Edward Said: The Last Interview

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Edward Said, University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, was one of the most important literary critics of the late 20th century, and for many years the most prominent spokesperson for the Palestinian cause in the United States.

He was the author of ten books, among them Orientalism, a runner-up in criticism for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The World, the Text and the Critic;Blaming the Victims;Culture and Imperialism;Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process;End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After; and, most recently, Power, Politics, and Culture.

Born into a Palestinian family in Jerusalem in 1935, in 1948 Said and his family were dispossessed and settled in Cairo. Educated in the United States, he lived in New York for many years. Long a member of the Palestine National Council, after resigning from the PNC in 1991, Said wrote critically about the post-Oslo peace process and the political failures of Yasser Arafat and the PLO.

Said was diagnosed with incurable leukemia in 1991, and struggled with the disease throughout the decade, while continuing to write and teach. Towards the end of his life, as the disease and chemotherapy treatments sapped his energy, he stopped giving interviews. However, less than a year before his death in September 2003, he made an exception and over the course of three days spoke at length with the filmmakers about his illness, his work, Palestine and politics, his life and education, and his continuing preoccupations.

EDWARD SAID: THE LAST INTERVIEW is the remarkable final testament of this passionately committed intellectual.

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Main credits

Said, Edward W. (interviewee)
Glass, Charles (interviewer)
Guttenplan, D. D. (film producer)
Dibb, Michael (film director)

Other credits

Camera/sound, Christopher Cox; editing, Dominic McMahon, Shelagh Brady.

MARC Record See Worldcat record

Keywords

Edward Said; Middle East; Palestine; Israel; Literature; Criticism; Politics; Imperialism; Orientalism; film; video; biography; dvd; documentary; biopic; "Edward Said: The Last Interview"; Icarus Films; ,doc,art,bio; history

WEBVTT

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Can I start right now with your
personal and intellectual

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preoccupations, what they
are and why they are

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what they are now?

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Yes.

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Well, I think that the main
preoccupation I\'ve had in the

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last several months and really
crowded everything else out is

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my illness, which I thought
I had mastered.

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I mean mastered intellectually.

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There\'s no cure for
what I have.

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So they can keep it
at bay sort of.

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But I\'ve come to the conclusion
that after a whole

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summer of illness and infections
and side effects

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and I don\'t know what
that I\'m really not

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going to get better.

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And I\'ve lived my whole life
with the idea that if you had

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determination and will and
put yourself to it, you

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could get over it.

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But I can\'t.

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And it\'s very, very discouraging
for me and has

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made it impossible for
me to concentrate on

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almost anything else.

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Is it taking an emotional toll?

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Yes.

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I mean, it takes all
kinds of tolls.

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The main one is that I just
feel that I don\'t have a

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center that isn\'t somehow tied
up with this disease.

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Plus the fact that it
takes a lot of time.

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In New York, this is where I
live, I mean, my doctor is out

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on Long Island.

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So it\'s an hour\'s drive,
sometimes an hour and a half

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drive each way to go
just to get a blood

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test or to see him.

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And then if treatment is thrown
in, which I seem to

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have all the time,
then days go by.

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And then the effects of the
treatment wear you out.

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And then of course in the
hospital and when you\'re not

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well, it\'s very, very hard
to do anything else.

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I\'ve tried my hardest
and I\'m very

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strong about these things.

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The reading is almost
impossible.

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I lost my ability to listen to
music, which has really been

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crucial to my whole life.

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I stopped playing the piano
about eight months ago because

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it takes too much out of me.

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And I think the worst thing is
that the absence of energy is

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so dramatic that by the end of
the day, by which I mean say 4

00:03:04.260 --> 00:03:06.390 align:middle line:84%
o\'clock, I\'m completely
drained.

00:03:06.390 --> 00:03:09.420 align:middle line:84%
I haven\'t got any energy to read
or think or do anything.

00:03:09.420 --> 00:03:13.530 align:middle line:84%
I can sometimes give a lecture
to bring myself up to that, or

00:03:13.530 --> 00:03:14.320 align:middle line:90%
teach a class.

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But that\'s all I can do.

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And then after that,
it\'s just--

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it\'s all wasted time.

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So it\'s very difficult and
depressing in, for me, an

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unusual way.

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It makes me think
of two things.

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One, that you\'ve already packed
so much into your life,

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musically, academically,
intellectually, politically,

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it\'s a good thing you haven\'t
wasted any of your time before

00:03:42.340 --> 00:03:46.420 align:middle line:84%
now, so in a way the rest may
be a welcome thing for you--

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I don\'t feel it that
way at all.

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I don\'t feel that it\'s rest.

00:03:50.020 --> 00:03:53.120 align:middle line:84%
I mean, there are things that I
still want to do and I still

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buy books that I don\'t read with
every intention of doing

00:03:55.950 --> 00:04:03.100 align:middle line:84%
take on projects, to travel
or write or plan,

00:04:03.100 --> 00:04:06.170 align:middle line:90%
which I can\'t do.

00:04:06.170 --> 00:04:09.210 align:middle line:84%
I find it very difficult
to turn myself off.

00:04:09.210 --> 00:04:14.010 align:middle line:84%
So looking back over
my life, it doesn\'t

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seem that way to me.

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In other words, it doesn\'t
feel as if I\'ve done that

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much, because there\'s still
so much more to--

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So much more to do.

00:04:20.589 --> 00:04:20.820 align:middle line:90%
Yes.

00:04:20.820 --> 00:04:22.830 align:middle line:84%
Still what I want to do,
so much more to do.

00:04:22.830 --> 00:04:25.750 align:middle line:84%
And I still have this kind of
ridiculous thing, which I got

00:04:25.750 --> 00:04:30.190 align:middle line:84%
from my father, I guess, who\'s
been a great both positive and

00:04:30.190 --> 00:04:33.830 align:middle line:84%
negative influence on me, that
you\'ve got to keep going and

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not look back at what
you\'ve done.

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Because if you do that, then you
sort of start to vegetate.

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And there\'s a kind
of moral business

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about not doing anything.

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So the idea of relaxation and
resting, which is what my

00:04:46.860 --> 00:04:49.840 align:middle line:84%
doctor keeps talking
to me about, I

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just completely refuse.

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It\'s a visceral, almost totally
physical revulsion

00:05:00.460 --> 00:05:02.470 align:middle line:90%
from the idea of resting.

00:05:02.470 --> 00:05:04.795 align:middle line:84%
Well, the second thought that I
had in relation to this was

00:05:04.795 --> 00:05:06.280 align:middle line:90%
also that--

00:05:06.280 --> 00:05:08.026 align:middle line:90%
and this is the bad thing--

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it must be a very frustrating
thing, particularly now

00:05:11.260 --> 00:05:15.330 align:middle line:84%
because it\'s a crucial moment
in relations between the two

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places you\'ve been most
concerned about, the West and

00:05:17.470 --> 00:05:22.470 align:middle line:84%
the Arab world, crucial in that
what is happening in the

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Israeli occupied territories
is at a turning point.

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And if the United States goes to
war soon against Iraq, the

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repercussions in the whole
Arab world and the

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repercussions particularly
in Palestine could be as

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devastating as 1948 was, which
was also a crucial

00:05:42.080 --> 00:05:43.220 align:middle line:90%
period in your life.

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And that this inability now to
be focused and to be working

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hard must be particularly
difficult for you now.

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Yes.

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Well, it actually began--

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I felt it very strongly
on September 11.

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I was in New York at the time.

00:05:58.970 --> 00:06:04.230 align:middle line:84%
And immediately after the 9:00
or 9:15 events took place, I

00:06:04.230 --> 00:06:08.720 align:middle line:84%
mean in the morning, I was
deluged with phone calls and

00:06:08.720 --> 00:06:10.150 align:middle line:90%
requests from all the media.

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But my immediate reaction was
I didn\'t want to do it.

00:06:14.520 --> 00:06:16.250 align:middle line:90%
I just couldn\'t get into it.

00:06:16.250 --> 00:06:19.380 align:middle line:84%
I felt I didn\'t have
the strength.

00:06:19.380 --> 00:06:23.250 align:middle line:84%
I felt also that most of them
were interested in talking to

00:06:23.250 --> 00:06:25.460 align:middle line:84%
me because I represented quote,
unquote, the other

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view, the terrorist view.

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And I didn\'t want to be
slotted into that.

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And in the past, I mean for
example during the first

00:06:31.820 --> 00:06:36.350 align:middle line:84%
intifada of the late \'80s, it
was a position I welcomed,

00:06:36.350 --> 00:06:39.040 align:middle line:84%
because there was an opportunity
to sort of clear a

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space away.

00:06:39.690 --> 00:06:40.750 align:middle line:90%
I always feel alone.

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I don\'t feel there\'s any--

00:06:41.830 --> 00:06:48.660 align:middle line:84%
I\'m not, in America at least, I
really haven\'t been part of

00:06:48.660 --> 00:06:51.310 align:middle line:90%
organizations.

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But I had friends who were very
important to me who have

00:06:54.690 --> 00:06:59.880 align:middle line:84%
since died, like Eqbal, like
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, who died

00:06:59.880 --> 00:07:01.880 align:middle line:90%
in the last couple of years.

00:07:01.880 --> 00:07:06.550 align:middle line:84%
But I felt on September 11 that
I just couldn\'t do it.

00:07:06.550 --> 00:07:08.630 align:middle line:84%
And so I just turned
it all down.

00:07:08.630 --> 00:07:10.510 align:middle line:84%
And then I decided that I
wouldn\'t write for the

00:07:10.510 --> 00:07:11.830 align:middle line:90%
American media.

00:07:11.830 --> 00:07:13.010 align:middle line:84%
I just couldn\'t do
that either.

00:07:13.010 --> 00:07:16.750 align:middle line:84%
The New York Times rang
me up several times.

00:07:16.750 --> 00:07:18.690 align:middle line:84%
And I didn\'t want to
give them anything.

00:07:18.690 --> 00:07:22.970 align:middle line:84%
So I concentrated on doing stuff
for the Arabic press and

00:07:22.970 --> 00:07:25.710 align:middle line:84%
for the English press
in the Arab world.

00:07:25.710 --> 00:07:28.120 align:middle line:84%
So that wasn\'t fatigue that
made you not want to--

00:07:28.120 --> 00:07:28.830 align:middle line:90%
Yes.

00:07:28.830 --> 00:07:29.810 align:middle line:90%
It was partly fatigue.

00:07:29.810 --> 00:07:33.320 align:middle line:84%
I mean, I had an exhausting
time of treatment at just

00:07:33.320 --> 00:07:35.440 align:middle line:90%
around that period.

00:07:35.440 --> 00:07:38.340 align:middle line:84%
And I knew that I didn\'t
have the staying power.

00:07:38.340 --> 00:07:41.520 align:middle line:84%
I didn\'t have the friends and
supporters that I once had who

00:07:41.520 --> 00:07:46.050 align:middle line:84%
were intimate with me and we
were all part of a movement.

00:07:46.050 --> 00:07:48.500 align:middle line:84%
And I had become so frustrated
with the situation in

00:07:48.500 --> 00:07:48.840 align:middle line:90%
Palestine--

00:07:48.840 --> 00:07:50.450 align:middle line:90%
I had just been there.

00:07:50.450 --> 00:07:53.800 align:middle line:84%
I had been there in late
May, early June, so

00:07:53.800 --> 00:07:55.420 align:middle line:90%
three months later.

00:07:55.420 --> 00:08:00.790 align:middle line:84%
And I saw the frustration and
the helplessness and the fact,

00:08:00.790 --> 00:08:03.370 align:middle line:84%
as Ibrahim Abu-Lughod always
used to say, we have no power.

00:08:03.370 --> 00:08:05.920 align:middle line:84%
I mean, you could say that you
have moral power, cultural

00:08:05.920 --> 00:08:07.990 align:middle line:84%
power, all that sort of thing,
but you don\'t have tanks.

00:08:07.990 --> 00:08:13.110 align:middle line:84%
And with the invasions of the
West Bank beginning to occur

00:08:13.110 --> 00:08:17.615 align:middle line:84%
more and more regularly, there
was the very little that I

00:08:17.615 --> 00:08:18.930 align:middle line:90%
felt I could do.

00:08:18.930 --> 00:08:21.970 align:middle line:84%
So I just decided to concentrate
on the writing and

00:08:21.970 --> 00:08:23.080 align:middle line:90%
not do any interviews.

00:08:23.080 --> 00:08:25.700 align:middle line:90%
And I didn\'t.

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So there was a general
sense of curtailment

00:08:30.660 --> 00:08:33.929 align:middle line:90%
and shutting down.

00:08:33.929 --> 00:08:38.350 align:middle line:84%
But during the course of the
year since 9/11, I\'ve been

00:08:38.350 --> 00:08:41.659 align:middle line:84%
quite closely in touch with
people, friends on the West

00:08:41.659 --> 00:08:47.430 align:middle line:84%
Bank, Palestinians, some
Americans in America, where I

00:08:47.430 --> 00:08:50.400 align:middle line:84%
felt there was some chance of
some cooperation and so on and

00:08:50.400 --> 00:08:55.120 align:middle line:84%
so forth on these two issues or
two worlds that I\'ve lived

00:08:55.120 --> 00:08:57.070 align:middle line:90%
in all of my life.

00:08:57.070 --> 00:08:58.160 align:middle line:90%
That hasn\'t worked out.

00:08:58.160 --> 00:09:01.270 align:middle line:84%
I mean, it\'s quite disappointing
that friends who

00:09:01.270 --> 00:09:07.380 align:middle line:84%
formerly had been in the
forefront now suddenly

00:09:07.380 --> 00:09:11.120 align:middle line:84%
discovered that they were really
American imperialists

00:09:11.120 --> 00:09:18.230 align:middle line:84%
after all and had turned
themselves into basically

00:09:18.230 --> 00:09:21.450 align:middle line:90%
mouthpieces of the status quo.

00:09:21.450 --> 00:09:24.860 align:middle line:90%
So that was a blow.

00:09:24.860 --> 00:09:31.370 align:middle line:84%
And I\'ve really been sustained
by the response I get from

00:09:31.370 --> 00:09:37.590 align:middle line:84%
people who read me
and write back.

00:09:37.590 --> 00:09:42.842 align:middle line:84%
And I know that my writing
is still in demand.

00:09:42.842 --> 00:09:44.800 align:middle line:90%
But that\'s what I can do.

00:09:44.800 --> 00:09:45.860 align:middle line:84%
Do you feel more powerless,
then, both

00:09:45.860 --> 00:09:46.950 align:middle line:90%
physically and mentally?

00:09:46.950 --> 00:09:47.430 align:middle line:90%
Yes.

00:09:47.430 --> 00:09:47.930 align:middle line:90%
Absolutely.

00:09:47.930 --> 00:09:48.900 align:middle line:90%
Very much so.

00:09:48.900 --> 00:09:49.550 align:middle line:90%
But I haven\'t given up.

00:09:49.550 --> 00:09:52.980 align:middle line:84%
I mean, every time I\'ve told
friends that when I-- for

00:09:52.980 --> 00:09:56.360 align:middle line:84%
example, this past summer I
was out for four months.

00:09:56.360 --> 00:09:58.750 align:middle line:84%
And I was just desperately
sick the whole time.

00:09:58.750 --> 00:10:01.370 align:middle line:84%
And the one thing that kept me
going is I\'d flash a picture

00:10:01.370 --> 00:10:03.720 align:middle line:84%
of Sharon in my mind and
I\'d get up again.

00:10:03.720 --> 00:10:10.270 align:middle line:84%
I\'d be angry and re-energized
for a bit.

00:10:10.270 --> 00:10:12.550 align:middle line:84%
But now you say you\'re thinking
of your father now

00:10:12.550 --> 00:10:15.085 align:middle line:84%
and what I can only assume
was the Protestant ethic.

00:10:15.085 --> 00:10:17.180 align:middle line:84%
And you don\'t like
to look back.

00:10:17.180 --> 00:10:18.315 align:middle line:90%
You have written a memoir.

00:10:18.315 --> 00:10:19.250 align:middle line:90%
You have looked back.

00:10:19.250 --> 00:10:21.440 align:middle line:90%
Why did you write the memoir?

00:10:21.440 --> 00:10:26.510 align:middle line:84%
Well, the memoir was really two
things that came together

00:10:26.510 --> 00:10:27.420 align:middle line:90%
in the early \'90s.

00:10:27.420 --> 00:10:30.560 align:middle line:84%
One was the death of my mother
and what I felt was the last

00:10:30.560 --> 00:10:32.682 align:middle line:84%
link to the worlds I
had grown up in.

00:10:32.682 --> 00:10:38.650 align:middle line:84%
You know, Egypt had been changed
completely after I

00:10:38.650 --> 00:10:42.020 align:middle line:90%
left in \'51 to go to America.

00:10:42.020 --> 00:10:45.110 align:middle line:84%
I grew up in King
Farouk\'s Egypt.

00:10:45.110 --> 00:10:47.480 align:middle line:84%
Palestine, of course, had
disappeared in 1948.

00:10:47.480 --> 00:10:51.020 align:middle line:84%
Lebanon, which is where we spent
summers and where my

00:10:51.020 --> 00:10:54.530 align:middle line:84%
mother had family because she
was half-Lebanese, was

00:10:54.530 --> 00:11:00.190 align:middle line:84%
consumed by the civil war and
what was restored to normalcy,

00:11:00.190 --> 00:11:03.600 align:middle line:84%
such as it is I thought was
rather grotesque in the case

00:11:03.600 --> 00:11:05.220 align:middle line:90%
of Lebanon.

00:11:05.220 --> 00:11:08.000 align:middle line:84%
So there was the idea of
recovering these lost worlds

00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:10.120 align:middle line:84%
which my mother\'s death
had symbolized.

00:11:10.120 --> 00:11:12.210 align:middle line:84%
And the other thing
was my illness.

00:11:12.210 --> 00:11:17.870 align:middle line:84%
When I got my diagnosis in the
fall of \'91, I was devastated.

00:11:17.870 --> 00:11:21.420 align:middle line:84%
I thought it really was
the end of my life

00:11:21.420 --> 00:11:22.300 align:middle line:90%
as I had known it.

00:11:22.300 --> 00:11:24.000 align:middle line:90%
And it is.

00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:27.190 align:middle line:84%
The shameful thing is that
it\'s gone on so long.

00:11:27.190 --> 00:11:32.330 align:middle line:84%
Most people, when they have a
disease like leukemia, I think

00:11:32.330 --> 00:11:34.810 align:middle line:90%
either die or they recover.

00:11:34.810 --> 00:11:37.550 align:middle line:84%
And I\'ve done neither one nor
the other, so it\'s been this

00:11:37.550 --> 00:11:42.290 align:middle line:90%
long kind of imprisonment.

00:11:42.290 --> 00:11:44.380 align:middle line:84%
I also thought it would
be a good--

00:11:44.380 --> 00:11:50.010 align:middle line:84%
the memoir would be a good way
of clarifying my own ideas

00:11:50.010 --> 00:11:55.520 align:middle line:84%
about principally my parents,
I thought, my father

00:11:55.520 --> 00:12:02.870 align:middle line:84%
especially, who had really
been very harsh with me.

00:12:02.870 --> 00:12:05.140 align:middle line:84%
And I think the change
occurred in the--

00:12:05.140 --> 00:12:08.010 align:middle line:84%
I indicate it lightly in the
book, but occurred during the

00:12:08.010 --> 00:12:13.170 align:middle line:84%
summer of 1942, which was a
period of the German advance

00:12:13.170 --> 00:12:15.390 align:middle line:84%
into Egypt into the
Western desert.

00:12:15.390 --> 00:12:19.650 align:middle line:84%
And he arrived home one day
and said that we should

00:12:19.650 --> 00:12:20.500 align:middle line:90%
immediately leave.

00:12:20.500 --> 00:12:22.160 align:middle line:90%
He was an American.

00:12:22.160 --> 00:12:26.170 align:middle line:84%
We were basically unprotected
in Egypt.

00:12:26.170 --> 00:12:28.520 align:middle line:84%
We were foreigners at a time
when America really didn\'t

00:12:28.520 --> 00:12:30.240 align:middle line:90%
count for very much.

00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:34.440 align:middle line:84%
And so he decided that
we should go to

00:12:34.440 --> 00:12:36.320 align:middle line:90%
Palestine, back there.

00:12:36.320 --> 00:12:37.220 align:middle line:90%
So we did.

00:12:37.220 --> 00:12:39.910 align:middle line:84%
And for the rest of the year--
this must have been in the

00:12:39.910 --> 00:12:41.100 align:middle line:90%
early spring.

00:12:41.100 --> 00:12:44.710 align:middle line:84%
For the rest of the year, we
spent time in Jerusalem.

00:12:44.710 --> 00:12:49.490 align:middle line:84%
And then he rented a house
for us in Ramallah

00:12:49.490 --> 00:12:50.760 align:middle line:90%
the summer of \'42.

