Umm... Joe, I also abhor Said, but I don't think it's right to be celebrating his death. This isn't Uday and Qusay we're talking about - Said was a blowhard, but not a killer. I don't lament his death, but I think it's a bit tasteless to gloat over it.

No, but he was a friend of those who were, a deeply dishonest man whose work remains one of the primary contributors to the deep incomprehension of the Mideast. He's a contributory cause of our pre-9/11 blindness, and his remaking of the Middle Eastern Studies field into its current pathetic state badly hampers our efforts to defend civilization to this day.

I may not give him a full yemach shemo the way I would for Chomsky, Osama and Arafat. But he was unquestionably someone to whom the stylized term "high in the councils of the enemy" justifiably applies. The world is a brighter place without him in it, and The War on Bad Philosophy also took a step forward with his passing.

I, for one, am very glad that he's dead.

Besides which, we have reason to believe that the Allah I'm praising here... may not be the real deal. This will come as a shock to some, I know.

The rest of the gloating stands, though.

Let me second the criticism of the tone. His politics were one sided, his work has not met with the appropriate level of engagement and criticism, (as opposed to blind acceptance), and some on his side of the P/I conflict are violent scum, but the one time I met him, I found him to be a genuinely nice guy. He had a family, and I hate to see anyone celebrating the demise of anybody's tweedy college professor dad. At least be decent to the dead.

July 26, 2003

WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE

[JK: long comment redacted - full blog post is highly recommended.]

....We were skeptical of Patai - a Hungarian Jew who had worked in the US and Israel. But we found him far more enlightening and convincing than Bernard Lewis. Most of his sources are Arabic, and he clearly has a respectful and affectionate relationship with his Arab colleagues. His exploration of "the Arab mind" is essentially an exercise in cultural anthropology. He examines social structures, language, child rearing, gender roles and the end result is that the whole coheres and is convincing. Unlike the ideological Said, he does not deny his data to make political points.

Patai draws a distinction between "Arab" culture and "Islamic" culture, and posits the tribal, pastoralist Bedouin as the archetypal pre-Islamic Arab, still revered as a cultural icon by the urban Arab. We were struck by numerous parallels with pre-Norman Irish culture and the contemporary traces thereof - which may go some way to explaining Irish affinity for the Arab.

After having read Patai, we were not in the least surprised by Saeed Al-Sahaf's performance, and were not surprised that most Al Jazeera viewers did not find his performance comical. It is a distinctive Arab trait, Patai tells us, to propound as fact, in flowery, poetic language, that which one would like to see be fact, without the slightest effort to make a connection between the statement and any action to bring about the fact. Patai convincingly links this to specific child rearing practices and gender roles in traditional Arab culture.

One example he uses to illustrate this, taken from the autobiography of King Hussein of Jordan, is most striking.

In the run up to the 1967 "Six Day War", Egypt, Syria and Iraq, armed to the teeth by the Soviet Union engaged in a mounting crescendo of belligerence towards the "Zionist entity". Egypt ordered the withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces and moved its troops into the Sinai. The Egyptian navy blocked the Straits of Tiran, preventing the passage of Israeli vessels, a classic "act of war". Jordan belatedly entered into a treaty with Egypt.

Israel, theretofore armed by Czechoslovakia and France, took the Arab threats at face value. France, having determined that the bread was better buttered by the oil rich Arabs, refused Israeli requests to update their armaments. Lyndon Johnson also turned them down. ("Israel will not stand alone unless she goes it alone").

The Israelis engaged in a preemptive strike, destroying most of the Egyptian air force on the ground.

Nasser then telephoned his ally and Arab brother King Hussein and repeatedly, in flowery language, told him how the Egyptian air force had destroyed most of the Israeli air force, urging Hussein to do his part and launch an attack on Israel.

Patai's point was that the Sandhurst educated Hussein did not understand that Nassar's straight faced though flowery declarations were not statements of fact, but statements of what he would have liked the facts to have been. Hussein actually believed Nasser was telling "the truth". Had Hussein had a "normal" Arab education, he would have understood that Nassar's statements were not something to be acted upon.

After it became too apparent for denial that the Egyptian air force had been destroyed, it became imperative that it should not have been the Israeli defence forces that had inflicted the blow. Nassar and Hussein calmly discussed by telephone, inconveniently tapped by the CIA, how they would blame this on (non-existent) British and American intervention on behalf of the Israelis, a plot Lyndon Johnson branded "the big lie".

Compared to Nassar's inducing King Hussein to put his forces at risk on the basis of assertions that turned out not to be factual, "Comical Ali's" antics were not comical at all, and not so interpreted by those viewing them through the lens of traditional Arab culture and the meaning it gives to assertive declarations.

And when all is said and done, Edward Said, courtesy of the Irish Times, demonstrates for us that these cultural traits survive a transposition to a professorship at Columbia University. He is no doubt in full earnest in declaring his assertions to be logical and truthful.

Whether we would choose to rely on them as facts is another matter.

Professor Said notwithstanding, we hope that Mr. Abbas's visit to Washington is fruitful.

