EDWARD SAID and Palestine (1988) with optional Arabic subtitles

[Music] [Applause] I mean I could say this almost without without qualification right from the moment I arrived in the West in in the early 50s until the present initially there's always a sense in which as an Arab and obviously as a Palestinian you feel in some way criminalized or delinquent so powerful is the definition of you as somebody who's outside the pale I mean whose sole sort of purpose in life is to kill [Music] Jews Edward SED is one of America's most distinguished literary Scholars and critics he is in Exile in the very particular sense that the country in which he was born and spent his childhood no longer [Music] exists although most of his time is devoted to academic work writing and lecturing on literature and music s's other great preoccupation in Exile is the story of Palestine and the Palestinians SED was born in 1935 into a wealthy Christian Palestinian family 13 years later with the Declaration of the state of Israel the SED family gave up their home in Jerusalem and settled in Egypt and then in Lebanon Edward was sent to English schools first in Cairo and later in the United States he studied at Princeton and Harvard and went on to become professor of comparative literature at Columbia University in New [Music] York s is a member of the Palestine National Council and a supporter of the PLO in March he was invited to Washington to advise George Schulz on the Palestinian question I don't have any Arab colleagues most of my colleagues are in fact Jews or Americans who have no connection with the Middle East and with them I mean my relationships on the whole I would say are thoroughly normal and perfectly Pleasant I mean I think there's a general sort of way of being in the academic world that tends to reduce conflict so that with Jewish colleagues who may feel strongly about it we simply never talk about it the worst aspect of it is of course the occasional threat of violence I mean my office has been raided and vandalized uh I've received death threats and phone messages that are you know quite unpleasant so there's that I mean there's the hint of violence around there and I suppose in general I do feel given the atmosphere surrounding Palestine and Palestinians in New York in particular I do feel whether anything is said overtly or not I feel as if I'm a delinquent sort of before anything gets going I am somehow guiltiest charged along with other left-wing Arab and Jewish intellectuals s appears in several academic blacklists as an enemy of Israel I'm I think to be honest with you my first uh inclination is to be vaguely amused by this because I mean we I must say as a as a group who supposed to be the enemies of Israel we we seem to to me anyway to be not a very formidable uh you know enemy but um then you know you get angry because I mean it's obviously meant to be intimidating and to threaten you to obviously you know smear your reputation that you're in there's always something there's always something suggestive about it that you're in the pay of somebody else or that you're really a terrorist uh you know you're an agent for terrorism or this sort of thing I've been called that actually quite frequently by uh by um you know pists and and even other Scholars who who prefer to do that rather than you know try to engage with my ideas but I think the the overall feeling that I have is one when I think about it you know for any length of time is is one of of you know know astonishment that at the sort of Injustice of it you know here here I am a a child of a people that's been sort of kicked out of its own land forbidden uh to return I mean that is to say most of the authors of these books for example are sometimes students who were employed by these agencies to spy on me and find out what I say and this sort of thing and if they're Jewish just by fact of being Jewish born in New York of a of of a Jewish parent they're entitled to go to Israel or Palestine as I call it become Israeli citizens at any time that they wish I was born there my father was born there my grandfather great Etc and I can't return I don't have the same right I mean the law of return somehow covers them and my people my family were kicked out of there and they're writing books about me accusing me of terrorism I mean the the sort of the the the enormity of the whole thing just baffles me at the same time that it strikes me very strongly [Music] Zionist settlement in Palestine gathered momentum after World War I but met with little serious opposition from the native population until the 1930s from then on the British government would find its mandate increasingly unworkable having made conflicting Promises to the Jews and to the Palestinian Arabs in 1917 the Belford declaration appeared to safeguard the interests of both not so a memorandum written two years later the four Great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism be it right or wrong good or bad is rooted in agong Traditions in present needs in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land my mother was born and lived in Nazareth and married my father there in 1932 my father came from Jerusalem and it wasn't really until about I would say maybe 10 or 15 years ago that she told me that's quite extraordinary experience that she had when she married my father they had to register the wedding and together they went to the Palestine government mandatory uh office the official there was an Englishman and my mother