Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said

245 Pages·2003·3.614 MB·English

by  Edward Said, David Barsamian

CONVERSATIONS WITH
EDWARD W. SAID
INTERVIEWS BY
DAVID BARSAMIAN
Culture and Resistance

Culture and Resistance
A
Conversations with Edward W. Said
David Barsamian
and
Edward W. Said
South End Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
s
Copyright © 2003 by Edward W. Said and David Barsamian.
Any properly footnoted quotation of up to 500 sequential words may be
used without permission, as long as the total number of words quoted
does not exceed 2,000. For longer quotations or for a greater number of
total words, please write to South End Press for permission.
Cover design by Ellen P. Shapiro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Said, Edward W.
Culture and resistance : conversations with Edward W. Said / David
Barsamian and Edward W. Said,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-89608-671-2 ISBN 0-89608-670-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Said, Edward W.—Interviews. 2. Intellectuals—United
States—Interviews. 3. Palestinian Americans—Interviews. 4. Arab-Israeli
Conflict. 5. Arab-Israeli conflict—1993—Peace. 6. Al-Aqsa Intifada,
2000- 7. Politics and culture. I. Barsamian, David. II. Tide.
CB18.S25A5 2003
956.05’3—dc21
2003042371
South End Press, 7 Brookline Street, #1
Cambridge, MA 02139-4146
www.southendpress.org
Printed in Canada
07 06 05 04 03 12 3 4 5 6
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction by David Barsamian ix
1 A One-State Solution 1
2 Intifada 2000: The Palestinian Uprising 31
3 What They Want Is My Silence 71
4 Origins of Terrorism 103
5 A Palestinian Perspective on the Conflict with Israel 133
6 At the Rendevous of Victory 159
Maps 197
Selected Bibliography 211
Index 215
About the Authors 227
Alternative Radio’s Audio Archives 229

Acknowledgments
Excerpts of these interviews appeared originally in The Pro­
gressive, Z Magazine, Third World Resurgence, and International
Socialist Review. All the interviews were broadcast on KGNU
in Boulder, Colorado, one of the premier community radio
stations in the United States. It has been my good fortune to
be associated with it since it first went on the air in 1978. Two
of the interviews were nationally broadcast on Alternative
Radio and one on Making Contact. Except for chapters 1, 4
and 5, the interviews were all done in person. Anthony
Amove is an outstanding editor and comrade. Thanks to the
Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe for its support. Thanks to
Dr. Mahdi Abdul Hadi, chairman of the Palestinian Aca­
demic Society for the Study of International Affairs
(PASSIA) in Jerusalem for the maps and Rebecca Kandel for
the photos used here. My special gratitude to Edward W. Said
for .making himself available. I count my time with him
among my most rewarding experiences.

Introduction
“I have been unable,” Edward W. Said writes, “to live an un­
committed or suspended life: I have not hesitated to declare
my affiliation with an extremely unpopular cause.”1
The 1967 Arab-Israeli war stirred him to political activism.
A year later, his first political essay, “The Arab Portrayed,” ap­
peared. When Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir infamously
declared in 1969, “It was not as though there was a Palestin­
ian people__ They did not exist,” Said decided to take on
“the slightly preposterous challenge of disproving her, of be­
ginning to articulate a history of loss and dispossession that
had to be extricated, minute by minute, word by word, inch
by inch,” he writes.2
For many years, he has been the main spokesman for the
Palestinian cause in the United States.
“Palestine,” he says, “is a thankless cause ... [Y]ou get
nothing back but opprobrium, abuse, and ostracism__How
many friends avoid the subject? How many colleagues want
none of Palestine’s controversy? How many bienpensant liber­
als have time for Bosnia and Chechnya and Somalia and
Rwanda and South Africa and Nicaragua and Vietnam and