BRAN
(Posted on July 26, 2003)

Point taken, Ed. Respect for the dead is surely not something to be thrown aside lightly. The fact that someone is your political opponent should NOT, by itself, be enough to justify that. But there is a line for me across which I don't feel constrained by social conventions re: the dead - and Said crossed it.

Chomsky is also someone's college professor relative, and you could say the same of Sendero Luminoso's leader Guzman. So "College professor dad" is not by itself an imprimatur of harmlessness or virtue.

Nor is meeting someone and finding them to be nice. Many Jews commented, in all seriousness and after the Holocaust, on the fact that Adolf Eichmann was a "nice guy" in person. It means nothing.

Now, having established those principles there is a big difference within the comparison set. Guzman and Eichmann killed people, or ordered their deaths. Chomsky and Said do not, confining their activities to trying to prevent others from defending themselves. That is still a moral distinction of significance, and should be acknowledged.

That said, in terms of their effect on the ground the distinction between being the prime excuse maker, denier, and apologist vs. an active terrorist or agent of genocide is somewhat blurred. The one enables the other, and thereby inherits some of the other's moral taint.

And especially for one who claims the title of Professor in The Academy, a life lived in the service of perceived truth is fundamentally different from one lived in the service of deliberate lies and/or the manifest willignness to tell them. The first may be mistaken, but it's forgivable as a noble mistake. The other contravenes every principle that makes the title "Professor" meaningful.

This applies in politics, as well - you might offer respects at Barry Goldwater's funeral, therefore, and not at Nixon's... and that would make sense to me.

Said, in my view, shared both of these moral failings. In spades. By siding with those who wish to kill me and mine, and telling untruths in the service of their cause, he crossed the line for me.

I reckon it's better to be glad someone is dead than it is to make them that way. There are exceptions...

Occidentalism. Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit turn Said's thesis back on itself.

I'm with ya Joe! It's hard being one of the few non politically correct people on the planet. Folks just don't understand....

Jennifer Martinez sends

Lots of links about Said including the text of the September, 1999, Commentary article by Justus Reid Weiner entitled " 'My Beautiful Old House' and Other Fabrications by Edward Said."

" As evil as Pharoah and the Egyptians were, when it came to their destruction at the hands of God through the plagues (particularly the death of the firstborn) and at the Sea of Reeds, the rabbis went to great lengths to temper our joy. A famous midrash in the Talmud makes the point:
When the Egyptians were drowning in the Sea of Reeds, the ministering angels began to sing God's praises. But God silenced them, saying: How can you sing while my children perish? (Megillah 10b)

We may rejoice in our liberation but we may not celebrate the death of our foes. To underscore the point, and re-enforce the value, the rabbis instructed that ten drops of wine be spilled from our cups [at the seder] diminishing the joy of our celebration, as a reminder of those who peished in the course of our liberation.

-- The Art of Jewish Living - The Passover Seder, Dr Ron Wolfson"

Ideas have consequences, so here is a drink to the death of Said.

Joe,

I guess it was lucky he wasn't on the UN staff, eh?

:-)

Mader has some good stuff on philosophy and Said. And moral relativism.

I left a few comments.

*Mader Said*

M. Simon, nice try at the cheap shot, but a swing and a miss, I'm afraid.

The issue re the U.N. staff was the overt support by people on our team of their death through terrorist acts. We don't like terrorist acts. We don't fight that way. That doesn't mean our enemies are any less dead...

I don't begin to share Joe's 'waving hands in the air' response, and I actually find it kind of unseemly, but I have no trouble drawing a line separating those two positions. I don't think most people would.

Do you?

A.L.

I also note Judith's valid observation that it is not in the Jewish tradition to exult in someone's death. This applies, it seems to me, even more so, with someone with whom one merely has intellectual disagreements, however profound.

To each their own. I don't think such exultation adds positive value to the world. You are entitled to disagree.

A.L.,

Seemed like a congruence to me. The UN supports murderers. Said supported the same people.

If one is morally tainted so is the other.

Saying the UN does some good is like saying Said was personally a nice guy.

BTW I hear Syria is on the Security Council and Lybia is protecting our human rights. Kind of makes you feel all warm and fuzzy about the UN don't it?

The UN objectively supports terrorists. But for them to be attacked by those they support is wrong? Excuse me but I flunked my classes in moral relativism. Explain to me again why terrorists should not kill their supporters? Explain to me again why I shouldn't cheer when it happens.

Believe me when I tell you that in the aftermath of WW2 I hated Germans and all things German. I gave up holding them responsible once the WW2 generation left the seats of power - more or less post Waldheim. Now a days I'm sorry for all that died. Cept maybe the SS and Hitler.

When the fascists and their UN supporters have lost this war irevocably and after a wait of 30+ years so we are sure, I promise to mourn all those on both sides of the conflict. But right now in the thick of this battle I rejoyce at the deaths of my enemies. UN functionaries, Said, Saddam, Uday, whoever.

What I was pointing out is that I am no different than Joe. My target list is just a bit broader.

Generally moral distinctions do not hold up well in war. It is a nasty murdering business. Cold. Cold. Cold. Watch yourself as this war goes on for years to come. What was once unthinkable will become business as usual. And most of us will cheer. Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki.

Which is why war sucks. Which is why if the Israelis don't start going postal they are going to win all the battles and lose the war.