00:12:50.760 --> 00:12:53.680 align:middle line:84%
And he became extremely
depressed and had a nervous

00:12:53.680 --> 00:12:57.500 align:middle line:84%
breakdown, about which I really
don\'t know the reasons.

00:12:57.500 --> 00:12:59.900 align:middle line:90%
But he became very withdrawn.

00:12:59.900 --> 00:13:03.360 align:middle line:84%
And I remembered him earlier
as a much more

00:13:03.360 --> 00:13:05.630 align:middle line:90%
jolly and warm person.

00:13:05.630 --> 00:13:10.740 align:middle line:84%
And after \'42, he became not
only withdrawn but also quite

00:13:10.740 --> 00:13:11.650 align:middle line:90%
distant and cold.

00:13:11.650 --> 00:13:11.930 align:middle line:90%
You were seven years old.

00:13:11.930 --> 00:13:13.180 align:middle line:90%
I was seven years old.

00:13:13.180 --> 00:13:16.370 align:middle line:90%

00:13:16.370 --> 00:13:20.230 align:middle line:90%
And that really changed.

00:13:20.230 --> 00:13:26.130 align:middle line:84%
He became very much a taskmaster
and I felt that he

00:13:26.130 --> 00:13:29.680 align:middle line:84%
had laid a kind of discipline
across my life which I was

00:13:29.680 --> 00:13:31.340 align:middle line:90%
never really able to shake.

00:13:31.340 --> 00:13:32.900 align:middle line:84%
And writing about in
the book, I wasn\'t

00:13:32.900 --> 00:13:34.335 align:middle line:90%
able to shake it either.

00:13:34.335 --> 00:13:37.110 align:middle line:84%
But did you make connections as
well between that childhood

00:13:37.110 --> 00:13:40.120 align:middle line:84%
and that upbringing, born in
1935 in British-controlled

00:13:40.120 --> 00:13:43.090 align:middle line:84%
Palestine, with Zionist
settlers

00:13:43.090 --> 00:13:45.420 align:middle line:90%
slowly driving you out?

00:13:45.420 --> 00:13:45.610 align:middle line:90%
Yes.

00:13:45.610 --> 00:13:49.330 align:middle line:84%
Because my upbringing was
extremely apolitical.

00:13:49.330 --> 00:13:53.750 align:middle line:84%
And I found myself, quite
interestingly, in the book

00:13:53.750 --> 00:13:55.840 align:middle line:84%
drawing a great deal of
attention to my education.

00:13:55.840 --> 00:13:58.450 align:middle line:84%
Of course, I spent my whole
life in education, being

00:13:58.450 --> 00:14:01.210 align:middle line:84%
educated and then educating, you
know, which is what I\'ve

00:14:01.210 --> 00:14:03.360 align:middle line:84%
done for the last 40 years,
being a teacher.

00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:06.360 align:middle line:84%
But the memoir in terms of sheer
volume is really about

00:14:06.360 --> 00:14:10.750 align:middle line:84%
experiences in schools, which
were always to me, without

00:14:10.750 --> 00:14:14.120 align:middle line:84%
exception really that I can
ever remember, alien

00:14:14.120 --> 00:14:15.070 align:middle line:90%
experiences.

00:14:15.070 --> 00:14:19.260 align:middle line:84%
They had to do with interacting
with teachers who

00:14:19.260 --> 00:14:22.980 align:middle line:84%
spoke a different language,
who referred to home in a

00:14:22.980 --> 00:14:26.060 align:middle line:84%
different way than I could
possibly ever do.

00:14:26.060 --> 00:14:29.210 align:middle line:84%
I remember in the first school
I went to, the Ghazir

00:14:29.210 --> 00:14:31.880 align:middle line:84%
preparatory school, they would
say, \"we are going to go home

00:14:31.880 --> 00:14:35.490 align:middle line:84%
for the summer.\" And I just
wondered what that meant.

00:14:35.490 --> 00:14:36.330 align:middle line:90%
Where are they going?

00:14:36.330 --> 00:14:38.680 align:middle line:84%
I mean, this isn\'t
really my home.

00:14:38.680 --> 00:14:40.990 align:middle line:84%
I\'m not Egyptian, so where\'s
my home kind of thing.

00:14:40.990 --> 00:14:43.530 align:middle line:90%

00:14:43.530 --> 00:14:47.190 align:middle line:84%
So there was that sense, of
education has somehow alien,

00:14:47.190 --> 00:14:49.360 align:middle line:84%
something to be resisted,
which is what I

00:14:49.360 --> 00:14:50.820 align:middle line:90%
felt most of the time.

00:14:50.820 --> 00:14:53.390 align:middle line:84%
But later on then, I understood
that education was

00:14:53.390 --> 00:14:56.830 align:middle line:84%
also what you could get out of
it, despite that sense of

00:14:56.830 --> 00:14:58.400 align:middle line:84%
alienation, if you
could do it.

00:14:58.400 --> 00:14:59.440 align:middle line:84%
And you had to do
it on your own.

00:14:59.440 --> 00:15:02.235 align:middle line:84%
So it was a discovery of a
kind of self-reliance, I

00:15:02.235 --> 00:15:06.540 align:middle line:84%
think, which was very, very
difficult to plot, because it

00:15:06.540 --> 00:15:09.180 align:middle line:84%
would appear at times and then
most of the rest of the time I

00:15:09.180 --> 00:15:11.030 align:middle line:90%
was very compliant.

00:15:11.030 --> 00:15:16.180 align:middle line:84%
There was a great deal attached
to delinquency when I

00:15:16.180 --> 00:15:18.320 align:middle line:90%
was punished.

00:15:18.320 --> 00:15:22.750 align:middle line:84%
The severity of my early
childhood was what struck me.

00:15:22.750 --> 00:15:26.470 align:middle line:84%
And going back over it, I made
the discovery that it wasn\'t a

00:15:26.470 --> 00:15:27.290 align:middle line:90%
happy childhood.

00:15:27.290 --> 00:15:29.210 align:middle line:84%
It was really quite
unhappy in a way.

00:15:29.210 --> 00:15:31.810 align:middle line:90%

00:15:31.810 --> 00:15:36.250 align:middle line:84%
What\'s the connection between
that boy growing up in

00:15:36.250 --> 00:15:39.620 align:middle line:84%
colonial Egypt, colonial
Palestine, and the man that

00:15:39.620 --> 00:15:43.860 align:middle line:84%
you became, the academic, the
critic, the musician?

00:15:43.860 --> 00:15:45.030 align:middle line:84%
That\'s the connection that
I\'m interested in.

00:15:45.030 --> 00:15:47.330 align:middle line:84%
How did they play against
each other?

00:15:47.330 --> 00:15:52.380 align:middle line:84%
Well, it was very hard for me
to establish a connection

00:15:52.380 --> 00:15:53.480 align:middle line:90%
because I didn\'t see it.

00:15:53.480 --> 00:15:56.890 align:middle line:84%
The one thing that I was able
to note really consistently

00:15:56.890 --> 00:15:59.970 align:middle line:84%
through my childhood into the
present was my interest in

00:15:59.970 --> 00:16:02.780 align:middle line:90%
language and in music.

00:16:02.780 --> 00:16:05.030 align:middle line:84%
And they were almost
exclusively

00:16:05.030 --> 00:16:07.530 align:middle line:90%
connected to my mother.

00:16:07.530 --> 00:16:12.770 align:middle line:84%
I had a certain gift for
self-expression, for

00:16:12.770 --> 00:16:16.720 align:middle line:84%
articulation, which was nurtured
by my reading habits,

00:16:16.720 --> 00:16:18.110 align:middle line:90%
which were omnivorous.

00:16:18.110 --> 00:16:21.640 align:middle line:84%
And don\'t forget, I grew
up without television.

00:16:21.640 --> 00:16:25.330 align:middle line:84%
Movies were banned except for
once a week, and usually a

00:16:25.330 --> 00:16:25.910 align:middle line:90%
children\'s movie.

00:16:25.910 --> 00:16:28.350 align:middle line:84%
You did write in your book that
you did like going to the

00:16:28.350 --> 00:16:31.080 align:middle line:84%
movies, you particularly like
Jon Hall and others.

00:16:31.080 --> 00:16:31.220 align:middle line:90%
Yes.

00:16:31.220 --> 00:16:32.020 align:middle line:90%
Those films, yes.

00:16:32.020 --> 00:16:32.410 align:middle line:90%
Tarzan films.

00:16:32.410 --> 00:16:32.800 align:middle line:90%
Yes.

00:16:32.800 --> 00:16:33.710 align:middle line:90%
Tarzan films.

00:16:33.710 --> 00:16:34.090 align:middle line:90%
Interesting.

00:16:34.090 --> 00:16:35.830 align:middle line:84%
They were almost
all colonial--

00:16:35.830 --> 00:16:36.230 align:middle line:90%
Of course.

00:16:36.230 --> 00:16:37.400 align:middle line:90%
Of course.

00:16:37.400 --> 00:16:39.690 align:middle line:84%
And I always identified
with the

00:16:39.690 --> 00:16:41.040 align:middle line:90%
colonialists, not with the--

00:16:41.040 --> 00:16:42.320 align:middle line:84%
you know, [INAUDIBLE]
talks about that.

00:16:42.320 --> 00:16:48.840 align:middle line:84%
He said when he saw the Tarzan
films in Martinique he

00:16:48.840 --> 00:16:51.940 align:middle line:84%
identified with Tarzan, not with
the blacks he was always

00:16:51.940 --> 00:16:54.960 align:middle line:84%
destroying and screaming at
and throwing knives at.

00:16:54.960 --> 00:16:57.130 align:middle line:84%
But when he went to Paris and
saw a Tarzan movie, he

00:16:57.130 --> 00:16:58.590 align:middle line:90%
identified with the blacks.

00:16:58.590 --> 00:16:59.600 align:middle line:90%
But of course, I was there.

00:16:59.600 --> 00:17:04.300 align:middle line:84%
I was in the colonies and
identified with the white man.

00:17:04.300 --> 00:17:08.680 align:middle line:84%
But anyway, those were very rare
experiences, once a week,

00:17:08.680 --> 00:17:09.770 align:middle line:90%
once every two weeks.

00:17:09.770 --> 00:17:12.210 align:middle line:84%
And they were very carefully
monitored for quote, unquote,

00:17:12.210 --> 00:17:13.490 align:middle line:90%
\"children\'s movies.\"

00:17:13.490 --> 00:17:15.670 align:middle line:84%
The rest of the time I was
loosed on the library.

00:17:15.670 --> 00:17:18.900 align:middle line:84%
So I read Defoe, and Scott,
the English classics.

00:17:18.900 --> 00:17:21.619 align:middle line:84%
My mother would talk to us about
and sometimes read to us

00:17:21.619 --> 00:17:25.300 align:middle line:84%
from Arabic novels about Arabic
history by Zaydan,

00:17:25.300 --> 00:17:28.089 align:middle line:84%
Jurji Zaydan, who wrote a whole
string of kind of Walter

00:17:28.089 --> 00:17:29.990 align:middle line:84%
Scott novels about
Arab history.

00:17:29.990 --> 00:17:32.200 align:middle line:84%
But mostly in my own reading
it was that.

00:17:32.200 --> 00:17:35.500 align:middle line:84%
And I developed a feel for
the language which

00:17:35.500 --> 00:17:36.260 align:middle line:90%
was entirely literary.

00:17:36.260 --> 00:17:39.340 align:middle line:84%
It had very little to do with
the demotic, everyday life

00:17:39.340 --> 00:17:41.800 align:middle line:90%
which was led an Arabic.

00:17:41.800 --> 00:17:44.270 align:middle line:84%
And then music, where
I was I think--

00:17:44.270 --> 00:17:45.090 align:middle line:90%
I don\'t know.

00:17:45.090 --> 00:17:46.960 align:middle line:84%
It\'s probably very
vain to say this.

00:17:46.960 --> 00:17:50.200 align:middle line:84%
But I think I was many years
ahead of my time.

00:17:50.200 --> 00:17:53.770 align:middle line:84%
I had perfect pitch, which
I didn\'t discover

00:17:53.770 --> 00:17:54.740 align:middle line:90%
until I left home.

00:17:54.740 --> 00:17:59.370 align:middle line:84%
I mean I just could hear
the notes exactly

00:17:59.370 --> 00:18:02.240 align:middle line:90%
right, identify them.

00:18:02.240 --> 00:18:04.510 align:middle line:90%
I had a perfect memory.

00:18:04.510 --> 00:18:07.380 align:middle line:84%
I could remember a piece from
the moment I heard it.

00:18:07.380 --> 00:18:10.170 align:middle line:84%
My mother used to say, for
example, that at the age of

00:18:10.170 --> 00:18:15.090 align:middle line:84%
one and a half, or even maybe
two, I had memorize 40 or 50

00:18:15.090 --> 00:18:17.780 align:middle line:90%
folk songs and nursery rhymes.

00:18:17.780 --> 00:18:22.510 align:middle line:84%
And when my cousin who played
the harmonica would play one

00:18:22.510 --> 00:18:25.390 align:middle line:84%
of them and make a mistake on
purpose, I would start to cry

00:18:25.390 --> 00:18:27.930 align:middle line:90%
and remonstrate against that.

00:18:27.930 --> 00:18:30.330 align:middle line:84%
And then of course, we
had some records.

00:18:30.330 --> 00:18:31.490 align:middle line:90%
I didn\'t go to many concerts.

00:18:31.490 --> 00:18:32.710 align:middle line:90%
There weren\'t that many.

00:18:32.710 --> 00:18:34.620 align:middle line:84%
It was thought of as
not for children.

00:18:34.620 --> 00:18:37.670 align:middle line:84%
But I recognize that they really
meant more to me than

00:18:37.670 --> 00:18:40.330 align:middle line:84%
anything else, listening
to the music.

00:18:40.330 --> 00:18:44.400 align:middle line:84%
In the memoir you write that
from a very young age you had

00:18:44.400 --> 00:18:45.370 align:middle line:90%
particular taste.

00:18:45.370 --> 00:18:46.650 align:middle line:90%
You didn\'t like Verdi.

00:18:46.650 --> 00:18:48.580 align:middle line:90%
You did like Rossini.

00:18:48.580 --> 00:18:53.980 align:middle line:84%
How was this, that at that
age you knew already?

00:18:53.980 --> 00:18:56.650 align:middle line:84%
Partly because we went
to the opera a lot.

00:18:56.650 --> 00:19:02.100 align:middle line:84%
They have a season in Cairo,
identified in French as the

00:19:02.100 --> 00:19:05.440 align:middle line:84%
\"saison lyrique Italienne.\" So
it was this group of people

00:19:05.440 --> 00:19:08.990 align:middle line:84%
from Rome and from Naples, the
San Carlo Opera Company, who

00:19:08.990 --> 00:19:12.210 align:middle line:84%
would come every year and
put on a repertory of

00:19:12.210 --> 00:19:13.170 align:middle line:90%
the standard works.

00:19:13.170 --> 00:19:15.610 align:middle line:84%
Very rarely did they
put on Rossini.

00:19:15.610 --> 00:19:18.010 align:middle line:84%
But the first time I heard \"The
Barber of Seville,\" I can

00:19:18.010 --> 00:19:20.590 align:middle line:84%
see it as if it was right
in front of me now.

00:19:20.590 --> 00:19:24.190 align:middle line:84%
Tito Gibb, one of the great
baritones of all time, he was

00:19:24.190 --> 00:19:30.720 align:middle line:84%
famous for Scarpia in \"Tosca,\"
sang the Barber.

00:19:30.720 --> 00:19:32.040 align:middle line:90%
And I was overwhelmed.

00:19:32.040 --> 00:19:34.200 align:middle line:84%
I just thought it was
so brilliant.

00:19:34.200 --> 00:19:37.230 align:middle line:84%
And there was some magic
in the interaction

00:19:37.230 --> 00:19:39.030 align:middle line:90%
of words and music.

00:19:39.030 --> 00:19:41.780 align:middle line:84%
I didn\'t know Italian very well,
although I set out to

00:19:41.780 --> 00:19:48.260 align:middle line:84%
learn the words of the opera
as a result of hearing it.

00:19:48.260 --> 00:19:50.200 align:middle line:84%
So in a sense it was
the rarity of that.

00:19:50.200 --> 00:19:53.680 align:middle line:84%
And then the one or two
performances I saw of \"The

00:19:53.680 --> 00:19:58.410 align:middle line:84%
Barber of Seville\" were
completely surrounded by

00:19:58.410 --> 00:20:03.770 align:middle line:84%
\"Rigoletto\" and \"Trovatore\" and
\"Ballo in maschera\" and

00:20:03.770 --> 00:20:04.300 align:middle line:90%
all that stuff.

00:20:04.300 --> 00:20:08.020 align:middle line:84%
And I just thought the thumping,
kind of overly

00:20:08.020 --> 00:20:13.100 align:middle line:84%
insistent, bloody-minded Verdi,
whom-- as I grew older,

00:20:13.100 --> 00:20:18.150 align:middle line:84%
I noticed that all the literary
people I knew, in my

00:20:18.150 --> 00:20:20.990 align:middle line:84%
professional life, they all
admired Verdi, because he was

00:20:20.990 --> 00:20:22.350 align:middle line:90%
a man of the Risorgimento.

00:20:22.350 --> 00:20:23.020 align:middle line:90%
He was a liberal.

00:20:23.020 --> 00:20:24.470 align:middle line:90%
He was anti-clerical.

00:20:24.470 --> 00:20:25.410 align:middle line:90%
\"Aida,\" above all.

00:20:25.410 --> 00:20:28.610 align:middle line:84%
Of course, that was the opera
they performed all the time.

00:20:28.610 --> 00:20:33.300 align:middle line:84%
I came to hate it, because it
was like everything was

00:20:33.300 --> 00:20:34.590 align:middle line:90%
italicized in Verdi.

00:20:34.590 --> 00:20:40.360 align:middle line:84%
And Rossini was just this
extraordinary complexity of

00:20:40.360 --> 00:20:47.540 align:middle line:84%
rhythm and melody with
wonderful patter.

00:20:47.540 --> 00:20:53.830 align:middle line:84%
I didn\'t even know that he had
written serious operas like

00:20:53.830 --> 00:20:56.240 align:middle line:84%
\"William Tell\" that go on, you
know, grand operas, in the

00:20:56.240 --> 00:20:57.490 align:middle line:90%
French style.

00:20:57.490 --> 00:21:01.280 align:middle line:84%
So that was where-- and then
I made in my own mind

00:21:01.280 --> 00:21:05.500 align:middle line:84%
connections between Rossini
and let\'s say Mozart.

00:21:05.500 --> 00:21:08.890 align:middle line:84%
I could see that he was in a
sense a child of Mozart.

00:21:08.890 --> 00:21:12.390 align:middle line:84%
He was somewhat, obviously,
younger than he was, but there

00:21:12.390 --> 00:21:16.420 align:middle line:84%
was a particular kind of-- not
exactly likeness, because I

00:21:16.420 --> 00:21:18.730 align:middle line:84%
love Beethoven too,
probably the most.

00:21:18.730 --> 00:21:23.970 align:middle line:84%
But there was a certain subtlety
and rhythmical

00:21:23.970 --> 00:21:25.240 align:middle line:90%
complexity that I liked.

00:21:25.240 --> 00:21:29.430 align:middle line:84%
And when I discovered Bach a
little later, Bach was always

00:21:29.430 --> 00:21:31.510 align:middle line:84%
a kind of a taskmaster
at the piano.

00:21:31.510 --> 00:21:34.740 align:middle line:84%
I mean, it was always hard to
play Bach for me, partly

00:21:34.740 --> 00:21:36.820 align:middle line:84%
because I wasn\'t introduced
until much later to

00:21:36.820 --> 00:21:39.670 align:middle line:84%
counterpoint, which became
really kind of an obsession of

00:21:39.670 --> 00:21:41.820 align:middle line:90%
mine in my later life.

00:21:41.820 --> 00:21:43.440 align:middle line:84%
Though when I became introduced
to Bach, then

00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:48.180 align:middle line:84%
everything opened up in
a quite amazing way.

00:21:48.180 --> 00:21:50.640 align:middle line:84%
And I felt my musical
development was always

00:21:50.640 --> 00:21:51.220 align:middle line:90%
continuing.

00:21:51.220 --> 00:21:54.030 align:middle line:84%
And my friendship with
Barenboim, which is the over

00:21:54.030 --> 00:21:56.550 align:middle line:84%
the last 10 years or so,
is part of that.

00:21:56.550 --> 00:21:58.620 align:middle line:84%
And that\'s why it\'s been so
satisfying, because it just

00:21:58.620 --> 00:22:02.410 align:middle line:84%
opens further and further
vistas, which I don\'t have in

00:22:02.410 --> 00:22:05.140 align:middle line:84%
any other field, you know,
except literature when I

00:22:05.140 --> 00:22:06.535 align:middle line:90%
discover somebody like Cavafy.

00:22:06.535 --> 00:22:10.910 align:middle line:84%
It\'s just out of the academic
development or professional

00:22:10.910 --> 00:22:15.570 align:middle line:84%
development of one\'s own life
and mind, you see these quite

00:22:15.570 --> 00:22:20.040 align:middle line:84%
extraordinary landscapes
opening up.

