Truth to Power: A Bibliography of Edward Said On-line (3/9)

1.1.3. Primary / E-texts: Articles, before 2000

Links on this page have been verified June 25, 2005.

Scoundrel Times Indeed, Al-Ahram, 23~29 December 1999. Despairing look at diplomatic talks between Israel and Syria, and discussion of Syria under Hafez Al-Assad.

A Protest Too Long Delayed, Al-Ahram, 9~15 December 1999. On the denunciation of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority by prominent Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza.

The Hazards of Publishing a Memoir, Al-Ahram, 2~8 December 1999. ‘I should like to report on what it is like to outlive my very recently published memoir, Out of Place, that I fully expected would appear only after my death.’

What Can Separation Mean? Al-Ahram, 11~17 November 1999. ‘[L]et us see these new partitions as the desperate and last-ditch efforts of a dying ideology of separation, which has afflicted Zionism and Palestinian nationalism, both of whom have not surmounted the philosophical problem of the Other, of learning how to live with, as opposed to despite, the Other.’

By Birth or by Choice? Al-Ahram, 28 October~3 November 1999. On the choice of adopting a Palestinian identity, which ‘means in effect to resist what the final status Oslo negotiations will have to offer.’

Farewell to Tahia, Al-Ahram, 7~13 October 1999. On the life and death of the dancer Tahia Carioca.

Paying The Price for Personal Politics, Al-Ahram, 30 September~6 October 1999. ‘Finally . . . the personalised politics of Yasser Arafat have taken us where neither the British, nor the US, nor the Israelis had been able to take us for the past 100 years. For that, alas, we have only ourselves collectively to blame. When will we wake up and say the “no” that he is now totally unable and unwilling to say?’

Defamation, Zionist Style, Al-Ahram, 26 August~1 September 1999. Appears also as Defamation, Revisionist Style, Counterpunch, 26 August 1999. ‘An article has appeared in the September issue of Commentary, a small conservative Jewish monthly, which attacks my life and story as a Palestinian by pretending to show that I am neither really Palestinian, nor ever lived in Palestine, nor that my family was evicted from Palestine in 1948.’

Refusal to Surrender Quietly, Al-Ahram, 5~11 August 1999. On ‘encouraging signs that Palestinians are regrouping, reasserting a collective identity despite the constricting limitations of the peace process’.

Private Planes, Power and Privilege, Al-Ahram, 22~28 July 1999. ‘One of the reasons great privilege and power accords individuals such insulation from ordinary cares, and allows them a front row seat for everything, is supposedly to protect their time and their minds in order to free them for important decisions. But is that really true, especially in situations where transparency and accountability cannot be maintained all the time?’

The Treason of the Intellectuals, Al-Ahram, 24~30 June 1999. ‘One must always begin one’s resistance at home, against power that as a citizen one can influence; but alas, a fluent nationalism masking itself as patriotism and moral concern has taken over the critical consciousness, which then puts loyalty to one’s “nation” before everything. At that point there is only the treason of the intellectuals, and complete moral bankruptcy.’

A Place to Travel In, Al-Ahram, 24~30 June 1999. On the nature of the university and of academic freedom: ‘[I]t is precisely the role of the contemporary academy to keep open the gap between itself and society, since society itself is too directly ruled by politics to serve so general and so finally intellectual and moral a role as the university plainly must.’

Really, Now—What’s Next? Al-Ahram, 10~16 June 1999. ‘[W]hat I’d like to concentrate on . . . [is] the specific political goal towards which Palestinian and Arab societies in general must try to move, and . . . the relationship between the Arabs, Palestinians included, and the rest of the modern, globalised world.’

A True Struggle, A Good Man, Al-Ahram, 13~19 May 1999. On the life and death of Eqbal Ahmad. ‘No one more than . . . Ahmad captured and understood the human suffering and distorted vision that produced the reckless violence of people or movements who, in his memorable phrase, were radical but wrong.’

Forced to Accept False Logic, Al-Ahram, 29 April~5 May 1999. ‘The worst thing about the NATO campaign [in Serbia] as it is reported in the media . . . is not only that it simplifies the enormously complicated histories, societies and peoples that exist in the Balkans, but that . . . the media in effect is part of the NATO campaign, obliterating history and reality with propaganda.’

Self-Determination for All, Al-Ahram, 8~14 April 1999. Appears also as Protecting the Kosovars, Z Magazine, April 1999, and as Protéger les Kosovars, Université de Lausanne, 29 March 1999. ‘Once again, and led by the United States as usual, a war is being conducted—this time in Europe—against an unprincipled and racist dictator who will almost certainly survive the onslaught even though thousands of innocents will pay the actual price.’

Music of Men’s Lives, Al-Ahram, 18~24 March 1999. On the life and death of Yehudi Menuhin. ‘The Knesset, and especially Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who had just handed Menuhin the prize, was stunned. As I recall, there was no applause, but Menuhin bravely continued to the end, then made a dignified exit.’

