Booknotes

Professor EDWARD W. SAID (Author, "Reflections on Exile"): Well, first of all, it's the title of one of the essays in there, which I wrote in 1984 and which seemed to me to capture, for my purposes at any rate, the condition of being somebody away from the place that he was born and belonged to, which was my condition. And I tried to generalize out from that to a more m--more widespread, modern condition of exile, of uprootedness, of migration, of immigration, of expatriation and so on.

Prof. SAID: I think probably on a plane. I--yeah. I--I mean, I live in New York. I don't think I could live anywhere else. And I find New York's anonymity and sort of volatility terrifically energizing. But I, myself, live a very quiet and quite sedentary life. I'm a creature of the university. I've been at Columbia since the early '60s, and I live on the campus; part of the sort of campus ghetto. And my trips downtown are few and far between, Columbia being uptown. So I like that. You know, my kids grew up there. And I--I find New York, strangely, a place of rest from lots of migration and travel for myself. I travel a lot.

Prof. SAID: Oh, it's a fantastic place. I mean, I--I've never been happier, I think, anywhere. I--I grew up, as you know, in schools and universities that have stayed there. And Columbia presents a fantastically challenging group of students, and that's the most important thing. As I say, an e--unending contact with young people, which is why I went into teaching in the first place. Second, it's a great university and has a wonderful faculty, which has been extraordinarily good to me. And third, it has a marvelous library and great facilities concentrated in one place. It--it's an urban university, not like the Ivy League school--I mean, it is an Ivy League school, but it's not like the ones I went to, which are basically, you know, resident places. And in that respect, it's the world for me. And I--I couldn't be happier.

Prof. SAID: Yeah. Well, the--it--it--in an apartment I used to live in, before I moved to the last one--I've moved--I've lived in three apartments, and the middle one, during the '80s, the second half of the '80s, I was subject to a lot of death threats and attempts, and my office at Columbia was ransacked and my papers burned o--on one occasion. And so the officers of the 26th Precinct and the security services at the university thought it better, because of these threats, to have a kind of panic button in my apartment, which if you re--pressed it, rang in the 26th Precinct, and a couple of minutes later, some officers would show up.

We never had to use it. It was only used once, as it turned out, by a house guest, who thought it was, you know, a--a light switch; pressed it, and there were these six officers there confronting the poor woman, who was scared out of her wits.

Prof. SAID: Well, because of my positions on--on Palestine. I--I mean, I've been a kind of outspoken activist on behalf of Palestinian rights since the '67 War. And then during the '70s, I--you know, because of my writing, and I would appear on television, I became quite recognizable. And--and so I--you know, there was a lot of--was a lot of strong feeling. And I've been, you know, persistent in my calls for Palestinian--justice for Palestinians, the rights of Palestinians who were dispossessed in 1948. And this is in New York--you know, and--and because I take no particular precautions, my life is, you know, quite open. I just go to the university, give talks and so on. There have been attempts made by the extremists, who have tried to--to do away with me.

Prof. SAID: Never. No, no. The only thing I've ever taught is literature, actually. I--I've taught, basically, the literature in which I was trained, in which I love, mainly English and some American, but French, German, Italian, comparative literature. And I've never, never believed in using the classroom to deal with political issues in which I'm engaged. So my--my work is very historical, and I've tried to expose the students to as rigorous a historical and aesthetic approach to literature rather than a--than a political one.

Prof. SAID: Well, not only get to--try to talk about them, but in some cases--I remember during the '60s, my class was--I forget the word they used in those days--interrupted or--they tried to take it over. It was during one of the Vietnam--anti-Vietnam protests, in which I was--which I played a role. But they inter--intervened in the class, I think, about six students. And my own students, who knew my position, actually got them--pushed them out so the class could continue, because I said I wasn't going to continue. So that was really the only time.

And then, I think, on one occasion--it may have been during the Gulf War--students put up their hands and asked me questions about what was taking place. And I said I--I'd be happy to discuss it, but not in a class on Irish literature. It didn't seem appropriate.

Prof. SAID: It's hard to know what one I'd--the newest one. I mean, I'm a--I'm a--I'm a shameless--How shall I put it?--a shameless purveyor of novelties. I like to read the latest book. I--I tend to read everything from fiction to biography to non-fiction to books about Hollywood to his--I--history is something that tremendously interests me. And--but I usually have very little free time. So what I look for now, to tell you the truth, is escape, because the pressure on me--I mean, I'm not well. My days are shorter. My energy is considerably less. So my--my favorite reading i--is something that will take me away from all the pressures of the world. And now I happen to be reading Sherlock Holmes for the 20th time.

Prof. SAID: Almost exactly 10 years ago, in 1991. I--I discovered it entirely by accident. It was a routine exam, and the blood test showed that I had leukemia.

Prof. SAID: Well, you know, when you get a--a verdict like that, the reaction is usually denial, or it's a mistake or, well, it's not that bad. I was in London at the time, and my wife--I'd rang her up to find out the results of some cholesterol thing I was worried about. And it took me, I think, about a week. And then terror, you know, because you get--y--you get shunted i--you know, from place to place by various doctors. M--I mean, my own internist sent me to a hematologist, who then told me he wasn't capable of treating me, so to find another doctor. So the first two or three months with tests going on all the time and different doctors, etc., I was really quite chattery.

