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edward said
Edward Said Warned Against Anti-Palestinian McCarthyism
Said’s legacy reads today as a scathing condemnation of the hypocrisy of U.S. liberal institutions, their moral corruption, and the hollowness of the very values that they profess to teach.
Apr 21, 2024
Students across the United States are rising up against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, bringing to memory the student movements of the 1960s. From Columbia to Brown, from Yale to Harvard, students are staging sit-ins, hunger strikes, class walkouts, and interfaith prayers, demanding an end to U.S. support for Israel and the complicity of their academic institutions in the ongoing genocide.
While some U.S. institutions are treading a delicate path, the Columbia University administration, led by President Minouche Shafik, has violently cracked down on its own students, summoning the NYPD to mass arrest over 100 students, and suspending others with a 15-minute notice. In an unprecedented brutal crackdown on free speech on campus, the police destroyed solidarity encampments and student belongings, while charging arrested students with “trespassing” on the campus that they are charged a whopping tuition of more than $60,000 a year to attend!
In its attempt to appease far-right extremists in Congress, and to save Columbia from “being cursed by God,” as a Republican Congressman warned Shafik, Columbia has sided with genocide, thus undermining its own legacy of safeguarding free speech and peaceful protest on campus.
Perceptively, Said warned of weaponizing antisemitism and the plight of Jews in Europe as a means to suppress and vilify Palestinians, and to justify Israel’s oppression of its victims.
The violence has backfired, as hundreds of students continue to protest at Columbia, sparking a ripple effect across U.S. campuses, and defying what they see as a growing McCarthyism in U.S. academia. An early target of this academic McCarthyism was the prominent Palestinian-American intellectual and distinguished Columbia Professor Edward Said, whose writings on postcolonialism, humanism, and democratic criticism are required readings at Columbia and across the humanities.
Said was a victim of anti-Palestinian intimidation himself. His office at Columbia was occasionally raided and vandalized. He received several death threats and was smeared with terrorism accusations and spied on by students and AIPAC agents. Shortly before his death, Said became the target of a vicious academic persecution, which he survived only because Columbia still had a shred of academic and moral integrity at the time.
In July 2000, Said went to South Lebanon on a solidarity tour, where he hurled a rock toward an Israeli guardhouse from the Lebanese border, which he described as “a symbolic gesture of joy” to mark the end of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. A photographer caught the action, featuring Said with his arm reached far behind him, ready to throw. The Israeli lobby, led by Anti-Defamation League, called on Columbia to punish Said. Columbia refused to be intimidated, though it took the administration two months of eerie silence to respond. In its five-page letter response, the university said that Said’s action was protected under the principles of academic freedom. Citing John Stuart Mill as well as from the Columbia Faculty Handbook, the letter asserted:
There is nothing more fundamental to a university than the protection of the free discourse of individuals who should feel free to express their views without fear of the chilling effect of a politically dominant ideology... This matter cuts to the heart of what are fundamental values at a great university.
In defense of Said, the letter added: “If we are to deny Professor Said the protection to write and speak freely, whose speech will next be suppressed and who will be the inquisitor who determines who should have a right to speak his or her mind without fear of retribution?”
The era of moral clarity and intellectual integrity in academia is now unraveling amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The tragic irony is that the current atmosphere of anti-Palestinian McCarthyism on U.S. campuses—led by an unlikely coalition of far-right Republicans, mainstream media, and liberal academic institutions—was foreseen by none other than Said himself. In his seminal essay, “Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims” (1979), Said warned:
The special, one might even call it the privileged, place in this discussion of the United States is impressive, for all sorts of reasons. In no other country, except Israel, is Zionism enshrined as an unquestioned good, and in no other country is there so strong a conjuncture of powerful institutions and interests—the press, the liberal intelligentsia, the military-industrial complex, the academic community, labor unions—for whom […] uncritical support of Israel and Zionism enhances their domestic as well as international standing.”
