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On the great importance of the "Issue of Palestine" by Eduard Said

On the great importance of the "Issue of Palestine" by Eduard Said
Edward Wadie Said (1935–2003)

By: Alexander Durie
Translated by: Rexhep Maloku

In his important work, The Question of Palestine (The question of Palestine, vj), Eduard Saidi [Edward Wadie Said] writes that the word "Palestine" has "turned into a symbol for the fight against social injustice... If we think of Palestine as something that also has the function of a place where let's go back and of a country completely new... then we will find out even better the meaning of the word". These are words that can easily be written today, but Saidi wrote them down almost fifty years ago, at a time when the Palestinians were described as "terrorists" in the Western media.

The Question of Palestine it would be published in 1979, a year after Said's masterpiece Orientalism and two years ago Covering Islam (Covering Islam, vj) – a trilogy that would help lay the foundations of post-colonial theory and develop a framework to critique the prejudiced and often racist lens of the West towards the Arab and Islamic world. The Questoin of Palestine it was extremely useful as it would become the first English-language book to recount the Palestinian experience and deconstruct Zionism as a project of colonization.


It remains essential reading from arguably the most influential American-Palestinian scholar who ever lived. Reading this book today offers you the opportunity to see reflections on how everything and nothing has changed, how Israel's genocidal attacks on Gaza, Israel's bombing of Lebanon and the annexation of the West Bank continue. Therefore, this is the main reason why the reprint of this book comes at the present time. In the United Kingdom, the edition of Fitzcarraldo Editions was made on November 21, with a new foreword by literary critic (and Said's nephew) Saree Makdisi, 21, as well as an added chapter, titled The One-State Solution (The one-state solution), about which Said had written in New York Times in 1999. For American audiences, Said's trilogy will be reprinted in new editions of Vintage Books and will immediately go on sale.

Eduard Saidi died at the age of 67 in September 2003 after a long battle with leukemia. He left behind two children: law professor Wadie Said and actress, writer and activist Najla Said. Both were children when The Questoin of Palestine was going to be published but, recently, they have confessed what it was like to grow up in New York with the Palestinian-American Columbia University professor, and how his book has managed to be read for more than 45 years.

"After more than a year of what has been happening in Gaza and now in Lebanon, I think that people will need more critical knowledge and a deeper understanding of what happened before," he told me. Naila. She has shown how Westerners, who are just beginning to take an interest in Palestine, tend to choose first works that publishers want to promote – books by Ilan Pappe, or Noam Chomsky, or The Hundred Years' War on Palestine of Rashid Khalid. Although these are all important works, she says that her father was the first author to speak aloud all of this history in English, and that readers should read the source material.

"Much has been said about how difficult it is in the West, or especially in America, to be Palestinian and speak out. And I think it is important to see that people have been doing this for a long time," she said. At the same time, her brother pointed out how often Israeli and Jewish historians were commissioned to write about Palestine – “because Palestinian historians are not taken seriously, are they? It must be an Israeli historian who tells the truth” – and that this trend has only recently begun to change.

The Question of Palestine it would be written at the height of Yasser Arafat's popularity as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), then at war against Israeli forces in the West Bank and Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. Then the Western media saw the Palestinians only through this lens - as PLO fighters, or "terrorists". Said's aim was to narrate their history on this land, their subsequent displacement and their struggle for dignity and the right of return after Nakbas (catastrophe), which Saidi had experienced himself as a child.

"If there is no country called Palestine, it does not mean that there are no Palestinians. There are Palestinians, and this essay is an attempt to present the reality to the reader", Saidi would write then. Son Wadie told me that "this book has a major role in developing the case for Palestinian liberation and independence, but reactively to the realities of the time, which were far more pressing for Palestinian representation in the Western world, and since the days of today, this work is not even discussed". The book would see the light in the United States during the administration of Jimmy Carter, shortly before the time of the Camp David agreements between Egypt and Israel. Wadie has said that Carter "seemed almost certain to aim for some level of Palestinian self-government that would lead to a state, despite deep hostility to that approach. . . . Then, Reagan wins the election (in 1981), and it has never been close to that point when it comes to the American administration to review the discussion". Similar views have been shared by well-known Palestinian voices of today, such as Mustafa Barghouti, that Jimmy Carter was convincingly the only American president who consistently campaigned for Palestinian self-determination.

As he reflects on The Question of Palestine today, Najla Said tells me that "if you remove or replace the names of the actors (the PLO and Arafat), almost nothing has changed... remove the weapons that are now far more terrible". But drawing on his father's lessons, he insists that people should "be more inspired by what is happening than by what worries them", and to keep in mind how solidarity for the movement for Palestine has grown.

Nalja remembers her father as a "very fair, empathetic, kind, humane" and "much larger than life" man with a style that made people - even those who disagreed with him - enjoy being around with him. "I was the kid who taught me about Christopher Columbus 40 years before anyone else accepted Indigenous People's Days," she said of her father, who taught English and comparative literature at Columbia.

Speaking about Columbia University, Wadie Said said that "if my father was there, he wouldn't have taken that course," referring to the violent clash against pro-Palestinian students earlier in the year at the university. "He was an essential figure at Columbia University in the second half of the twentieth century. He was also very well suited to maintaining relationships with the individuals who actually ran the country." But both he and Najla say that "now there is a completely different administration" there and that the predecessor was far more supportive of Said and his policies.

Jacques Testard, founder of Fitzcarraldo Editions, said that the decision to republish it The Question of Palestine it is now taken up because of how "relevant and contemporary the work remains even 45 years later...for anyone seeking to understand Zionism and its impact on the Palestinian people." Inclusion of Said's 1999 essay The One-State Solution it is also important, as Western politicians still grapple with the two-state solution. Saidi was among the first voices to tell mainstream Western audiences that "permanent peace can only come with an Israeli-Palestinian binational state." In his proposal for a one-state solution, which is still contested today, Said envisioned Palestinians and Israelis living in the same state as equal citizens with democratic rights. "When we instill in the minds of Palestinians and Israelis that they will not be uprooted from there, then this dignified conclusion must be accompanied by sincere reconciliation and peaceful coexistence," he wrote.

Had Said been alive to witness the violence of today, it is hard to imagine that he would have had the same hope of bringing his "reconciliation" to life, but Wadie recalls that his father " tried to imagine a future". Both he and Najla follow in their father's footsteps in many ways when it comes to fighting for a free Palestine. Najla, who still lives in New York City, said that carrying his surname is a heavy weight of responsibility, "but not a bad one".

"I've been vocal for a while, but especially this year, I mean, it mattered to people to a degree that I may not have realized. Not to compare my father to the Young Martin Luther King, but somehow it feels similar, to be someone's daughter like his job. It's very important for people to talk openly about things... especially for American-Palestinians."

"I am also remembering what my father taught me, which is that we are part of a people who are trying to make life better for themselves and for others, so there is no reason to give up to this... Whenever a Palestinian could meet my father, no matter how famous or busy he was, he would always answer, and so I'm trying to do the same thing." /Magazine "Academia"/

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