And then after a while, if you're lucky enough, as I was, to get a really good doctor whom you like, which I did about a year later, in '92, and he's--I mean, he's still my doctor--you--you learn how to--I mean, because it's--in--in my case, I have a very persistent and nasty kind of leukemia. It's chronic, which means that basically there's no cure for it. So it's a question of yo--your doctor coming up with therapies to keep it at bay, to just--so you learn to do the same thing with your head. I mean, if you keep it in the front of your head, then you can't do anything.

And I would say it took me about nine months to just--you know, it was like the center of my attention--was to just push it aside like that. I mean, it--it's always there, and there's always some problem. And--and the longer you go, the more you know it's going to be complicated because you get infections and things of that sort.

Prof. SAID: Well, it makes me value life a great deal more. I mean, I--I now truly savor experiences as much as I can. I do what I want to do and what I really love to do. That includes music. It includes travel. It includes being with friends. But I'm also--I feel more driven about things, you know, that I feel obligate me; teaching is very important, writing, and, you know, issues of justice and--and oppression around the world, which--you know, which g--grip my attention.

Prof. SAID: Yeah. I--you know, one of the strangest things I've found, and I've found it very difficult to deal with, was very close friends of mine, not many but some, with whom I used to be in regular contact, suddenly stopped calling me. I mean, it was just too hard for them to deal with somebody who they thought was, you know, in the--in the throes of a--of a terminal disease. So I--I think that's the main thing, and then, of course, the--the ironic or s--sort of funny--people who think you're going to die and so you have colleagues who say, `I'd like his office when he dies,' kind of thing. Yeah, it's very weird.

And, you know, there are numerous ceremonies that people feel they have to go through. It's all--it's all fantastically well-intentioned. But, you know, w--I--I had--in the middle and late '90s, I had some very bad years when I was really sick for most of the time. And so, you know, there were--there were several conferences held in my honor. And I--you know, you're treated with a kind of--I don't know what the exact word is, but al--almost in a--in a--in a kind of elegiac way, you know, as somebody on the way out.

Prof. SAID: Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, I was in the hospital yesterday. I mean, I spend a lot of time going to...

Prof. SAID: Well, there--it's hard to tell because I've exhausted all the main ones. And my doctor, who's, I think, the leading figure in--in leukemia, he's an Indian doctor called Kanti Rai. He's one of the great figures, I think. He's a very interesting man. We've become very good friends. He's--well, he's on the cutting edge. He's a great clinician and a--and a researcher. So I'm now in basically experimental treatments because all the conventional ones no longer work. So he--I'm hoping he'll come up with something, you know. I--I have a large tumorous growth in my stomach, which--for which he found earlier in the year an experimental treatment. It was--it was quite ghastly, but I survived it. And--and--and the tumor shrunk, but it's coming--I mean, it's coming back. It's still there. So, you know, you have those kinds of considerations; plus, the fact that, you know, any little thing--you know, a scratch can turn into a major infection. So you have to be careful. I'm, a lot of the time, on antibiotics and--and I have periodical im--immunization treatments.

Prof. SAID: I was f--56, I think. Yeah, 56.

Prof. SAID: Oh, I'm 65. I will be 66 later in the year.

Prof. SAID: No. No. In fact, I--I--well, I didn't even--well, to tell you the truth, I don't know. I do--I do--I didn't think much about it. You know, you--because you--in a funny sort of way, your--your per--per--your horizons and perspectives narrow. You don't think in terms of all the things I want to do, the way you normally do. But you think in terms of more or less immediate things that you want to do and you don't think in terms of surviving for X number of years. I--I just try not to think in those terms.

Prof. SAID: Oh, no.

Prof. SAID: Well--well, that I--I tried to tell the truth. I--it's very important. That I was a good teacher, decent writer. And--and a good friend. And especially for my family, you know, g--good father, husband, so on.

Prof. SAID: Well, this is a photograph taken a couple--let's see, it must have been in March, by Annie Leibovitz. It's a--it's very flattering. And it's going to be the cover of this next book, a collection of interviews, basically.

Prof. SAID: No, more than that. They go back at least 25 years. The first one in the book is 1976. Well, it's very flattering. It was--the idea was that of a colleague of mine who--who--who--who is a--you know, also Indian, as it turns out, who is a former student of mine. And sh--she had the idea originally to do a series of interviews into a book. And I just said I didn't have time to do that, you know, but there were all these interviews I'd done. I do a lot of them. Over the--I've done--I've done--I've done hundreds, really, over the years. Some of them were interesting. And so she took the time--Garwi Vishwinatan, her name is--she took the time to read through and pick out about 40 of them or something. And we put them together in a book. I mean, basically, you know, I--I was embarrassed a bit, you know.

Prof. SAID: Yeah.

Prof. SAID: Well, I remember--I'm sure I'll remember this one. But I remember one in particular in--and, actually, my short-term memory is really quite bad, so I tend not to remember them. But the one I do remember, in particular, recent, was about a year ago, the summer of 19--of 2000. The leading Israeli daily, which is called Ha'aretz, h--had been in touch with me through one of their leading sort of profile and interview writers. And he came over in August and we spent three days talking, basically. And then he produced this long interview, which is in this book, yeah.