I take Sherman's attitude on this. They want war? I aim to see they have a belly full. When they have had enough and beg for peace I propose they get it. And then we can all play nice. Until then I plan to cheer the deaths of every one of the bastards and the deaths of those who support them or who work for those who support them. Terrorists just murdered Prince Whatshisname of Saudi Arabia and his whole family? Just deserts. Yippee.

Nothing personal mind you. It's just war.

I'll be glad when it is over.

I'll be glad to go back to important questions like the meaning of "is" and are blow jobs sex? We never knew how good we had it.

Said's death leaves me cold. I don't rejoice and I cannot mourn.

Because Said, along with any number of other academics, drained the idea of truth seeking from scholarship and replaced it with the idea that asking the question "Whose truth?" was more important than actually getting the facts. That way lies the destruction of the Enlightenment and the very basis of the academic enterprise.

It is well past time to fix the Enlightenment gaze upon Said and his supporters and fellow travellers and say "Prove it." Knowing full well that without distorting the rules of rationality - or suggesting those rules are just another social construct - Said's work will be exposed for the tissue of half truths and prejudices it actually is.

Said took the central truth of the enlightenment "doubt" and elevated it to the realm of the only truth.

If all you have to work with is doubt then moral relativism is a perfectly good stance.

Evidence then has no value. What works is of no importance. There can be no workable general principles. Even the engineering disciplines are suspect as social constructs and due for revision. Despite the fact that the lights work and the bridges stand.

Jay, you are correct to point out that once you start asking for evidence their whole case begins to fall apart.

Gary Farber: I also note Judith's valid observation that it is not in the Jewish tradition to exult in someone's death.

I, too, am very much opposed to this exaltation. And I am an atheist.

Edward Said's family and friends are in mourning. Let them mourn, and hope they do not read this or other right-wing blogs.

You don't have to mourn Said, but it is right that you respect those who do. Advice: Don't say anything in public on the day a man dies that you wouldn't say at his funeral in front of his family.

I would spit on Uday and Qusay's grave at their funeral if I could get away with it. I could not do that to Edward Said.

I am speechless at this petty, nasty, vicious pile of shit. I expected better from you. Of course it's all Said's fault! Now he's dead no-one will sue! Congratulations on joining my all-time shitlist.

PS: Your RSS feed will shortly depart my blog.

Will Joe Katzman die from cancer? I sincerely don't hope so. I'd rather see one of his close family members die, so he can suffer.

If one of my family members crossed the line the way Said did, you'd be justified in wanting them dead. And no... for the reasons explained in this comments section, I do NOT believe that respecting the standard social conventions for Said's death is required.

That list of mine is a very short one, but Said made it.

As to the how... that's the one thing I do regret because of the suffering involved. I'd have preferred hit by lightning, but that's not my choice to make.

Manner has limit consequences but idea has tremendous consequences especially lies and half truth ideas. You don't think the fanatics par excelence invent all ideas themselves without the help of the likes of Said? Some fanatics blowing up themselves having immediate and short term consequences but the ideas that feed the line of those fanatics have prolong effect. Moral relativism is only appropriate for the house of cards. Truth is not absolute but they are not all equal. Some are more probable and certain than others and that's how the world works else, I have a bridge to sell you.
Want another drink?

You can crossed out the words "especially lies & half truth" above. It should be universally applied to all ideas, not just limited to just lies but the medium where ideas propagate indicate the level of crowd's intellectual.

Let me quote you Patton on the proper attitude towards one's enemies:

"War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours! Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts."

Said supported the fascists. That is enough for me.

I never had much of an opinion about Said. I don't think he was quite the demon that Joe makes him out to be; true, he was not on "our" (who am us anyway?) side, but not everybody is, or can be. From what I know about him, he was on the side of the arab world, which I estimate makes him not a great guy by default in Katzman's book, judging from the little I've read here.

I think what's sad about him is that he was an atheist and a marxist, making him unwelcome within much of the arab world, and as an "arabist" (whatever that means) he was unwelcome in much of the West, where he lived.

It must have been lonely, and frustrating.

Frankly, the part about Eichman and Chomsky was a bit stupid, veering a little too close to Godwins Law for comfort. In what possible way could Chomsky be compared to Adolph Eichman, other than Katzman doesn't particularly agree with either of their politics? Eichman is of course a Nazi architect of the holocaust, Chomsky is a left-wing ideologue who it seems has in the past been a foe of the nation-state of Israel (as contrasted with the living population of Ethnic jews).

The similarity, as they say, ends there.

I guess now that I look back on my comment here, and the essay and thoughts of Katzman, and his reasons for disliking Said, I begin to wonder if he and Said aren't really two sides of the same coin, or maybe the same side of two different coins.

Pot/Kettle/Black?

Edward Said hijacked the entire field of Middle East Studies to advance his own personal agenda. The result was that the so called "experts" were blinkered, and in no shape to provide the insight, guidance and clarity of vision which might have warned the US Authorities that big trouble was indeed brewing.

Let his family mourn his passing, the rest of us should treat him with the disdain he so richly deserves. The west would be better employed purging the straphangers out of the Middle-Eastern Studies faculties, and blocking the foreign salafist funding of educational establishments.