00:22:20.040 --> 00:22:22.760 align:middle line:84%
And music and literature are the
only ones that provide it.

00:22:22.760 --> 00:22:26.460 align:middle line:84%
There\'s a kind of sameness to
politics, intellectual debate,

00:22:26.460 --> 00:22:30.360 align:middle line:84%
all the stuff that
one lives by.

00:22:30.360 --> 00:22:33.830 align:middle line:84%
But in those two fields, there\'s
this quite unique kind

00:22:33.830 --> 00:22:38.320 align:middle line:84%
of unfolding disclosure kind
of excitement which has

00:22:38.320 --> 00:22:40.580 align:middle line:90%
sustained me.

00:22:40.580 --> 00:22:43.430 align:middle line:84%
How old were you when you first
went to America and why

00:22:43.430 --> 00:22:45.320 align:middle line:90%
did you go to America?

00:22:45.320 --> 00:22:49.320 align:middle line:84%
I went to America when I was
15, in the late summer of

00:22:49.320 --> 00:22:54.920 align:middle line:84%
1951, for what seemed
to be two reasons.

00:22:54.920 --> 00:22:59.970 align:middle line:84%
One was that I had in the
spring of \'51 had a bad

00:22:59.970 --> 00:23:03.550 align:middle line:84%
episode in the school I was then
going to in Cairo, called

00:23:03.550 --> 00:23:07.650 align:middle line:84%
Victoria College, where I was
very rowdy, it being a moment

00:23:07.650 --> 00:23:10.930 align:middle line:84%
of great tension between the
teachers who were all English

00:23:10.930 --> 00:23:15.230 align:middle line:84%
and the student body which
is all not English.

00:23:15.230 --> 00:23:19.740 align:middle line:84%
And I was caught being rowdy at
one point, put outside the

00:23:19.740 --> 00:23:24.090 align:middle line:84%
door of the classroom, and seen
by the headmaster who the

00:23:24.090 --> 00:23:27.250 align:middle line:90%
next morning gave us math.

00:23:27.250 --> 00:23:28.910 align:middle line:90%
He taught math.

00:23:28.910 --> 00:23:31.410 align:middle line:84%
And during-- it was a
two-hour math class,

00:23:31.410 --> 00:23:32.565 align:middle line:90%
called additional math.

00:23:32.565 --> 00:23:35.020 align:middle line:90%
It was trigonometry, I think.

00:23:35.020 --> 00:23:39.310 align:middle line:84%
And so we were about to take a
break between the first and

00:23:39.310 --> 00:23:40.080 align:middle line:90%
the second periods.

00:23:40.080 --> 00:23:41.280 align:middle line:90%
And he said--

00:23:41.280 --> 00:23:43.610 align:middle line:84%
Said, he said, I saw you
outside yesterday.

00:23:43.610 --> 00:23:45.050 align:middle line:84%
What you were doing
outside the door?

00:23:45.050 --> 00:23:47.150 align:middle line:84%
I said, well, Mr.
Low, the English

00:23:47.150 --> 00:23:49.340 align:middle line:90%
teacher, had put me out.

00:23:49.340 --> 00:23:50.300 align:middle line:90%
He said, yes.

00:23:50.300 --> 00:23:50.680 align:middle line:90%
I heard.

00:23:50.680 --> 00:23:51.900 align:middle line:90%
You were misbehaving again.

00:23:51.900 --> 00:23:52.450 align:middle line:90%
I said yes.

00:23:52.450 --> 00:23:55.890 align:middle line:84%
He said, well, we can\'t have any
of that here, so go home.

00:23:55.890 --> 00:23:56.920 align:middle line:90%
I said, now, sir?

00:23:56.920 --> 00:23:57.540 align:middle line:90%
He said, yes.

00:23:57.540 --> 00:23:57.970 align:middle line:90%
Now.

00:23:57.970 --> 00:24:00.790 align:middle line:84%
So I packed up my bag
and I went home.

00:24:00.790 --> 00:24:04.980 align:middle line:84%
And he asked to see my parents
and told them that I was--

00:24:04.980 --> 00:24:08.460 align:middle line:90%

00:24:08.460 --> 00:24:13.110 align:middle line:84%
that he would accept me back,
but only after a period of

00:24:13.110 --> 00:24:16.380 align:middle line:84%
two, three weeks of being
away, at which point I

00:24:16.380 --> 00:24:19.660 align:middle line:84%
realized and my parents, I
think, realized after speaking

00:24:19.660 --> 00:24:22.270 align:middle line:84%
to them, that my career in that
school, in the English

00:24:22.270 --> 00:24:25.890 align:middle line:90%
system, was really over.

00:24:25.890 --> 00:24:29.160 align:middle line:84%
And the other thing was that my
father had known somebody

00:24:29.160 --> 00:24:30.790 align:middle line:84%
at the consulate, the
American consulate.

00:24:30.790 --> 00:24:33.460 align:middle line:84%
I had inherited this American
citizenship, which meant

00:24:33.460 --> 00:24:36.580 align:middle line:84%
absolutely nothing to me,
because I never really--

00:24:36.580 --> 00:24:39.120 align:middle line:84%
you know, I was just an American
citizen with no

00:24:39.120 --> 00:24:41.050 align:middle line:90%
connection to America.

00:24:41.050 --> 00:24:45.650 align:middle line:84%
And he said that I had to live
in America for 5 years

00:24:45.650 --> 00:24:47.930 align:middle line:90%
before I was 21.

00:24:47.930 --> 00:24:49.630 align:middle line:90%
And since I was--

00:24:49.630 --> 00:24:50.560 align:middle line:84%
In order to keep the
citizenship.

00:24:50.560 --> 00:24:52.390 align:middle line:90%
In order to keep it.

00:24:52.390 --> 00:24:57.030 align:middle line:84%
And that much later turned out
to be unconstitutional.

00:24:57.030 --> 00:24:59.770 align:middle line:84%
But anyway, so then they
suddenly decided, my parents,

00:24:59.770 --> 00:25:02.310 align:middle line:84%
that I should be sent
away to America.

00:25:02.310 --> 00:25:07.720 align:middle line:84%
And through a man called John
Badeau, who was then the head

00:25:07.720 --> 00:25:10.800 align:middle line:84%
of the American University,
later became ambassador to

00:25:10.800 --> 00:25:12.950 align:middle line:84%
Egypt under Kennedy-- he was
quite a good friend of my

00:25:12.950 --> 00:25:15.650 align:middle line:84%
father\'s, I didn\'t much
care for him--

00:25:15.650 --> 00:25:18.400 align:middle line:84%
this school was found,
Mount Hermon.

00:25:18.400 --> 00:25:21.480 align:middle line:90%
And so I was sent there.

00:25:21.480 --> 00:25:25.730 align:middle line:84%
So I really left with a
kind of double load.

00:25:25.730 --> 00:25:27.890 align:middle line:84%
I mean, there was this American
citizenship which I

00:25:27.890 --> 00:25:29.530 align:middle line:90%
was supposed to be preserving.

00:25:29.530 --> 00:25:35.950 align:middle line:84%
And the other thing was I was
sort of forced out of what I

00:25:35.950 --> 00:25:39.110 align:middle line:90%
really in a sense had known.

00:25:39.110 --> 00:25:41.850 align:middle line:84%
I mean, so I went to an
entirely new world.

00:25:41.850 --> 00:25:43.940 align:middle line:84%
And I don\'t think I ever really
recovered from it.

00:25:43.940 --> 00:25:47.610 align:middle line:84%
It was like the biggest shock
of my life at that point,

00:25:47.610 --> 00:25:50.630 align:middle line:84%
being away and being in America
at the same time.

00:25:50.630 --> 00:25:56.470 align:middle line:84%
And although I\'ve been there now
for over 50 years, I still

00:25:56.470 --> 00:26:00.430 align:middle line:90%
don\'t feel I belong there.

00:26:00.430 --> 00:26:00.960 align:middle line:90%
Was it a boys\' school?

00:26:00.960 --> 00:26:01.740 align:middle line:90%
Boarding school.

00:26:01.740 --> 00:26:05.020 align:middle line:84%
Boys\' school and boarding
school.

00:26:05.020 --> 00:26:05.890 align:middle line:90%
Religious affiliation?

00:26:05.890 --> 00:26:06.520 align:middle line:90%
Very.

00:26:06.520 --> 00:26:09.710 align:middle line:90%
There was a lot of chapel.

00:26:09.710 --> 00:26:12.230 align:middle line:84%
I think it was five
times a week.

00:26:12.230 --> 00:26:15.050 align:middle line:84%
It was a school founded by DL
Moody, the great evangelist,

00:26:15.050 --> 00:26:17.680 align:middle line:84%
so there was a lot of
emphasis on that.

00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:20.410 align:middle line:90%
And I completely resisted it.

00:26:20.410 --> 00:26:22.670 align:middle line:90%
I went through unscathed.

00:26:22.670 --> 00:26:23.910 align:middle line:90%
I was clever at it.

00:26:23.910 --> 00:26:26.500 align:middle line:84%
Everybody had to write a paper
on DL Moody once, in the

00:26:26.500 --> 00:26:27.130 align:middle line:90%
junior year.

00:26:27.130 --> 00:26:28.530 align:middle line:90%
So I wrote one.

00:26:28.530 --> 00:26:29.500 align:middle line:84%
And I don\'t remember
what I wrote.

00:26:29.500 --> 00:26:33.070 align:middle line:84%
I just wrote nonsense, but
I got an A or something.

00:26:33.070 --> 00:26:37.210 align:middle line:84%
But that whole aspect of it,
I had, of course, been very

00:26:37.210 --> 00:26:40.480 align:middle line:84%
carefully brought up in
the Anglican faith.

00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:43.590 align:middle line:84%
And then I also because of my
mother\'s background, which was

00:26:43.590 --> 00:26:46.910 align:middle line:84%
Presbyterian and Baptist,
so I\'d had that too.

00:26:46.910 --> 00:26:48.850 align:middle line:90%
And so I went on Sundays.

00:26:48.850 --> 00:26:50.700 align:middle line:90%
They were hell.

00:26:50.700 --> 00:26:52.580 align:middle line:84%
It was four times a
day of church in

00:26:52.580 --> 00:26:54.440 align:middle line:90%
Arabic and in English.

00:26:54.440 --> 00:26:56.890 align:middle line:84%
And there too, I didn\'t retain
any of the substance.

00:26:56.890 --> 00:27:01.040 align:middle line:84%
I just remembered the forms and
the words, which I liked

00:27:01.040 --> 00:27:02.830 align:middle line:84%
for their own sake, not for
what they meant, for the

00:27:02.830 --> 00:27:03.980 align:middle line:90%
sound and so on.

00:27:03.980 --> 00:27:07.920 align:middle line:90%
Anyway, back to Mount Hermon.

00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:09.320 align:middle line:90%
So I couldn\'t wait to get out.

00:27:09.320 --> 00:27:11.730 align:middle line:84%
The problem was in vacations,
which were quite long,

00:27:11.730 --> 00:27:16.060 align:middle line:84%
Christmas, and Easter,
I had no place to go.

00:27:16.060 --> 00:27:21.180 align:middle line:84%
I had some relatives in New
York, cousins of mine.

00:27:21.180 --> 00:27:24.060 align:middle line:84%
But they weren\'t really
equipped to have

00:27:24.060 --> 00:27:25.460 align:middle line:90%
me, but they did.

00:27:25.460 --> 00:27:28.020 align:middle line:84%
It was too far to go back to
Egypt except in the summer,

00:27:28.020 --> 00:27:30.155 align:middle line:84%
because it takes three
days to come.

00:27:30.155 --> 00:27:33.960 align:middle line:84%
I went to America originally
in \'51 by boat.

00:27:33.960 --> 00:27:38.200 align:middle line:84%
But flying in \'52, it took three
days to get to Cairo.

00:27:38.200 --> 00:27:40.170 align:middle line:84%
So it was something you could
only do once a year.

00:27:40.170 --> 00:27:42.280 align:middle line:84%
Luckily, my parents
could afford it.

00:27:42.280 --> 00:27:44.830 align:middle line:84%
So I\'d go back and I\'d spend all
the time dreading when I\'d

00:27:44.830 --> 00:27:46.375 align:middle line:84%
have to return, which
I did of course.

00:27:46.375 --> 00:27:49.110 align:middle line:90%

00:27:49.110 --> 00:27:55.170 align:middle line:84%
And what I developed was on the
surface, at least, a kind

00:27:55.170 --> 00:27:56.420 align:middle line:90%
of hardened--

00:27:56.420 --> 00:28:02.590 align:middle line:90%

00:28:02.590 --> 00:28:04.250 align:middle line:84%
I don\'t know what the word
in English, [FRENCH]

00:28:04.250 --> 00:28:07.140 align:middle line:90%
in French--

00:28:07.140 --> 00:28:10.200 align:middle line:84%
a sort of semi-professional
attitude to the things I had

00:28:10.200 --> 00:28:14.386 align:middle line:84%
to do, all the time feeling
miserable inside.

00:28:14.386 --> 00:28:17.820 align:middle line:84%
Not exactly crying, but
regretting one thing or the

00:28:17.820 --> 00:28:23.830 align:middle line:84%
other, missing my family,
missing my room, missing the

00:28:23.830 --> 00:28:26.600 align:middle line:84%
language, which I didn\'t
hear at all--

00:28:26.600 --> 00:28:29.900 align:middle line:84%
Arabic, I mean-- while
I was there.

00:28:29.900 --> 00:28:35.110 align:middle line:84%
And then over time I developed
quite a sense of being able to

00:28:35.110 --> 00:28:39.780 align:middle line:84%
do two things simultaneously,
to carry on in the school,

00:28:39.780 --> 00:28:44.110 align:middle line:84%
getting all the things right,
and then sort of going my own

00:28:44.110 --> 00:28:45.330 align:middle line:90%
way underneath that.

00:28:45.330 --> 00:28:47.430 align:middle line:84%
I mean, there was almost another
self where I could

00:28:47.430 --> 00:28:51.490 align:middle line:84%
develop in fields that
interested me, like

00:28:51.490 --> 00:28:54.400 align:middle line:84%
philosophy, which I first
became aware of at Mount

00:28:54.400 --> 00:28:56.910 align:middle line:90%
Hermon, through the chaplain.

00:28:56.910 --> 00:28:59.990 align:middle line:84%
And I first read Kierkegaard
when I was at Mount Hermon, at

00:28:59.990 --> 00:29:03.700 align:middle line:84%
the age of 14, and Plato
I discovered.

00:29:03.700 --> 00:29:06.550 align:middle line:84%
So they were all sort
of a self-education.

00:29:06.550 --> 00:29:09.490 align:middle line:84%
And in the formal aspects of
education, I just became a

00:29:09.490 --> 00:29:10.980 align:middle line:90%
pro, as they say.

00:29:10.980 --> 00:29:12.810 align:middle line:84%
But did that give you great
self-confidence?

00:29:12.810 --> 00:29:13.210 align:middle line:90%
No.

00:29:13.210 --> 00:29:13.830 align:middle line:90%
Not at all.

00:29:13.830 --> 00:29:16.470 align:middle line:90%
I mean, it\'s funny.

00:29:16.470 --> 00:29:23.360 align:middle line:84%
On the surface, I suppose I
carried myself with a certain

00:29:23.360 --> 00:29:25.040 align:middle line:90%
confidence.

00:29:25.040 --> 00:29:31.400 align:middle line:84%
But I always felt my
insufficiencies and

00:29:31.400 --> 00:29:34.470 align:middle line:84%
delinquencies and the
fact that I wasn\'t--

00:29:34.470 --> 00:29:38.610 align:middle line:84%
for example, my father came for
my graduation from school,

00:29:38.610 --> 00:29:41.050 align:middle line:90%
from Mount Hermon, in 1953.

00:29:41.050 --> 00:29:44.230 align:middle line:84%
And I mean, it was a gesture
I deeply appreciated.

00:29:44.230 --> 00:29:45.700 align:middle line:84%
It was very hard for
him to come.

00:29:45.700 --> 00:29:47.130 align:middle line:90%
He wasn\'t terribly well.

00:29:47.130 --> 00:29:47.870 align:middle line:90%
He came alone?

00:29:47.870 --> 00:29:48.240 align:middle line:90%
He came alone.

00:29:48.240 --> 00:29:51.330 align:middle line:84%
My mother didn\'t come because I
had four younger sisters and

00:29:51.330 --> 00:29:54.100 align:middle line:84%
they couldn\'t be left and
it was such a long trip.

00:29:54.100 --> 00:29:56.020 align:middle line:90%
Anyway, he came.

00:29:56.020 --> 00:29:59.770 align:middle line:84%
And the first sort of question
I remember him asking of the

00:29:59.770 --> 00:30:05.910 align:middle line:84%
teachers, since it was like
a whole-day affair, was

00:30:05.910 --> 00:30:07.190 align:middle line:90%
how did Edward do?

00:30:07.190 --> 00:30:09.060 align:middle line:84%
And they\'d say, well,
he did very well.

00:30:09.060 --> 00:30:12.570 align:middle line:84%
He was second or first in the
class or something like that.

00:30:12.570 --> 00:30:13.580 align:middle line:90%
And then he said, yes.

00:30:13.580 --> 00:30:15.510 align:middle line:90%
But did he do his best?

00:30:15.510 --> 00:30:18.520 align:middle line:84%
And most of the times, the
answer would be, well, not

00:30:18.520 --> 00:30:19.700 align:middle line:90%
quite, really.

00:30:19.700 --> 00:30:20.510 align:middle line:90%
He could have--

00:30:20.510 --> 00:30:23.630 align:middle line:84%
so he could have done better,
my father would say.

00:30:23.630 --> 00:30:25.270 align:middle line:84%
So I always had that
feeling, you know.

00:30:25.270 --> 00:30:28.390 align:middle line:84%
I mean, I don\'t think he meant
it to undercut me.

00:30:28.390 --> 00:30:30.940 align:middle line:84%
But it impressed me, the fact
that there was always

00:30:30.940 --> 00:30:32.870 align:middle line:84%
something that I hadn\'t done
that I should have done.

00:30:32.870 --> 00:30:35.430 align:middle line:90%

00:30:35.430 --> 00:30:38.090 align:middle line:84%
I mean, in the long run it\'s a
good feeling to have, because

00:30:38.090 --> 00:30:41.300 align:middle line:84%
you don\'t really rest on your
achievements and say, well,

00:30:41.300 --> 00:30:42.000 align:middle line:90%
I\'ve done that.

00:30:42.000 --> 00:30:45.090 align:middle line:84%
You know, there\'s always
something more to do.

00:30:45.090 --> 00:30:49.420 align:middle line:84%
So a lot of the time was I
was developing a kind of

00:30:49.420 --> 00:30:52.120 align:middle line:84%
independence of my own as
I said, outside my main

00:30:52.120 --> 00:30:55.680 align:middle line:84%
identity, which was, as I grew
older, I became a professor

00:30:55.680 --> 00:30:57.770 align:middle line:84%
and a scholar and so
on and so forth.

00:30:57.770 --> 00:31:04.110 align:middle line:84%
But I always had this other
life, which allowed me to make

00:31:04.110 --> 00:31:05.660 align:middle line:90%
connections with people.

00:31:05.660 --> 00:31:11.000 align:middle line:84%
I mean, as I saw, it was useful
or pleasurable for me.

00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:14.030 align:middle line:90%
It\'s a kind of great luxury.

00:31:14.030 --> 00:31:16.835 align:middle line:84%
Many years ago I devised
this scheme.

00:31:16.835 --> 00:31:20.430 align:middle line:84%
It\'s a verbal one, where the
difference between filiation

00:31:20.430 --> 00:31:23.590 align:middle line:84%
and affiliation, where filiation
is what you get from

00:31:23.590 --> 00:31:26.800 align:middle line:84%
your inheritance and your
background and being a son,

00:31:26.800 --> 00:31:28.350 align:middle line:90%
which is what I was.

00:31:28.350 --> 00:31:32.220 align:middle line:84%
Affiliation are connections you
make when the others sort

00:31:32.220 --> 00:31:33.490 align:middle line:90%
of fail or break down.

00:31:33.490 --> 00:31:37.840 align:middle line:84%
And since that filiation for me
had always been a problem,

00:31:37.840 --> 00:31:40.880 align:middle line:84%
I really spent a lot more
time affiliating, making

00:31:40.880 --> 00:31:43.980 align:middle line:84%
connections with people through
my work, through

00:31:43.980 --> 00:31:47.730 align:middle line:84%
politics, across lines-- always
across lines, with

00:31:47.730 --> 00:31:50.770 align:middle line:84%
people who are quite different
from me and intellectually

00:31:50.770 --> 00:31:53.190 align:middle line:84%
people who are at the
opposite extreme.

00:31:53.190 --> 00:31:56.990 align:middle line:84%
I mean that\'s the greatest
pleasure of all.