said uh that she watched him sort of rip up her passport and he in amazement my mother said why are you doing this he said well now you'll travel on your on your husband's passport and she said yes but I mean why did I have to lose mine and in that way and he said well because your place and this card is going to be given to a Jewish immigrant to Palestine and the idea was that her identity was just you know just by a simple Act of tearing up a piece of paper was taken away from her by a foreigner and she lived with the consequences of that for 30 years and then she became in the 50s in the late 50s a Lebanese Citizen and of course she's not Lebanese she's Palestinian at hper the last British troops leave Palestine and very few of them can have been sorry as the tanks and soldiers went aboard the transports the thought that a difficult and thankless job had been well done must have mattered much less than the prospect of going home the Union Jack was hauled down and the doors closed for Good on the British mandate later in the day Israel's flag was flying over Hyer and the Prime Minister Mr benan was there for the taking over sediment a sad chapter had closed and the world hopes that youo will be able to find a satisfactory solution to the Palestine [Music] problem there's a place on the application says place of birth so I put down Jerusalem Palestine then I'd get a passport back saying Jerusalem Israel I'd then go into the passport office and say look I wasn't born in Israel I said where were you born Palestine Palestine doesn't exist anymore so I say yeah but I was born there and pal and Israel didn't exist when I was born so back and forth until finally I get a passport just says place of birth Jerusalem without any country listed I don't think it would work for any other City because Jerusalem is I suppose a rather special [Music] [Music] place in [Music] [Applause] [Music] the [Music] Palestine is not an ordinary place I'm sure where oppression occurs is like South Africa or Chile and so on those are not ordinary places either but Palestine I think has something more it's a the place where religions were manufactured and all kinds of Revelations are alleged to have occurred and it has a kind of density in Residence that virtually no other place in the world has and it's also a very small place and very crowded and that crisscrossing that sort of fabric of claims and counter claims interests me a great deal the question I mean the political and even philosophical question is why is it you know that visions of community in a land that is as dense as this have tended not to Triumph and what is Tred instead is Visions are visions of exclusivism you know to say well it's our country and only ours we want to push everybody out the scene is near Jericho one of the camps for Arab refugees the story is one of destitution for these people as the result of the war in Palestine have either fled or been expelled from their homes and their livelihood moreover the Arab Refugee problem is a very big one for those in need are said to number over half a million but relief to be effective must be Speedy it's been very important to try to un understand for me uh the U tremendous appeal of of Zionism to to the European mind and I would say that there are really two very powerful and and um and compelling reasons for that appeal what one of them is the first reason is that um Zionism is a uh appears to be a movement um and an ideology that sort of gathered together uh the remnants and the um the the the kind of remains of a of a shattered community of people who had historically been oppressed and and abused and discriminated and persecuted in the west and gather them together into a a very powerful uh movement uh which created a new country uh it had all the elements of a kind of Phoenix you know rising from the ashes um and it also had the appeal of uh of the creation of a new state which is I I think very Central to the to the European Consciousness um because you know a lot like for example the American um experiment of Europe that is to say sending out people to America to create a new country and obviously it explains the peculiarly close connection between America and Israel there's this tremendously attractive idea of starting out a fresh of starting with a clean slate of building a a new country making the Desert Bloom I mean that has all the elements also of of Miracle uh and that's very very appealing I think s's ability to look at the west from the East and the east from the West having been educated in both informs the themes and arguments of much of his work work in his best known and most influential book s examined 19th century Western attitudes to the Orient and Oriental Society I was struck by the consistency and the um coherence of pictures or representations of the east or the Orient as I called it in a lot of European culture you know say 19th century French paintings by jol for instance or novelist writing say in the work of people like FL and Disraeli say and sort of scholarly writing um by linguists and historians and anthropologists and and sociologists the consistency of the picture that emerged of something called the Orient and um the extent to which a lot of this material contributed to creating a kind of um unified image of the Orient which had a very set character which had a particular set of characteris that keep coming back you know sensuality despotism wealth promise cruelty and so I tried to show how this Collective portrait