Barbarians at the Gates, Al-Ahram, 11~17 March 1999. ‘For over two months now, the United States has been conducting a low-intensity war of attrition against Iraq in the guise of sanctioned police action authorised by the United Nations.’

Public Spectacle, Public History, Al-Ahram, 18-24 February 1999. On the ‘false context’ provided by television news outlets, particularly CNN, framed by discussion of coverage of the death of King Hussein of Jordan.‘The troubling thing is that CNN’s broadcast represents all that one needs to know about the world, reduced, packaged, and delivered without a trace of conflict or contradiction.’

Literature and Literalism, Al-Ahram, 28 January~3 February 1999. ‘The . . . point of educating university students in the liberal arts generally, and literature specifically, is to train them to read not just pious books about good behavior, but all books, particularly those that are morally and intellectually challenging. What would become of literature if it was to be subjected to rules formulated by a committee of experts as to what can and cannot be read?’

Truth and Reconciliation, Al-Ahram, 14~20 January 1999. ‘[T]he peace process has in fact put off the real reconciliation that must occur if the 100-year war between Zionism and the Palestinian people is to end. Oslo set the stage for separation, but real peace can come only with a binational Israeli-Palestinian state.’

Unoccupied Territory, London Review of Books, 7 January 1999. ‘I was especially conscious . . . of the unpleasant quality of daily life for most Palestinians, whose capacity to earn money or travel has been greatly curtailed since Oslo; whose land and homes are under constant threat; and whose life under Chairman Arafat’s dreadful Authority (buttressed by CIA and Mossad support) has become a nightmare.’

An Incitement to Revolt, Al-Ahram, 31 December 1998~6 January 1999. ‘The main burden of the Wye Accord . . . was neither to give Palestinians more freedom, nor to allow the US and Israel to “help” Palestinian independence, but quite the contrary: with the Authority’s help, to increase the restrictions and conditions under which Palestinians live so that they remain docile and taken care of in the best colonial manner.’

Clinton’s Rampage, Al-Ahram, 24~30 December 1998. ‘Seventy-nine per cent of the American people say they are for the bombing of Iraq, 86 per cent say that God loves them, 57 per cent don’t want Bill Clinton impeached, 62 per cent believe that he bombed Iraq for good, rather than personal, reasons . . . and so on, while each evening 200 Cruise missiles fall on Baghdad . . . . For the American home audience, everything about this attack has been miniaturised and sanitised for living room delectation.’

West Bank Diary, Al-Ahram, 10~16 December 1998. ‘[W]e have to undertake bold initiatives to carry our message to precisely those Israelis who for years have thrived on our absence and our silence.’

A Longer View, Al-Ahram, 3~9 December 1998. ‘Having just returned from a trip to attend an academic conference at Bir Zeit University on the West Bank it has seemed to me important to report on what, after an absence from Palestine of about six months, I saw and was impressed with.’

The End of the Interim Arrangements, Al-Ahram, 29 October~4 November 1998. On the Wye River Memorandum: ‘Arafat and his people have done the usual thing: given up without very much of a struggle and certainly without the slightest trace of a strategic or moral vision. . . .’

Methods of Forgetting, Al-Ahram, 22~28 October 1998. ‘[O]ne of [Yasser Arafat’s] closest aides went on record as being prepared “to forget history” and deal honestly and in good faith with Sharon. Forget history: the phrase has a certain stink about it that emanates directly from the sty of corruption and dishonesty in which the Palestinian leadership from top to bottom now swims.’

A Real State Means Real Work, Al-Ahram, 1~7 October 1998. ‘Far from uniting Palestinians . . . the declaration of a Palestinian state would in fact divide them more than they have ever been before, rendering the notion of one Palestinian people more or less void.’

The President and the Baseball Player, Al-Ahram, 17~23 September 1998. On the Starr Report and Mark McGwire: ‘Looked at rationally, what Clinton has done is tasteless indiscretion, and what Starr has done is to violate his privacy with a vengeance. And all Mark McGwire has accomplished is to hit a ball for about 400 [feet]. But in the American popular imagination, amplified millions of times by the ubiquitous media, we have been watching a cosmic drama of vast proportions. A dangerous business indeed.’

Bridge Across the Abyss, Al-Ahram, 10~16 September 1998. Wide-ranging thoughts on the approach of the millennium, the emergence of the United States as the sole superpower, cultural hybridity, Islam, educational and cultural development, and globalization.

What Cabinet Reshuffle? Al-Ahram, 20-26 August 1998. ‘Yasser Arafat’s announcement of a new cabinet was a combination of tragedy and comedy. Every single one of the ministers who had been under a cloud for incompetence and corruption was kept, as if in defiance of the Legislative Council’s report of the year before.’

Israël-Palestine, une troisième voie. Le Monde diplomatique, August 1998. ‘Maintenant qu’Oslo s’est révélé foncièrement inopérant et impraticable, il serait pour le moins souhaitable que les défenseurs arabes, israéliens et autres de cet accord se décident à faire un effort de clarté.’