Prof. SAID: It's the last interview right in the book. And I remember it because it was quite an amazing thing. In the--in the first instance, I don't think an interview like that, about the Palestinian problem and the history of Palestine and my views on Palestine, could have been published in an American journal or newspaper, simply because it's too frank, you know. Here--here's an Israeli, who--who's right on the line, who, in fact, lives in the same area where I was born, in Jerusalem--in West Jerusalem. And so there was that. And he asked all the questions about return and what happened in 1948 and all that sort of thing.

But much more important is it wasn't adversarial. I mean, it was--it was a conversation, such as this, you know, a man asking me questions with--with great politeness. They were very searching questions. And, you know, he was there to listen to me, not to give me a lecture on what I should be thinking and what I shouldn't be saying and all this sort of thing. And--and, third, the most important thing, I think, of all was that it was, you know, published by a leading Israeli journal. I mean, it was, you know, Ha'aretz, which is the--is The New York Times of Israel, basically. But--and, you know, they published it pretty much as--as we did it. I mean, he edited, obviously, it was much too long. But it was very well-edited and it was eminent--eminently fair.

Prof. SAID: Oh, well, I don't really know because I--I don't read Hebrew. But, you know, there was a lot of discussion of it. And it was published, I think, just a few days before the Intifadah began on the 28th of September. I think it was published in September. So it--it--it--it came at a--at a rather sort of opportune time, in a way.

Prof. SAID: No.

Prof. SAID: Well, I--I--what I did, basically, was to trace current events in the Middle East, I mean, certainly, as regard to Palestine and the Palestinians and Israel and the Israelis, back to the events of 1948, which are simply forgotten about. And I talk about the peace process, which I do in a very critical way, and--and--and show how the peace process--and I think I was prophetic about this; I think he mentions it--because almost from the very beginning, I was critical of them as not really dealing with the fundamental question, which is Palestinian self-determination and in a kind of cosmetic way trying to keep Israel basically in charge of the territories. So there was that. Third, there was the--the whole question of what had happened to the Palestinian. I mean, I--I--I talked about Palestinian suffering, which is central to the--to the--you know, as--as suffering ironically at the hands of a people that have themselves suffered so much, the Jews. I mean, these are tough questions.

And he listened, and he may not have agreed with me--I'm sure he didn't--but at least he thought it was worth listening to. And that is simply not the case in--in journalism in this country. You cannot, in a sustained way, do this.

Prof. SAID: Well, I think the prevailing discourse is--is very, very closed. It's dominated by the Zionist point of view, which is, I think, much more extreme, much more closed-minded, I think, than the Israeli equivalent. And--and what's ironic about it, too, is that these are people who live in America, who--who are entitled to go to Israel--I'm talking about American Jews who are supporters of Israel--but prefer to stay in--in America and sort of fight to the last Israeli. It's--it's an act of supremely bad faith. And they're cl--absolutely closed, and I would think even narcissistically closed, to the experiences of other people; namely, the Palestinians.

I mean, I--there's no way that you could think of the history of Israel without thinking of what happened to the Palestinians. And that simply isn't done in this country where s--you know, self-affirmation and--and sort of Zion--the Zionist myth of liberation and independence completely ignores the narrative of--of the Palestinians.

Prof. SAID: Well, The New York Times has one or two columnists occasionally, you know, Th--Thomas Friedman being one and Anthony Lewis, who writes only once a week now, who--who express criticism of Israelis--of Israel's policies on the West Bank and Gaza. But they're by no means anti-Israel in the sense that they think that--that the establishment of Israel was, for the Palestinians, a catastrophe, which I think it was. And I think that's about it. But historically, what's interesting is that The New York Times was not--during the '40s, at the time of Israel's establishment, was actually anti-Zionist. It's true it was not for a Jewish state in Palestine, for whatever reasons. I--you know, that's irrelevant.

But that history has--has continued, even though during the editorship of people like Abe Rosenthal, who is a right-wing Zionist, basically, the paper an--and its pol--editorial policies have remained staunchly pro-Israel. I mean, critical of what Israel does, like it would be critical of the United States. Israel is not a sacred state, by any means, and, I mean, the idea that it shouldn't be criticized is preposterous.

But--but, for example--I'll--I'll show you what I'm trying to say. Since the Intifadah began on September the 29th of 19--of 2000, you know, there have been many, many columns written, except for one, which was written by a Palestinian who now lives in Jordan and is very much pro-peace process, and a Palestinian who is an American professor at the University of Chicago, there have been no representations of the Palestinian point of view in The New York Times op-ed page. I used to write for them a lot in the--in the '70s, in the '80s, and I think even in the '90s. They got in touch with me once, and I'd just written something for The Nation. I sent it to them and I never heard from them again. I--I--that's what I'm trying to say.

Prof. SAID: Yeah.

Prof. SAID: Zionists are somebody who believes in the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and I would say in Palestine; although originally, it was just the idea of a Jewish homeland. It's a--it's a f--it's a--it's an idea that has come and gone over the years and...

Prof. SAID: Well, it's difficult to tell because the Jews were an exiled people, you know, back in the first century. But as a political movement in the modern paradigm, I'd say it began towards the end of the 19th century as an organized political movement, the end of the 19th century.