uh of the Orient grew in the 19th century and became as consistent as it as it was and I related it to uh and I think this was one of the things that was quite controversial I related it to European power I was saying saying really that there is no such thing as the Orient the Orient is much more complicated much more varied much more uh heterogeneous and above all much more detailed than any of these Grand generalizations about well we know that orientals tend to think in certain ways that for example one of the things I mentioned in the early part of the book was Lord Cromer who saying the Oriental mind is different from ours it is not capable of grasping Western logic uh you know an Egyptian for example cannot walk on the sidewalk you would say you know he has to walk the that's a function of the and I was saying all of that's absolute nonsense you know you can't make these generalizations and then pretend that they are factual or scientific generalizations they are rooted in rule what do you think of when you think of an Arab somebody with a towel on their head camel and maybe some sand want to throw a pyramid in there well guess who's here right on our stage this itself would not have been possible not long ago Edward S joins as professor of English Columbia University member of the Palestinian of the Palestine National Council to which umbrella organization belongs the PLO you were born in Jerusalem and raged in Egypt and Palestine you are currently a United States citizen Kenneth Jacobson director of Middle Eastern Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League of Benet brith you don't want to talk to Mr s unless the PLO declines or moves away from its um stated policy of uh destroying Israel if the PLO doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist then I suppose there's some uh some passionate uh people might think you are betraying Israel to even appear with a man is it that bad out there now it's not that bad out there now it's been bad for a while in the sense that you have to have something to talk about when someone says to you his basic assumption in speaking to you is that you don't have a right to exist where do you go from it's offputting yes Mr s Professor s how do you respond to that no I think the basic thing is whether people want to talk about peace and about the the real issue which is the land and whether it can be divided I think I hear him saying he might be willing to discuss that if if the PLO would acknowledge Israel's legitimate right to exist well I mean what what about the Israeli recognition of the Palestinian people as a political Factor as as a as a community with a claim you unless you love me and I won't say unless you say first and now well we're never going to get married I'm not saying that I said why not have a mutual recognition in which the the people recognize each other perhaps we can do something today we have here a wonderful opportunity two moderates from either side sitting together hopefully talking to each other well I mean he doesn't talk to each other I'd be happy to be called a moderate but I I really question whether anyone who's supporting the PLO can be as Moder well can I say [Applause] something look I think not here to score points we are here to talk about matters of life and death matters of War and Peace let score points a natural expression of enthusiasm they want to say babies say yeah look I think the main point is if you want to negotiate some kind of peace with Justice you cannot legislate in advance who's going to represent whom the position and the position of the ADL is that we are not only entitled to decide what to talk about but we're going to decide who to talk to now the Palestinians have their own representatives and that's they've never found nobody has found any other representatives for the pales except the PLO now we don't say we will not talk to the Israeli government because they don't I mean after all it was the Israeli government a that dispossessed the Palestinians that destroyed Lebanon in 1982 killed me is no no I'm saying Le Lebon is being destroying itself the same thing let's why isn't it the same thing why couldn't why just hang on one second why couldn't the pal why couldn't the PLO decline to talk to Israel because Ariel Chiron a duly authorized member of the presided over the bonding say argument why couldn't Russia refused to talk to us because we bombed Libya it goes on and on I'm not saying this is easy but don't we save more babies by at least getting into the same room to get into the same room the problem is it didn't start yesterday it didn't start yester I think the the really dramatic change which I again read about was I think' 67 uh the war of ' 67 where the entire map of the Arab world changed and for the first time Israel which had been confined largely to the small boundaries of the state um had sort of overflowed into Jordan taking the west back and Gaza taken the sin and the Golden Heights and reading about this in America watching on the television almost entirely from the Viewpoint of a horrified and shamed victim because then it was perfectly clear that I was an Arab I mean I couldn't go on simply being an undergraduate with this strange to my American friends and colleagues you know the strange cache of being somehow from the Arab world maybe from Egypt uh that the whole idea of being an Arab and then beginning to discover that that meant being a Palestinian that all really came to the four in 1967 I mean