00:31:56.990 --> 00:31:59.760 align:middle line:84%
People whom in everyday life,
for example, I would have

00:31:59.760 --> 00:32:04.820 align:middle line:84%
nothing to do with because
they\'d be so reactionary, but

00:32:04.820 --> 00:32:08.110 align:middle line:84%
to get from them or to somehow
connect with them in ways that

00:32:08.110 --> 00:32:11.120 align:middle line:84%
were sort of against
the grain.

00:32:11.120 --> 00:32:12.370 align:middle line:84%
That\'s been the greatest
thing.

00:32:12.370 --> 00:32:15.120 align:middle line:90%

00:32:15.120 --> 00:32:19.260 align:middle line:84%
Then intellectually, one of the
great influences on me was

00:32:19.260 --> 00:32:22.310 align:middle line:84%
an Italian philosopher that I
read when I was about 20,

00:32:22.310 --> 00:32:27.050 align:middle line:84%
called Vico, who is an 18th
century Neapolitan who is a

00:32:27.050 --> 00:32:28.720 align:middle line:90%
professor of Latin eloquence.

00:32:28.720 --> 00:32:33.170 align:middle line:84%
I think the single most
powerful intellectual

00:32:33.170 --> 00:32:36.930 align:middle line:84%
influence on my life was Vico,
Giambattista Vico.

00:32:36.930 --> 00:32:40.050 align:middle line:84%
And there\'s nothing that
we have in common.

00:32:40.050 --> 00:32:46.210 align:middle line:84%
I mean, he was a devout
Christian Latin scholar, very

00:32:46.210 --> 00:32:49.000 align:middle line:84%
choleric, seemed like a
very unpleasant man.

00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:51.580 align:middle line:84%
A lot of the people I\'ve admired
in terms of writing

00:32:51.580 --> 00:32:54.980 align:middle line:90%
are deeply unpleasant.

00:32:54.980 --> 00:33:01.120 align:middle line:84%
Conrad, who is the great
figure of my sort of

00:33:01.120 --> 00:33:06.500 align:middle line:84%
imaginative life, was a Pole who
learnt French first, after

00:33:06.500 --> 00:33:10.870 align:middle line:84%
he left Poland as a 17- or
18-year-old, and then worked

00:33:10.870 --> 00:33:14.250 align:middle line:84%
in the French merchant Navy
and then became an English

00:33:14.250 --> 00:33:19.900 align:middle line:84%
sailor and got his master\'s
certificate as a captain when

00:33:19.900 --> 00:33:22.790 align:middle line:84%
he was close to 30 and then
became an English novelist.

00:33:22.790 --> 00:33:25.730 align:middle line:84%
Also a deeply unpleasant
man from all accounts

00:33:25.730 --> 00:33:26.410 align:middle line:90%
that we have of him.

00:33:26.410 --> 00:33:29.060 align:middle line:90%
But his work has haunted me.

00:33:29.060 --> 00:33:31.140 align:middle line:84%
So those kinds of connections
are the ones that really

00:33:31.140 --> 00:33:34.600 align:middle line:84%
interest me, not the ones with
people who are like me, who

00:33:34.600 --> 00:33:36.490 align:middle line:84%
come from the similar
backgrounds.

00:33:36.490 --> 00:33:38.850 align:middle line:84%
But as I grow older I realize
that there aren\'t any people

00:33:38.850 --> 00:33:43.700 align:middle line:84%
who are like me, in a way,
that there\'s a kind of--

00:33:43.700 --> 00:33:47.210 align:middle line:84%
as the English poet Gerard
Manley Hopkins said, there\'s a

00:33:47.210 --> 00:33:50.560 align:middle line:84%
wonderful line which has meant
a lot to me, \"all things

00:33:50.560 --> 00:33:55.650 align:middle line:84%
counter, original, spare.\" And
I\'ve tried to maintain that

00:33:55.650 --> 00:33:58.630 align:middle line:84%
view of things, where everything
is original and

00:33:58.630 --> 00:34:01.980 align:middle line:84%
I\'ve sorted out, rather than
trying to find likes.

00:34:01.980 --> 00:34:05.950 align:middle line:84%
It\'s the unlikes and the
asymmetrical and the

00:34:05.950 --> 00:34:09.219 align:middle line:84%
unreconciled which is also the
core of the counterpoint, I

00:34:09.219 --> 00:34:12.380 align:middle line:84%
think, the idea of
the counterpoint.

00:34:12.380 --> 00:34:17.760 align:middle line:84%
With this richness of
friendships and of interests,

00:34:17.760 --> 00:34:19.790 align:middle line:84%
would it to be fair to say that
you really don\'t have any

00:34:19.790 --> 00:34:23.389 align:middle line:84%
regrets about not having been
able to stay in Palestine and

00:34:23.389 --> 00:34:26.060 align:middle line:84%
not having been able to stay
in Cairo and not being

00:34:26.060 --> 00:34:29.219 align:middle line:84%
confined to that society
from which you came?

00:34:29.219 --> 00:34:29.590 align:middle line:90%
Yes.

00:34:29.590 --> 00:34:30.310 align:middle line:90%
I don\'t.

00:34:30.310 --> 00:34:33.120 align:middle line:84%
I don\'t have any regrets,
because I don\'t

00:34:33.120 --> 00:34:34.230 align:middle line:90%
know what it means.

00:34:34.230 --> 00:34:35.130 align:middle line:90%
It\'s strange.

00:34:35.130 --> 00:34:38.810 align:middle line:84%
I mean, my most intimate
relationships now are with my

00:34:38.810 --> 00:34:40.330 align:middle line:90%
family, my immediate family.

00:34:40.330 --> 00:34:43.016 align:middle line:84%
You know my wife, who changed my
life when I got married to

00:34:43.016 --> 00:34:47.199 align:middle line:84%
her in 1970, because it was a
re-establishment of contact

00:34:47.199 --> 00:34:50.010 align:middle line:90%
with the Arab world.

00:34:50.010 --> 00:34:53.000 align:middle line:90%
And of course my own children.

00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:56.130 align:middle line:84%
But for the rest, it\'s
been very itinerant.

00:34:56.130 --> 00:34:59.430 align:middle line:84%
And I\'ve had the best
of it, I think.

00:34:59.430 --> 00:35:03.270 align:middle line:84%
You know, I feel very lucky
that way and pleased.

00:35:03.270 --> 00:35:07.660 align:middle line:84%
But the rest, which-- as I
say, I don\'t own a house.

00:35:07.660 --> 00:35:10.830 align:middle line:90%
I don\'t own a car.

00:35:10.830 --> 00:35:13.990 align:middle line:84%
I don\'t have much property
except portable property.

00:35:13.990 --> 00:35:17.070 align:middle line:90%
I mean, I like clothes.

00:35:17.070 --> 00:35:17.770 align:middle line:90%
I like pens.

00:35:17.770 --> 00:35:19.720 align:middle line:90%
I like pipes, small things.

00:35:19.720 --> 00:35:22.300 align:middle line:90%
I don\'t own any art.

00:35:22.300 --> 00:35:26.790 align:middle line:84%
I\'ve got thousands of books,
but they co-exist in no

00:35:26.790 --> 00:35:27.930 align:middle line:90%
particular order.

00:35:27.930 --> 00:35:29.250 align:middle line:90%
But they exist in my head.

00:35:29.250 --> 00:35:31.570 align:middle line:84%
I mean, I can call up my
assistant when I\'m ill and

00:35:31.570 --> 00:35:33.842 align:middle line:90%
tell her I want the book.

00:35:33.842 --> 00:35:35.090 align:middle line:90%
And she\'ll say, where is it?

00:35:35.090 --> 00:35:37.690 align:middle line:84%
So I tell her, it\'s on
the fourth shelf

00:35:37.690 --> 00:35:38.770 align:middle line:90%
six from the left.

00:35:38.770 --> 00:35:39.200 align:middle line:90%
I can remember.

00:35:39.200 --> 00:35:41.360 align:middle line:84%
I have kind of a photographic
memory for some things.

00:35:41.360 --> 00:35:44.620 align:middle line:90%

00:35:44.620 --> 00:35:47.900 align:middle line:84%
In Orientalism, when you wrote
it, what were you trying to

00:35:47.900 --> 00:35:48.760 align:middle line:90%
achieve, first.

00:35:48.760 --> 00:35:54.280 align:middle line:84%
And second, what was the
reaction that you got?

00:35:54.280 --> 00:35:58.960 align:middle line:84%
Well, my whole interest in
Orientalism really began, I

00:35:58.960 --> 00:36:03.670 align:middle line:84%
would have thought, around the
time of the October of 1973

00:36:03.670 --> 00:36:09.400 align:middle line:84%
war, when for the first time
in my history, at least of

00:36:09.400 --> 00:36:15.730 align:middle line:84%
being aware, there was some
Arab military success.

00:36:15.730 --> 00:36:19.210 align:middle line:84%
\'67 was a devastating year for
me, because everything I\'d

00:36:19.210 --> 00:36:21.050 align:middle line:84%
grown up with-- although
I was in America by

00:36:21.050 --> 00:36:23.020 align:middle line:90%
that time, I was alone.

00:36:23.020 --> 00:36:25.020 align:middle line:84%
The rest of my family was
in the Middle East.

00:36:25.020 --> 00:36:27.540 align:middle line:84%
But everything I had
intellectually and politically

00:36:27.540 --> 00:36:32.550 align:middle line:84%
grown up with, namely Abdel
Nasser, perhaps because of the

00:36:32.550 --> 00:36:37.510 align:middle line:84%
distance from it, had a
certain prestige in

00:36:37.510 --> 00:36:38.250 align:middle line:90%
my mind about it.

00:36:38.250 --> 00:36:40.270 align:middle line:84%
This was Arab nationalism
and so on.

00:36:40.270 --> 00:36:42.800 align:middle line:90%
It all crumbled very quickly.

00:36:42.800 --> 00:36:47.320 align:middle line:84%
And worse, being in New York at
the time, there was a sense

00:36:47.320 --> 00:36:54.040 align:middle line:84%
of triumphalism, which appeared
for the first time,

00:36:54.040 --> 00:36:57.200 align:middle line:84%
not just amongst Jews, but
amongst everybody, where you\'d

00:36:57.200 --> 00:36:58.440 align:middle line:84%
walk down the street
and people would

00:36:58.440 --> 00:36:59.680 align:middle line:90%
say, how are we doing?

00:36:59.680 --> 00:37:02.800 align:middle line:84%
And it was always understood
that it was Israel, the plucky

00:37:02.800 --> 00:37:07.100 align:middle line:84%
little state about to be
overwhelmed, but winning this

00:37:07.100 --> 00:37:08.570 align:middle line:90%
tremendous victory.

00:37:08.570 --> 00:37:13.710 align:middle line:84%
So there began to grow up, in
those years after \'67, a kind

00:37:13.710 --> 00:37:17.575 align:middle line:84%
of the library of cliches
about Arabs,

00:37:17.575 --> 00:37:18.630 align:middle line:90%
that they\'re cowardly.

00:37:18.630 --> 00:37:24.430 align:middle line:84%
And I remember, for example, my
own class, the class of \'57

00:37:24.430 --> 00:37:25.670 align:middle line:90%
at Princeton.

00:37:25.670 --> 00:37:27.250 align:middle line:90%
I mention this in Orientalism.

00:37:27.250 --> 00:37:30.300 align:middle line:84%
At the 10th reunion in \'67,
which occurred just after the

00:37:30.300 --> 00:37:34.830 align:middle line:84%
war, there was to have been a
costume in which we all were

00:37:34.830 --> 00:37:38.080 align:middle line:90%
supposed to wear Arab costume.

00:37:38.080 --> 00:37:39.530 align:middle line:90%
And it was changed.

00:37:39.530 --> 00:37:41.510 align:middle line:84%
And you could wear
Arab costume.

00:37:41.510 --> 00:37:42.750 align:middle line:84%
You\'re supposed to go barefoot
and put your

00:37:42.750 --> 00:37:43.630 align:middle line:90%
hands up like that.

00:37:43.630 --> 00:37:46.680 align:middle line:84%
So Arabs had become a
representation of defeat and

00:37:46.680 --> 00:37:50.420 align:middle line:84%
submission and incompetence
and so on and so forth.

00:37:50.420 --> 00:37:53.390 align:middle line:84%
And then with the onset of
the \'73 war, what I found

00:37:53.390 --> 00:37:55.360 align:middle line:84%
interesting-- and I gave a talk,
I remember the first

00:37:55.360 --> 00:37:59.880 align:middle line:84%
time at the University of
Michigan in the winter of \'74,

00:37:59.880 --> 00:38:03.560 align:middle line:84%
was exactly on this explosion
of myths, that suddenly the

00:38:03.560 --> 00:38:05.900 align:middle line:84%
Arabs were seen as being able
to cross the canal.

00:38:05.900 --> 00:38:09.100 align:middle line:84%
The Egyptians, the Syrians made
it back on to the Golan

00:38:09.100 --> 00:38:11.170 align:middle line:90%
Heights momentarily.

00:38:11.170 --> 00:38:14.420 align:middle line:84%
And then I started to see
the sort of battle for

00:38:14.420 --> 00:38:19.110 align:middle line:84%
representation, which was very
interesting to me, outside the

00:38:19.110 --> 00:38:19.680 align:middle line:90%
Arab world.

00:38:19.680 --> 00:38:22.580 align:middle line:84%
And it had very little to do
with experiences, the actual

00:38:22.580 --> 00:38:25.930 align:middle line:84%
lived experience, which was
always my main theme, in the

00:38:25.930 --> 00:38:26.450 align:middle line:90%
Arab world.

00:38:26.450 --> 00:38:28.790 align:middle line:84%
And I started working on it in
a kind of scholarly way.

00:38:28.790 --> 00:38:33.990 align:middle line:84%
And I started tracing it back,
well, to the Middle Ages.

00:38:33.990 --> 00:38:38.220 align:middle line:84%
And I found a whole library of
stuff, mostly religious in the

00:38:38.220 --> 00:38:43.940 align:middle line:84%
early days, but I mean, Dante,
for example, where Muhammad is

00:38:43.940 --> 00:38:48.140 align:middle line:84%
in the seventh or eighth circle
of hell as a false

00:38:48.140 --> 00:38:49.310 align:middle line:90%
prophet and so on.

00:38:49.310 --> 00:38:52.270 align:middle line:84%
And I decided to write a
short book about that.

00:38:52.270 --> 00:38:55.630 align:middle line:84%
And I got very little interest
from publishers.

00:38:55.630 --> 00:39:01.280 align:middle line:84%
And I had just then gotten,
in 1975, an agent.

00:39:01.280 --> 00:39:03.860 align:middle line:84%
And he was able to sell
it to a reputable

00:39:03.860 --> 00:39:06.080 align:middle line:90%
academic press for $250.

00:39:06.080 --> 00:39:09.800 align:middle line:84%
And I was made to understand
that I was very lucky.

00:39:09.800 --> 00:39:11.840 align:middle line:84%
Then we spent the year
in California.

00:39:11.840 --> 00:39:13.660 align:middle line:90%
And I was completely free.

00:39:13.660 --> 00:39:16.890 align:middle line:84%
I had a wonderful year
at the Center for

00:39:16.890 --> 00:39:19.210 align:middle line:90%
Advanced Study at Stanford.

00:39:19.210 --> 00:39:22.550 align:middle line:84%
And there I wrote this book,
which grew in ways I hadn\'t

00:39:22.550 --> 00:39:26.330 align:middle line:84%
foreseen, and then suddenly
became something much more.

00:39:26.330 --> 00:39:30.030 align:middle line:84%
It became the whole history of
representation of the other.

00:39:30.030 --> 00:39:33.060 align:middle line:84%
I think it was one of the first
books to try to do that.

00:39:33.060 --> 00:39:35.770 align:middle line:84%
But I was really going into
uncharted territory because of

00:39:35.770 --> 00:39:37.900 align:middle line:90%
the subject matter.

00:39:37.900 --> 00:39:41.030 align:middle line:84%
So the generational thing was
quite immediately obvious,

00:39:41.030 --> 00:39:43.210 align:middle line:84%
that the older people, who
really thought that the word

00:39:43.210 --> 00:39:49.570 align:middle line:84%
Orientalism was a dignified
word signifying oriental

00:39:49.570 --> 00:39:53.600 align:middle line:84%
studies and being
an Orientalist

00:39:53.600 --> 00:39:56.410 align:middle line:90%
reacted with great vehemence.

00:39:56.410 --> 00:39:57.830 align:middle line:90%
In some cases it took a while.

00:39:57.830 --> 00:40:00.690 align:middle line:84%
I mean, Bernard Lewis, for
example, took four years to

00:40:00.690 --> 00:40:02.320 align:middle line:90%
respond to me.

00:40:02.320 --> 00:40:04.920 align:middle line:84%
In the pages of The New York
Review they gave him 15,000

00:40:04.920 --> 00:40:07.550 align:middle line:84%
words to write a tremendous
attack on me, which I

00:40:07.550 --> 00:40:09.830 align:middle line:90%
responded to.

00:40:09.830 --> 00:40:13.380 align:middle line:84%
Younger people, that was the
most interesting thing.

00:40:13.380 --> 00:40:16.240 align:middle line:84%
Even members of organizations
that I had criticized in the

00:40:16.240 --> 00:40:19.570 align:middle line:84%
book, like the Middle East
Studies Association, MESA,

00:40:19.570 --> 00:40:26.970 align:middle line:84%
within 10 years, my book had
become like their manifesto.

00:40:26.970 --> 00:40:29.950 align:middle line:84%
And there was a complete sort
of revolutionizing of the

00:40:29.950 --> 00:40:32.760 align:middle line:84%
profession amongst the young
people, who then became

00:40:32.760 --> 00:40:36.360 align:middle line:84%
extremely sensitive to the
question of Orientalism in

00:40:36.360 --> 00:40:37.900 align:middle line:84%
both positive and
negative ways.

00:40:37.900 --> 00:40:41.080 align:middle line:84%
I mean, the negative thing,
there was a great deal,

00:40:41.080 --> 00:40:43.390 align:middle line:84%
certainly in the Arab world,
of simplifying, that people

00:40:43.390 --> 00:40:46.500 align:middle line:84%
thought that I was really
defending Islam.

00:40:46.500 --> 00:40:50.710 align:middle line:84%
And therefore, the Islamists
used Orientalism and one of

00:40:50.710 --> 00:40:54.400 align:middle line:84%
the two books that came after
it covering Islam, whereas I

00:40:54.400 --> 00:40:56.570 align:middle line:84%
have nothing to say about Islam
in the book at all.

00:40:56.570 --> 00:40:59.390 align:middle line:84%
There really isn\'t anything
at all about it.

00:40:59.390 --> 00:41:03.210 align:middle line:84%
And then others used it as an
excuse for a kind of nativism

00:41:03.210 --> 00:41:05.610 align:middle line:84%
that only Orientals should write
about themselves, which

00:41:05.610 --> 00:41:07.970 align:middle line:84%
I say explicitly is not what
I believe in, you know, the

00:41:07.970 --> 00:41:09.980 align:middle line:90%
insider/outsider argument.

00:41:09.980 --> 00:41:12.370 align:middle line:84%
And then there was the whole
question, which I think was

00:41:12.370 --> 00:41:16.400 align:middle line:84%
perhaps the most damaging and
serious misreading, which

00:41:16.400 --> 00:41:19.470 align:middle line:84%
still goes on today, which is
to suggest that I identify

00:41:19.470 --> 00:41:23.400 align:middle line:84%
Orientalism with imperialism,
[FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

00:41:23.400 --> 00:41:26.120 align:middle line:84%
in other words, that if you
study an other, you\'re

00:41:26.120 --> 00:41:29.780 align:middle line:84%
automatically being an
imperialist and a racist.

00:41:29.780 --> 00:41:30.970 align:middle line:90%
I don\'t say that.

00:41:30.970 --> 00:41:33.150 align:middle line:84%
Were you writing as an
Occidental or as an Oriental?

00:41:33.150 --> 00:41:34.240 align:middle line:90%
I don\'t really know.

00:41:34.240 --> 00:41:38.650 align:middle line:84%
I mean, certainly my training,
I was trained as a

00:41:38.650 --> 00:41:39.430 align:middle line:90%
comparatist.

00:41:39.430 --> 00:41:43.100 align:middle line:84%
I remember one of the most to
me satisfying letters I got

00:41:43.100 --> 00:41:46.530 align:middle line:84%
was from my old Harvard
professor, Harry Levin, who

00:41:46.530 --> 00:41:50.200 align:middle line:84%
was a known comparatist,
probably the best known

00:41:50.200 --> 00:41:50.710 align:middle line:90%
comparatist in America.

00:41:50.710 --> 00:41:56.030 align:middle line:84%
When I sent him the book, he
said, you know, this really

00:41:56.030 --> 00:42:00.130 align:middle line:84%
justifies or somehow fulfills
the mission of the comparatist

00:42:00.130 --> 00:42:02.250 align:middle line:84%
better than anything
I\'ve seen.

