The Wise Raven Is Dead
by Israel Shamir
It takes an enemy to eulogise a great warrior.
His hurt cry is sweeter than friends’ approval.
A few days ago died my great countryman Edward
Said, and our comrades-in-arms wrote obituaries
tolling like copper bells in the air of his
native Jerusalem. They stressed goodness of his
heart, expanse of his knowledge, his relentless
support for the downtrodden of Palestine. But to
my ears, the most pleasing obituary to Said was
that composed by his and ours enemy, one Zev
Chafets, who wrote in an American Zionist (well,
aren’t they all?) paper The New York Daily News:
"Said didn't blow up Marines in Lebanon in
1983, ignite the Palestinian intifadeh or send
Wahhabi missionaries to preach violence against
infidels. He certainly didn't fly a plane into
the World Trade Center. What he did do was jam
America's intellectual radar."
Above: Edward Said takes part in intifadah
Who the hell is Zev Chafets? This symbol of
integration of two Jewish elites, of America and
Israel, an American Jew from Michigan went to
Israel in 1969. When he was in the IDF he was
posted to the West Bank, where he found he liked
kicking Arab ass and even was reprimanded for
his brutality. His first marriage broke up
because he raised his hand to his wife once too
often. His career of a petty sadist shot up when
Menachem Begin, the arch-terrorist and mass
murderer, became the Prime Minister of Israel.
Begin appointed him the head of the government
press office. Now he poisons Americans’ minds
with his racist propaganda and promotes war. On
August 19, 2003, he wrote: “The people of Iraq
have made their choice. They want barbarism. The
polite term for this in the Arab world is
self-determination. The Arabs have been given
the chance to rule themselves. The result is
almost two dozen impoverished, xenophobic
dictatorships. This is not a condition imposed
upon the Arabs. On the contrary, it expresses
their political culture. It's what the Arabs
want” .
What do ‘the Jews’ personified by Chafets want,
then? On November 12, 2002, Zev Chafets wrote in
the New Haven Register an article headlined,
"Disarming Iraq is only a start in Middle East".
He explained that the Arab and Iranian cultures
were "irrational" and that nothing could be done
to "improve the collective mental health of Arab
societies" short of invading and subjugating
them to direct Israeli – American rule . In
short, they want domination.
Inverting his own rhetoric, we can say: Chafets
did not drive a 65 ton bulldozer over the
pregnant Nuha Swaidan and the Seattle girl
Rachel Corrie, he did not sodomise the Lebanese
prisoners of war in the dark cellars of Shabak,
he certainly did not pour bombs on Baghdad and
Kabul. He provided intellectual support for
these deeds. And Edward Said was the greatest
adversary he came across.
Edward Said could not stop single-handed the
mighty Judeo-American disinformation machine,
but he explained to us its working. Like the
wise raven from Tolkien’s Hobbit, he pointed out
the vulnerable spots of the dragon. He explained
to us the vital importance of the battle for
narrative, the struggle for discourse, this
spiritual plane of the war on the ground. He
understood that the scientists and columnists’
‘explanation’ of the world outside its
Anglo-American ‘core’ precedes its conquest.
Paradoxically, I came to his reading of history
in snowy Moscow of 1991, when the theories of
Milton Friedman, the tools of neo-liberal
discourse were applied as powerful systemic
weapon and turned the people of Russia into poor
strangers in their own home.
Though the name of Edward Said is inseparably
connected to the sad and haunting Holy Land, it
would be a mistake to view his oeuvre through
Palestinocentric eyes. He was a Karl Marx to
Foucault’s Hegel, to wit, like Marx overturned
Hegel and placed his theory on the feet, while
previously it was standing on the head; Said
overturned Foucault and gave his great ideas to
the people. His Orientalism provides a
revelatory reading, for it explains that ‘area
studies’ of the American discourse – not only
Oriental Studies, but its sisters Kremlinology,
Russian Studies and Chinese Studies as well –
are tools of subjugation.
But he was also a Karl Marx to Karl Marx. While
vulgar Marxists concentrated their attention on
the ownership of the means of production and saw
the capitalist owners as ultimate enemy of the
people; Said perceived the true order of the
battle. The great and evil minds that direct
politics from their university cathedra are
infinitely more important to our future than the
rich but feeble-minded bastards. Indeed, their
takeover of American universities, so clearly
presented by Saul Bellow in his Ravelstein was
the paramount event of the last thirty years.
Whoever controls media, promotes an academic
school, whoever controls universities, decides
the content of the media; whoever controls media
and universities, controls government. Or, in
Biblical terms, Sulzberger chose Leo Strauss,
Leo Strauss begat Wolfowitz, Wolfowitz begat
Iraqi War. Milton Friedman begat IMF, IMF begat
world poverty. Bernard Lewis begat Samuel
Huntington, Samuel Huntington begat the War on
Islam. Bernard-Henri Levy begat Andre Sacharov,
and the Soviet Union was privatised by Gusinsky
and Chodorkovsky.
