[Peace-discuss] Salaita/Said

[David Green]

 This comment was posted to the News-Gazette website underneath both the article and the (execrable) editorial about Salaita's appointment to the Said Chair at the American University in Beirut:http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2015-07-01/salaita-lands-job.htmlhttp://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2015-07-03/back-saddle.htmlIn his essay “Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims,”included in the book “The Question of Palestine” (1979), Edward Said wrote thefollowing:“The outcry in the West after the 1975 “Zionism is racism”resolution was passed in the United Nations was doubtless a genuine one. Israel’sJewish achievements—or rather on behalf of European Jew, less so for itsachievements on behalf of the Sephardic (Oriental) Jewish majority—stand beforethe Western world; by most standards they are considerable achievements, and itis right that they not sloppily be tarnished with the sweeping rhetoricaldenunciation associated with “racism.” For the Palestinian Arab who has lived throughand who has now studied the procedures of Zionism toward him and his land, thepredicament is complicated, but not finally unclear. He knows that the Law of Returnallowing a Jew immediate entry into Israel just as exactly prevents him fromreturning to his home; he also knows that Israeli raids killed thousands of civilians,all on the acceptable pretext of fighting terrorism, but in reality becausePalestinians as a race have become synonymous with unregenerate, essentiallyunmotivated terrorism; he understands without perhaps being able to master, theintellectual process by which his violated humanity has been transmuted,unheard and unseen, into praise for the ideology that has all but destroyedhim. Racism is too vague a term: Zionism is Zionism. For the Arab Palestinian,this tautology has a sense that is perfectly congruent with, but exactly theopposite of, what it says to Jews.”Given his scholarly record of incisive and thoughtfulliterary and political criticism, Steven Salaita is an excellent candidate to servein Said’s chair. Such criticism is, obviously, desperately needed on our own campusand in our own community. It’s not by accident that it was disallowed by the powers thatbe.
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