[here they are...going after Said the way they did Rigoberta M.--jsc]
From the Daily Telegraph:
Palestinian exile Said 'falsified' life story
By Alan Philps in Jerusalem and Daniel Johnson
EDWARD SAID, the leading Palestinian intellectual, was accused
yesterday of falsifying his life story to give the impression that he
was brought up in Jerusalem and forced into exile by the Israelis in
1947.
Prof Said, a darling of the American Left, has written that he spent
most of his "formative years" in Jerusalem and has suggested that he
was made to leave, under Jewish threat, in the months before the
Israeli War of Independence. A prolific author and energetic public
figure, his story has made him a powerful symbol of the Palestinian
dispossession and subsequent exile. His version of events has been
promoted in newspaper and magazine articles and television
appearances.
But after three years of research, an Israeli academic is challenging
his story. According to Justus Reid Weiner, scholar in residence at
the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, Prof Said "has served up -
and consciously encouraged others to serve up - a wildly distorted
version of the truth, made up in equal parts of outright deception and
of artful obfuscations".
In an article in the New York magazine Commentary, Dr Weiner says that
Prof Said did not live in Jerusalem, did not go to school there and
was not a refugee. A house he claimed to have grown up in is
registered in the name of his aunt and her five children, he claims.
In fact, Dr Weiner says, the family lived comfortably in Cairo, where
Prof Said's father, an American citizen, ran a successful business.
The professor, who teaches English literature at Columbia University
in New York, is the author of such works as Blaming the Victims, The
Politics of Dispossession and Orientalism, which denounces the Western
tradition of Eastern studies as a form of colonialism.
Many Israelis were delighted at the research into his past. David
Bar-Illan, spokesman for the former Right-wing government, said: "I
never had much respect for the intellectual integrity of Prof Said.
This proves that my suspicions were not groundless."
Shlomo Riskin, chief rabbi of the Jewish settlement of Efrat on the
West Bank, said: "Truth and fiction converge very easily in this part
of the world. Edward Said is taken seriously here."
He was not available for comment yesterday but is said to be working
on a revised version of his childhood, Out of Place, which correctly
places his childhood in Cairo, but offers no explanation for his past
claims. Dr Weiner said: "I and my researchers interviewed 85 people
over three years, including Edward Said's cousin, Robert, in Amman and
a family friend in Cairo. I think people told him that the house of
cards was looking perilous."
Dr Weiner concludes: "The young Edward Said resided in luxurious
apartments, attended private English schools, and played tennis at
Cairo's exclusive Gezira sporting club, as the child of one of its few
Arab members. Whatever we finally make of all this, there can be no
denying that the parable is a lie."
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