that was I would say the great explosion and it had a tremendous effect on on my sort of psychological and even intellectual processes because I I discovered then that I had to rethink my uh my life and my identity even though it had been so sort of sheltered and U built up in this completely artificial way uh I had to rethink it from from the start uh and that was a process that really is continuing I mean it hasn't ended for me in his 1979 book the question of Palestine SED quotes the Israeli General mosha Dian we came to this country which was already populated by Arabs and we are establishing a Hebrew that is a Jewish State here in considerable areas of the country we bought the land from the Arabs Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab Villages you don't even know the names of these Arab Villages and I don't blame you because the geography books no longer exist not only do the books not exist the Arab Villages and not there either there is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population the great problem that we face as a people is that we're being told by the Israelis that in a certain sense we don't really exist that the continuity of our existence in Palestine that our history our identity is sort of manageable by Israeli historians by propagandists by politicians is manageable as something else the Arabs of Judea and Samaria Bean used to call us uh two-legged beasts terrorists everything but not Palestinians we were there I mean you can't do more than that but it it's so indecent and humiliating in exercise to have to say that we do exist in that is to say there were Villages Palestinian Villages there were Palestinian cities there were Palestinian there was a pal inian Society there were Palestinian people before 1948 who were Arab and who formed a society underdeveloped whatever you want to call it but it was there which abruptly and dramatically in the mid middle part of 1948 was shattered dismantled destroyed by the zionists there's also a question of how Zionism conceives Arabs and it has become current for Arabs to call Zionism a racial a racist Ideology Now what Patrick seal is the basis of that charge well I know it's a charge which created outrage when it was first raised I think the UN they tried to dub Zionism as a racist thing but you see unfortunately I think there is something in it I mean much as one hates to say so but if you if you just look at some of the statements say of a man like like bean I mean he's always ranting about Jewish blood and how precious it is with the implication of course that Arab blood is much less precious and he says things like Palestinians or animals walking on two pores or you remember his chief of staff at the time rafu atan talked about Palestinians being cockroaches in a bottle now he talks about blood liel against the Jews or of course his famous phrase at the time of the suban chatila massacre he would say he said if gim killed gim what concern is it of of ours now that it seems to me is absolutely racial remark of course these are this is not the only basis of that evidence and there's a great deal more in particularly of course the treatment of U Jews from Arab countries in Israel and they would be the first I think to say that they had been treated in a racialist way I've just been reading very interesting book thoroughly disagree with thorough disagree now of course you can mention I can give you a list of two dozen other loudmouth Generals in Israel who have said outrageous things but this you can say about every country I mean in this country there are no loudmouth politicians and loudmouth generals surely I would not make generalizations about England on the basis of what couple of of of politicians they have said about about the the the West Indian immigrants and so forth is B just a random politician or does he represent a trend well beg does not represent a trend beging I think is a is a um is a very sad consequence of of 40 or 50 years of Arab Israeli Wars about Mr Bean and about Mr RAF that you had mentioned I think I would say by way of generalization that the Arab extremists um um who are our worst enemies by the way uh uh they have at least already achieved one great victory over us in that they have succeeded to infect us or some of us with their brutality and their extremism this I think is a consequence of 50 and 60 years of war I think what Patrick is saying in another way I'd like to reformulate and say that had there been in the United States for example example uh immigration laws which said that only white Anglo-Saxon Protestants can immigrate and get a c citizenship then you as a Jew and I as a Palestinian would object now the same law in an inverse formulation of the same law it says that only a Jew can immigrate to Israel uh whereas a Palestinian who is born there and can that cannot don't forget the historic cont I'm sure I'm not say this law this law was passed barely five or six years after the Gates of aitz had closed when everybody had seen that the Jews were the only people overthrown in the gas Chambers because they were the only people in Europe who had absolutely no control not even the slightest measure of control over their fate the Jews convinced themselves rightly or wrongly that this had happened because they did not have a territory because they did not have any this law let's put this question more precisely how exactly do you justify not in 47 or 48 when the owitz case seems to be unanswerable but how do you justify 