He was a carpetbagger, and now he's dead. Make way for a rational bloke!

If one of my family members crossed the line the way Said did, you'd be justified in wanting them dead. And no... for the reasons explained in this comments section, I do NOT believe that respecting the standard social conventions for Said's death is required.

Well, that's the difference between you and me. Decency and dignity. I wouldn't gloat over anyone's suffering or death. If you, like others, had experienced a family-member slowly being killed by cancer, you would've responded differently. I hope you change your mind.

No, illovich, the point about Chomsky, Guzman and Eichmann was completely apropos. Neither the occupation of professor, nor fatherhood, nor the fact that someone is a "nice guy" when met is relevant - yet all were advanced as reasons to go easy on Said. Professors can be dangerous fanatics and even murderers - and examples were given. A key trait of characters as extreme as sociopaths is that they're famous for being pleasant people when met in person - and an well-known example was given. That is called logic or argument. Try it sometime.

Yes, Michael, his family mourns him. And again I say, so? Families usually mourn when their members die, whether they're janitors or Mafia dons. So let them mourn - but especially when talking about a figure who played a major public role, do not allow that to fetter our powers of judgment. Would you honestly argue that the death of a mob boss should be an occasion where the rest of society says nothing mean, in order to avoid hurting his family's feelings? I think not. As I've mentioned earlier in this thread, that kind of respect is a social convention - and one that truly egregious actions with public consequences may cancel.

As for a "lonely and frustrating" existence, illovich - yeah, I'm sure life as a tenured professor with complete job security, a six-figure salary, celebrity status at lots of conferences, and speaking fees on top was just hell.

Gary, Said's conduct goes beyond mere intellectual disagreement. He was a key advocate on the side of an enemy that declared war on all of us many years ago. To win, those are the people we want dead or out of the picture. You may find that fact unpleasant, but that doesn't make it less true. He was protected in America by laws he did not himself support, and that's as it should be. Should natural causes of any kind suffice to cause his death, however, so much the better for all of us and there's no point lying or crying crocodile tears. Death comes to us all - but in his case, the sooner the better.

Finally, M. Simon... your U.N. worker point is completely off base, and here's why.

Example #1: I celebrate the death of Arafat and his henchmen. No problem. I may even devoutly wish for the "Palestinian Authority" (boy, there's the world's biggest misnomer) to become less powerful, or even to be disbanded. No problem.

Example #2: I celebrate the death of any Palestinian. Big problem.

See the difference?

Arash,

I've had a few family members die of cancer. It's not a nice way to go. Then again, except for "shot by a jealous husband at age 90", there really aren't many nice ways to go on option. Jumping from a burning tower? Faster, certainly, but still not exactly ideal, is it?

As Nushrivan the Just reminds us, we all go eventually. For many of us, the "how" matters. For those who have earned themselves a place like Said's, however, the "how" ceases to matter. I don't care how Stalin died, I'm just glad that he did. Would that it had been sooner.

So Said's leukemia is just a reporting detail to me. He had it, lots of people have it, sucks to have it. No one "deserves" leukemia, because it's not something you earn but something that happens to you. Could be me in the leukemia ward next year, who knows?

But I AM glad that Said is dead, and see no adequate reason advanced in these comments to change that judgment.

Joe, I was a little uncomfortable with your comments about Edward Said.

The feeling passed in a few seconds.

Hey, this is better than Trent's bit about Public Displays of Patriotism. It's like Public Displays of Rejoicing in Death.

I have to admit that I personally felt discomfort at reading Joe's piece. I thought it was a little unbecoming of someone who commands a lot of respect because of his tolerance of dissenting views and his humanity. I have to confess that that respect was undermined, just a wee bit.

I still have trouble condemning it outright, perhaps because of that respect.

Said was a close case: misguided intellectual or dangerous militant? I have no problem celebrating the end of his capacity for pernicious influence. Maybe a little less ostentatiously? And maybe cut Joe a little more slack for his personal take on the matter.

I think the title of this post does not reflect well on this blog.

Finally, David Sucher identifies the issue.

Said's departure from the public sphere may be cause for celebration. I really don't know enough about the man to say.

To gloat at his death, however, is petty.

Said death noted on my blog this evening:

http://eclectchap.blogspot.com

[JK: Here is the exact URL. Button, best to include the full permalink. These archives tend to be around for a while.]

Recently Joe stepped into a thread here* to restore civility and a focus on the point of discussion when my comments drew insulting responses. It encouraged me to visit again.

Now I'm less encouraged.

*Dan Darling's special analysis of Al Qaeda on Sept 11.

I would ask those who have commented on the "unseemly" nature of this post to think a bit deeper. There are issues in here that go beyond manners or social convention, and they deserve your consideration.

Winds of Change.NET has a charter and a mission: "Liberty. Discovery. Humanity. Victory." We should think about what that means. What response equates to "humanity," when dealing with people who are influential enemies of the other 3 principles? Is Stephen King's protagonist in "The Dead Zone" right to try and kill the President? Is that a humanist response, or evil? If the former, then where are the conditions that justify such measures? Now take a less extreme cases - being publicly glad the world is rid of someone. Is it right to be happy that Edward Said is dead, and to despise him in death? Would you feel that way for Stalin, Osama, Uday Hussein, and others? Many very obviously did feel that way, but if not, why not (and while were at it, how about those munchkins dancing and singling when the witch died - the right thing to do, or a bad example for kids)? And if you did feel glad in those instances, then what's the key distinction that protects Said from similar scorn?