00:42:02.250 --> 00:42:04.430 align:middle line:84%
Because I talked about
literature a lot in the book.

00:42:04.430 --> 00:42:05.690 align:middle line:90%
It\'s not attacking people.

00:42:05.690 --> 00:42:10.570 align:middle line:84%
I mean, this caricature of what
people say I have done

00:42:10.570 --> 00:42:12.400 align:middle line:84%
has stayed with the
book too long.

00:42:12.400 --> 00:42:15.230 align:middle line:84%
It\'s become a term of abuse
as Albert Hourani said.

00:42:15.230 --> 00:42:18.090 align:middle line:84%
And I can\'t be blamed for that,
because a lot of the

00:42:18.090 --> 00:42:21.660 align:middle line:84%
book is very minute
analysis of texts,

00:42:21.660 --> 00:42:23.410 align:middle line:90%
literary texts mostly.

00:42:23.410 --> 00:42:26.420 align:middle line:84%
So I think in that respect
I was writing

00:42:26.420 --> 00:42:28.610 align:middle line:90%
as a Western scholar.

00:42:28.610 --> 00:42:32.730 align:middle line:84%
But the driving force of the
book as exactly Hourani

00:42:32.730 --> 00:42:36.000 align:middle line:84%
himself said in a review that he
wrote of the book, which he

00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:42.680 align:middle line:84%
found somewhat mystifying, was
that you might say the animus

00:42:42.680 --> 00:42:46.300 align:middle line:84%
in the book derived from the
tremendous gap I felt between

00:42:46.300 --> 00:42:49.760 align:middle line:84%
these accounts of the Orient
that were Western accounts,

00:42:49.760 --> 00:42:53.570 align:middle line:84%
from the outside, and
my own experience.

00:42:53.570 --> 00:42:54.660 align:middle line:84%
I mean, there was no
correspondence

00:42:54.660 --> 00:42:55.320 align:middle line:90%
between them at all.

00:42:55.320 --> 00:42:59.290 align:middle line:84%
They were saying things about
me and others like me that

00:42:59.290 --> 00:43:04.190 align:middle line:84%
really never rendered our
reality or our experience in

00:43:04.190 --> 00:43:05.920 align:middle line:90%
any intelligible way.

00:43:05.920 --> 00:43:08.270 align:middle line:84%
And what was the connection
between this Western

00:43:08.270 --> 00:43:11.040 align:middle line:84%
scholarship about the
Orient and power?

00:43:11.040 --> 00:43:14.720 align:middle line:84%
Well, the idea was that, going
back to Napoleon, I mean, that

00:43:14.720 --> 00:43:20.120 align:middle line:84%
if you wanted to not just to go
in and rampage, if you were

00:43:20.120 --> 00:43:24.440 align:middle line:84%
coming from the outside, but you
wanted to go in and impose

00:43:24.440 --> 00:43:29.990 align:middle line:84%
your own reality on these
people, to rule them, you had

00:43:29.990 --> 00:43:30.980 align:middle line:90%
to know them.

00:43:30.980 --> 00:43:35.990 align:middle line:84%
And then I remarked that all the
great successful imperial

00:43:35.990 --> 00:43:39.740 align:middle line:84%
adventures, well, not
adventures, expeditions, I

00:43:39.740 --> 00:43:42.460 align:middle line:84%
mean, of course the next step
was to look at the British in

00:43:42.460 --> 00:43:47.400 align:middle line:84%
India, and then later the
French in North Africa.

00:43:47.400 --> 00:43:49.280 align:middle line:84%
Napoleon\'s adventure
was an adventure.

00:43:49.280 --> 00:43:49.910 align:middle line:90%
It was short-lived.

00:43:49.910 --> 00:43:53.050 align:middle line:84%
He was defeated by Nelson a few
months after he arrived.

00:43:53.050 --> 00:43:53.690 align:middle line:90%
And he left.

00:43:53.690 --> 00:43:57.530 align:middle line:84%
But of course, the team of
specialists stayed on to

00:43:57.530 --> 00:43:58.310 align:middle line:90%
complete their work.

00:43:58.310 --> 00:44:01.530 align:middle line:84%
It took them four
or five years.

00:44:01.530 --> 00:44:03.640 align:middle line:84%
But if you want to actually
rule a country, you really

00:44:03.640 --> 00:44:05.440 align:middle line:90%
have to do it by knowledge.

00:44:05.440 --> 00:44:06.910 align:middle line:90%
You have to know the natives.

00:44:06.910 --> 00:44:12.550 align:middle line:84%
And I noticed, for example in
the works of Kipling, his

00:44:12.550 --> 00:44:16.090 align:middle line:84%
greatest book, perhaps his only
good novel, Kim, I mean,

00:44:16.090 --> 00:44:19.530 align:middle line:84%
it\'s the most satisfying thing
he ever wrote, one of the main

00:44:19.530 --> 00:44:24.300 align:middle line:84%
characters in the book is
Colonel Creighton, who is on

00:44:24.300 --> 00:44:30.410 align:middle line:84%
the one hand the chief of
intelligence in India, but on

00:44:30.410 --> 00:44:33.640 align:middle line:84%
the other hand is an
anthropologist, who\'s writing

00:44:33.640 --> 00:44:35.210 align:middle line:90%
a survey of India.

00:44:35.210 --> 00:44:39.890 align:middle line:84%
And that, the coincidence of
knowledge and power, which is

00:44:39.890 --> 00:44:47.530 align:middle line:84%
of course a theme developed by
Foucault, had a very concrete

00:44:47.530 --> 00:44:51.860 align:middle line:90%
embodiment in rule.

00:44:51.860 --> 00:44:56.690 align:middle line:84%
And I felt that you couldn\'t
really detach the

00:44:56.690 --> 00:45:01.060 align:middle line:84%
circumstances of knowledge from
the knowledge itself,

00:45:01.060 --> 00:45:04.230 align:middle line:84%
that it was formed with the
idea, in the case of, for

00:45:04.230 --> 00:45:07.305 align:middle line:84%
example, Colonel Creighton or
the British in India, there

00:45:07.305 --> 00:45:08.410 align:middle line:90%
was always a dispute.

00:45:08.410 --> 00:45:10.970 align:middle line:84%
Do we rule the Indians according
to their ways or

00:45:10.970 --> 00:45:12.660 align:middle line:90%
according to ours?

00:45:12.660 --> 00:45:15.380 align:middle line:84%
And Creighton and Kipling and
others like them were the

00:45:15.380 --> 00:45:16.500 align:middle line:90%
so-called Orientalists.

00:45:16.500 --> 00:45:16.890 align:middle line:90%
They said, no, no.

00:45:16.890 --> 00:45:20.260 align:middle line:84%
We have to learn about them
so as not to disturb their

00:45:20.260 --> 00:45:24.030 align:middle line:84%
patterns of life too much so
they won\'t rise up against us.

00:45:24.030 --> 00:45:25.390 align:middle line:90%
Let\'s keep them going.

00:45:25.390 --> 00:45:28.100 align:middle line:84%
Then there were the others,
especially the Americans later

00:45:28.100 --> 00:45:33.290 align:middle line:84%
on, who as we know for example
from The Quiet American, the

00:45:33.290 --> 00:45:37.540 align:middle line:84%
prescient novel by Graham Greene
in the \'50s, where the

00:45:37.540 --> 00:45:39.130 align:middle line:90%
French leave after--

00:45:39.130 --> 00:45:40.150 align:middle line:90%
Vietnam.

00:45:40.150 --> 00:45:41.470 align:middle line:90%
In Vietnam, right.

00:45:41.470 --> 00:45:44.150 align:middle line:84%
And then the Americans come in
with all these plans, a third

00:45:44.150 --> 00:45:47.200 align:middle line:84%
way and all this sort of thing,
in order to rule so

00:45:47.200 --> 00:45:49.260 align:middle line:90%
they become more American.

00:45:49.260 --> 00:45:53.700 align:middle line:84%
So in that context you see also
the association between

00:45:53.700 --> 00:45:55.100 align:middle line:90%
knowledge and power.

00:45:55.100 --> 00:45:58.720 align:middle line:84%
And of course, there was a big
argument around my book as to

00:45:58.720 --> 00:46:00.780 align:middle line:84%
whether there is any such
thing as pure knowledge.

00:46:00.780 --> 00:46:04.390 align:middle line:84%
I mean, why can\'t you, for
example, read Sanskrit and

00:46:04.390 --> 00:46:07.200 align:middle line:84%
just be enamored of the language
and that\'s it.

00:46:07.200 --> 00:46:09.160 align:middle line:84%
Well, I allow for
that, of course.

00:46:09.160 --> 00:46:11.040 align:middle line:84%
I mean, people do things because
they want to do them.

00:46:11.040 --> 00:46:13.590 align:middle line:84%
They don\'t only feel they
have to do them.

00:46:13.590 --> 00:46:16.780 align:middle line:84%
But as I try to show, the
context, certainly in America,

00:46:16.780 --> 00:46:20.210 align:middle line:84%
which is the America I grew up
in in the Cold War period, was

00:46:20.210 --> 00:46:23.990 align:middle line:84%
very much circumscribed by
questions of competition with

00:46:23.990 --> 00:46:26.830 align:middle line:84%
the Soviet Union, so that the
study of Arabic, for example,

00:46:26.830 --> 00:46:29.800 align:middle line:84%
or the study of Russia, but
certainly of the Eastern

00:46:29.800 --> 00:46:31.230 align:middle line:90%
languages, was tied up with

00:46:31.230 --> 00:46:32.360 align:middle line:90%
questions of national security.

00:46:32.360 --> 00:46:35.630 align:middle line:84%
An act was actually passed
to encourage the study of

00:46:35.630 --> 00:46:39.530 align:middle line:84%
languages like Arabic
and fund them to

00:46:39.530 --> 00:46:41.080 align:middle line:90%
enhance American security.

00:46:41.080 --> 00:46:45.460 align:middle line:84%
So you could love the language,
but the framework is

00:46:45.460 --> 00:46:48.680 align:middle line:84%
very, very powerful
an opinion.

00:46:48.680 --> 00:46:51.380 align:middle line:84%
All I thought was to make
people aware of it.

00:46:51.380 --> 00:46:51.730 align:middle line:90%
That\'s all.

00:46:51.730 --> 00:46:54.830 align:middle line:84%
I didn\'t have any particular
thesis about

00:46:54.830 --> 00:46:56.770 align:middle line:90%
how you should study.

00:46:56.770 --> 00:46:57.950 align:middle line:90%
But that was later people.

00:46:57.950 --> 00:47:00.830 align:middle line:84%
I mean they try to do that,
in other words, liberating

00:47:00.830 --> 00:47:04.270 align:middle line:84%
Orientalism from that
kind of framework.

00:47:04.270 --> 00:47:08.740 align:middle line:84%
From Orientalism to Culture and
Imperialism, in what way

00:47:08.740 --> 00:47:13.540 align:middle line:84%
does it develop the original
themes and in what ways does

00:47:13.540 --> 00:47:16.270 align:middle line:84%
it advance them, is it
an advance upon them?

00:47:16.270 --> 00:47:17.910 align:middle line:90%
Well, in two ways.

00:47:17.910 --> 00:47:22.490 align:middle line:84%
One they were written about
14 years apart.

00:47:22.490 --> 00:47:25.990 align:middle line:84%
Orientalism came out in \'78,
Culture and Imperalism in 92.

00:47:25.990 --> 00:47:28.310 align:middle line:84%
In the meantime, I\'d written
about six or seven or maybe

00:47:28.310 --> 00:47:32.140 align:middle line:84%
even eight books on subjects
having to do with Palestine,

00:47:32.140 --> 00:47:35.680 align:middle line:84%
on technical literary theory
and criticism, developing

00:47:35.680 --> 00:47:38.160 align:middle line:84%
issues that I had raised in
Orientalism, which was really

00:47:38.160 --> 00:47:43.070 align:middle line:84%
quite barren of machinery,
critical

00:47:43.070 --> 00:47:44.150 align:middle line:90%
machinery I didn\'t go into.

00:47:44.150 --> 00:47:47.050 align:middle line:84%
But I did in, for example, a
book I wrote in \'83 called,

00:47:47.050 --> 00:47:49.460 align:middle line:84%
The World, the Text,
and the Critic.

00:47:49.460 --> 00:47:54.130 align:middle line:84%
I also worked with images in
a book I wrote with the

00:47:54.130 --> 00:47:57.640 align:middle line:90%
photographer Jean Mohr.

00:47:57.640 --> 00:48:02.525 align:middle line:84%
And I worked on the history of
the intellectual in the Reith

00:48:02.525 --> 00:48:04.930 align:middle line:84%
Lectures I gave in
the early \'90s.

00:48:04.930 --> 00:48:06.120 align:middle line:84%
So I had a lot of different
concerns.

00:48:06.120 --> 00:48:08.570 align:middle line:84%
I also wrote a book
about music.

00:48:08.570 --> 00:48:12.820 align:middle line:84%
But then I felt, because I was
very concerned with the

00:48:12.820 --> 00:48:17.620 align:middle line:84%
aftermath of Orientalism, that
I wanted to expand it, first

00:48:17.620 --> 00:48:22.550 align:middle line:84%
of all, to include other regions
of the world where

00:48:22.550 --> 00:48:26.310 align:middle line:84%
representation and rule or
knowledge and power, if you

00:48:26.310 --> 00:48:29.150 align:middle line:90%
like, went together.

00:48:29.150 --> 00:48:31.480 align:middle line:84%
That I found very interesting,
the formations of

00:48:31.480 --> 00:48:35.160 align:middle line:84%
anti-colonial movements, which
happened all over the world

00:48:35.160 --> 00:48:39.700 align:middle line:84%
where by the end of the 19th
century, the European empires

00:48:39.700 --> 00:48:41.220 align:middle line:90%
controlled 85% of the world.

00:48:41.220 --> 00:48:43.680 align:middle line:84%
So it\'s impossible that
everybody was just submitting

00:48:43.680 --> 00:48:46.220 align:middle line:90%
blindly to it.

00:48:46.220 --> 00:48:49.950 align:middle line:84%
And I found also tremendously
interesting the reflection of

00:48:49.950 --> 00:48:52.260 align:middle line:90%
one region on another.

00:48:52.260 --> 00:48:56.086 align:middle line:84%
For example, Ireland, about
which I say a lot in Culture

00:48:56.086 --> 00:48:59.690 align:middle line:84%
and Imperialism, I didn\'t even
talk about in Orientalism.

00:48:59.690 --> 00:49:03.490 align:middle line:84%
But Ireland and the Caribbean,
Jamaica, in particular, became

00:49:03.490 --> 00:49:05.850 align:middle line:84%
identified with each other
in the European mind.

00:49:05.850 --> 00:49:10.890 align:middle line:84%
There\'s a wonderful Daumier
print where two of his

00:49:10.890 --> 00:49:15.180 align:middle line:84%
sarcastic lawyers I think in
the 1860s, just around the

00:49:15.180 --> 00:49:20.740 align:middle line:84%
time of the Governor Eyre
controversy, are saying one to

00:49:20.740 --> 00:49:26.250 align:middle line:84%
the other, oh, look at the
Jamaicans, how much

00:49:26.250 --> 00:49:27.160 align:middle line:90%
trouble they cost.

00:49:27.160 --> 00:49:31.310 align:middle line:84%
And the other one\'s saying how
much the Irish are giving the

00:49:31.310 --> 00:49:32.910 align:middle line:84%
British trouble at
the same time.

00:49:32.910 --> 00:49:34.590 align:middle line:84%
And the first one responds,
yeah, but

00:49:34.590 --> 00:49:36.450 align:middle line:90%
they\'re all niggers together.

00:49:36.450 --> 00:49:38.810 align:middle line:90%
[SPEAKING FRENCH], he says.

00:49:38.810 --> 00:49:42.500 align:middle line:84%
So, you know, that became very
interesting and the cross back

00:49:42.500 --> 00:49:45.260 align:middle line:84%
and forth, where you get
exceptional figures like

00:49:45.260 --> 00:49:48.580 align:middle line:84%
Conrad in the early 20th century
or at the end of the

00:49:48.580 --> 00:49:51.390 align:middle line:84%
19th, in a book like Heart of
Darkness where he\'s making the

00:49:51.390 --> 00:49:54.110 align:middle line:84%
point that not only are these
horrible things going on out

00:49:54.110 --> 00:49:57.440 align:middle line:84%
there, but there origin may in
fact be in our own hearts back

00:49:57.440 --> 00:50:02.240 align:middle line:84%
here in London and Brussels
and so on and so forth.

00:50:02.240 --> 00:50:03.600 align:middle line:84%
And so I dealt with
all of that.

00:50:03.600 --> 00:50:06.680 align:middle line:84%
And then I also dealt with the
emergence of I guess what you

00:50:06.680 --> 00:50:10.020 align:middle line:84%
would call a kind of liberation
theory which comes

00:50:10.020 --> 00:50:14.880 align:middle line:84%
out of nationalism and
the movement for self

00:50:14.880 --> 00:50:17.160 align:middle line:84%
determination and independence,
which is where

00:50:17.160 --> 00:50:20.690 align:middle line:84%
the Congress Party takes over
from the British in 1947.

00:50:20.690 --> 00:50:24.790 align:middle line:84%
But there are prescient figures,
like Tagore, who

00:50:24.790 --> 00:50:27.190 align:middle line:84%
understands that nationalism
can\'t be an end in itself, and

00:50:27.190 --> 00:50:28.710 align:middle line:90%
also [INAUDIBLE].

00:50:28.710 --> 00:50:31.620 align:middle line:84%
Unfortunately, there isn\'t much
literature about that.

00:50:31.620 --> 00:50:33.970 align:middle line:84%
And I try to supply some of
that, in other words, why

00:50:33.970 --> 00:50:36.190 align:middle line:84%
nationalism itself is not enough
independent-- and of

00:50:36.190 --> 00:50:40.570 align:middle line:84%
course, that was reflected in
my own work and affiliation

00:50:40.570 --> 00:50:44.400 align:middle line:84%
with the Palestinian movement,
where I saw it being

00:50:44.400 --> 00:50:50.400 align:middle line:84%
transformed willy nilly from
being a liberation movement

00:50:50.400 --> 00:50:54.900 align:middle line:84%
into an independence movement
where there was an idea about

00:50:54.900 --> 00:50:59.500 align:middle line:84%
a new kind of polity, where Jews
and Arabs could live in a

00:50:59.500 --> 00:51:02.500 align:middle line:84%
kind of secular democracy,
turning into a kind of

00:51:02.500 --> 00:51:06.440 align:middle line:84%
separatist thing and the
Lebanese Civil War and the

00:51:06.440 --> 00:51:10.030 align:middle line:84%
struggles between India and
Pakistan and the Irish

00:51:10.030 --> 00:51:11.450 align:middle line:90%
north-south thing.

00:51:11.450 --> 00:51:14.900 align:middle line:84%
And I began to be aware of the
history of partition as an

00:51:14.900 --> 00:51:15.910 align:middle line:90%
imperial scheme.

00:51:15.910 --> 00:51:21.260 align:middle line:84%
All that is of course fed into
Culture and Imperialism, which

00:51:21.260 --> 00:51:24.610 align:middle line:90%
wasn\'t in Orientalism.

00:51:24.610 --> 00:51:29.660 align:middle line:84%
And I found this very troubling
assumption that

00:51:29.660 --> 00:51:35.250 align:middle line:84%
whereas we assumed that the
Russians were ruling by design

00:51:35.250 --> 00:51:38.370 align:middle line:84%
and taking over countries and
whatever it is that they did

00:51:38.370 --> 00:51:41.510 align:middle line:84%
and the Arab nationalists did
the same thing and so on,

00:51:41.510 --> 00:51:43.170 align:middle line:84%
Americans never did
that, because we

00:51:43.170 --> 00:51:44.870 align:middle line:90%
didn\'t have an empire.

00:51:44.870 --> 00:51:46.620 align:middle line:90%
And we didn\'t really--

00:51:46.620 --> 00:51:48.717 align:middle line:84%
Russia invaded Afghanistan,
but America had

00:51:48.717 --> 00:51:50.040 align:middle line:90%
a presence in Vietnam.

00:51:50.040 --> 00:51:51.750 align:middle line:90%
Well, that\'s it exactly.

00:51:51.750 --> 00:51:55.120 align:middle line:84%
And the presence was
a benign one.

00:51:55.120 --> 00:51:57.820 align:middle line:84%
We were always there to bring
democracy, to modernize, to

00:51:57.820 --> 00:52:01.550 align:middle line:84%
show people the way of America,
whether it\'s through

00:52:01.550 --> 00:52:05.710 align:middle line:84%
Coke and McDonald\'s and blue
jeans and all the rest of it.

00:52:05.710 --> 00:52:07.600 align:middle line:90%
And so many people--

00:52:07.600 --> 00:52:10.590 align:middle line:84%
and there I found the
provincialism of the American

00:52:10.590 --> 00:52:15.920 align:middle line:84%
intellectual is such that they
were really insulated from the

00:52:15.920 --> 00:52:18.260 align:middle line:84%
depredations of American power
throughout the world.