1987 a law of return which entitles a Jew from London or from Manchester to return to enjoy rights and citizenship protection in Israel which are denied to Arabs born in that Country Born on that territory try as he or she might a Palestinian find it very difficult I won't say impossible but I I think it's very very hard and I in this I think Mo Palestinians are like most people it's very hard for the Palestinian who feels himself or herself to have been the victim of Injustice by Jews Israeli Jews to sympathize or imaginatively incorporate the history of the Holocaust and say well we forgive them for what they did I mean after all they suffered this enormous this this colossal historical tragedy the Jews did and the fact that they are evicting us from our territory that they are placing us under occupation that they're treating us as third class citizens that they are killing our people that they are confining us to camps etc etc etc we understand look I I would no nobody can understand that I mean you can you can grasp the first fact the fact of the Holocaust but you can't translate that into to your own um Doom I mean as another person as the the Doom that is visited on You by those people I mean it's very very hard to do that on the other hand I I I really genuinely believe that it's in incredibly important for Palestinians to try to understand to understand what it is that we what force it is that we're dealing with you know I mean I made a great effort to go and see show out you know the lansman film about the the Holocaust which was shown recently in New York 9 and a half or 10 hours and I'm I'm certain that uh that my wife and I were the only two Arabs in the audience when we saw it um and I I could feel it all you know and I understood the enormous horror and I was a gast at it I mean because I understood it as a kind of European or Western kind of Holocaust which it was but then when I when I came to the point of saying well what does this mean to me it means to me that this is the legitimization of what has happened to us as a people the Palestinians and then you know it's a paradox you can call it you can call it an antinomy you can call it an a tragedy but it doesn't lessen one's will and this is the second point it doesn't lessen your will to struggle against it this is an example of Palestinian black humor it's it's something that was broadcast on the Israeli radio during the U summer of 82 as an instance of how a Palestinian captured quote unquote terrorist is interrogated by somebody but it's it it was then transcribed by a friend and given to me and it was played many times on the radio in Beirut as a form of entertainment of how the Palestinian who is in fact the captured uh turns the table on his uh Israeli captor who's interrogating him and this is this is what happens on the radio so the Israeli broadcaster says your name the captured Palestinian says my name is Ahmed abdulhamid abuti the Israeli man says what's your movement name my movement name is Abu father of Knight tell me Mr Abu to which terrorist organization do you belong he responds I belong to the popular front for The Liberation I I mean terrorization of Palestine in Arabic and when did you get involved in the terrorist organization when I first became aware of terrorism and what was your mission in South Lebanon my mission was terrorism in other words we would enter Villages and just terrorize and whenever there were women and children we would terrorize everything and all we did was terrorism by this time of course the Israelis very happy that this man is saying all of these things and did you practice terrorism out of belief in a cause or simply from for money Palestinian no by God just for money what kind of cause is this anyway why is there still a cause we sold out a long time ago tell me where do the terrorist organizations get their money from anyone who will spare money for terrorism in other words from the Arab regimes that support terrorism of course he's now giving him exactly what he wants but I mean to such a degree that it's what's your opinion the Israeli say What's your opinion of the terrorist Arafat Palestinian I swear he's the greatest Terror terrorist of all he's the one who sold us and the cause out his whole life is Terrorism what's your opinion of the way the Israeli Defense Forces have conducted themselves Palestinians On My Honor we thank the Israeli Defense Forces for their good treatment to all us terrorists do you have any advice for other terrorists who are still terrorizing and attacking the IDF Palestinian respond my advice to them is to surrender their arms to the IDF and what they'll find there there is the best possible treatment lastly Mr terrorist would you like to send a message to your family Palestinian I'd like to assure my family and friends that I'm in good health and I'd also like to thank the enemy broadcasting facility for letting me speak out like this you mean the call Israel the voice of Israel uh yes sir thank you sir naturally sir that's of course very amusing and very ironic but I do need to know where you stand on this question of terrorism the killing of innocent people men women children by Palestinians well I I think it's uh I I think it's a horrible thing I'm I've always been against it uh I've always felt that the emphasis on what has been called armed struggle has been uh indiscriminate and um um sometimes foolishly and in a political sense stupid relied on but I never never will concede that the essence