Addressing questions like these, we may find a real and productive argument - but "that's not nice" or "that doesn't feel right" or "that title doesn't reflect well on this blog" won't get us there. They're inherently unarguable propositions, taste unsupported by a coherent rationale.

Do you really expect me to change my views on that basis?

Unless you believe in argument by intimidation, that won't get you very far. And if that is the tactic, you're trying it on the wrong cat.

This is a news blog, but it's an opinion blog too - and if some of those opinions don't challenge you, we aren't doing our job (which is also my answer to the right-wing question "what the @#$%! is Tony Foresta doing with a guest blog on Winds?").

It's not always going to be congenial here, and that's OK. We have a comments section to address that, and our readers have done a bang-up job of stepping up so far. Including here... there's some pretty serious discussion going on, and the comments are why.

If you want to leave, well, we'll miss you. Or, you can stick around, step into the ring with the rest of us... and bring your game.

I'm not sure that intrinsic gloatworthiness is the main, or at least sole, issue. The more general question, which Joe touches on above, is whether a blog, like Winds of Change, is more a private forum for restricted expression of individual views or a public forum for mass circulation of opinion: cocktail party chatter or editorial in a major newspaper? I think one would also want to distinguish between the main posts section and the unmoderated comments section.

How one views the nature of the forum may affect one's judgment on keeping with social conventions of propriety.

joe is totally justified and right in his reaction to the death of said. to be all respectful of the dead simply because they are dead removes all value from a person or from their life. it reduces them to nothing more than a rule of morality and a preset determination of how we "should" react to those who are dead. to those that are afraid to take responsibility for their own opinions of the dead and the living, and who choose instead to claim the moral high ground by saying all the dead are sacred and beyond celebration of their passing.... stop.

said was an sob worthy of contempt. the damage he has done to the heart of learning and to the lives of countless people who justify vicious slaughter behind his moral equivalence and relativism is sickening. just because we do not want to blindly act as those who dance in the streets when innocent civilians are killed, does not mean we should not be glad to see a preacher and active supporter of dehumanization dead.

may he rot in his grave and may the world wake up from the nightmare he helped talk so many into.

My man Hitch's obit of Said, a man he knew well:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2088944/

is it enough to "care" and yet be terribly wrong?

or is there no such thing in the world as being wrong?

I have great admiration for the sheer intellect and principled stands of Christopher Hitchens on most issues. But he is the wrong guy to be writing a meaningful or informative obituary of Said and his misleading (and soporific) piece in Slate is evidence of that.

Brilliant as he is, Hitchens handicaps his credibility with too many analytically crippling obsessions - Kissinger, Mother Teresa, Blumenthal, aspirin factories (or rather only one) - and the balancing act of keeping all of his baggage from his past in a sober equilibrium with his newborn self. (No, I don't have a problem with his drinking, other than his own self-absorption with it: but it adds color to the character.)

Part of that balancing act involves walking the fine line of pro-Palestinianism/anti-Zionism and virulent advocacy of the fight against islamofascists, which puts him in odd company and odd situations at times. Hitchens stands on the right side of the terror war and can in so doing claim intellectual and moral consistency with his ideological past - indeed, much more so than the Chomsky-Zinn crowd he so detests. But he can't quite bring himself to forcefully direct that same righteous zeal against Palestian terrorists and their apologists and sympathizers, including Said, for this would indeed undermine his own credibility as a vigorous anti-Zionist and association with the very types he would have to condemn. Indeed, he has continued that association, albeit in more muted form, and in particular has acted as a defender and apologist of Said himself with as much zeal as he directs against such dangerous threats to world peace and sanity as Diana worship.

Hitchens is one of my favorite thinkers. But, I don't find him credible on either Said or anything relating to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

No-one has mentioned here the fact that Said devoted a considerable part of the last years of his life to running a summer school with Daniel Barenboim for talented young Palestinian and Israeli musicians. I saw a documentary about one such school and I was impressed by Said's attempts to encourage debate and understanding between the students - he sincerely wanted Jews and Palestinians to live peacefully side-by-side. Considering Said was a humanist, brought up in a Christian household, Joe's initial comments betray a rare lack of understanding of the facts, a pity as this site is usually informed and informative. Hitchens obit was, by contrast, illuminating.

I for one celebrate murderers and there defenders deaths quite happily and Said was a terrorist defender....

People, get some damned moral clarity.....we celebrate when Terrorists are killed the world over.....we should celebrate when one of there intelligestia also die.......

This is great news......

Devon Hill

Proud Darul Harbian

If you people want to find some dignified comment on the death of Said look at that that of Danny Rubinstein in last Saturday's Haaretz. Compared to that Katzman is merely vile. It all confirms my thesis that the American pro-Israel lobby is the greatest obstacle to peace in the region.

