'NUFF SAID:

Makiya vs. Said: Edward Said CRASSHes (Martin Kramer, 12/03/02)

Edward Said, celebrity professor and advocate for Palestine, has just ended a stretch at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities-acronym CRASSH-at Cambridge University in England. Between his lectures on "The Example of Auerbach's Mimesis" and "Return to Philology" (serious people never left it), Said huddled in his rooms to settle an old score with the Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya. The result is an emission that is truly breathtaking for its sheer hypocrisy.

The Said-Makiya feud is more than a decade old, and it's not easy to map all its labyrinthine passages. So here is a crib note. Makiya, an Iraqi who first found politics in the bosom of the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, later went into exile and set about exposing the regime of Saddam Hussein. His book, Republic of Fear, shattered the complacency surrounding the Iraqi regime, bringing evidence that situated Saddam and his gangs outside civilization. A subsequent book, Cruelty and Silence, brought more evidence of Saddam's crimes, and also served an indictment against Arab writers who either swooned before the Iraqi dictator, or didn't see his misdeeds as sufficient cause for America to act.

Palestinian "intellectuals" beat loud drums for Saddam; some of them played shrill flutes against American intervention. Edward Said was the first flautist. In the fray, Makiya accused Said of sacrificing the Iraqi people to the unappeasable god of "Palestine first." Said in turn denounced Makiya as a traitor to the mother of all Arab causes. The feud later subsided, but the current U.S.-led drive for "regime change" in Iraq, coming as it does in the midst of yet another Palestinian drama, has gotten Said stirred up again-and against Makiya. That's because it's hard to read a major newspaper, or listen to National Public Radio, or even thumb your favorite magazine, without bumping into Kanan Makiya. One reason: Makiya is prominent in the "Democratic Principles Working Group," composed of some 30 Iraqis who belong to the State Department's "Future of Iraq Project." This has enraged Said to the boiling point; in his column in the Ahram Weekly, he boils over. Take a deep breath, and read it.

Makiya doesn't need me to defend him, and I won't. I'm more interested in the patent hypocrisy of Said's charges. He hardly makes an accusation against Makiya that couldn't be made-usually with more justification-against himself. I'd describe it as a suicide character-bombing.

Does anyone outside academia actually read Edward Said? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 9, 2002 6:56 PM