00:52:18.260 --> 00:52:18.900 align:middle line:90%
That\'s number one.

00:52:18.900 --> 00:52:23.000 align:middle line:84%
Number two, the geographical
spread of the country was such

00:52:23.000 --> 00:52:26.190 align:middle line:84%
that there was no coherence to
an intellectual movement of

00:52:26.190 --> 00:52:28.060 align:middle line:90%
dissent on imperial grounds.

00:52:28.060 --> 00:52:29.900 align:middle line:84%
I mean, it happened during
Vietnam because so many

00:52:29.900 --> 00:52:31.700 align:middle line:84%
Americans were being
killed, right?

00:52:31.700 --> 00:52:34.150 align:middle line:84%
But if they weren\'t being
killed, as in Iraq during the

00:52:34.150 --> 00:52:37.900 align:middle line:84%
Gulf War, which is what my book
Culture and Imperialism

00:52:37.900 --> 00:52:43.090 align:middle line:84%
ends with, then it\'s not as
important a matter as your own

00:52:43.090 --> 00:52:44.115 align:middle line:90%
career in the university.

00:52:44.115 --> 00:52:45.450 align:middle line:84%
And of course, a lot
of intellectuals

00:52:45.450 --> 00:52:48.400 align:middle line:90%
in America are academics.

00:52:48.400 --> 00:52:51.980 align:middle line:84%
And there isn\'t much of an
affiliation with other groups

00:52:51.980 --> 00:52:52.950 align:middle line:90%
and other countries.

00:52:52.950 --> 00:52:56.880 align:middle line:84%
I mean, you do see it\'s a bit
in the African American

00:52:56.880 --> 00:52:59.570 align:middle line:84%
community, where there\'s an
interest in obviously American

00:52:59.570 --> 00:53:02.810 align:middle line:84%
policy towards Africa, the
Chinese American and the

00:53:02.810 --> 00:53:07.390 align:middle line:84%
policy towards China and India
and so on and so forth.

00:53:07.390 --> 00:53:12.670 align:middle line:84%
The American self-portrayal,
even in the fiction, in the

00:53:12.670 --> 00:53:18.390 align:middle line:84%
popular fiction of our own time,
is very self-idealizing.

00:53:18.390 --> 00:53:21.470 align:middle line:84%
And even if you read a novelist
like Mailer, there\'s

00:53:21.470 --> 00:53:23.720 align:middle line:84%
something romantic about
being an American.

00:53:23.720 --> 00:53:28.540 align:middle line:84%
And the sordid and harmful
effects, the long term effects

00:53:28.540 --> 00:53:31.060 align:middle line:84%
of being an American
in the world are

00:53:31.060 --> 00:53:33.860 align:middle line:90%
really simply not present.

00:53:33.860 --> 00:53:37.290 align:middle line:84%
And if you think of the major
novelists of our time in the

00:53:37.290 --> 00:53:41.240 align:middle line:84%
United States, you\'ll find that
most of their work really

00:53:41.240 --> 00:53:42.600 align:middle line:90%
concerns only America.

00:53:42.600 --> 00:53:44.030 align:middle line:90%
I mean, think of Faulkner.

00:53:44.030 --> 00:53:46.760 align:middle line:84%
Faulkner had no interest
whatever in the world outside

00:53:46.760 --> 00:53:47.690 align:middle line:90%
really the South.

00:53:47.690 --> 00:53:49.060 align:middle line:84%
I mean, he\'s a very
great novelist.

00:53:49.060 --> 00:53:50.420 align:middle line:84%
I\'m not trying to
put him down.

00:53:50.420 --> 00:53:51.880 align:middle line:90%
And in the case of Hemingway--

00:53:51.880 --> 00:53:53.240 align:middle line:84%
I\'m just thinking about
the classics.

00:53:53.240 --> 00:53:55.210 align:middle line:84%
Hemingway was interested in
the rest of the world, but

00:53:55.210 --> 00:53:58.540 align:middle line:84%
really in very limited terms
having to do with hunting and

00:53:58.540 --> 00:54:02.860 align:middle line:84%
sort of manhood and virility
and this sort of thing.

00:54:02.860 --> 00:54:06.770 align:middle line:84%
And then in our own time, people
like Mailer and Roth--

00:54:06.770 --> 00:54:10.240 align:middle line:84%
I mean, Roth I think deserves
a Nobel Prize.

00:54:10.240 --> 00:54:12.820 align:middle line:90%
He is so much really the

00:54:12.820 --> 00:54:14.940 align:middle line:90%
quintessential American novelist.

00:54:14.940 --> 00:54:19.460 align:middle line:84%
But there too, except for a
few scenes in some of his

00:54:19.460 --> 00:54:21.160 align:middle line:84%
novels having to do the
West Bank, where

00:54:21.160 --> 00:54:22.700 align:middle line:90%
he talks about Israel--

00:54:22.700 --> 00:54:25.760 align:middle line:84%
I was thinking of the
Zuckerman books.

00:54:25.760 --> 00:54:28.110 align:middle line:90%
Where he refers back to--

00:54:28.110 --> 00:54:29.750 align:middle line:84%
No, there\'s whole scenes
on the West

00:54:29.750 --> 00:54:30.575 align:middle line:90%
Bank amongst the settlers.

00:54:30.575 --> 00:54:33.130 align:middle line:84%
He\'s very interested in
the settler movement.

00:54:33.130 --> 00:54:35.670 align:middle line:84%
But I mean, it\'s really seeing
Israel as a part of America,

00:54:35.670 --> 00:54:37.030 align:middle line:90%
you know, a crazed part.

00:54:37.030 --> 00:54:39.980 align:middle line:84%
I mean it\'s really very
devastatingly critical.

00:54:39.980 --> 00:54:45.160 align:middle line:84%
And the other thing is, very
striking and not commonly

00:54:45.160 --> 00:54:47.440 align:middle line:84%
admitted, in fact, never
admitted, that American

00:54:47.440 --> 00:54:50.240 align:middle line:84%
education is deeply
ideological.

00:54:50.240 --> 00:54:52.270 align:middle line:84%
In other words, the homogenizing
effects of

00:54:52.270 --> 00:54:56.820 align:middle line:84%
American education are so
strong that by the time

00:54:56.820 --> 00:55:00.740 align:middle line:84%
students and consumers get
through high school, they\'ve

00:55:00.740 --> 00:55:02.830 align:middle line:84%
turned into a finished product,
which I would call

00:55:02.830 --> 00:55:07.880 align:middle line:84%
America or American, in that
sense, which teaches you first

00:55:07.880 --> 00:55:09.790 align:middle line:84%
of all not to question
the state.

00:55:09.790 --> 00:55:12.670 align:middle line:84%
If you look at American writing,
the notion of the

00:55:12.670 --> 00:55:15.340 align:middle line:84%
state, which is such a powerful
discourse, for

00:55:15.340 --> 00:55:20.410 align:middle line:84%
example, in France and even in
England, historically, it

00:55:20.410 --> 00:55:22.710 align:middle line:84%
doesn\'t have an existence
in American

00:55:22.710 --> 00:55:24.310 align:middle line:90%
writing or American thought.

00:55:24.310 --> 00:55:25.450 align:middle line:90%
We don\'t think of the state.

00:55:25.450 --> 00:55:30.120 align:middle line:84%
We think somehow of a polity
that transcends the state, the

00:55:30.120 --> 00:55:34.000 align:middle line:84%
sacred status given to the
Constitution, the importance

00:55:34.000 --> 00:55:37.860 align:middle line:84%
of the court system, which
is quite unique.

00:55:37.860 --> 00:55:40.710 align:middle line:84%
I mean, it has its positive
sides in the Bill of Rights

00:55:40.710 --> 00:55:43.140 align:middle line:84%
and the amendments to the
Constitution, in the whole

00:55:43.140 --> 00:55:46.500 align:middle line:84%
notion of sort of canonizing
freedom of speech and so on

00:55:46.500 --> 00:55:47.230 align:middle line:90%
and so forth.

00:55:47.230 --> 00:55:50.230 align:middle line:84%
But it\'s bad side is it removes
it from the realm of

00:55:50.230 --> 00:55:54.500 align:middle line:84%
the secular and places it in
another, at the same time that

00:55:54.500 --> 00:55:58.050 align:middle line:84%
there\'s this very in my opinion
materialistic and

00:55:58.050 --> 00:56:05.120 align:middle line:84%
quite sordid side of corporate
America, which is lobbies and

00:56:05.120 --> 00:56:08.220 align:middle line:84%
the kind of thing that the
Enron scandal turned up.

00:56:08.220 --> 00:56:09.480 align:middle line:90%
So why do you teach?

00:56:09.480 --> 00:56:12.210 align:middle line:90%
What\'s the point?

00:56:12.210 --> 00:56:17.620 align:middle line:84%
Well, one teaches really for
the people who might be

00:56:17.620 --> 00:56:18.980 align:middle line:90%
changed by it.

00:56:18.980 --> 00:56:22.840 align:middle line:84%
And some have been, in some
corner of their mind.

00:56:22.840 --> 00:56:27.900 align:middle line:84%
There\'s a possibility that
in teaching literature--

00:56:27.900 --> 00:56:29.060 align:middle line:90%
I\'ve never taught politics.

00:56:29.060 --> 00:56:30.990 align:middle line:84%
I\'ve never taught the Middle
East, for example, about which

00:56:30.990 --> 00:56:33.690 align:middle line:90%
I\'ve written a great deal.

00:56:33.690 --> 00:56:36.620 align:middle line:84%
But what I\'ve tried to teach
all along in acquainting

00:56:36.620 --> 00:56:38.680 align:middle line:84%
students with the classics
of literature--

00:56:38.680 --> 00:56:40.300 align:middle line:90%
I never teach popular culture.

00:56:40.300 --> 00:56:43.310 align:middle line:84%
I don\'t teach sort
of junk fiction.

00:56:43.310 --> 00:56:50.160 align:middle line:84%
I try to teach high class art,
basically, and music.

00:56:50.160 --> 00:56:54.706 align:middle line:84%
The idea is to, A, put them
in contact with it.

00:56:54.706 --> 00:56:59.800 align:middle line:84%
It happened to me with my own
son, who had resisted during

00:56:59.800 --> 00:57:02.800 align:middle line:84%
high school the notion that
one could read literature.

00:57:02.800 --> 00:57:04.620 align:middle line:84%
And then in his freshman
year in college--

00:57:04.620 --> 00:57:05.350 align:middle line:90%
I mean, it wasn\'t me.

00:57:05.350 --> 00:57:09.420 align:middle line:84%
It was another teacher who
introduced him to Balzac.

00:57:09.420 --> 00:57:13.280 align:middle line:84%
And I remember a phone call
from my 18-year-old son in

00:57:13.280 --> 00:57:16.400 align:middle line:84%
November of his freshman year
saying, how come, Dad, you

00:57:16.400 --> 00:57:18.270 align:middle line:84%
never talked to me about
this guy Balzac?

00:57:18.270 --> 00:57:19.360 align:middle line:90%
He really is terrific.

00:57:19.360 --> 00:57:22.600 align:middle line:84%
You know, there is another world
outside popular culture.

00:57:22.600 --> 00:57:23.220 align:middle line:90%
This is Wadie?

00:57:23.220 --> 00:57:24.910 align:middle line:90%
Wadie, yes.

00:57:24.910 --> 00:57:25.640 align:middle line:90%
So there\'s that.

00:57:25.640 --> 00:57:28.160 align:middle line:84%
Second of all, to
ask questions.

00:57:28.160 --> 00:57:32.840 align:middle line:84%
I spend a lot of time as I grow
older making it obvious

00:57:32.840 --> 00:57:34.800 align:middle line:84%
to the students that I don\'t
know all the answers.

00:57:34.800 --> 00:57:38.410 align:middle line:84%
In fact, I\'m puzzled by passages
in Hopkins or TS

00:57:38.410 --> 00:57:42.570 align:middle line:90%
Eliot or Wallace Stevens.

00:57:42.570 --> 00:57:45.960 align:middle line:84%
So the thing of asking questions
and not exactly

00:57:45.960 --> 00:57:49.350 align:middle line:84%
raising the level of suspicion,
but certainly

00:57:49.350 --> 00:57:52.600 align:middle line:84%
troubling the mind, rather than
allowing it to be settled

00:57:52.600 --> 00:57:54.040 align:middle line:90%
with questions and so on.

00:57:54.040 --> 00:57:56.950 align:middle line:84%
And I spend a lot of time
attacking doctrines and

00:57:56.950 --> 00:58:00.660 align:middle line:90%
orthodoxies and dogmas.

00:58:00.660 --> 00:58:02.460 align:middle line:84%
What good that does I
don\'t really know.

00:58:02.460 --> 00:58:05.800 align:middle line:84%
But I mean, I think that
it marks some students.

00:58:05.800 --> 00:58:09.310 align:middle line:84%
So it\'s not really a
major effect, but--

00:58:09.310 --> 00:58:10.480 align:middle line:90%
It\'s not entirely futile.

00:58:10.480 --> 00:58:10.730 align:middle line:90%
No.

00:58:10.730 --> 00:58:11.090 align:middle line:90%
No.

00:58:11.090 --> 00:58:12.410 align:middle line:90%
I don\'t think it\'s futile.

00:58:12.410 --> 00:58:13.980 align:middle line:90%
And I enjoy it.

00:58:13.980 --> 00:58:16.840 align:middle line:84%
For me it\'s terribly
important.

00:58:16.840 --> 00:58:19.740 align:middle line:84%
The writing is also very
important for me, because I,

00:58:19.740 --> 00:58:23.460 align:middle line:84%
because of the internet, now
reach a large audience in the

00:58:23.460 --> 00:58:26.040 align:middle line:84%
Arab world, which is what
interests me the most.

00:58:26.040 --> 00:58:29.090 align:middle line:84%
I\'m interested in influencing
opinion there.

00:58:29.090 --> 00:58:33.140 align:middle line:84%
And trying to explain Arabs to
Americans and Americans to

00:58:33.140 --> 00:58:35.960 align:middle line:84%
Arabs is worth doing, if
you can manage it.

00:58:35.960 --> 00:58:39.900 align:middle line:84%
And I\'ve been very lucky that
way, that they\'ve given me a

00:58:39.900 --> 00:58:42.990 align:middle line:90%
platform to do it in.

00:58:42.990 --> 00:58:46.930 align:middle line:84%
But in the final analysis, I
realize that I\'m not that

00:58:46.930 --> 00:58:50.800 align:middle line:84%
anxious to satisfy
my own needs.

00:58:50.800 --> 00:58:52.260 align:middle line:90%
In fact, if I--

00:58:52.260 --> 00:58:53.450 align:middle line:90%
whoever reads me.

00:58:53.450 --> 00:58:54.550 align:middle line:90%
And the same of the students.

00:58:54.550 --> 00:58:59.600 align:middle line:84%
I think I\'m much more interested
in provoking and

00:58:59.600 --> 00:59:03.640 align:middle line:84%
even stimulating resistance to
what I\'m saying than I am to

00:59:03.640 --> 00:59:06.200 align:middle line:84%
giving them stuff that will
amuse them or to keep them

00:59:06.200 --> 00:59:08.360 align:middle line:90%
sort of interested.

00:59:08.360 --> 00:59:10.840 align:middle line:90%
And I prefer that kind of--

00:59:10.840 --> 00:59:14.570 align:middle line:84%
I guess it\'s a form of
intransigence to the other

00:59:14.570 --> 00:59:19.880 align:middle line:84%
kind, which is to work
in cliches and

00:59:19.880 --> 00:59:21.400 align:middle line:90%
in the known avenues.

00:59:21.400 --> 00:59:23.990 align:middle line:84%
And the fact that I\'m a literary
person writing about

00:59:23.990 --> 00:59:28.580 align:middle line:84%
hard politics a lot of the time,
and that my stance is

00:59:28.580 --> 00:59:32.800 align:middle line:84%
quite clearly oppositional, I\'ve
learned from people like

00:59:32.800 --> 00:59:36.280 align:middle line:84%
Chomsky and Alex Cockburn really
to name the names and

00:59:36.280 --> 00:59:37.990 align:middle line:90%
cite the figures.

00:59:37.990 --> 00:59:39.670 align:middle line:84%
So then in the end, it
isn\'t the audience

00:59:39.670 --> 00:59:40.360 align:middle line:90%
that matters so much.

00:59:40.360 --> 00:59:41.220 align:middle line:90%
It\'s the material.

00:59:41.220 --> 00:59:44.210 align:middle line:84%
It\'s the subject that
matters much more.

00:59:44.210 --> 00:59:47.340 align:middle line:84%
And in the case of the subjects
that interest me,

00:59:47.340 --> 00:59:49.130 align:middle line:84%
they\'re also difficult
subjects.

00:59:49.130 --> 00:59:54.110 align:middle line:84%
I\'m very attracted to the
difficult as opposed to the

00:59:54.110 --> 00:59:56.050 align:middle line:90%
comfortable.

00:59:56.050 --> 00:59:59.500 align:middle line:84%
And I\'m much less interested
in affirming than I am in

00:59:59.500 --> 01:00:02.350 align:middle line:84%
negating or in some way
being negative.

01:00:02.350 --> 01:00:06.760 align:middle line:84%
So topics that historically I\'ve
always been associated

01:00:06.760 --> 01:00:11.470 align:middle line:84%
with have been modernist
literature, which is defined

01:00:11.470 --> 01:00:13.070 align:middle line:90%
as difficult.

01:00:13.070 --> 01:00:16.720 align:middle line:84%
The question of Palestine, which
is not only difficult,

01:00:16.720 --> 01:00:18.720 align:middle line:90%
it\'s almost impossible.

01:00:18.720 --> 01:00:21.840 align:middle line:84%
But in that case, there\'s also a
human dimension, which is my

01:00:21.840 --> 01:00:24.770 align:middle line:84%
own experience, which I don\'t
really talk that much about,

01:00:24.770 --> 01:00:26.120 align:middle line:90%
but it\'s there.

01:00:26.120 --> 01:00:28.810 align:middle line:84%
And my relationship to people
and my responsibility to

01:00:28.810 --> 01:00:31.980 align:middle line:84%
people in very difficult if
not impossible situations.

01:00:31.980 --> 01:00:36.020 align:middle line:84%
The role of the intellectual,
who by my definition can\'t

01:00:36.020 --> 01:00:39.410 align:middle line:84%
organically connected to what
he or she is writing about,

01:00:39.410 --> 01:00:42.330 align:middle line:84%
but really is writing in
a sense of opposition.

01:00:42.330 --> 01:00:46.230 align:middle line:84%
Music, which attracts me not
because it\'s soothing--

01:00:46.230 --> 01:00:48.030 align:middle line:84%
I mean, I can\'t listen
to music and do

01:00:48.030 --> 01:00:50.670 align:middle line:90%
anything else at all.

01:00:50.670 --> 01:00:54.390 align:middle line:84%
I mean, it\'s especially
when I\'m ill.

01:00:54.390 --> 01:00:59.300 align:middle line:84%
music is for me a very
difficult, almost impossible

01:00:59.300 --> 01:01:01.710 align:middle line:84%
discipline having to do with the
most difficult rather than

01:01:01.710 --> 01:01:03.010 align:middle line:90%
the easiest kind of music.

01:01:03.010 --> 01:01:06.130 align:middle line:84%
I mean, I have mixed feelings
about people like Mozart and

01:01:06.130 --> 01:01:09.340 align:middle line:84%
Haydn, whom I love, but I\'d
much rather listen to say,

01:01:09.340 --> 01:01:13.230 align:middle line:84%
late Bach, \"The Art of Fugue\"
and \"The Goldberg Variations\"

01:01:13.230 --> 01:01:17.280 align:middle line:84%
and \"The Musical Offering\"
than I am interested in

01:01:17.280 --> 01:01:20.060 align:middle line:84%
listening to any sort
of dance music.

01:01:20.060 --> 01:01:23.240 align:middle line:84%
So all of these subjects where
the requirements of the

01:01:23.240 --> 01:01:25.760 align:middle line:84%
subject are a constant challenge
to one, whether

01:01:25.760 --> 01:01:30.000 align:middle line:84%
morally, technically,
intellectually, ethically, in

01:01:30.000 --> 01:01:31.420 align:middle line:90%
all these ways.

01:01:31.420 --> 01:01:34.940 align:middle line:84%
So in the end, your sense of
the audience, which is what

01:01:34.940 --> 01:01:39.890 align:middle line:84%
you\'re taught as a journalist
and as a writer for

01:01:39.890 --> 01:01:45.612 align:middle line:84%
consumption, to cater to, it\'s
just the opposite for me.

01:01:45.612 --> 01:01:47.730 align:middle line:90%
I want to know two things.

01:01:47.730 --> 01:01:52.930 align:middle line:84%
First, when you first went back
after childhood, why did

01:01:52.930 --> 01:01:53.460 align:middle line:90%
you go back?

01:01:53.460 --> 01:01:56.920 align:middle line:84%
And then why wouldn\'t
you go back to live?

