Edward Said Speaks to Overflow Crowd at UCLA, Israel-First Dissenters Attempt to Disrupt Lecture

By Pat McDonnell Twair

When Edward Said, the greatest living Palestinian academic, spoke February 20 at UCLA, the venue had to be changed to Royce Hall to accommodate 1,800 students and admirers who called for reservations.

About two dozen hard-core supporters of Israel distributed anti-Said fliers while a bevy of middle-aged pro-Sharon women gathered in the front rows near a microphone for the Q&A session.

When a woman from the sponsoring Burkle Center for International Relations asked the Israel-firsters to refrain from distributing the anti-Said fliers inside the auditorium, a pugnacious Sharonista demanded to know her name, while claiming she is a UCLA graduate and would hand out fliers wherever she chose.

When the distinguished scholar and former member of the Palestine National Council came to the podium, he received a standing ovation. A man wearing a yarmulke sitting next to me, who did not participate in the ovation, wrote notes furiously throughout Said's talk dedicated to the "Israeli Assault on Palestinian Memory."

Said earned his second round of applause in response to his observation: "No power, no matter how horrific its past, should be exempt from censure if it practices starvation, torture, forced transfer. We live in a secular world--there simply is no way to legitimize bombing and maiming people because they don't belong to the correct race."

Noting that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon went on record that he will put no restrictions on his actions in the West Bank, Said countered that the world must oppose such "sluggish balderdash, especially if it justifies barbarism."

The Columbia University professor of comparative literature stressed that in his lifetime--since 1948--two-thirds of the Palestinians have been dispersed from their homeland:

"Seven and a half million Palestinians are stateless refugees all over the world and Israel denies any blame. From the moment the Oslo Accords were undertaken in 1993, neither Israel nor the U.S. acknowledged past injustices. Instead, Israel and the U.S. divided and subdivided Palestinian land all under the rubric of a peace process."

"Was there ever any other intention but to postpone and acquire more land?" he asked rhetorically.

Israel's systematic efforts to wipe out the Palestinian memory have been to obliterate old cemeteries and villages.

The image of Israel rising afresh and removing traces of the Palestinians worked quite well at first, he pointed out. Israeli archaeologists were complicit in providing an ancient past absent of Arabs.

Even though 800,000 Palestinians were expelled and the Israelis have repressed Palestinian institutional life since 1967, Said declared, "Israel is still encumbered by Palestinian memory."

Whenever he speaks publicly, Said says he must outline the chronology of disbursement of the Palestinian people because most Westerners are only aware of the Israeli myth of Palestine as a land with no people for a people (Jews) with no land.

Pointing out that when the Israelis invaded Lebanon in 1982, they removed all Palestinian archives from Beirut, he said that in the latest incursions into Palestinian territories, they removed all records from the Central Bureau of Statistics and Department of Health.

"Is this a prelude to ethnic cleansing?" he asked.

"Efforts of spin doctors offer an Israeli version that the struggle is between equal forces and that the Israelis must be harsh to suppress terrorists. Now a great wall is being built to blot out the existence of the Palestinians," he continued.

"An entire people is to be removed from sight as if they are so many insects to be swatted aside. This is a tremendous assault on memory."

And yet, he enthused, "the Palestinian style invigorates their far flung existence. The Palestinian struggle is irreversible and now situated in contemporary awareness. The universality of this drive has its place in all liberation movements.

"Every major United Nations conference deals with the question of Palestine.

"Palestine now is the progressive cause. Divestment campaigns and boycotts of Israeli goods are present on most U.S. campuses."

As the audience of nearly 1,800 roared its approval of Said's speech, the yarmulke-wearing man next to me scrambled over my legs in his rush to be first at the Q&A microphone.

He introduced himself as Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller and notified Said that his figures are wrong, that 800,000 Palestinians were not expelled in 1948. "Your emphasis on memory is paralytic, your memory is mired in suffering," stated the rabbi.

While many in the audience shouted "What's your question," the agitated rabbi challenged Said to sign some kind of statement.

Said responded: "You did your case a massive injustice. You didn't voice the slightest regret over crimes that Israel refuses to admit. As for the 800,000 expelled, Yitzhak Rabin and David Ben Gurion cited this figure, Ilan Pappe' has written about it. Your tirade of half-truths didn't mention illegal [Israeli] settlements. This is a savage war of oppression and until that fact is faced, there can be no peace. The only paper I'll sign is one to end the Israeli occupation."

Immediately after the program, Rabbi Seidler-Feller argued with Middle Eastern students at the entrance to Royce Hall. The shouting match lasted a good half hour as the rabbi told students they must recognize the state of Israel and Jewish people before he could talk to them.

Into the melee entered Yael Korin, a UCLA researcher and co-founder of Women in Black - Los Angeles.

Korin retorted the Palestinians have recognized the state of Israel. "It's the Israelis and Jewish people who haven't recognized the Palestinian people yet."

Korin told Muslim WakeUp! that the rabbi admonished her in Hebrew, stating she should be ashamed of herself and asking what Palestinians have recognized Jews and the state of Israel.

"I'm not ashamed of myself because I speak the truth," she answered in English.

The tirade backfired on the rabbi because many students gathered around Korin, asking to know more about Women in Black and how they could take part in its human rights demonstrations.

Editor's Note:
The man whose invective is referred to in the article, Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, is the director of the UCLA Hillel Center, the primary Jewish student institution at UCLA, and a professor of Jewish Studies.

In an article on issues facing Jews at university campuses, Seidler-Feller lists the fact that "Arab/Muslim student groups have recently found their voice and have entered the battle for recognition as an oppressed minority" as one of several "negative indicators" at universities today. He also betrays a peculiar obsession with Edward Said whom he holds responsible for creating a "chilling impact" in Middle East Studies programs and for an alleged dearth of academics "whose sympathies lie with Israel."

The scary thing is that Seidler-Feller is actually seen by many right wing Jews as a sellout and enemy of Israel!