Prof. SAID: Zion is, of course, Israel and the--and they want to establish a new--a new--I mean, a continuation of the--of the temple that was destroyed by the Romans.

Prof. SAID: Palestine is a historical area which is, I guess, what today Israel would be--Right?--including the West Bank and Gaza. And it has a long history, but it's not a history exclusively associated only with Jews. I mean, it's an area--has a history of 10,000 years. It's been associated with Judaism--with all the monotheistic religions, Christianity and Judai--and Islam as well. But literally dozens, if not hundreds, of civilizations have come and gone. So Palestine includes all those histories, Arabs, Ottomans, Byzantines, Greeks, Romans, Parathions, Philistines, Moabite, Jebuzite--I mean, people you've never heard of have had a stake in Palestine.

So for us, Palestine is that long history, including that of the Jews, you know, but that's just part of it. And 20th century Palestine is basically an Arab land where the preponderance of the inhabitants were, in fact, Palestinian Arabs, until 1948 when two-thirds of them were driven out.

Prof. SAID: I was born in--November 1st, 1935.

Prof. SAID: In Jerusalem.

Prof. SAID: Well, I don't think the birth is controversial. It--I mean, you know...

Prof. SAID: No, no. It's not--that isn't even--that's never been an issue. I mean, I have--I have a birth certificate and it's clear that I was born there. No, the question is whether--I mean, was raised by some--my opinion--nut who seemed to have nothing better to do than to spend three years researching my early life, which was a fairly peripatetic life. My father was a businessman from Jerusalem who emigrated to the United States in 1911 and then went back to Palestine in 1920 after serving in World War I. And he went into business with his family and established a business in Palestine and then expanded the business into Egypt in--in the late '20s. And so he spent a good bit of his life in Egypt, but also in Palestine, back and forth. And I was born in one of these trajectories.

And, you know, most of my early life was spent in--in Cairo, but it was also spent in Palestine, where all of my family was. I mean, all my extended family on both sides, my mother's family and father's family. And also Lebanon, since we had a summer place in Lebanon. My father was a very well-off, very successful businessman. And what this character was trying to show was that I was not as Palestinian as I claimed to be and that I wasn't a refugee in any sense of the word. I had become, through my writings and appearances on television and so on and so forth--he s--he claimed that I had become a kind of symbol of Palestinian refugeehood. I mean, complete b--you know, complete nonsense. (Graphic on screen) For More Information Harvard University Press 79 Garden Street Cambridge, MA 02138

Prof. SAID: I never said I was a refugee. I did say that I couldn't go back, which was true. I mean, any Jew born in--in--anywhere can become an Israeli and go and live there. I can't. I--I was born there, and I can't return. So he took that and he said, `Well, the house was registered in'--well, it was in my family's name, not--certainly not in my name. And he proved that I was in Egypt, which was obviously true. I was in Egypt and my family did have a house there. But we also had a house in Lebanon. And he interviewed lots of people, many of whom he misquoted, who then wrote me and wrote him. He tried to get the book published--I mean, his--his essay published at the same time that my book was about to appear, which he didn't--he didn't cite.

And he was unsuccessful with, for example, The New Republic, which wanted to do a fact check based on my book, and he said he didn't want to do that. So he finally published it in commentary, and it was just done to dis--try to discredit me. But in the end, he was just sort of laughed off, I think.

Prof. SAID: Well, the last time I was there was in the--December of '47.

Prof. SAID: Twelve.

Prof. SAID: Oh, very well, of course, yeah. I remember--I mean, I--I went back for the first time in 45 years in 1992, and I went--you know, found the house I was born in, my family's house, which is now the headquarters of the International Christian Embassy, believe it or not, a fundamentalist Christian, pro--pro-Israeli right-wing group. And it's become an office. It's in a lovely part of Jerusalem, perhaps the nicest part of Jerusalem. And I--it's interesting that when I went in '92, I got from my cousin, who was the last member of my family to leave the house--he's 82 and lives in--in Toronto. He gave me a copy of the deed. And I had it with me. And it was a very emotional visit for me because it was--you know, I--I--I mean, I spent a good part of my childhood there, you know.

Prof. SAID: Well, it was a disorganized Palestinian population. You know, th--by far, the largest n--number of people in the country--there had been since the end of World War I, when the Balfour Declaration promised Palestine as a home for the Jews. You know, Britain was the great imperial power of the day. And during that period, from--the--the mandatory period when the British were in charge of Palestine, which was when I was born and grew up, they in--they allowed Jewish immigration into Palestine. It never in--it never amounted to more than about 25 percent or 30 percent until the war broke out in the--in--in the--late-'47.

Prof. SAID: Well, there were about a million Palestinians, of whom later 870,000 were driven out and about 120,000 remained, and about a million Jews, less even than a million Jews. But there were all the result of immigration. There was a small Jewish community there, much, much smaller than the Palestinians and much smaller than the numbers of people who came in during the period, you know, in the '30s and especially after World War II, after the Holocaust. It--it became a kind of refuge.

Th--that aspect of it is quite tragic, you know. But nevertheless, it was the land o--of another people. And, you know, one of the great slogans of the Zionist was that--a land without people for a people without land. I mean, they just simply had overlooked the presence of these, as we--they used to call us, natives who were there. And in--and the Palestinian community was not well-organized by any means, it wasn't well-armed. It was--it had just lived through a long three-and-a-half-year revolt against--Intifadah against the British in the thir--you know, '36 to '39, so it was depleted. Their--the leaders had been deported or killed.