01:01:56.920 --> 01:01:59.690 align:middle line:90%

01:01:59.690 --> 01:02:08.200 align:middle line:84%
I went back for the first time
to effectually Israel in 1992,

01:02:08.200 --> 01:02:12.780 align:middle line:84%
having tried a few times
during the \'80s to go.

01:02:12.780 --> 01:02:16.500 align:middle line:84%
In 1988, we were
all set to go.

01:02:16.500 --> 01:02:20.910 align:middle line:84%
And in fact, there was an
American television program

01:02:20.910 --> 01:02:23.780 align:middle line:90%
who wanted to film my return.

01:02:23.780 --> 01:02:28.600 align:middle line:84%
And Shamir just issued
a pronunciamento.

01:02:28.600 --> 01:02:31.430 align:middle line:84%
And he said I\'m not allowed to
go because I\'m a terrorist.

01:02:31.430 --> 01:02:35.180 align:middle line:84%
I was a member of the
National Council.

01:02:35.180 --> 01:02:40.760 align:middle line:84%
So we couldn\'t go until after
\'91, when I resigned from the

01:02:40.760 --> 01:02:42.550 align:middle line:90%
National Council.

01:02:42.550 --> 01:02:44.190 align:middle line:90%
It was still before Oslo.

01:02:44.190 --> 01:02:46.920 align:middle line:84%
In fact, I went twice before
Oslo, in the years

01:02:46.920 --> 01:02:49.130 align:middle line:90%
before, \'92 and \'93.

01:02:49.130 --> 01:02:54.440 align:middle line:84%
And visiting it for the first
time, there was obviously the

01:02:54.440 --> 01:02:57.320 align:middle line:84%
emotional experience of
reacquainting myself with a

01:02:57.320 --> 01:03:01.630 align:middle line:84%
place I hadn\'t seen in many,
many years, which really was

01:03:01.630 --> 01:03:03.100 align:middle line:90%
Israel, not the West Bank.

01:03:03.100 --> 01:03:07.190 align:middle line:84%
I mean, I went to the West Bank
twice, once in the middle

01:03:07.190 --> 01:03:09.680 align:middle line:84%
\'50s for a family wedding
and then again in

01:03:09.680 --> 01:03:11.180 align:middle line:90%
the early \'60s for--

01:03:11.180 --> 01:03:11.990 align:middle line:84%
It was still under
Jordanian rule.

01:03:11.990 --> 01:03:14.200 align:middle line:84%
It was Jordan, I
mean, basically

01:03:14.200 --> 01:03:15.900 align:middle line:90%
Jerusalem and Ramallah.

01:03:15.900 --> 01:03:19.460 align:middle line:84%
But it was East Jerusalem of
which I had no memories at all

01:03:19.460 --> 01:03:20.970 align:middle line:84%
to speak of, except
the Old City and

01:03:20.970 --> 01:03:22.010 align:middle line:90%
wandering around in it.

01:03:22.010 --> 01:03:23.700 align:middle line:84%
Because you\'d grown up
on the west side.

01:03:23.700 --> 01:03:25.530 align:middle line:84%
We were completely
on the west.

01:03:25.530 --> 01:03:28.252 align:middle line:84%
And of course, the church, I
mean, St. George\'s, where I

01:03:28.252 --> 01:03:32.100 align:middle line:84%
was baptized, and the school
were the east.

01:03:32.100 --> 01:03:34.760 align:middle line:84%
But aside from that, they were
just places one passe through,

01:03:34.760 --> 01:03:37.180 align:middle line:84%
usually on the outside, not
through the Old City.

01:03:37.180 --> 01:03:42.710 align:middle line:84%
So really it was Israel that
I saw for the first time

01:03:42.710 --> 01:03:46.200 align:middle line:84%
converted from Palestine
that I knew.

01:03:46.200 --> 01:03:50.800 align:middle line:84%
And it was pretty traumatic in
a way, because I kept trying

01:03:50.800 --> 01:03:55.700 align:middle line:84%
to understand not only how
it happened, but why.

01:03:55.700 --> 01:03:58.390 align:middle line:84%
Why was it possible to just
transform a place that had

01:03:58.390 --> 01:04:02.000 align:middle line:84%
been something completely
different into something about

01:04:02.000 --> 01:04:04.560 align:middle line:84%
as different as you could
come around to?

01:04:04.560 --> 01:04:07.400 align:middle line:90%

01:04:07.400 --> 01:04:11.820 align:middle line:84%
And especially places like
Nazareth, which I had

01:04:11.820 --> 01:04:14.420 align:middle line:84%
practically no memory of but
had been my mother\'s city,

01:04:14.420 --> 01:04:16.870 align:middle line:84%
where she was born
and grew up.

01:04:16.870 --> 01:04:22.910 align:middle line:84%
And then Haifa, where one of my
uncles lived was all deeply

01:04:22.910 --> 01:04:27.070 align:middle line:84%
foreign and quite to me
repellent, because the thing

01:04:27.070 --> 01:04:31.400 align:middle line:84%
that struck me about it was that
wherever you looked, any

01:04:31.400 --> 01:04:34.870 align:middle line:84%
empty space was encircled
with barbed wire.

01:04:34.870 --> 01:04:38.100 align:middle line:84%
And there were lots of soldiers,
more so than in any

01:04:38.100 --> 01:04:44.110 align:middle line:84%
Arab country, soldiers and armed
people wandering around.

01:04:44.110 --> 01:04:46.680 align:middle line:84%
Otherwise, it was
fairly peaceful.

01:04:46.680 --> 01:04:49.630 align:middle line:84%
And since we were Americans,
we didn\'t have trouble

01:04:49.630 --> 01:04:51.510 align:middle line:90%
entering or--

01:04:51.510 --> 01:04:52.290 align:middle line:90%
well, entering.

01:04:52.290 --> 01:04:54.490 align:middle line:90%
Leaving was very difficult.

01:04:54.490 --> 01:04:56.080 align:middle line:84%
But I never thought
about returning,

01:04:56.080 --> 01:04:58.390 align:middle line:90%
really, to live there.

01:04:58.390 --> 01:05:01.590 align:middle line:84%
In a sense, A, it was
a different place.

01:05:01.590 --> 01:05:07.350 align:middle line:84%
And the West Bank from my point
of view was a new place.

01:05:07.350 --> 01:05:13.280 align:middle line:84%
And I would be going for what in
the end seemed to me to be

01:05:13.280 --> 01:05:14.580 align:middle line:90%
not authentic reasons.

01:05:14.580 --> 01:05:16.370 align:middle line:90%
It would just be sentimental.

01:05:16.370 --> 01:05:18.710 align:middle line:84%
I felt I could do
more in America.

01:05:18.710 --> 01:05:20.530 align:middle line:90%
I had made my life there.

01:05:20.530 --> 01:05:23.210 align:middle line:84%
And most important of
all, I was sick.

01:05:23.210 --> 01:05:26.620 align:middle line:84%
And I didn\'t feel that if I went
to the West Bank there

01:05:26.620 --> 01:05:29.590 align:middle line:84%
would be much point to my
endlessly trying to find

01:05:29.590 --> 01:05:31.310 align:middle line:84%
doctors and hospitals and
so on and so forth.

01:05:31.310 --> 01:05:33.590 align:middle line:84%
In the meantime, some of
my friends went back.

01:05:33.590 --> 01:05:37.720 align:middle line:84%
My closest friend, Ibrahim
Abu-Lughod, left America after

01:05:37.720 --> 01:05:41.930 align:middle line:84%
40 years there, and left
Northwestern, where he had

01:05:41.930 --> 01:05:44.530 align:middle line:84%
been teaching for at
least 30 years, and

01:05:44.530 --> 01:05:45.400 align:middle line:90%
went back to Bir Zeit.

01:05:45.400 --> 01:05:46.140 align:middle line:90%
I was tempted.

01:05:46.140 --> 01:05:48.630 align:middle line:84%
And in fact, I thought often
about going to teach there.

01:05:48.630 --> 01:05:50.240 align:middle line:90%
I wasn\'t even able to do that.

01:05:50.240 --> 01:05:52.570 align:middle line:90%
It just never worked out.

01:05:52.570 --> 01:05:57.140 align:middle line:84%
All of my visits were simply
short ones for a few days or

01:05:57.140 --> 01:05:59.960 align:middle line:84%
maybe a week or two
weeks at most.

01:05:59.960 --> 01:06:02.340 align:middle line:84%
And I regret it very much,
but I just didn\'t

01:06:02.340 --> 01:06:03.945 align:middle line:90%
feel I had the strength.

01:06:03.945 --> 01:06:08.690 align:middle line:84%
You know, as the years went on
I got more and more tired and

01:06:08.690 --> 01:06:10.960 align:middle line:90%
worried about getting sick.

01:06:10.960 --> 01:06:13.130 align:middle line:90%
And so it just passed.

01:06:13.130 --> 01:06:18.640 align:middle line:84%
But my involvement was no less
great despite that fact.

01:06:18.640 --> 01:06:23.260 align:middle line:84%
And in the end, I think it wan
involvement based, really, on

01:06:23.260 --> 01:06:31.210 align:middle line:84%
the sense of a cause rather than
that of an actual place

01:06:31.210 --> 01:06:35.590 align:middle line:84%
and a nationalist thing, which
moved me somewhat.

01:06:35.590 --> 01:06:39.570 align:middle line:84%
But it was the injustice and
the fact that there were so

01:06:39.570 --> 01:06:42.360 align:middle line:84%
many people who I felt I
couldn\'t help by being there.

01:06:42.360 --> 01:06:45.330 align:middle line:84%
I felt I could do more
by being away in

01:06:45.330 --> 01:06:49.055 align:middle line:90%
the West, as it were.

01:06:49.055 --> 01:06:54.480 align:middle line:84%
Have you come to depend on
exile, to prefer it?

01:06:54.480 --> 01:06:55.900 align:middle line:84%
Well, I don\'t know
any other state.

01:06:55.900 --> 01:07:02.960 align:middle line:84%
I mean, it makes no sense to me
now at my age and with my

01:07:02.960 --> 01:07:06.220 align:middle line:84%
declining health to think in
terms of making some kind of

01:07:06.220 --> 01:07:07.980 align:middle line:90%
terminal move.

01:07:07.980 --> 01:07:17.160 align:middle line:84%
And I\'ve been very interested
not for very subtle reasons in

01:07:17.160 --> 01:07:19.366 align:middle line:84%
something that I call
late style.

01:07:19.366 --> 01:07:23.230 align:middle line:84%
You know, I\'m writing a book,
which I hope I can sometime

01:07:23.230 --> 01:07:27.580 align:middle line:84%
finish, on the last period of
various thinkers\' and writers\'

01:07:27.580 --> 01:07:31.080 align:middle line:84%
and musicians\' and
artists\' lives.

01:07:31.080 --> 01:07:32.940 align:middle line:84%
And it seems to me there
are two alternatives.

01:07:32.940 --> 01:07:36.360 align:middle line:84%
And the one I\'ve chosen to study
in my book is the more

01:07:36.360 --> 01:07:38.190 align:middle line:84%
severe and difficult
one, but to me the

01:07:38.190 --> 01:07:38.970 align:middle line:90%
more interesting one.

01:07:38.970 --> 01:07:41.500 align:middle line:84%
There is the idea that as you
grow older you become more

01:07:41.500 --> 01:07:42.380 align:middle line:90%
reconciled.

01:07:42.380 --> 01:07:44.180 align:middle line:90%
You settle your affairs.

01:07:44.180 --> 01:07:51.370 align:middle line:84%
I have this image of the sage
or the older person who has

01:07:51.370 --> 01:07:55.760 align:middle line:84%
settled his quarrels, rid
himself or herself as it may

01:07:55.760 --> 01:07:59.380 align:middle line:84%
be of worldly goods, and
settles into a kind of

01:07:59.380 --> 01:08:04.230 align:middle line:84%
semi-holy state of understanding
and acceptance.

01:08:04.230 --> 01:08:09.770 align:middle line:84%
Oedipus at Colonus, for example,
or the late plays of

01:08:09.770 --> 01:08:14.060 align:middle line:84%
Shakespeare, Prospero at the end
of The Tempest returning

01:08:14.060 --> 01:08:17.859 align:middle line:84%
to life and accepting the
fullness of time and so on.

01:08:17.859 --> 01:08:20.319 align:middle line:84%
There\'s another alternative,
which is that of the late

01:08:20.319 --> 01:08:25.010 align:middle line:84%
period as being one of greater
intransigence, more

01:08:25.010 --> 01:08:30.950 align:middle line:84%
complexity, more awareness of
the irreconcilability of life,

01:08:30.950 --> 01:08:34.720 align:middle line:84%
that life is not a dialectical
process-- as [INAUDIBLE]

01:08:34.720 --> 01:08:38.109 align:middle line:84%
used to say, that if you think
in terms of a synthesis, you

01:08:38.109 --> 01:08:42.000 align:middle line:84%
can achieve it, even if it\'s
only a psychological one--

01:08:42.000 --> 01:08:46.880 align:middle line:84%
but rather that there is endless
discovery of new

01:08:46.880 --> 01:08:49.069 align:middle line:84%
complexities and new
difficulties.

01:08:49.069 --> 01:08:52.240 align:middle line:84%
And I think that\'s what
really interests me.

01:08:52.240 --> 01:08:55.790 align:middle line:84%
I mean, I don\'t feel any
more comfortable with

01:08:55.790 --> 01:08:57.029 align:middle line:90%
it than I did earlier.

01:08:57.029 --> 01:09:01.450 align:middle line:84%
I still feel out of
sorts and at odds.

01:09:01.450 --> 01:09:06.609 align:middle line:84%
And anger plays a fairly major
role in my thinking about, for

01:09:06.609 --> 01:09:08.750 align:middle line:90%
example, Palestine.

01:09:08.750 --> 01:09:11.499 align:middle line:84%
Well, it\'s not just anger,
but one is exercised.

01:09:11.499 --> 01:09:13.710 align:middle line:84%
So you\'re still raging
against the--

01:09:13.710 --> 01:09:13.930 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

01:09:13.930 --> 01:09:15.189 align:middle line:90%
Well, I don\'t know raging.

01:09:15.189 --> 01:09:15.700 align:middle line:90%
No.

01:09:15.700 --> 01:09:19.229 align:middle line:84%
On the contrary, I try to put
it as sensibly as I can.

01:09:19.229 --> 01:09:25.359 align:middle line:84%
But I don\'t think one loses
one\'s ambition to try to

01:09:25.359 --> 01:09:28.359 align:middle line:84%
indicate to people that there
are other alternatives.

01:09:28.359 --> 01:09:30.569 align:middle line:84%
That\'s what I\'m trying to say,
that you don\'t just shut down

01:09:30.569 --> 01:09:32.910 align:middle line:84%
at the end, that you try to open
up even as you\'re going

01:09:32.910 --> 01:09:36.390 align:middle line:84%
down, which I\'m certainly
doing.

01:09:36.390 --> 01:09:39.330 align:middle line:84%
But you\'re trying to open up
avenues that you can leave

01:09:39.330 --> 01:09:43.750 align:middle line:84%
behind for younger people and
friends and comrades and so

01:09:43.750 --> 01:09:44.180 align:middle line:90%
and so forth.

01:09:44.180 --> 01:09:48.740 align:middle line:84%
I think in terms rather like
that, then, and the others, in

01:09:48.740 --> 01:09:52.670 align:middle line:84%
the sort of harmonic,
harmonious terms.

01:09:52.670 --> 01:09:55.720 align:middle line:84%
Right through the \'70s, as I
recall, when I would give

01:09:55.720 --> 01:09:59.920 align:middle line:84%
talks, let\'s say in America,
there would be demonstrations

01:09:59.920 --> 01:10:06.460 align:middle line:84%
with young Jewish and maybe
other kinds of people walking

01:10:06.460 --> 01:10:11.560 align:middle line:84%
outside with posters saying,
\"There is no Palestine.\" I

01:10:11.560 --> 01:10:14.390 align:middle line:84%
mean, that went on for
quite a while.

01:10:14.390 --> 01:10:19.580 align:middle line:84%
But after the emergence of the
PLO in the post-\'67 period,

01:10:19.580 --> 01:10:23.180 align:middle line:84%
then I think it became
impossible to deny the

01:10:23.180 --> 01:10:25.550 align:middle line:84%
existence of a people and
of an organization.

01:10:25.550 --> 01:10:29.120 align:middle line:84%
I mean, that really is the PLO\'s
and Arafat\'s greatest

01:10:29.120 --> 01:10:32.820 align:middle line:84%
contribution, was that he made
it possible for Palestinians

01:10:32.820 --> 01:10:38.970 align:middle line:84%
to have a specific identity
rather than to just be a

01:10:38.970 --> 01:10:41.710 align:middle line:84%
people or just a collection
of individuals who had--

01:10:41.710 --> 01:10:42.160 align:middle line:90%
Refugees.

01:10:42.160 --> 01:10:42.970 align:middle line:90%
Beg pardon?

01:10:42.970 --> 01:10:43.235 align:middle line:90%
Refugees.

01:10:43.235 --> 01:10:43.500 align:middle line:90%
Or refugees.

01:10:43.500 --> 01:10:44.930 align:middle line:90%
Exactly.

01:10:44.930 --> 01:10:53.060 align:middle line:84%
The PLO, which emerged in Jordan
in the late \'60s, was

01:10:53.060 --> 01:10:57.750 align:middle line:84%
for me the great event after
\'67, which was a devastating

01:10:57.750 --> 01:11:02.340 align:middle line:84%
time, that by a series of
coincidences made it possible

01:11:02.340 --> 01:11:06.180 align:middle line:84%
for me to return to the Arab
world for the first time since

01:11:06.180 --> 01:11:09.590 align:middle line:84%
I left in \'51, 20 years before,
with some sense of

01:11:09.590 --> 01:11:11.220 align:middle line:90%
familiarity and belonging.

01:11:11.220 --> 01:11:14.730 align:middle line:84%
I mean, for example, when I was
a student, I would go back

01:11:14.730 --> 01:11:15.380 align:middle line:90%
in the summers.

01:11:15.380 --> 01:11:17.920 align:middle line:84%
And there was something
transitory about it.

01:11:17.920 --> 01:11:19.370 align:middle line:90%
I would go.

01:11:19.370 --> 01:11:21.640 align:middle line:84%
We\'d spend some weeks in Cairo
and then we would go to

01:11:21.640 --> 01:11:24.360 align:middle line:84%
Lebanon for the rest
of the summer.

01:11:24.360 --> 01:11:30.690 align:middle line:84%
And gradually I became involved
in my own sort of

01:11:30.690 --> 01:11:33.060 align:middle line:84%
professional career
and whatnot.

01:11:33.060 --> 01:11:35.070 align:middle line:84%
And then \'67 happened and
I started meeting

01:11:35.070 --> 01:11:35.880 align:middle line:90%
people at the UN.

01:11:35.880 --> 01:11:37.760 align:middle line:84%
We would gather there in
great helplessness.

01:11:37.760 --> 01:11:39.190 align:middle line:90%
There was not much to do.

01:11:39.190 --> 01:11:43.630 align:middle line:84%
But it wasn\'t until \'68 and
\'69 that I suddenly found

01:11:43.630 --> 01:11:45.900 align:middle line:84%
myself going to Jordan, which
I\'d never been to before,

01:11:45.900 --> 01:11:49.060 align:middle line:84%
although a large number of my
relatives who were expelled in

01:11:49.060 --> 01:11:51.200 align:middle line:90%
\'48 ended up in Jordan.

01:11:51.200 --> 01:11:53.320 align:middle line:84%
So I got reconnected
with them.

01:11:53.320 --> 01:11:56.960 align:middle line:84%
And in the process, it happened
that the PLO was

01:11:56.960 --> 01:12:00.050 align:middle line:84%
becoming a visible and rather
powerful force there.

01:12:00.050 --> 01:12:05.430 align:middle line:84%
And I met relatives of mine,
like Kamal Nasser, whom I\'d

01:12:05.430 --> 01:12:08.460 align:middle line:84%
seen in Cairo in the \'50s as an
exile from the West Bank,

01:12:08.460 --> 01:12:11.990 align:middle line:84%
who is now the spokesman
of the PLO.

01:12:11.990 --> 01:12:15.320 align:middle line:84%
And [INAUDIBLE], another
friend of mine--

01:12:15.320 --> 01:12:17.060 align:middle line:84%
we were contemporaries
in school here.

01:12:17.060 --> 01:12:18.820 align:middle line:84%
He had been at Haverford,
I at Princeton.

01:12:18.820 --> 01:12:19.980 align:middle line:84%
And then we were together
at Harvard.

01:12:19.980 --> 01:12:22.340 align:middle line:84%
He had been teaching at the
University of Washington.

01:12:22.340 --> 01:12:25.420 align:middle line:84%
He went back and volunteered and
became a member of Fatah

01:12:25.420 --> 01:12:27.150 align:middle line:84%
and continued working
with them until he

01:12:27.150 --> 01:12:29.110 align:middle line:90%
was killed in 1976.

