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Columbia community mourns passing of Edward Said, beloved and esteemed University Professor

26 September 2003

Edward W. Said, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, a member of the Columbia faculty since 1963 and University Professor since 1992, died on Thursday, September 25, at 6:45 a.m. One of the most influential scholars in the world, Said was also a devoted and beloved teacher to generations of Columbia students. The University mourns his passing. 

More than just a wall

Maureen Lynch 26 September 2003

By any name —- separation barrier, security fence, transfer wall —- the controversial enclosure under construction within the West Bank violates international humanitarian law and threatens Palestinian communities and livelihoods. Maureen Lynch just completed an assessment mission to the Middle East. 

Weekly report on human rights violations

25 September 2003

This week Israeli forces killed 3 Palestinians, including 2 children. One of the children died in Nablus from a previous injury, while the other was killed in an Israeli raid on Rafah. Israeli forces demolished 22 houses in Rafah and Khan Yunis leaving dozens of Palestinian families homeless. Israeli forces raided homes and arrested Palestinian civilians. Israeli forces razed agricultural land in Gaza and demolished two homes in Jenin and Hebron as collective punishment. The construction of the separation wall in the West Bank continued. Israeli forces shelled three schools in Rafah, wounding a teacher and a student. The comprehensive closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip remained enforced. 

Jewish Peace Group Targets Caterpillar Corporation

25 September 2003

As the Bush Administration moves to cut financing for Israel’s settlements, the largest grassroots Jewish peace group in the U.S. announced today that it is targeting Illinois-based Caterpillar Corporation for its role in diminishing the chances for Middle East peace. Caterpillar has knowingly allowed its bulldozers to be used by the Israeli military for the demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes, settlement construction, and the building of Israel’s Wall. 

Palestinian, intellectual, and fighter, Edward Said rails against Arafat and Sharon to his dying breath

Robert Fisk 25 September 2003

The last time I saw Edward Said, I asked him to go on living. I knew about his leukaemia. He had often pointed out that he was receiving “state-of-the-art” treatment from a Jewish doctor and - despite all the trash that his enemies threw at him - he always acknowledged the kindness and honour of his Jewish friends, of whom Daniel Barenboim was among the finest. Robert Fisk remembers Edward Said. 

Tribute to Edward Said

Mustafa Barghouthi 25 September 2003

It is with heart-breaking sorrow that the Palestinian National Initiative announces the tragic death of Edward Said who passed away today after eleven years fighting leukemia. At this time our thoughts and love are with his family. We wish them strength and courage and assurance that Edward will be a man forever remembered not only for his incredible achievements but for his remarkable qualities as a friend. Though words may do little at such a time to assuage the pain and grief something must be said to pay homage to a man and a life we should truly celebrate. 

The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said

G. S. Naggiar 25 September 2003

Edward Said’s life and work is a story of transcendence of the cultural and spatial barriers that so often thoughtlessly divide humanity. Born in Jerusalem, the capital of the three great monotheistic faiths and a city that he once called “a seamless amalgam of cultures and religions engaged, like members of the same family, on the same plot of land in which all has become entwined with all,” he would live most of his late life and finally die in New York City, the capital of the modern world and where men and women from every corner of the earth converge to form a modern amalgam of peoples unlike anything ever known before. There could have been no more fitting places for the beginning and end of the life’s journey of Edward Said. AAPER president George Naggiar remembers Said. 

Permission to narrate: Edward Said, Palestine, and the Internet

Nigel Parry 25 September 2003


When I think of Palestinian American academic and writer Edward Said, one phrase he penned comes to the fore. It was the title of a piece he wrote for The London Review of Books in February 1984, “Permission to Narrate”. These three words described what Said felt was most denied to the Palestinians by the international media, the power to communicate their own history to a world hypnotised by a mythological Zionist narrative of an empty Palestine that would serve as a convenient homeland for Jews around the world. EI’s Nigel Parry narrates.