The British had, you know, cordoned off--dead--what the Israelis are doing now, the same thing, against the Palestinian uprising for Palestinian independence and to try to stop these waves of immi--immigrants from coming in. And the result of that was a community that was, you know, very depleted, leaderless, unorganized, facing a community that had come out of World War II, been trained by the British. I mean, Moshe Dayan, for example, had served in the British army and was trained, as was a whole Jewish battalion, by the British army. We had no such training and no background.

Well-armed, well-organized, and they had a plan. And the plan was to dislodge as many Palestinians--it was a simple--the--the--the phrase is more land and less Arabs. And Ben-Gurion was part of it. Every major leader of the Zionist movement envisaged the emptying out of Palestine of its native inhabitants and bringing in Jews to replace them. And that's what happened in 1948, exactly. Palestinians were defeated militarily. There was a half-hearted attempt by a group of Arab armies to come in to the aid of the Palestinians. But they amounted to less than a third of the Jewish force that was there. Arab states in various conditions of decline, some of them colluding--Jordan--colluding with the British so that King Abdullah of Jordan would get the West Bank, which is, in fact, what happened, and not enter the war against the Haganah.

And the result was this enormous wave of refugees, you know, about 900,000--870,000, who are--now number 4 1/2 million. And m--my entire family--we left--my parents and I left at the end of 1947. We went to Egypt; we had a home there. But the rest of my family, on both sides, my extended family, the entire lot of them were made refugees, and so that by the spring of '48, there wasn't a single member of the--of my family left in Palestine.

Prof. SAID: I'd say 7 1/2 million; 4 1/2 million refugees, two--little less than 3 million West Bank and Gaza and about a million in--inside Israel as people who were left behind, who are now Israeli citizens.

Prof. SAID: No, because Palestinians--I happen to come from a Christian background. My family is, of all things, Episcopalian. I was baptized in the mission church there. But it's a--a--a preponderantly Muslim group. And I think it--all Palestinians suffer from the pangs of dispossession because, don't forget, Israel has become a great success story, except for the Palestinians. In other words, it's celebrated in the Western press, it's considered a democracy, it's a liberal European country in--in its--in--in--a lot of it, but not all. I mean, it has all kinds of things that are never looked at. And it gets the largest amount of aid of any country in the history of foreign aid. It gets tw--you know, off--officially $3 billion but sometimes bordering on $4 billion and $5 billion a year from the United States, the US taxpayer.

And the problem for Palestinians is that our history is not acknowledged, you see. In the Peans--in the--in the endless stories about Israel--not anymore, but there was a time when, in the '50s and the '60s and the '70s, Israel, was celebrated as a--as a bastion of democracy, the outpost of this, that and the other thing. We were forgotten, and we had to watch as this country that had destroyed us basically got all the praise and we got nothing.

So our main battle has been, A, to survive, obviously; B, to re-create our national identity as a people, as opposed to a collection of refugees or miscellaneous Arabs, as we used to be referred to; and third, to have self-determination, which means some form of sovereignty in the country from which we were expelled and which every protocol in the world, including the UN Charter, the Bill--the Declaration of Human Rights, everything, allows us to return to. I mean, the Kosovo war was fought to let the Albanians return, and every refugee in the world potentially has the right to return, except us. And this invidious fate is what we--what we feel as Palestinians.

Prof. SAID: Mm. Well, we'd say that's simply untrue because Israel is a democracy for Jews. For non-Jews, a million--the 20 percent of people who are not Jews inside Israel are treated as--well, I mean, they're treated as blacks used to be treated in this country. African-Amer...

Prof. SAID: They can vote. But they're municipally--until 1966, for example, they were ruled by military edict, and st--until now, no non-Jew in Israel, no Palestinian, can own or lease or rent land because 92 percent of the land in Israel is owned in trust for the Jewish people. I mean, that's a racist land-holding law. If it was applied in this country, saying, `Only whites can own--or the land of the United States is for whites only,' nobody would accept that. But in Israel, that's the way it is, in a country which is not totally Jewish, that's not democratic. If you don't have to be Jew--and no non-Jew can return. Any Jew anywhere has the right to return.

Israel is a country without a constitution, it's a country without a bill of rights. And most important from the point of view of international politics, it's the only country in the world that has no declared borders. So when you talk about Israel, what are you talking about? You're talking about a country which has yet to declare what its international borders. Do they include the West Bank in Gaza? Sharon seems to think that they do, for example. So, you know, it's a very--it's a--it's a much more complex question than American journalists saying, `Israel is the only democracy'--it's simply not true.

Prof. SAID: Because they don't know anything about the story of the Palestinians. And Palestinians, I should say, by the way, including myself, have been in the forefront of--of criticism of Arab anti-democracy, you know, the fact that so many of the Arab countries are ruled tyrannically, that they're the abrogation of human rights. But the irony--I mean, we come back to irony again--is that these countries, like Saudi Arabia, like Egypt, like Jordan, are supported by the United States. I mean, we--those of us who come from the Arab world--I--I'm an American. I'm an Arab American. And it's a source of great pride for me to be an American, but also great shame and--and--and sorrow that the United States is not supporting the many struggles within the Arab world to end censorship, to end illegal imprisonment, to end torture, to end the absence of freedom of opinion and so on and so forth. Why? Because the US supports these governments, because they're seen as strategic ally and--and because, of course, the United States wants oil. It's a fantastically oil-rich area of the world.

