As Iâm preparing this archival program for rebroadcast at the end of June, 2020, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce his governmentâs annexation of major areas of the Israeli-Occupied Palestinian West Bank, including the Jordan Valley. Such an act would eliminate whatever possibility remained of creating a Palestinian state side by side with Israel which had been stated US policy prior to the election of Donald Trump.
This is Edward Said's last major speech on Palestine, the war on Iraq and the Bush administration. On September 25, 2003, a message made its way around the world. Edward Said, Palestinian American, world famous professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and fearless defender of the Palestinian cause had died of leukemia in New York City, far from the city of Jerusalem where he was born in 1935.
In 1948 Said and his family were forced to leave Palestine for Cairo when the newly founded state of Israel took their ancestral home. Later Said came to the US, studied at Princeton and Harvard and went on to teach at Yale and Columbia. He was not only a renowned academic but also an eloquent spokesperson for Palestinian rights and sovereignty.
Said leaves behind a treasure of writings including his most influential book, Orientalism (1978),as well as books inspired by his passionate advocacy of the Palestinian cause, including The Question of Palestine, (1979), Covering Islam (1981), After the Last Sky (1986), Blaming the Victims (1988), and Culture and Imperialism (1993).
Said was recorded at UC Berkeley in February of 2003 - his last public address before his death seven months later.
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