النهار

“The struggle of Palestine is not just a political struggle; it is a struggle for our humanity”-Edward Said

Edward Said is a Palestinian American academic, political activist, and literacy critic. He is recognized as one of the world’s leading cultural critics as he represented the very ideal of the “cosmopolitan intellectual”. Edward Said’s well-known book “Orientalism” left a significant impact and created a new field of the postcolonial studies. Said was fully engaged with the idea of Palestine and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) through several ways such as: solidarity, representation, advocacy, and critique.

According to his book “Question of Palestine”, Said discusses the “social science jargon and ideological cliches masked as knowledge”. The book is entitled as such as a question of people who were forced to leave their homeland, and whose basic human rights have been denied, in order for the Jews to build their own state in what is claimed as the land of their ancestors. According to Said, the question of Palestine is not political, but rather a fundamentally moral. For most westerners, the word “Palestinians” has become a synonym of terrorism, because of what the western media portrays about Palestinians. In an effort to awaken the West to this tragedy, Said wrote the most concise description of the intentions and deeds of the Zionists in the last one hundred years, “Zionism from the Standpoint of its victims”. Nevertheless, Edward Said discusses the silence in the West as “disgraceful”. “It is one of the most frightening cultural episodes of this century, this almost total silence about Zionism’s doctrines for and treatment of the native Palestine” (p.113).

However, in chapter three, Said discussed two key points the identity and self-assertion of Palestinians. In the past few years, Palestinians have managed to create a universal language to make the world aware of their identity as Palestinians whose homeland has been occupied by Israelis. Palestinians are no longer “refugees”, but they became the core of the “Middle East Crisis” that should be resolved.

Unhappily, no meaningful solution is on the horizon. Palestinians are still suffering, they are still in pain, surrounded with tortures and lack of the basic fundamental human rights. The Question of Palestine book is an indispensable book for reading, as it gives a significant insight not only for the Palestine, but rather for the whole situation in the Middle East.