of the Palestinian struggle as the Israelis say is Terrorism I think that the Palestinians by and large to a fantastic degree have um waged war against a merciless occupier a person a state an army uh an enemy that has dispossessed them and has has done far far worse to Palestinians than any Palestinians have done to Israelis and I think one must always make the distinction between terrorism which is as I say random and stupid and unpolitical uh and uh and the struggle against uh an oppressor and I think uh in that particular uh distinction I'm obviously for the latter and and totally against the former um at the same time as I say that I I'm myself have always been made uncomfortable by by by the use of arms in this very very ugly and long-standing struggle but I I certainly must say that uh I've I've been much more much much more impressed by the cruelty and above all the extent of Palestinian suffering uh than at the hands of the Israelis than the other way around I mean the the ratio is is is infinitely greater uh that the Israelis have make no secret of it that they've always killed Palestinian civilians sometimes at the rate of 100 to one Israeli deaths so I think given that I think use of the word terrorism is a is a mistake that seems very clear but also very cold and unfeeling one has to say I'm not sure what you mean I'm feeling well to say that that bombing schools or school buses is not political uh no no I mean by that I mean it's it's want and murder is what I'm saying uh if that's being cold then I I'm being cold I'm simply saying that it uh all violence of this sort is ugly I don't myself believe in the purifying uh quality of violence as it's it's sometimes alleged to have I don't believe in Cults of arms and and blood and so on and so forth so that any uh Act of that sort horrifies me uh and I've grown up in an area which has had more than its share of violence it in my lifetime but the best that can be said about it is that it's it's it's Advanced a political goal I mean certainly the zionists have used it and brought it in fact to the area terrorism as we know it today the planting of bombs in marketplaces and so on and so forth was in fact introduced into the Middle East by the zionists in the 20s um so I'm I'm I'm against that but I what I'm also trying to say is that some people will say that it advances a political cause I myself don't feel that it does I mean I think it it in this way it it simply it attracts attention to it but the net result of of Zionist uh terrorism and and violence in the in the first third of the 20th century has brought forth to my mind the the anomaly the horrific and unacceptable status in the Middle East today of the state of Israel which is in fact an armed Garrison State which now exports more arms and distributes violence all around the world uh vastly disproportionate to itself I mean in that respect I think it's a it's it's a horrible cycle of of violence but in it all I think the Palestinian is the victim there's no question about that after two months Siege and bombardment by the Israel Defense Forces the surviving PLO Fighters left West Beirut to be dispersed in the few Arab countries still willing to receive and support them Israel had invaded Lebanon with the aim of destroying the Palestinian state within a state which had grown up under the leadership of Yasser Arafat and the PLO this was not a purely military matter the PLO had established schools hospitals and other institutions which the Israeli government wished to see removed from Lebanon in the latter part of August of 1982 I was in uh of all place of Chicago uh my family my mother my my sisters um my wife's family um many many friends were all in Beirut um so the actual end of the end of the war was symbolized by the Palestinians uh the PLO Fighters leaving Beirut uh by sea and it was it meant a number of very different things one obviously was the Iran the irony uh of the uh of the situation in which Palestinians were put out to sea but in boats and for years we had heard it said that we were the ones who were trying to drive the Jews into the sea and here before the world's eyes could be seen the spectacle of Palestinians being sent out into the sea further away from the land that they came from the second significance to me watching it again at a great distance was that I knew instinctively that this was the end of a very important phase of Palestinian life and that it would never be the same again because beut uh was I mean the Palestinian presence in Beirut from the early '70s for about a decade from the early' 70s to the early 80s was the first time I would say in our national existence when we had in fact constituted a kind of substitute or ASAT Palestine in alas a sovereign country Lebanon and had led a kind of um in relatively independent existence with institutions and so on and it was the first time that we had in fact constructed a kind of Palestine um for ourselves but everyone knew it wasn't in Palestine it was somewhere else I mean I'd say that's the that's the quintessential uh Palestinian irony that we're always doing things that we would like to have done in Palestine but couldn't but we're doing them somewhere else at the wrong time and you know causing a lot of trouble for others I mean that's got to be said too and of course the the main significance Beyond those two other things is the tremendous sadness of you know of and uncertainty of what is to come afterwards um knowing for example that not one of of