Edward Said on Israel and Palestine. Presentation by Dr. Michael Schiffmann

Edward Said (1935 – 2003) was one of the most renowned cultural critics of our time. His book Orientalism (1978) made him famous all across the world; today, Said is regarded as one of the scholars at the origins of post-colonial studies. But Edward Said was also a Palestinian who felt deeply connected to the fate of his people, a fate to which he devoted a substantial body of his work from The Question of Palestine (1979) to Culture and Resistance (2003).

While Said always insisted on the historical and national rights of the Palestinian people, he was one of the first prominent Palestinians who called on his compatriots to recognize the immense historical suffering of the Jewish people. From the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of 1967 to his death in 2003, Said tirelessly promoted his humanistic vision in which the area of historic Palestine was shared equally by two national communities, Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews.

Until the mid-1990s, Said was an ardent proponent of the “two-state solution,” that is, a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 – a separate new state alongside Israel. In his later years, Said envisaged a “one-state solution” in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians would live together in a single state where both communities enjoy the same rights, including national rights. In all of this, Said’s fundamental moral vision never changed: Peace between the Israeli Jews and the Palestinians can only be based on mutual recognition, including recognition of the historical suffering of the other side, and a future in which they treat each other as equals.

After the horrific events on and after October 2023 and the horrors of the last 15 months, many people are asking: What now? What could be possible ways out of this carnage and towards a more decent and non-violent future? This is an area in which the voice of Edward Said still has a lot to offer. The event will consist of a lecture by Dr. Michael Schiffmann (translator of two of Edward Said’s books), briefly introduced by film material featuring Edward Said. This will be the first hour, followed by 60 minutes of discussion.