After the Final Acre, Al-Ahram, 23~29 July 1998. ‘For reasons that elude me, there continues to be some hope on the part of Arab governments that American impatience with Israel will soon reach the breaking point, perhaps provoking a dramatic new initiative, perhaps finally galvanising American power into actively opposing Netanyahu’s tactics. This, alas, is seriously to misunderstand what is currently taking place both in Israel and the United States.’

Arrogance and Amnesia, Al-Ahram, 9~15 July 1998. ‘So strong has resentment grown against the US’s overbearing, wasteful and cruel ways that a mighty wave of anti-Americanism sweeps the globe.’

A Desolation, and they Call it Peace, Al-Ahram, 25 June~1 July 1998. ‘Now that Oslo has clearly been proven the deeply flawed and unworkable “peace” process that it really was from the outset, Arabs, Israelis and their various and sundry supporters need to think a great deal more, rather than less, clearly.’

Inside the Other wilaya, Al-Ahram, 4~10 June 1998. ‘In the absence of a real military option, in the absence even of a real front dividing Palestinians from Israelis (the two populations are mixed despite the dreams of Zionism to separate them), there is no way for Palestinians to gain their rights without actively involving Israelis in their struggle.’

New History, Old Ideas, Al-Ahram, 21~27 May 1998. ‘It is certainly true that the great political importance today of the new Israeli historians is that they have confirmed what generations of Palestinians, historians or otherwise, have been saying about what happened to us as a people at the hands of Israel. . . . But . . . as Arabs generally, and Palestinians in particular, we must also begin to explore our own histories, myths, and patriarchal ideas of the nation . . . .’

Fifty Years of Dispossession, Al-Ahram, 7~13 May 1998. ‘Only if the inherent contradiction is faced between what in effect is a[n Israeli] theocratic and ethnic exclusivism on the one hand and genuine democracy on the other, can there be any hope for reconciliation and peace in Israel/Palestine.’

Between Worlds, London Review of Books, 7 May 1998. ‘[T]he moment one enters [Conrad’s] writing the aura of dislocation, instability and strangeness is unmistakable. No one could represent the fate of lostness and disorientation better than he did, and no one was more ironic about the effort of trying to replace that condition with new arrangements and accommodations.’

La Palestine n’a pas disparu, Le Monde diplomatique, May 1998. ‘Je viens de rentrer de deux voyages distincts à Jérusalem et en Cisjordanie. J’y réalisais un film que la BBC doit programmer le 10 mai. L’occasion, c’est le cinquantième anniversaire d’Israël, que j’examine d’un point de vue personnel et, bien sûr, palestinien.’

Scenes from Palestine, Al-Ahram, 26 March~1 April 1998. On impressions of Jerusalem and the West Bank while preparing the BBC documentary In Search of Palestine. ‘[A]t this moment it seems important that we testify to the resilience and continued potency of the Palestinian cause, which clearly has influenced more people in Israel and elsewhere than we have hitherto supposed.’

Jerusalem Revisited, Al-Ahram, 22~28 January 1998. ‘I remembered the house itself quite clearly: two stories, a terraced entrance, a balcony at the front, a palm tree and a large conifer as you climbed toward the front door, a spacious (and at the time) empty square, designated as a park, that lay before the room in which I was born . . . .’

The Challenge of Israel: Fifty Years On, Al-Ahram, 15~21 January 1998. ‘The challenge of Israel is the challenge of our own [Arab] societies. We are now unequal to the task because we are still chained to methods and attitudes that belong to an earlier time.’

A Devil’s Theory of Islam, The Nation, 12 August 1996. Review of God Has Ninety-Nine Names: Reporting from a Militant Middle East, by Judith Miller. ‘Books like Miller’s are symptomatic because they are weapons in the contest to subordinate, beat down, compel and defeat any Arab or Muslim resistance to U.S.-Israeli dominance.’

The Morning After, London Review of Books, 21 October 1993. ‘Now that some of the euphoria has lifted, it is possible to re-examine the Israeli-PLO agreement with the required common sense. . . . The fashion-show vulgarities of the White House ceremony, the degrading spectacle of Yasser Arafat thanking everyone for the suspension of most of his people’s rights, and the fatuous solemnity of Bill Clinton's performance . . .: all these only temporarily obscure the truly astonishing proportions of the Palestinian capitulation.’

Islam Through Western Eyes, The Nation, 26 April 1980. ‘The media have become obsessed with something called “Islam,” which in their voguish lexicon has acquired only two meanings, both of them unacceptable and impoverishing.’

A Configuration of Themes, review of Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers, by J. Hillis Miller, The Nation, 30 May 1966 (posted 30 October, 2003). ‘The formidable subject of . . . Poets of Reality is “the recovery of immanence,” whose loss, in [Miller’s] The Disappearance of God (1963) he has so brilliantly and persuasively recorded. Together the . . . books form an inner history of the transition from romantic to modern literature.’