the Arab countries um that Arab friends if you like were with a very few usually individual exceptions unable to come to the aid of this quite I thought quite heroic small force of people who had no heavy arms to speak of No Air Force no Navy no tanks none of that stuff who fought off this immense Israeli concentration usually who depended on sort of phantoms and cluster bombs and think you know remote control devices to to to kill you know just kill large concentrations of [Music] Palestinians Beirut really became it became the last of the places of my early years uh Palestine Egypt and Lebanon theii to which I could no longer return and its disappearance was of immense and terribly sad significance for me and second it was also the loss of a place that had been immensely uh immensely generous in hospitable to a whole generation of Arab Exiles not only Palestinians but Iraqis and syrians and Egyptians and uh and uh and uh Sudanese and so on and it was the it was the uh should we say The Expatriate capital of the Arab world and it was over in that respect beut really now stands for a kind of nostalgia it represents a kind of nostalgia and an intellectual and political and personal development which is which is really utterly closed shut off in a way that is is so sad to behold particularly as it seems to continue I mean it's not as if it happened and it was over but the news of Beirut as we hear it since my mother still lives in Beirut is that of a city that's sort of chopping itself and bleeding to death the state of Exile as a as a pretty serious and unpleasant experience I mean somebody's been sent way banished severed from his or her native place is a I mean it was traditionally considered to be one of the worst Fates I mean you could never return to your Patria to your uh place of origin to your country so on your native soil and I think it's right to concentrate therefore on the dispossessions on the diminutions and the unhappiness of all that the impermanence the loss and so on on the other hand you know uh you could could say Well since Exile is as I believe it is a permanent state in other words it's something that cannot be gotten over it can't be restored you can't restore yourself to a state of it's like the fall in from Paradise you can't really go back in that case what is it that Exile affords you that wouldn't be the case for somebody who was who always stayed at home and you know went through the daily routine and I think there what the the essential privilege of Exile is to have not just one set of eyes but half a dozen each of them corresponding to the places you've been and therefore instead of looking at an experience as a single unitary thing it's it's always got at least two aspects I mean the aspect of of the person who's looking at it and has always seen it okay looking at it now and seeing it now and then as you're looking at it now you could remember uh what it would have been like to look at something similar in that other place for which you came so there so you can bring the two experiences together and there's always a kind of a a doubleness to that uh to that experience and the more places you've been the more displacements you've gone through as every Exile does because every situation is a new and you start out each day a new the more experience seems to be multiple and complex and and composite and interesting for that [Music] reason good evening tonight we start with an exclusive report from inside the Palestinian refugee camp of bourj Al baraj in West beut It's Been Under Siege since the end of October and women and girls have to run a daily Gauntlet of sniper fire to get food and medical supplies the three main camps are Sabra and shatilla where Palestinians were massacred by right-wing Christian militias after the Israeli invasion in 198 8 2 and further down in the southern suburbs of Beirut boura bar covering about a square mile it's been held under siege for over 5 months by Amo militia men and Shiite Muslims in the Lebanese Army who don't want the PLO to reestablish a power base in Lebanon bour alaraj like other Palestinian refugee camps was built by people who fled the new state of Israel in 1948 it's always been a sort of state within a state itself you become you become incapable really of reacting further you just take it in and and say that's where we are but I think it en it encourages in me and I I think in most Palestinians who who who have watched or heard about this uh the will to resist further I mean that that you know we mustn't let this some simply take place and these people be a faced we must continue to to fight and uh and to struggle towards something that will take us out of this and that bu baraj and and shatila and Sabra and all the other I mean the whole string of these catastrophes in our histories have to end up somewhere uh that isn't just another catastrophe above all else they know the cost of food that comes from the outside cannot be counted in Lebanese pounds it is paid for in blood an 18-year-old victim of the death passage having paid for bread with her life well I think I think to a large degree it is their fault I mean I I have no doubt that it's the case that the Palestinians fault is that they exist and wherever they exist whether they exist in former Palestine now Israel occupied territories Jordan Syria Lebanon Egypt and elsewhere they are a reminder because they are extremely politically conscious they are people who are simply not going to go back on their National