An overflowing crowd of UCLA students greeted leading
Palestinian intellectual and activist, Edward Said, with a standing
ovation at Royce Hall on Thursday night, but response to his talk
afterward has been mixed.
Said’s two-hour speech focused on what he called the
Israelis’ persistent abuse of Palestinian human rights
occurring since the declaration of the Jewish state in 1948. He
claimed that “short of genocide, I can’t think of one
single human right that hasn’t been violated.”
He said that the electric fence surrounding the Gaza Strip
renders it “a prison” and that Palestinians remain
politically unrepresented in Israel. On the other hand, he said,
the Israeli Law of Return entitles any Jew to automatic Israeli
citizenship.
“Separation between peoples is not a solution to the
problems that divide them,” he added, in reference to the
expensive wall that is being constructed around the West Bank.
Said was critical of the U.S. media, arguing it has
intentionally distorted Palestinian occupied territories by
portraying them as having resources equal to Israel’s. He
also said there are large imbalances of economic power, military
strength and human rights violations between Jewish Israelis and
Palestinians.
He said “there cannot be dialogue between two completely
unequal people … what can they dialogue about?” claiming
the Oslo peace process was an Israeli misnomer during which time
the abuse of Palestinian rights and U.N. edicts increased as a
result of the intensification of illegal settlement building.
He was also highly critical of the relationship between the
United States and Israel, saying that $135 billion of U.S. tax
money has contributed to the systematic abuse of Palestinian human
and civil rights.
Said pointed out what he sees as the hypocrisy of the Bush
administration, an administration he accused of supporting the
abuse of Palestinian human rights while claiming to desire the
liberation of oppressed Iraqis.
A war with Iraq will be a “war of resources and strategic
control” Said said. Yet he emphasized that “terrible
abstractions of national unity and national interest should not be
allowed to ignore individuals’ rights.”
Said concluded his speech on a more positive note saying his
recent music workshops in Europe with Israeli, Palestinian and
other Arab teenagers have shown him that coexistence between equals
is possible.
He ended by saying that he was “full of optimism, despite
the darkening skies.”
Said’s views provoked a mixed and heated reaction from the
multi-ethnic audience.
One Jewish Israeli student, who said she opposed the occupation,
asked Said to respond to the issue of Palestinian human rights in
the face of continuing suicide bombings in Israel. Said sympathized
with the plight of the Israelis and condemned violence yet claimed
it was “state terrorism” that lay at the root of the
problem.
In a question-and-answer session Hillel’s Rabbi Chaim
Seidler-Feller strongly argued against Said’s claim that
800,000 Palestinians were expelled from Israel in the 1948
Arab-Israeli war.
He implored Said to sign an agreement with him stating his
support for the end of the occupation and the establishment of an
independent Palestinian state. Said refused, saying he would agree
to the end of Occupation, nothing more.
Afterwards, Seidler-Feller said Said “set back the chances
of coexistence and mutual respect between the two
communities” and that he had “created an environment
that nurtured hostile feelings.”
Justin Levi, a fourth-year political science student and member
of Bruins for Israel, said fellow members were outraged by
Said’s speech. He also said Jews in the audience felt
outnumbered and intimidated by anti-Zionist comments made
afterwards.
“Palestinian groups are responsible for abusing
Palestinian human rights,” he said. “They kill people
when they speak out.”
Perhaps acknowledging that some would be upset with what Said
would have to say, Geoffrey Garrett, vice provost of the UCLA
International Institute, opened the event by asking, “If we
at the university cannot engage in civil debate, who
can?”