Presaging the rise of anti-Palestinian McCarthyism in academia, Said detected a state of academic repression and campus policing in which Palestinians “have no permission to narrative” and are increasingly demonized and silenced in the name of fighting antisemitism—a loaded concept that has become a shield for Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Perceptively, Said warned of weaponizing antisemitism and the plight of Jews in Europe as a means to suppress and vilify Palestinians, and to justify Israel’s oppression of its victims. He understood that systematically inflating antisemitism with the critique of Zionism was feeding anti-Palestinian sentiments in U.S. academic and media discourse. He further warned:
One must admit, however, that all liberals and even most “radicals” have been unable to overcome the Zionist habit of equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Any wellmeaning person can thus oppose South African or American racism and at the same time tacitly support Zionist racial discrimination against non-Jews in Palestine. The almost total absence of any handily available historical knowledge from non-Zionist sources, the dissemination by the media of malicious simplifications (e.g., Jews vs. Arabs), the cynical opportunism of various Zionist pressure groups, the tendency endemic to university intellectuals uncritically to repeat cant phrases and political clichés (this is the role Gramsci assigned to traditional intellectuals, that of being “experts in legitimation”), the fear of treading upon the highly sensitive terrain of what Jews did to their victims, in an age of genocidal extermination of Jews—all this contributes to the dulling, regulated enforcement of almost unanimous support for Israel.
The assault on Columbia students is an attack on constitutional rights and the basic tenets of democracy. It’s deplorable that the one of the most violent crackdown on student protests in U.S. history is coinciding with one of the worst genocides in recent memory, which has killed over 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them children, and displaced nearly two million others.
One day after the mass arrests at Columbia, Palestinians in Gaza unearthed large mass graves at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, containing hundreds of civilians and patients who were massacred or buried alive by Israel. More deplorable, from the young generation’s standpoint, is that this genocide is being backed and sustained by U.S. weapons and tax money, diplomatic support, and media and academic complicity. (The Biden administration is preparing to send its largest military aid package to Israel in U.S. history, with bipartisan blessing.) Despite massive protests, U.S. colleges have refused to divest from Israel over its genocidal war in Gaza (with few notable exceptions that include Rutgers and UC Davis.) Several universities, including Columbia, have suspended the chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Edward Said’s legacy reads today as a scathing condemnation of the hypocrisy of U.S. liberal institutions, their moral corruption, and the hollowness of the very values that they profess to teach. This irony is best illustrated by a Columbia student’s protest sign, which read:
“Columbia, why require me to read Prof. Edward Said, if you don’t want me to use it?”
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Transcending the Clinton-Sanders Debate: On the Middle East and US Foreign Policy
Feb 25, 2016
As US liberals and some leftists are pulling up their sleeves in anticipation of a prolonged battle for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination, the tussle becomes particularly ugly whenever the candidates' foreign policy agendas are evoked.
Of the two main contenders, Hilary Clinton is the obvious target. She is an interventionist uncompromising, and her term as Secretary of State (2009-2013) is a testament to her role in sustaining the country's foreign policy agenda under George W. Bush (as a Senator, she had voted for the Iraq war in 2002) and advocating regime change in her own right. Her aggressive foreign policy hit rock bottom in her infamous statement upon learning of the news that Libyan leader, Muammer Gaddafi, was captured and killed in a most savage way.
"We came; we saw; he died," Clinton rejoiced during a TV interview, once the news of Gaddafi's grisly murder was announced on October 20, 2011. True to form, Clinton used intervention in the now broken-up and warring country for her own personal gains, as her email records which were later released, publically indicated.
In one email, her personal advisor, Sidney Blumenthal congratulated her on her effort that led to the 'realizing' of 'a historic moment," - overthrowing Gaddafi - urging her to "make a public statement before the cameras (and to) establish yourself as in the historical record at this moment." She agreed, but suggested that she needed to wait until "Qaddafi goes, which will make it more dramatic."
Her rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters, of course, pounce on the opportunity to discredit Clinton, which is not entirely difficult. But many have argued that, although Sanders is promoted as the more amiable and trustworthy, if compared to Clinton, his voting record is hardly encouraging.
"Sanders supported Bill Clinton's war on Serbia, voted for the 2001 Authorization Unilateral Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), which pretty much allowed Bush to wage war wherever he wanted (and) backed Obama's Libyan debacle," wrote Jeffery St. Clair. Aside from supporting the US' current position on Syria, Sanders has "voted twice in support of regime change in Iraq," including in 1998.
"It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime," the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 read.
