live to read Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” which spoke of resisting colonization and imperialism. But like Said, Conrad was also an exile.
History is clearly written by the victors: Shamir said terrorism is alright if it is for a good cause. “Then a journalist asked him ‘What about Palestinian terrorism?’ He said, ‘Their cause is not just’. He added, ‘They fight for a land that is not theirs’.” If you are allowed in Western Media to explain the Palestinian position, historically you’ll get only 20 seconds to explain it all before being interrupted. Your job is to connect Israel to its occupation. When a moderator blathers on about hostages, their eyes will glaze over if you counter, “Yes, but can we also mention the 15,000 Palestinian political prisoners who are also held hostage?”
Islamophobia in Film: Iron Eagle legitimized killing Arabs and Muslims. Black Sunday is where the screenwriter pulled from his own posterior that Arabs want to bomb the Super Bowl. Funny how instead, Israel intentionally bombed Rafah DURING the 2024 Super Bowl – maybe Zionists were inspired by the Black Sunday film? Edward points out that in these films they don’t use real Arabs to play the terrorists but use Israelis dressed up as Arabs. He says, “There is a small but thriving industry in Israel of producing extras and stand-ins for these roles who play the Arabs who are shot and killed.”
Western Media and Bill Maher will never tell you about Andalusia (Spain) where all races co-existed between 711 and 1492 under Muslim power, nor about its aesthetic and intellectual achievements. We are taught that Islam is intolerant, reactionary, and can’t tolerate the outsider and NOT that Israel is intolerant, reactionary, and can’t tolerate the outsider. Catholicism for centuries was the same, but are we taught about that? Was the Spanish Inquisition somehow an exercise in tolerance? Or the Crusades?
“Every major Zionist thinker has always talked about the transfer of the Palestinians, the expulsion of the Palestinians, getting rid of them, spiriting them away. So, it’s a continuity which was there from the very beginning.” As long as Palestinians are there Palestinians will be the problem for Israel. Edward defines Hasbara as “information in the West for the goyim.” Edward said Rabin’s plan was “The best thing that will happen to the Palestinians is to get rid of them. If they won’t be gotten rid of, we’ll sign an agreement with them that will make their lives so intolerable that in the end they will die to get out. That in my opinion is the plan.” He says this is the basic Zionist premise unless you go to fringe groups like B’Tselem.
Note that US Media and Zionist Instagram pages endlessly blather on about security for Israelis but NEVER security for Palestinians. ONLY the occupier calls themselves the victim, while the illegally occupied are ONLY called terrorists or fools who voted for terrorism. Funny how if Palestinians were only Jewish, they’d be called Freedom Fighters. Note also that 80% of Gazans are actually not from Gaza but came from the north (Haifa, Jaffa, etc); today in 2024 they are refugees still on the move playing an endless forced game of musical chairs – only without the music or chairs, keep moving or die, or watch your friends die, while US liberals stay silent. Edward says CNN doesn’t inform, “It simply confirms the world’s ideological system, now controlled, I believe, by the US, and a few allies in Western Europe.” The PLO was born as a liberation movement in the 20th century and became the only liberation movement in human history to sadly turn “itself into a collaborator with the occupying force.”
This was another great book with Edward Said, I love everything he discussed, so reading this was a no brainer. How great to hear him in conversation, I loved the informality and sense of him being in the room while you read. Too bad it was so short, but I learned a lot.