Arie Brand

"No, illovich, the point about Chomsky, Guzman and Eichmann was completely apropos. Neither the occupation of professor, nor fatherhood, nor the fact that someone is a "nice guy" when met is relevant - yet all were advanced as reasons to go easy on Said. Professors can be dangerous fanatics and even murderers - and examples were given. A key trait of characters as extreme as sociopaths is that they're famous for being pleasant people when met in person - and an well-known example was given. That is called logic or argument. Try it sometime."

Yeah, ok I'll bite. Comparing Eichman to Said follows the same logic as comparing Adolf Hitler to Kofe Anan. Not only are they ideologically different, but the way they approached, connected with, behaved in and affected the world is completely different.

To spell it out: Adolf Eichmann was the nazi in charge of implementing the so-called final Solution (among other crimes against humanity)--he can be held at least partially responsible for the actual murder of perhaps 4 million of the total dead in the holocaust. 4 million people. According to someone here, he was also a nice guy.

Edward Said was a college professor who deconstructed the west's attitudes towards arabs and islam, and also wrote pamphlets sympathetic to the palestinians and critical of the nation-state of Israel. Apparently he was also a nice guy.

OK, let's bring this back to logic, and more appropriately the tactics of rhetoric: To rebut the statement "hey, I heard Said was a nice guy" with "Well, Eichmann was a nice guy too" might follow if Said could be compared in any reasonable way to Eichmann, but he really can't be. But to make the comparison introduces a false comparison that suggests the Said is in some way comparable to Eichmann, but he's not.

This is the root of my complaint. not that being a college professor excuses being a murderer, but that Said was not a murderer, and does not deserve to be held next to one.

Further, doesn't using the holocaust to demean a non-violent critic of Israel in essence deny the singular evil of the Holocaust? It's a pet peave of mine, when people trot out the Nazis to make someone look bad by associating their names togeether.

As to your point about logic, you have to be kidding. What you wrote could best be described as "essentially incoherent rant," not logic.

"Winds of Change.NET has a charter and a mission: "Liberty. Discovery. Humanity. Victory." We should think about what that means. What response equates to "humanity," when dealing with people who are influential enemies of the other 3 principles?"

This, and other statements made by Joe confuse me and make me think he knows less about Edward Said than it seems.

Said, rather than defending terrorism, offered explanations for it, saying he thought that given the current situation, terrorism would happen due to huge imbalances of power in the region. His explanations belied his sympathies for the Palestinians rather than the Israelis... go figure, given that he was a Christian Palestinian who lost his home as a child to what he describes as "israeli forces." (I have no way to confirm what that means, but the date correlates with the birth of the Israeli nation state).

To label him as a "enemy" of Israel is probably too strong, given the totality of his life. "Critical" of Israel is correct, perhaps even "against" Israel would not be too strong. But I have no problem with an Irish Catholic being "against" the U.K., similarly I understand that a palestinian might be "against" Israel. Anyone, on any side, has to admit that Israel has not really worked out that well for the Palestinians.

To label him an enemy of the "other 3 principles" (Liberty, Discovery, Victory) is absurd, even if you discount the nonsense of suggesting that Said was against "victory." Said was a proponent and adherent of western liberal academic thought--he was a marxist, for pete's sake! BookTV (or whatever the channel is called) had a nice interview with Said on this weekend where he spent 5 minutes extolling the virtues of the freedom of western academics.

I think some of you have confused Said with some rather more radical folks. If you ask me, it would be better for the US to deal with people like him than with people like those in charge of the PLO these days.

"Is it right to be happy that Edward Said is dead, and to despise him in death? Would you feel that way for Stalin, Osama, Uday Hussein, and others?"

Please illustrate the moral equivalency of the life works of Edward Said, Josef Stalin, Osama bin Laden and Uday Hussein. I would be most interested to see this.

Don't forget to include an analysis of the impact U.S. funding has on each. =)

I for one celebrate murderers and there defenders deaths quite happily and Said was a terrorist defender.... People, get some damned moral clarity.....we celebrate when Terrorists are killed the world over.....we should celebrate when one of there intelligestia also die.......

My guess about this and many other posts here, is that the poster neither has read Said nor heard him speak, and probably knew nothing about him before his death.

I'm pretty sure that this trend is continuing for the same individuals after his death.

"The UN objectively supports terrorists. But for them to be attacked by those they support is wrong? Excuse me but I flunked my classes in moral relativism. Explain to me again why terrorists should not kill their supporters? Explain to me again why I shouldn't cheer when it happens."

I guess I flunked my classes in moral relativism too.. and also the seminar on following incoherent tripe like this. The "UN objectively supports terrorists?" WTF? Please explain, using citations of fact, if possible.

Also, on the moral relativism tip: A cursory glance at the US enemy list reveals mostly former friends. Why is that? It's interesting to me that when Osama was a terrorist against the USSR he was basically a good buddy. When Sadaam gassed the Kurds we looked the other way, because he was our boy vs. Iran.

Isn't this moral relativism at it's worst? I'm sure the answer will be, it's not morality, it's reality. But come on, where are the calls for the heads of the people who started a lot of the mess we're in by funding it?

So let's break this down; If we're so against moral relativism, why not start with murder? Is it wrong to cause the death of people or not?