On Israel, Sander's legacy is very similar to that of President Barack Obama. He seemed to be relatively balanced (as 'balanced' as Americans officials can be) during his earlier days in various official capacities, a position that became more hawkish with time. It behooves those who argue that Sanders is the lesser of two evils to examine the legacy of President Obama, whose sympathy with the Palestinians was underscored by his friendship with the late Palestinian Professor Edward Said, and Professor Rashid al-Khalidi. The trappings and balances of power, however, led Obama to repeatedly grovel before the Israeli Lobby in Washington DC, and he has stalwartly backed Israel's wars against Gaza. More Palestinians died at the hand of Israel during Obama's terms than those killed during the administration of W. Bush, who was an adamant supporter of Israel. Still, the current administration is negotiating an increase in US funding of Israel to exceed, and by far, the current 3.7 billion dollars a year.
As odd as this may actually sound, as First Lady, Clinton, too, was criticized for not being firm enough in her support for Israel before shifting her position in supporting Israel, right or wrong, just before she eyed a Senator position representing the State of New York.
Not that many are ignorant of Sanders' less-than-perfect past records, but some are rushing to Sanders' side because they are compelled largely by fear that a Clinton White House would spell disaster for the future of the country, not just in the area of foreign policy, but domestic policies as well.
It is this train of thought that has compelled leading Leftist professor, Noam Chomsky, to display support for Sanders, and, if necessary, even Clinton in swing states to block Republican candidates from winning the presidency.
Chomsky, of course, has no illusions that Sanders' self-proclaimed socialist title is even close to the truth. He is not a socialist, said Chomsky in a recent interview with Al Jazeera, but a "decent, honest New Dealer." Thanks to the massive repositioning of the American political system to the Right, if one is a New Dealer, one is mistaken for a 'raving leftist."
To a degree, one can sympathize with Chomsky's position considering the madness of the political rhetoric from the Right, where Donald Trump wants to ban Muslims from entering the country, and Ted Cruz is advocating 'carpet bombing' Middle Eastern countries to fight terrorism. But, on the other hand, one is expected to question the long-term benefit of the lesser of two evils approach to permanent, serious change in society. Chomsky had, in fact, made similar statements in previous presidential elections, yet America's foreign and domestic policies seems to be in constant decline.
If seen within the larger historical context, US foreign policy, at least since the end of the Second World War, has been that of 'rolling back' and 'containing' perceived enemies, 'regime change' and outright military intervention. The tools used to achieve US foreign policy interest have rarely ever changed as a result of the type of administration (the lesser of two evils, Democrat, or a raging Republican) but varied, largely based on practical circumstances.
The rise of the Soviet Union as a global contender after WWII made it difficult for the US to always resort to war as a first choice, fearing an open confrontation with the pro-Soviet bloc and possibly a nuclear war. It was Henry Kissinger that helped navigate America's imperial interests at the time, resorting to most underhanded and, often, criminal tactics to achieve his goals.
But the demise of the USSR has opened up US appetite for global hegemony like never before. The US's interventionist strategy became most dominant throughout the 1990s to the present time. If Republican or Democratic administrations differed in any way, it was largely in rhetoric, not action. Whereas Republicans justified their interventions based on pre-emptive doctrines, Democrats referenced humanitarian interventionism. Both were equally deadly and, combined, destabilized the Middle East beyond repair.
The Presidency of Obama is hardly a significant departure from the norm, although his doctrine - 'leading from behind', at times and aerial bombardment as opposed to 'boots on the ground' and so on - is mostly compelled by circumstances and not in the least a departure from the policies of his predecessors.
While US administrations change their tactics, infuse their doctrines and adapt to various political conditions, wherever they intervene in the world, massive, complex disasters follow.
Clinton might have come, saw, and Gaddafi was brutally murdered, but the country has also descended into a 'state of nature' type of chaos, where extreme violence meted out by militant brutes and managed by Western-backed politicians has taken reign.
Similar fates have been suffered by Iraq, Yemen, and Syria.
Thus, it is essential that we understand such historical contexts before, once more, delving into impractical political feuds that, ultimately, validate the very US political establishment which, whether led by Republicans or Democrats, have wrought unmitigated harm to the Middle East, instability and incalculable deaths.
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