Summary
Said’s name, in Chapter One, III, for the operation by which Zionism speaks for Palestine and the Palestinians on the world stage, blocking the Palestinian from representing himself, and by which the liberal West accepts Israeli experts and visiting writers’ mediated Arabs in place of Arab voices.
Details
- Zionism always undertakes to speak for Palestine and the Palestinians; this has always meant a blocking operation, by which the Palestinian cannot be heard from, or represent himself, directly on the world stage, as the expert Orientalist spoke for the natives he had studied (see Orientalism) (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.60 / printed p.39).
- The political question underneath is who represents the Palestinians: the Palestine Liberation Organization is recognized by over 100 nations and by all Palestinians as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, yet neither the United States nor Israel concedes it, and Camp David arrogated Palestinian representation to the United States, Israel and Egypt (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.46 / printed p.25).
- Who speaks for what is an almost infallible index of acceptability and political legitimacy in the United States: articles by Israelis about Israel circulate publicly while articles by Arabs about themselves are very rarely found, and a supposedly symmetrical Arab feature in the New York Times Sunday Magazine during the 1973 war was written by a former U.S. ambassador to Syria (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.60-61 / printed p.39-40).
- Visiting writers after 1967, most recently Saul Bellow, dealt with the Arabs through an Israeli Arab expert, whose mediated view came to stand for what the Arab Palestinian was, wanted and felt (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.61-62 / printed p.40-41).
- The frame for the section is the hegemonic coalescence of the liberal Western view with the Zionist-Israeli view: hegemony in Gramsci’s sense, working by consent and acquiescence, not mere domination, whose concrete meaning for the displaced Arab was to become a nonperson (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.58-59 / printed p.37-38).
- In an age of mass and instant communication, Said argues, sensational guerrilla or terrorist exploits can speak directly for an otherwise blocked presence, and the repressed presence filters through; the latest denial of the Palestinians has turned out to be the greatest, but most inevitable, mistake Zionism has made since its inception (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.60 / printed p.39).
Related pages
The Question of Palestine, Orientalism, Palestine Liberation Organization, Saul Bellow, Israeli League of Human Rights