Staying on the basic (israeli/palestine) topic:

If I strap a bomb to myself and blow up a cafe, it's wrong, right? What if I rocket attack a neighborhood to kill a Hamas officer? Is that wrong? What about killing people in war, is that wrong? Is it wrong to kill civilians attacking a Legitimate Military Target? Is it wrong, if you feel you're "at war" with a country to kill civilians attacking a Legitimate Military Target? What if the country you feel you are at war with thinks you're a terrorist? What if you aren't really attacking a "legitimate" military target? Who decides?

Is murder only ok when you're a nation-state? Is it only ok when you achieve "Victory?" Is it ok when you kill a killer? What if that killer was killing to avenge a killing?

I ask because it seems to me that the attack on "moral relativism" is essentially a denial of other people's worldview, or values. In some cases, moral relativism is wrong. I think.

Genital mutilation of girls is wrong... but then I wonder, is circumcision?

But it seems that everyone is always a bit "morally relative," with the exception of the anti-abortion/anti-war/anti-death penalty folks... they seem to feel that deliberate death is bad, all the time.

Look, I want to be clear in all of this: I really don't have much use for Edward Said. I'm not really for or against him. I didn't think about him much before his death, and I won't think about him much later in life, probably. Nothing against him, he just doen't come up much.

But, I'm pretty sure that he isn't the monster some people are making him out to be, and unless someone can demonstrate otherwise--using contextualized evidence, and not just "quotes" and uncited bullet points, I won't be convinced otherwise.

He almost certainly does not deserve the treatment he's gotten here, nether does his family. I'm not saying it to "scare" Joe or get the blog to change it's way, I'm saying it becasue it needs to be said.

For the record, for those willing to just look at what sort of things Said really wrote, here are a few relatively short articles written by him. I found them becasue this page got me more interested in him, and I link to them not to defend him, and not because I always agree with him, but becasue I think if you read what he says, you'll see that he probably isn't someone to loathe:

"Coexistence is our answer to Israeli exclusivism and belligerence. This is not conceding: it is creating solidarity, and therefore isolating the exclusivists, the racists, the fundamentalists. "

From Edward Said: Thinking ahead: After survival, what happens?

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"We are on the eve of a catastrophe that our political, moral and religious leaders can only just denounce a little bit while, behind whispers and winks and closed doors, they make plans somehow to ride out the storm. They think of survival, and perhaps of heaven. But who is in charge of the present, the worldly, the land, the water, the air and the lives dependent on each other for existence? No one seems to be in charge." (regarding the invasion of Iraq)

From: When Will We Resist?

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"The only political vision worth holding on to is a secular bi-national one that transcends the ludicrous limitations of a little Palestinian state, declared for the second or third time, without much land or credibility, as well as the limitations that have been so essential to the Zionist form of apartheid imposed on us everywhere.

I am not the only one to see our plight today as basically that of human beings deprived of the right to full citizenship. It is this that united us all as a people, whether in Lebanon, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Amman, Damascus or Chicago. The present Palestinian leadership has neither comprehended our dilemma nor, obviously enough, furnished an answer to it. "

From How Do You Spell Apartheid? O-s-l-o

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"Beyond formulaic expressions of grief and patriotism, every politician and accredited pundit or expert has dutifully repeated how we shall not be defeated, not be deterred, not stop until terrorism is exterminated. This is a war against terrorism, everyone says, but where, on what fronts, for what concrete ends? No answers are provided, except the vague suggestion that the Middle East and Islam are what 'we' are up against, and that terrorism must be destroyed."

From: There Are Many Islams

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"There seems to be a minor campaign in the print media to hammer home the thesis that "we are all Israelis now," and that what has occasionally occurred in the way of Palestinian suicide bombs is more or less exactly the same as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. In the process, of course, Palestinian dispossession and oppression are simply erased from memory; also erased are the many Palestinian condemnations of suicide bombing, including my own. The overall result is that any attempt to place the horrors of what occurred on 11 September in a context that includes US actions and rhetoric is either attacked or dismissed as somehow condoning the terrorist bombardment. " (emphasis added)

from: Backlash and Backtrack

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Wow, I really need to stop. =) I really hope the HTML I put all over this works.

NYT 1 Oct.2003

To the Editor:

Re "Edward W. Said, Literary Critic and Advocate for Palestinian Independence, Dies at 67" (obituary, Sept. 26):

Edward W. Said was one of this country's leading intellectuals.People who were fortunate enough to have studied with him, as I did,as well as the thousands of others who read his books, had their minds and work changed by his passionately held ideas.
He was a brilliant thinker, an inspiring teacher, a courageous and tireless activist and a charming human being. His influence on two generations of literary, political and cultural thinkers has been profound.
Your obituary's emphasis on journalistic squabbles does not do justice to the memory of a great and distinguished man.

JANE TOMPKINS
Chicago, Sept. 29, 2003

The writer is a professor of English and education, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Illovich demonstrates once again that he simply doesn't understand the argument. It isn't that the 2 people are comparable, it's that the criterion being proposed is useless.

I have no doubt that many people will mourn Edward Said and say nice things about him. Everybody does good deeds in their life, and the music program was one I hadn't known about (but which was added to the UPDATES above via Hitchens' piece once klaatu pointed it out). Our lives are always composites, yet at the end of that composite is a moral judgment. After all, Hezbollah runs charities too, don't they? Thing is, they also run suicide bombers and foment terrorism.