Said taught us to perceive the big guns of
aircraft carrier beyond academic mantle of the
reticent professors. He noticed the unique place
of Zionist ideas in the Western imperialist
thought. He left further development of this
thought to us. Indeed, when I pointed out the
Zionist connection and the mean Judaic spirit of
the new American imperialism, I was duly
assaulted by gatekeepers of PC; but Edward Said
wrote to me much needed letters of support. To
his last days he referred to my writing, though
it was extremely hazardous for a professor in a
leading American university. For there are rich
benefactors who support universities and
think-tanks, who provide advertising to
newspapers, and they are tied-in with the
Zionist knot.
Edward Said was well aware of it, and he dreamed
to use the Arab funds to counteract the Zionist
propaganda machine in the tug-of-war for
American minds. He could do it: not in vain,
Chafets wrote that ‘his "Orientalism" did more
for the jihad than a battalion of Osamas’. He
was indeed a great warrior in jihad of spirit
and he dreamed of our think-tanks fighting the
JINSA think-tanks in a spiritual Armageddon. But
the Arab princes and the Russian billionaires
preferred to spend their money on tangible
assets. They did not understand that material
things are more fragile and perishable than the
assets of spirit, and that tomorrow they will
lose their material goods because today they did
not invest into spirit.
Edward Said was an Arab, and it is natural that
he frequently referred to the Arab experience.
But his ideas are equally important for all the
people who were deemed irrelevant by the new
masters of the world. The evil wizards he
confronted are the enemies of mankind; they are
equally bad and foreign to a Detroit worker and
a Palestinian peasant, to a Russian scientist or
a Turkish writer. We do not know who will
incarnate the dream of Said: a Californian
computer genius or a Saudi prince, a Russian
media lord or a wise Chinese Communist leader,
an Indian Raja or a Malay Prime minister. But it
will be done, for the magic of names tells us
that Said (spiritual bliss) will overcome
Chafets (desire for material things).
Edward Said jammed our view of Arab world by Zev
Chafets
As far as we know, Saddam Hussein is on the
loose in Iraq, Osama Bin Laden is hiding
somewhere in the tribal lands of Pakistan and
Sheik Ahmed Yassin is still dodging Israeli
bombs in Gaza. But the jihad lost a hero last
week right here in New York City. Edward Said,
Columbia University's famous warrior-scholar, is
dead, felled at age 67 by leukemia. Columbia
mourns. "This death is an irreplaceable loss to
the realm of ideas," said President Lee
Bollinger. Bollinger's grief is shared by many.
CounterPunch, a journal of the radical left, has
run a series of fervid tributes to Said's life
and work. The Saudi government-controlled Arab
News has extolled him in almost glowing terms.
Not since the Soviet-Nazi nonaggression pact of
1939 has there been such ideological harmony.
Said not only united fascists and Communists, he
also served as an ecumenical bridge. He was the
rare Episcopalian admired by Hamas, whose goal
of eradicating Israel he shared; Hezbollah -
which was his host in southern Lebanon on his
famous rock-throwing expedition - and other
pillars of Islamic orthodoxy. This is not as
incongruous as it might seem. Said was a dapper
fellow, known in the salons of New York for his
fine piano playing and nuanced appreciation of
Jane Austen's novels. But beneath the foppish
exterior beat the heart of a martyr. His most
famous book, "Orientalism," published in 1979,
did more for the jihad than a battalion of
Osamas. Like all great polemics, "Orientalism"
rests on a simple thesis: Westerners are
inherently unable to fairly judge, or even
grasp, the Arab world. In fact, any attempt to
do so amounts to an act of intellectual
imperialism. This idea was seized upon by
American students of the Middle East as a
liberating insight. If they couldn't understand
the Arab world - if, indeed, studying the
subject was tantamount to colonialist aggression
- then they could skip class and go out for
hummus. All they needed to become qualified
Arabists was a humble attitude and a mastery of
the orthodoxies propounded by Said and other
experts. "Orientalism" made Said a hero not only
in the mosques of Gaza, but in the halls of ivy.
Not since Cliffs Notes has a work so simplified
scholarship. Since 1979, a generation of
Saidists - professors, diplomats and foreign
correspondents - has dominated polite discourse
on the Middle East. Their animating principle is
politically correct simplicity itself: see no
evil, hear no evil and speak no evil about the
Arab world. Of course, Said allowed himself to
criticize Arab regimes - usually on the grounds
that they weren't sufficiently revolutionary.
But he carefully remained within the bounds of
acceptable Arab opinion. He was until his death
a valued contributor to Al Ahram, the house
organ of the Egyptian government. Said wasn't
responsible for the depredations of Hosni
Mubarak's regime or any other Arab tyranny. He
didn't blow up Marines in Lebanon in 1983,
ignite the Palestinian intifadeh or send Wahhabi
missionaries to preach violence against
infidels. He certainly didn't fly a plane into
the World Trade Center. What he did do was jam
America's intellectual radar.
He wasn't the architect of 9/11, but he was the
father of the 9/12 inability to comprehend it.
Ah, well, Said is in paradise now. As an
Episcopalian, he's ineligible for the customary
72 virgins, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's
honored with a couple of female doctoral
candidates. No one deserves it more. Meanwhile,
the legacy lives. Like George Steinbrenner,
Bollinger has recruited a new superstar for
Columbia's "realm of ideas." Rashid Khalidy is
now the enforcer of Arab authenticity in
Morningside Heights, and he's got the title to
prove it: Edward Said professor of Middle
Eastern studies.
Originally published on October 1, 2003 |