Prof. SAID: No, that's not true. Absolutely not true.

Prof. SAID: Well, it's a very emotional issue, but I--but I--I do want to say something that's very important is that over the years, my own--and I--I mean, I'm speaking for myself, but I'm--for--for others as well that in my struggle for Palestinian rights, there have been many Jews, Israeli and non-Israeli, who have played an extremely honorable role as critics of Israel, upholders of universal standards of human rights. I--it's very easy to support human rights in South African during apar--you know, against apartheid, but then to come and say, you know, `What about the same laws'--apartheid laws is what they are in Israel--that say that Palestinians can't travel, they can't reside, they can't work. All these things are applied to Palestinians. And they say, `Well, no, no, no. We can't. We're Jewish.' Well, there are many Jews who don't agree with that double standards in America, in Israel, in Europe, elsewhere. So I don't think that's true. But the ones who--who would want to e--disagree with me and--and fight me do so for two reasons. One is emotion. They feel that in some way, I oppose a Jewish state. I don't at all oppose the presence of Jews and self-determination for Jews, just as long as it doesn't take place at the expense of others. And the second reason is that they're ignorant. I mean, they do not know the facts. Many--many Israelis are only now 50 years, 52 years after the establishment of the state, beginning to discover the--the events that took place and how Israel was born. It--it was by no means a clean birth. It was a--a very ugly situation for the majority of people in the area who became refugees.

Prof. SAID: Well, about the refugees. A lot of the research, recent research, on what happened in 1948, which shatters the myth of Israel fighting a war of liberation and the refugees fled because they were told to, is being done by Israeli historians who have looked in the archives which have been recently de--declassified of the army, of the Haganah, which show that there were orders to disperse Pal--Rabin, for example, who's often celebrated in this country as a great warrior for peace. He was personally responsible for the expulsion of 60,000 people in the towns of Rid--Lod and Romle in the spring of 1948. So, you know--and Diane himself said in the early '70s, he said `Every village, every country, every town in this country used to be an Arab town and we destroyed them.' So, you know, these facts, as they gradually become known and accepted--it's not just a matter of known. I mean, you can, `No, no, no,' deny it, but I think there's now a--a growing consensus that the Palestinians didn't appear from nowhere, nor are they fanatics bent on the destruction of Israel for no other reasons than they--they hate Jews. That's complete nonsense.

Prof. SAID: I think that's changing.

Prof. SAID: Yeah, I do, actually. I don't think it can be solved militarily. I mean, that's what's so tragic about what's taking place in--in the occupied territories and with the failure of the peace process, that--you know, people think that if you bomb Palestinians, they're going to, in the end, give up. They're not. I think we--we need a--a climate and culture of co-existence, and that's going to take time. But I think it can be solved. When it--I mean, human beings are very stubborn and I think what you need is a slow, seeping in the--in the consciousness that the other people are not going to go away, that Palestinians will have to recognize that Israelis are not going to go away and likewise Israelis, who have all the power--it's very asymmetrical--will have to realize that Palestinians are not only not going to go away, but they should be treated and must be treated as equals.

Prof. SAID: Egypt.

Prof. SAID: Yes.

Prof. SAID: Crucial. Crucial.

Prof. SAID: Absolutely not. I think it's--first of all, most of the money is going for military purposes. I mean, Israel gets a huge amount of military aid. So does Egypt. And I think the bane--and Jordan. The bane of the Middle East has been the militarization of--of society, so that Egypt i--is a military society, Israel is a military society. In Egypt, for example, the army is the largest employer in the country. So we're talking about something that goes beyond genuine need. They're not attacking each other. So I think American tax dollars should, number one, stop going for military purposes. And since most of the money goes to Israel for--and Israel is the only one that uses its army in this way, to attack civilians in Lebanon--and they had a military occupation of Lebanon for 22 years against every law in the books in this country, according to foreign policy, and there's been an occupation of the West Bank and Gaza for 33 years, I--you know, that should stop.

Second, I believe that the American taxpayer should become aware of what the issues are and support peace--processes for peaceful change which are the most extraordinarily needed now. You need the enfranchisement of women, you need the--the participation of citizens in what are basically oligarchies and--and autocracies of one sort or another. And there is a growing sense of a human rights movement in the Arab world, which is profoundly shocking now--the situation.

Prof. SAID: That commentary again. A--a--a Jewish magazine in this country, a monthly, some guy wrote an article, called me the professor of terror. Sort of libelous. It passed, I--I still receive...

Prof. SAID: I--I was a member of the Palestinian National Council.

Prof. SAID: I was in it from 1977 to 1991, 14 years.

Prof. SAID: The--I went to three meetings, basically. That's what I did.

Prof. SAID: One meeting was in Cairo, one in Amman, Jordan, and the third one in Algers, 1988.

Prof. SAID: I--I knew him very well, actually, till--I would say till the period of Gulf War, around '92.