demand which is self-determination a society in a place of their own so that by their very existence which is their fault technically speaking they are a provocation uh to all the societies and all the states in the region and and in the world elsewhere uh who have tried to eliminate them or say that these people should be settled elsewhere they should give up on this now we now have Israel we now have Lebanon we now have Jordan let's not have another uh state so the stubborn resistance of the Palestinian to say no I I mean I'm I'm the one who was driven off the land and dispossessed and dislocated uh and just that very fact to say that you're a Palestinian [Music] [Music] brutality displayed little regard for the tourist's protests they gassed them in Hebron with feelings running high at the funeral of a man who died of asphixiation in a cloud of gas earlier in the day the soldiers moved in to break up the funeral procession when gas failed to do that live ammunition was used and there was fresh evidence that despite assurances that they've been given orders to the contrary Israeli forces are still meating out their own summary Justice this youth sampled it just north of Jerusalem and outside Nablus one of the worst cases of brutality yet witnessed the youths had been throwing stones they were caught according to the solders orders they should have been arrested and detained in fact the soldiers spent 40 minutes systematically beating the youth until they'd broken their arms Palestinians say this is happening with increasing frequency what do these the events of the last few months mean to you I mean I I I sense there first of all as one of the people in Gaza said that fear has been forbidden I mean nobody seems to be afraid of armed Israelis and the subsequent beatings and the brutality that have been on the screen has not deterred Palestinians from a rather disciplined and intelligent mass action of one sort or another I mean you know throwing stones are only part of it the other is just endlessly disrupting the the occupation in one way or another so that they they never know what's coming next and they can never sort of rest assured that they've got control of the territory so there's that for us for me I mean as a Palestinian I there a tremendous amount of attention now focused on the Palestinians who they are what they're doing Etc whereas we had always been kind of secondary and shadowy figures we still are to a certain degree most people don't know who I mean they're faceless people but still there's some sense in which you know somebody like myself is now called upon frequently to talk about this to express to explain to interpret in a way that hadn't been true before for there's a there's a there's a kind of heroism here which is which has communicated itself to us all so that everybody feels he's willing to he or she is willing to make sacrifices shortly before the uprising began s accepted an invitation to lecture at beer Zite University in the Israeli occupied West Bank I was prepared to go we were all going I was going with my wife and two children we had reserved seats on British Airways to London and then London to Tel Aviv and um about 10 days ago I I started to get signals that i' better not come and then uh 3 4 days ago in in mid-march I got a clipping sent to me from davar which is an Israeli newspaper in which it was suggested that by the prime minister's office that should I appear at the airport I would not be admitted so in in in the circumstances it seemed to me rather quixotic to to to try because it would probably mean you know being sent back so I I just didn't but it was it was a it was a blow because we had looked forward to it and I had wanted my children who have never been there to see it I particularly wanted my son who is named after my father to go to the school where I and my father both went St George's and see his F his grandfather's name on the first 11 for Cricket and and uh and football you know in 196 or whatever it was but it it didn't work out maybe we'll go at some later date but it doesn't look too probable [Music] now Exile the facts of my birth are so distant and strange as to be about someone I've heard of rather than someone I know Nazareth my mother's Town Jerusalem my father's the pictures I see of these places today display the same produce presented in the same carelessly plentiful way in the same rough wooden cases the same people walk by looking at the same posters and trinkets concealing the same Secrets searching for the same profits pleasures and goals the same as what there's little that I can truly remember about Jerusalem and Nazareth little that is specific little that has the irreducible durability of tactile visual or auditory memories that concede nothing to time little that is not confused with pictures I have seen or scenes I've glimpsed elsewhere in the Arab world Palestine is exile dispossession the inaccurate memories of one place slipping into vague memories of another the story of Palestine cannot be told smoothly instead the past like the present offers only occurrences and coincidences random

Channel: Christopher Sykes

Views: 664,159

Keywords: Edward Said, Columbia, Palestine, Orientalism, Israel, terrorism, holocaust, Holy Land, BBC, exile, gaza, shoa, antisemitism, literature, critic, intifada, west bank, arab, palestinian, human rights, occupation, jerusalem, jew

Id: 7g1ooTNkMQ4

Length: 54min 11sec (3251 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2013