So those conciliatory gestures of Said's may be true. This is also true - as Ibn Warraq himself notes:

"Those truths aside, Mr. Said, who died last week, will go down in history for having practically invented the intellectual argument for Muslim rage. "Orientalism," his bestselling manifesto, introduced the Arab world to victimology. The most influential book of recent times for Arabs and Muslims, "Orientalism" blamed Western history and scholarship for the ills of the Muslim world: Were it not for imperialists, racists and Zionists, the Arab world would be great once more. Islamic fundamentalism, too, calls the West a Satan that oppresses Islam by its very existence. "Orientalism" lifted that concept, and made it over into Western radical chic, giving vicious anti-Americanism a high literary gloss.

In "Terror and Liberalism," Paul Berman traces the absorption of Marxist justifications of rage by Arab intellectuals and shows how it became a powerful philosophical predicate for Islamist terrorism. Mr. Said was the most influential exponent of this trend. He and his followers also had the effect of cowing many liberal academics in the West into a politically correct silence about Islamic fundamentalist violence two decades prior to 9/11. Mr. Said's rock-star status among the left-wing literary elite put writers on the Middle East and Islam in constant jeopardy of being labeled "Orientalist" oppressors -- a potent form of intellectual censorship."

It was once said of Stalinist literateuse Lillian Hellman that every word she wrote was a lie, including "and" and "the". Said wasn't quite in that class, but he has given ample grounds to those who would deeply question both his honesty and his motives. And angrily lament his role in helping foster the current environment in which we all live.

One wishes Said had experienced a "conversion on the way to Damascus", as it were, and set about trying to undo that legacy. Unfortunately, as his comments shortly after 9/11 and since demonstrate, that was not on his agenda. Which means the world is better off rid of him... there are plenty more with similar agendas to take his place.

And so the war is on, a war Said himself helped foster. Let's get on with it.

The world famous Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim was a strong personal friend of Said. Remarkably enough he either didn’t detect Said’s ‘mendacity’ Joe goes on about or he didn’t care. There is a third possibility: Joe is simply wrong.

Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim

Perhaps the first thing one remembers about Edward Said was his breadth of interest. He was not only at home in music, literature,philosophy, or the understanding of politics, but also he was one of those rare people who saw the connections and the parallels
between different disciplines, because he had an unusual understanding of the human spirit, and of the human being, and he recognized that parallels and paradoxes are not contradictions.

He saw in music not just a combination of sounds, but he understood the fact that every musical masterpiece is, as it were, a conception
of the world. And the difficulty lies in the fact that this conception of the world cannot be described in words-because were it possible to
describe it in words, the music would beunnecessary. But he recognized that the fact that it is indescribable doesn't mean that is has no meaning.

This very curious mind, of course, allowed him privileged glimpses into the subconscious of people, of creators. And added to that he had a very unrestrained courage of utterance, and this is what earned him the admiration, the jealousy, and the enmity of so many people.

Many Israelis and Jews did not want to tolerate his criticism, not just of the present Israeli government, but of a certain mentality
that he identified in Israeli thoughts and deeds-namely the lack of empathy with the fact that the very same war of independence of Israel in 1948, which brought about the acquisition of a new identity for the Jewish part of the population, was not just a military defeat, but also a psychological catastrophe for the non-Jewish population of Palestine. And therefore he was critical of the inability of Israeli leaders to make the necessary symbolic gestures that have to precede any political solution.
The Arabs, on the other hand, were and are still unable to accept his sensitivity toward Jewish history, limiting themselves to repeat their innocence as far as the suffering of Jewish people is concerned.

It was precisely this ability of his to see not only the different aspects of any thought or process, but their inevitable consequences
as well-and also the combination of human, psychological, and historical, as the case may be, "pre-history" of such thoughts and processes. He was one of those rare people who was permanently aware of the fact that information is only the very first step toward understanding. And he always looked for the "beyond" in the idea,the "unseen" by the eye, the "unheard" by the ear.

It was a combination of all these qualities which led him to found together with me the West-Eastern Divan, which provides a forum
for young Israeli and Arab musicians to learn together music and all its ramifications.

The Palestinians have lost one of the most eloquent defenders of their aspirations. The Israelis have lost an adversary-but a fair and
humane one. And I have lost a soul mate.

* The writer is conductor, pianist and director of the Deutsche Staatsoper, Berlin

How does adressing the root to terrorism make someone a supporter of terrorism??? He questioned Isreals illegal occupation of west bank and gaza, and argued that frustation due to that contributed to the brutal acts by arab terrorists. I fully agree with him. The root cause leading to arab terrorism needs to be addressed, and that in my opinion has a lot to do with, as Dr Said had advocated: illgeal occupation of palestinian terroteries, mass extridition of muslims from their land and lack of oppuritunities in the occupied terrotaries (cerfews, lack of drinking water, inflation). If you guys need to say saomthing bad about him, atleast understand what he stood for and advocated, don’t let your irrational hate show in the posts.

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Besides, Said was not a muslim, he came from arab christian family. He never was a muslim! I dont understand (praise Allah) comments!