Prof. SAID: Well, he's a br--he's probably the most brilliant politician of survival, I think, that the mo--modern period has seen. He's a--in his--in his own way, extremely effective with his people. He can be very engaging. But I think he has become, unfortunately, really too--I mean, he's--has a tendency to identify Palestine with himself. I mean, he thinks he is Palestine and Palestine is he. And, of course, he does have the control of the budget, which is very important.

Prof. SAID: Well, it's--I don't really know. I mean, he's had--gotten it from the Gulf states during the period until '82. He gets it from various international agencies, the World Bank, and so on and so forth. And the--the European Union mainly. And he keeps very tight control of it.

Prof. SAID: No, I don't.

Prof. SAID: Well, I think--you know, once you start involving the af--in the affairs of the world, which is made by men and women--I mean, the world is a historically constructed thing, I believe--once you start involving God in them and bringing in to these affairs revelations and edicts from on high, then you leave the world of--of negotiation and politics and you enter a world of absolutes and I--I believe extremism.

Prof. SAID: Well, I think very, very much. I mean, if you--if you think that most Americans get their news from television and television devotes very little time to coverage of the--of the world outside the United States, and you--and you get really basically very simple and homogenized images. For example, if you say Islam or Palestine or Arab, you immediately think of terrorism. And it's that kind of simple, inadequate historical coverage that--that worries me. But it's not only television. I think that's true in--even inside the academy, in--in the university people just say `Oh, yeah. Swift, he was an Irish writer and he was very angry.' I mean, that's inadequate to describe a writer like Swift. So I think the role of the teacher and the critic is always to expand, to question dogmas and simple ascertains and to show people alternative routes by which they can achieve greater understanding and critical understanding.

Prof. SAID: Oh, this is a--a--well, it came from a clever editor at--at--at the Harvard Press, that published the book. But it's a por--it's a portrait of Dante, a 19th century portrait of Dante in exile, who--he was a famous exile in the 14th century, a great poet of the "Divine Comedy." And he was exiled from Florence. And he--he's one of the earlier symbols of the wandering humanist.

Prof. SAID: Sure.

Prof. SAID: Yes. Yes. Well, this...

Prof. SAID: Oh, I--you know, for a moment, I thought you were going to ask me about the belly dancer I wrote about in there, too, but Walter Lippmann was--was a very important figure to me when I was growing up, actually, in thi--when I--I came here when I was 15. And he was the accepted kind of pundit.

Prof. SAID: '51, I came.

Prof. SAID: Yeah, yeah.

Prof. SAID: No, no. I came first to boarding school in--in New England. I was there for two years, and then I was an undergraduate at Princeton and then went to Harvard for five years to do my PhD. So I was in--ni--11 years.

Prof. SAID: Sure. I mean, I talked about it in my memoir. It's called Mt. Hermon. I--it's in Massachusetts. I--I--I found it very stifling in a way for me. It was a religious school. And--and don't forget, I come from a rather warm climate and a different system of education. I just found New England piety a little hard to take, plus the snow, which I'd never seen before.

But anyway, about Lippmann, Lippmann is--is, I think, tremendously interesting to me because he is exactly the opposite of what I am. I mean, he was a man of such respectability and authority that, you know, his words were--were taken for, you know, fact, partly because of his connections but above all, because of his closeness to power in this country. And I've always been very far away from it. So I thought it was an interesting study. It's a--it's a biography of Lippmann that--that stimulated this essay--by Ronald Steel that got me inter...

Prof. SAID: Never, no. No, he was just a figure.

Prof. SAID: I did. I did. I read him. I read several of his books. In fact, I first heard of him when I was in boarding school when I--when I--when I was si--well, he--his name was suggested to me as somebody one should profitably read as an authority on the public sphere, which has always interested me.

Prof. SAID: Right.

Prof. SAID: Never to be too controversial, never upset people with your ideas, although there was an--an exception in his career. Toward the end of his career, he opposed the Vietnam War, but well after it started. And I think for the wrong reasons.

Prof. SAID: Yeah, he was 75. Third, make sure you talk in the accepted lingo of the day, you know, the lingo of Franco, want people want to hear. In other words, clichés, uncontroversial, above all, and with a certain amount of grave authority. And--and that--I think he was a master of that.

Prof. SAID: Mm-hmm.

Prof. SAID: Mm-hmm.

Prof. SAID: Mm-hmm.

Prof. SAID: Admirable career. He left socialism far behind. He--he eschewed anything to do with revolution or radical social change. And he became the pundit. He became the figure of the pundit who spins out these columns of, I think, kind of reassuring wisdom that they effective confirm America's eminence in the world, the fact that people are thinking about its future with a certain kind of paternal or patriarchal, I should say, benign concern. And above all, it didn't--it doesn't trouble the conscious. I mean, it's really stuff that con--keeps you going as you are. It doesn't say, `Stop. What we are doing is immoral. It's wrong. We should be doing X, Y and Z.'

Prof. SAID: Not too many. I wouldn't say--not the ones who write, you know, write regularly for the big journals that re--in a sense, require a--a certain, you know, first of all, the format. And my--my favorites and I people I read with--with interest are--you know, really include people like Christopher Hitchens, like Alexander Cockburn, from time to time, Gary Wills, you know, people who are al--sort of alternative figures who write from a different point of view, who are--who are there. William Greider in The Natio--in The Nation, excellent.

Prof. SAID: Less and less, I would say. You know, they--I think they're more interested in advancing in their professional careers than they used to be, say, in the '60s and the '70s.

Prof. SAID: I think they do now, yeah. Unfortunately. That's--that--and probably come to the class wa--partially because of my reputation.

Prof. SAID: Well, when I can, I--I teach two. But I've--you know, the problem with my teaching in the last, I would say, five years has been that it's intermittent because it's constantly interrupted by long periods of treatment and sickness. So it's hard--I--I don't like to teach a class and then drop it. So unless I can see a period without severe treatment, I try not to teach.

Prof. SAID: No, I'm not teaching right now, no. Because I had a bad four-month period recently. But I taught in--in the--in--I taught last year, but not this year.

Prof. SAID: Well, first of all, I think it's very important to confront it. I--you know, most of us go through various phases of denial. And I think it's terribly important to face up to what you have and cut it to size. That's number one. I think number two, get--the most important thing in the long run is to get a doctor you like because it's a--you know, it's a long-term thing. It's not just a one-visit business. You have to keep seeing the doctor over and over again. So I think a doctor you trust and like is--is terribly important. And third, trust in your doctor. I mean, it's the same as the second really.

Prof. SAID: I have a--I have a son who is 29 and is a lawyer. And I have a daughter who's 27 and is an actress.

Prof. SAID: They're both in New York.

Prof. SAID: I am married, yeah.

Prof. SAID: My wife is a Lebanese woman who is the still point of the turning world. She's a very calm, extremely self-possessed and amazing woman of great strength. She's a banker. But she is the sort of anchor of our--our--of our lives.

Prof. SAID: I met her in Lebanon in the late '60s and we've been married since 1970 for--What was it?--31 years, yeah.

Prof. SAID: Palestinian.

Prof. SAID: Yeah. Yes.

Prof. SAID: Pretty normally. I mean, I--I--it's quite strange. I mean, Columbia has a reputation for being a--a--a Jewish university. I mean, a lot of the students are Jewish and many of my friends and colleagues in the faculty are also Jewish. And, you know, that never really seems to come up, you know, I--they know who I am certainly. There's no--I've never been secretive about it. And most people talk about it openly. Our closest friends tend to be from other parts of the world in the United States, but lots of American friends, many of them Jewish, as it turns out. So it's not--it's not a problem in everyday life really at all.

Prof. SAID: Mm-hmm.

Prof. SAID: Not really, no. I mean, I--I think the American university, which is--I mean, God knows it deserves a lot of criticism for many of the things that are wrong with it, but all you have to do is to go to places where the university's part of the--where the--where the university is a state institution to realize that in many ways, the American university is a utopia. I mean, we have the best life possible as members of a university. There's basically freedom of expression and research, there's a freedom of exchange. And it's basically a meritocracy. You know, it doesn't matter who your parents are or what--how much money you have, that you will achieve what you can achieve on the basis of your--of your--of your work. And of--on the merit of your work. And I--it's an amazingly, I think, effective institution.

Prof. SAID: Right.

Prof. SAID: Well, the...

Prof. SAID: It's a silly story, but basically, in the summer of 2000, my--my wife, as you know, is Lebanese and my two kids and I were in Lebanon for a family occasion. And we went to South Lebanon, from which--this is July, early July of 2000. The Israelis had just been thrown out of the south where they had been an occupation--military occupation for 22 years. And, you know, it's--it became a tourist attraction to go to the south and visit, the areas where the Israelis had been, the prisons that they had established and villages they had destroyed and so on. And the last stop is to go to the border where there's a barbed wire, you know, encampment where there used to be an Israeli interrogation center where lots of people were tortured and beaten up and so on and is now evacuated. And on the other side of the frontier, about 300, 400 yards away, is a watch tower, which is completely sealed off. You can't see if you--there was nobody in it when we were there.

Anyway, so everybody who's there picks up stones and little pebbles and just heaves them across the border. And I was drawn to this because my son did it and I thought, `Well'--you know, kind of Oedipal--`Well, can I throw it as far as he can?' which obviously I couldn't. There was some photographer there, took the picture and sold it to the press in--in Beirut. And the picture then went round the world and became a kind of silly cause célèbre. But I think blown out of proportion in order to shield people from what, in fact, had happened in South Lebanon, which was a horrible story of occupation and torture and--and destruction on the part of the Israelis.

Prof. SAID: Well, it's difficult to guess. I--I think this is a very, very dark period; I think probably the darkest in a whole series of declining moments. But I think in the end, a formula--in--in other words, when more people on the Israeli side--because they're the ones with the power--I mean, their, you know, nuclear arsenal, they have a fantastic air--air force, army, etc., navy--when they realize that they cannot bring the Palestinians to their knees, I think then--and--and--and what's interesting is that many young Israelis--this hasn't been widely reported--are refusing reservists and refusing service on the West Bank in Gaza to try to put down the Palestinians. When there's a meeting of minds of like-minded people who want co-existence on both sides, I think there's a--there's a hope for--for the future. But now it doesn't look very good at all.

Prof. SAID: Thank you for having me.