01:12:29.110 --> 01:12:34.280 align:middle line:84%
So those kinds of connections
meant a lot to me politically.

01:12:34.280 --> 01:12:40.030 align:middle line:84%
And then I got remarried
in 1970 to Mariam,

01:12:40.030 --> 01:12:41.740 align:middle line:90%
who lived in Lebanon.

01:12:41.740 --> 01:12:48.090 align:middle line:84%
And then I reestablished my
rather more complete contact

01:12:48.090 --> 01:12:48.990 align:middle line:90%
with the Arab world.

01:12:48.990 --> 01:12:51.150 align:middle line:90%
What happened to Kamal Nasser?

01:12:51.150 --> 01:12:54.040 align:middle line:84%
Well, Kamal Nasser, it\'s
quite extraordinary.

01:12:54.040 --> 01:12:56.880 align:middle line:84%
It was that year that I
mentioned earlier that I had a

01:12:56.880 --> 01:12:59.210 align:middle line:90%
sabbatical in Beirut.

01:12:59.210 --> 01:13:03.860 align:middle line:84%
And he was often in Beirut,
and in fact lived there.

01:13:03.860 --> 01:13:06.620 align:middle line:84%
He would travel somewhat, but
most the time he lived in

01:13:06.620 --> 01:13:12.070 align:middle line:84%
Beirut, not far from where
we lived in [INAUDIBLE]

01:13:12.070 --> 01:13:14.720 align:middle line:84%
section, not far from
Ras Beirut.

01:13:14.720 --> 01:13:17.490 align:middle line:84%
And I remember very clearly
the evening.

01:13:17.490 --> 01:13:20.200 align:middle line:90%
It was in early April.

01:13:20.200 --> 01:13:23.980 align:middle line:84%
And we had spent the evening
with Kamal and his cousin, who

01:13:23.980 --> 01:13:28.060 align:middle line:84%
was married to my cousin, Sylvia
and Albert, my very

01:13:28.060 --> 01:13:31.520 align:middle line:84%
close first cousin and
second cousin.

01:13:31.520 --> 01:13:36.420 align:middle line:84%
And then we got word that my
aunt, Nabiha, who had been

01:13:36.420 --> 01:13:38.430 align:middle line:90%
living in Jordan, had died.

01:13:38.430 --> 01:13:43.120 align:middle line:84%
And so Albert and I decided to
go to Jordan that night to

01:13:43.120 --> 01:13:45.180 align:middle line:84%
attend the funeral and then
take her-- that was the

01:13:45.180 --> 01:13:47.560 align:middle line:84%
closest I came to going back to
Palestine, to take her to

01:13:47.560 --> 01:13:49.250 align:middle line:90%
Jerusalem to bury her.

01:13:49.250 --> 01:13:51.210 align:middle line:90%
And I got permission.

01:13:51.210 --> 01:13:52.420 align:middle line:90%
My name was put on some list.

01:13:52.420 --> 01:13:54.940 align:middle line:84%
But Albert and I, in the middle
of the night, got to

01:13:54.940 --> 01:13:57.240 align:middle line:90%
the Syrian-Lebanese border.

01:13:57.240 --> 01:14:00.040 align:middle line:84%
And I discovered that by mistake
I\'d taken my son\'s

01:14:00.040 --> 01:14:01.360 align:middle line:90%
passport instead of mine.

01:14:01.360 --> 01:14:02.110 align:middle line:90%
So I couldn\'t get in.

01:14:02.110 --> 01:14:03.640 align:middle line:90%
I came back.

01:14:03.640 --> 01:14:06.210 align:middle line:90%
And Kamal had gone off.

01:14:06.210 --> 01:14:09.190 align:middle line:84%
He had spent part of the evening
babysitting for Albert

01:14:09.190 --> 01:14:10.530 align:middle line:90%
and Sylvia.

01:14:10.530 --> 01:14:14.070 align:middle line:84%
And that very night, he was
assassinated by an Israeli

01:14:14.070 --> 01:14:17.920 align:middle line:84%
team that had come ashore and
killed three PLO leaders, of

01:14:17.920 --> 01:14:18.620 align:middle line:90%
whom he was one.

01:14:18.620 --> 01:14:22.560 align:middle line:84%
He was killed by Ehud Barak, who
later, as you know, became

01:14:22.560 --> 01:14:24.300 align:middle line:90%
prime minister of Israel.

01:14:24.300 --> 01:14:30.650 align:middle line:84%
And it was an extraordinary
moment, that he was killed, as

01:14:30.650 --> 01:14:33.540 align:middle line:84%
of course, the habit has gone
on of these extrajudicial

01:14:33.540 --> 01:14:35.120 align:middle line:84%
killings of suspected
terrorists and

01:14:35.120 --> 01:14:36.410 align:middle line:90%
all the rest of it--

01:14:36.410 --> 01:14:38.450 align:middle line:84%
but in a vindictive and
humiliating way.

01:14:38.450 --> 01:14:40.340 align:middle line:84%
He was apparently shot
in the mouth,

01:14:40.340 --> 01:14:42.550 align:middle line:90%
because of his eloquence.

01:14:42.550 --> 01:14:49.380 align:middle line:84%
And the aftereffects of that
were to make the whole

01:14:49.380 --> 01:14:53.060 align:middle line:84%
relationship between Israelis
and Palestinians I think

01:14:53.060 --> 01:14:55.310 align:middle line:90%
irreconcilable.

01:14:55.310 --> 01:15:00.750 align:middle line:84%
The PLO subsequently signed an
agreement at Oslo with which

01:15:00.750 --> 01:15:02.220 align:middle line:84%
you were in profound
disagreement.

01:15:02.220 --> 01:15:03.080 align:middle line:90%
Disagreement.

01:15:03.080 --> 01:15:05.420 align:middle line:84%
But what one mustn\'t forget what
happened during the rest

01:15:05.420 --> 01:15:07.300 align:middle line:90%
of that decade of the \'70s.

01:15:07.300 --> 01:15:10.440 align:middle line:84%
I mean, the PLO for the first
time established Palestinian

01:15:10.440 --> 01:15:11.660 align:middle line:90%
institutions.

01:15:11.660 --> 01:15:13.050 align:middle line:84%
So there was a research
center.

01:15:13.050 --> 01:15:15.360 align:middle line:90%
There was a health service.

01:15:15.360 --> 01:15:19.010 align:middle line:84%
There was a sense in which we
had become a kind of nation in

01:15:19.010 --> 01:15:20.780 align:middle line:90%
exile or in waiting.

01:15:20.780 --> 01:15:23.650 align:middle line:84%
And this was also the period
where we were two things at

01:15:23.650 --> 01:15:24.960 align:middle line:90%
the same time.

01:15:24.960 --> 01:15:28.760 align:middle line:84%
We were a liberation movement
that attracted most of the

01:15:28.760 --> 01:15:30.420 align:middle line:90%
world\'s liberation movements.

01:15:30.420 --> 01:15:33.340 align:middle line:84%
Beirut became a capital
for people.

01:15:33.340 --> 01:15:35.290 align:middle line:90%
I\'ll give you an example.

01:15:35.290 --> 01:15:38.710 align:middle line:84%
When Mariam and I went to South
Africa in \'91, we met

01:15:38.710 --> 01:15:40.780 align:middle line:90%
people at the ANC.

01:15:40.780 --> 01:15:42.140 align:middle line:84%
Mandela had just
been released.

01:15:42.140 --> 01:15:44.660 align:middle line:90%
It was May of \'91.

01:15:44.660 --> 01:15:46.190 align:middle line:90%
And we went to the ANC

01:15:46.190 --> 01:15:47.700 align:middle line:90%
headquarters in downtown Jo\'burg.

01:15:47.700 --> 01:15:50.590 align:middle line:84%
And we saw people that I had
seen in Beirut in the \'70s who

01:15:50.590 --> 01:15:54.150 align:middle line:84%
had come there when the ANC was
outlawed in South Africa,

01:15:54.150 --> 01:15:55.680 align:middle line:90%
many of them--

01:15:55.680 --> 01:15:59.820 align:middle line:84%
Sandinistas turned up, various
people from Ireland,

01:15:59.820 --> 01:16:01.670 align:middle line:90%
Cubans, and so on.

01:16:01.670 --> 01:16:02.910 align:middle line:90%
And also [INAUDIBLE]

01:16:02.910 --> 01:16:04.240 align:middle line:90%
like Carlos--

01:16:04.240 --> 01:16:04.440 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

01:16:04.440 --> 01:16:06.180 align:middle line:90%
Well, that\'s always been the--

01:16:06.180 --> 01:16:06.560 align:middle line:90%
[INAUDIBLE]

01:16:06.560 --> 01:16:06.990 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

01:16:06.990 --> 01:16:07.330 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

01:16:07.330 --> 01:16:08.310 align:middle line:90%
All those people.

01:16:08.310 --> 01:16:08.370 align:middle line:90%
Right.

01:16:08.370 --> 01:16:09.880 align:middle line:90%
Of course.

01:16:09.880 --> 01:16:14.390 align:middle line:84%
And in a certain sense, I
regretted that aspect of PLO,

01:16:14.390 --> 01:16:16.990 align:middle line:84%
which was particularly,
I think, allowed by

01:16:16.990 --> 01:16:19.430 align:middle line:90%
Arafat in the \'70s.

01:16:19.430 --> 01:16:22.260 align:middle line:84%
That is to say, many factions,
and he would play them off

01:16:22.260 --> 01:16:23.000 align:middle line:90%
against each other.

01:16:23.000 --> 01:16:27.010 align:middle line:84%
It was never like the FLN,
whether the Algerian or the

01:16:27.010 --> 01:16:29.780 align:middle line:84%
Vietnamese, a kind
of central thing.

01:16:29.780 --> 01:16:31.680 align:middle line:90%
It was always factions.

01:16:31.680 --> 01:16:33.670 align:middle line:84%
And there was a Syrian
faction.

01:16:33.670 --> 01:16:34.950 align:middle line:90%
There was an Iraqi faction.

01:16:34.950 --> 01:16:38.230 align:middle line:84%
There was a Marxist Lenin--
and so it was a chaos.

01:16:38.230 --> 01:16:43.130 align:middle line:84%
But it was in many ways a rather
creative chaos, with

01:16:43.130 --> 01:16:45.890 align:middle line:84%
regrettable and unfortunate
sides.

01:16:45.890 --> 01:16:50.110 align:middle line:84%
Until \'82, at which point the
siege of Beirut took place and

01:16:50.110 --> 01:16:52.480 align:middle line:90%
the PLO was banished.

01:16:52.480 --> 01:16:55.870 align:middle line:84%
And Arafat became an exile
for the next 10 years.

01:16:55.870 --> 01:16:58.200 align:middle line:84%
And during those 10
years, during the

01:16:58.200 --> 01:16:59.910 align:middle line:90%
\'80s, he was in Tunisia.

01:16:59.910 --> 01:17:02.960 align:middle line:84%
And being a member of the
National Council, I knew him

01:17:02.960 --> 01:17:03.720 align:middle line:90%
quite well.

01:17:03.720 --> 01:17:08.370 align:middle line:84%
I went often to Tunisia, whether
for meetings or to

01:17:08.370 --> 01:17:08.920 align:middle line:90%
talk with him.

01:17:08.920 --> 01:17:13.880 align:middle line:84%
And my main concern was to try
to inform him and his people

01:17:13.880 --> 01:17:15.130 align:middle line:90%
about the United States.

01:17:15.130 --> 01:17:19.580 align:middle line:84%
I already in 1979 in Beirut had
given a lecture, in which

01:17:19.580 --> 01:17:21.780 align:middle line:90%
I forecast--

01:17:21.780 --> 01:17:22.770 align:middle line:90%
I wouldn\'t say prophesied.

01:17:22.770 --> 01:17:26.600 align:middle line:84%
But I forecast the fact that
they would be negotiated with

01:17:26.600 --> 01:17:29.020 align:middle line:84%
the Americans in a matter
of time, because it was

01:17:29.020 --> 01:17:29.720 align:middle line:90%
inevitable.

01:17:29.720 --> 01:17:31.880 align:middle line:84%
And no matter what the Israelis
did during the

01:17:31.880 --> 01:17:34.580 align:middle line:84%
intifada, for example, the first
intifada of the late

01:17:34.580 --> 01:17:40.030 align:middle line:84%
\'80s, \'87 to \'92, they were
never able to dislodge the

01:17:40.030 --> 01:17:42.630 align:middle line:84%
PLO, even among people on
the West Bank and Gaza.

01:17:42.630 --> 01:17:42.990 align:middle line:90%
They tried.

01:17:42.990 --> 01:17:45.520 align:middle line:84%
For example, it was the Israelis
who encouraged Hamas

01:17:45.520 --> 01:17:46.220 align:middle line:90%
and established.

01:17:46.220 --> 01:17:48.490 align:middle line:84%
Peres himself was in
charge of that.

01:17:48.490 --> 01:17:49.454 align:middle line:90%
And [INAUDIBLE]

01:17:49.454 --> 01:17:50.420 align:middle line:90%
University in [INAUDIBLE].

01:17:50.420 --> 01:17:50.880 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

01:17:50.880 --> 01:17:54.160 align:middle line:84%
All of that as alternatives to
the PLO, but that simply

01:17:54.160 --> 01:17:55.200 align:middle line:90%
strengthened the PLO.

01:17:55.200 --> 01:17:56.690 align:middle line:84%
I mean, there\'s this thing
about Palestinians--

01:17:56.690 --> 01:18:01.500 align:middle line:84%
I think most people who are
oppressed will resist by being

01:18:01.500 --> 01:18:07.210 align:middle line:84%
more stubborn in their beliefs
and convictions and

01:18:07.210 --> 01:18:08.660 align:middle line:90%
wanting to go on.

01:18:08.660 --> 01:18:11.180 align:middle line:84%
And all of the efforts that were
made to get Palestinians

01:18:11.180 --> 01:18:15.050 align:middle line:84%
to move never succeeded with the
Palestinians of Palestine.

01:18:15.050 --> 01:18:18.800 align:middle line:84%
The Palestinians in Jordan, who
were driven out in \'71 by

01:18:18.800 --> 01:18:21.750 align:middle line:84%
Hussein and by the Hashemites
and then again in \'82 by the

01:18:21.750 --> 01:18:25.890 align:middle line:84%
Israelis, ended up, I mean, one
has to say it, ironically,

01:18:25.890 --> 01:18:27.450 align:middle line:84%
by returning to Palestine,
which is what

01:18:27.450 --> 01:18:29.230 align:middle line:90%
happened with Arafat.

01:18:29.230 --> 01:18:31.910 align:middle line:84%
But I knew that the US
was going to play

01:18:31.910 --> 01:18:32.550 align:middle line:90%
an important role.

01:18:32.550 --> 01:18:35.980 align:middle line:84%
And what I was very early struck
by was the fact that

01:18:35.980 --> 01:18:39.070 align:middle line:84%
not just the PLO, but most of
the Arabs, the educated Arabs,

01:18:39.070 --> 01:18:42.700 align:middle line:84%
many of whom had been in
America, educated in America,

01:18:42.700 --> 01:18:46.500 align:middle line:84%
whether they were Egyptian or
Syrian or Iraqi or Lebanese or

01:18:46.500 --> 01:18:51.110 align:middle line:84%
Palestinian, really didn\'t in my
opinion have a deep enough

01:18:51.110 --> 01:18:53.590 align:middle line:84%
understanding of what America
was and what it would be like

01:18:53.590 --> 01:18:54.440 align:middle line:90%
to negotiate with them.

01:18:54.440 --> 01:18:57.130 align:middle line:90%
Of course, we had examples.

01:18:57.130 --> 01:18:58.580 align:middle line:84%
There were the Vietnamese
talks.

01:18:58.580 --> 01:19:01.230 align:middle line:84%
And a very good guide in all
this was my friend Ikhbal

01:19:01.230 --> 01:19:03.860 align:middle line:84%
Ahmed, whom I took to
Beirut in 1980,

01:19:03.860 --> 01:19:05.410 align:middle line:90%
introduced him to Arafat.

01:19:05.410 --> 01:19:08.880 align:middle line:84%
And he was the first one to
explain to them that just

01:19:08.880 --> 01:19:12.440 align:middle line:84%
having a lot of soldiers in
South Lebanon and maybe two

01:19:12.440 --> 01:19:16.410 align:middle line:84%
tanks, which was all they had,
would be as nothing to an

01:19:16.410 --> 01:19:17.340 align:middle line:90%
Israeli invasion.

01:19:17.340 --> 01:19:19.840 align:middle line:84%
And he prophesied what the
Israelis would do almost to

01:19:19.840 --> 01:19:20.810 align:middle line:90%
the letter.

01:19:20.810 --> 01:19:24.540 align:middle line:84%
But there was so much investment
in conventional

01:19:24.540 --> 01:19:26.030 align:middle line:90%
ideas about--

01:19:26.030 --> 01:19:28.530 align:middle line:84%
that were taken from the Arab
armies, which had a very

01:19:28.530 --> 01:19:32.580 align:middle line:84%
distinguished record of success,
that they didn\'t

01:19:32.580 --> 01:19:33.170 align:middle line:90%
listen to him.

01:19:33.170 --> 01:19:35.540 align:middle line:84%
And of course, what he
emphasized, and when I got out

01:19:35.540 --> 01:19:39.270 align:middle line:84%
of it, was that we need to be
creative and innovative and

01:19:39.270 --> 01:19:42.300 align:middle line:84%
original in our thinking, and
really try to work with groups

01:19:42.300 --> 01:19:46.120 align:middle line:84%
inside Israel and in the west
and so on, and focus on that.

01:19:46.120 --> 01:19:49.330 align:middle line:84%
So when Arafat was in Tunis,
that long moratorium when he

01:19:49.330 --> 01:19:53.840 align:middle line:84%
was high and dry, I would bring
people to talk to him

01:19:53.840 --> 01:19:56.680 align:middle line:84%
about America, about
resistance, about

01:19:56.680 --> 01:19:58.890 align:middle line:90%
liberation, et cetera.

01:19:58.890 --> 01:20:02.890 align:middle line:84%
It was hopeless, because in
the end, what I could see

01:20:02.890 --> 01:20:05.520 align:middle line:84%
right through the \'80s was
a very, very conventional

01:20:05.520 --> 01:20:09.980 align:middle line:84%
mindset, where his model of rule
was, I don\'t know, was

01:20:09.980 --> 01:20:12.140 align:middle line:84%
Hafez al-Assad in Syria, that
if you could get to Hafez

01:20:12.140 --> 01:20:15.140 align:middle line:84%
al-Assad and whisper in his
ear, it would be done.

01:20:15.140 --> 01:20:18.940 align:middle line:84%
So he figured if you could get
to the top American, then that

01:20:18.940 --> 01:20:20.160 align:middle line:90%
was the end of your problem.

01:20:20.160 --> 01:20:24.560 align:middle line:84%
And so the top American
was the president.

01:20:24.560 --> 01:20:28.040 align:middle line:84%
And because I was in this ironic
position of being a

01:20:28.040 --> 01:20:29.920 align:middle line:84%
member of the American
establishment through my

01:20:29.920 --> 01:20:33.030 align:middle line:84%
education being at Princeton and
watching, say, during the

01:20:33.030 --> 01:20:35.510 align:middle line:84%
Carter administration,
classmates of mine in the

01:20:35.510 --> 01:20:39.550 align:middle line:84%
State Department, it was easy
for me to have access.

01:20:39.550 --> 01:20:40.820 align:middle line:84%
But I realized it
wasn\'t enough.

01:20:40.820 --> 01:20:43.600 align:middle line:84%
And so I was in this
feverish situation

01:20:43.600 --> 01:20:45.170 align:middle line:90%
of trying to explain.

01:20:45.170 --> 01:20:49.330 align:middle line:84%
And I didn\'t realize at the
time, neither I nor Ibrahim,

01:20:49.330 --> 01:20:55.260 align:middle line:84%
that this was a period when he
was doing his best to contact

01:20:55.260 --> 01:20:57.420 align:middle line:84%
the State Department to make
himself more attractive.

01:20:57.420 --> 01:21:02.190 align:middle line:84%
And the way he did it, looking
back on it, was to make more

01:21:02.190 --> 01:21:03.470 align:middle line:90%
concessions than anyone else.

01:21:03.470 --> 01:21:05.600 align:middle line:90%
In other words, he understood.

01:21:05.600 --> 01:21:07.910 align:middle line:84%
I mean, he\'s an extremely
canny,

01:21:07.910 --> 01:21:11.490 align:middle line:90%
even brilliant tactician.

01:21:11.490 --> 01:21:15.260 align:middle line:84%
He represented himself as the
only person who could actually

01:21:15.260 --> 01:21:17.540 align:middle line:90%
deliver the Palestinians.

01:21:17.540 --> 01:21:21.250 align:middle line:84%
And as time went on, after the
Gulf War, when he sided with

01:21:21.250 --> 01:21:26.650 align:middle line:84%
Saddam, I began to be quite
disenchanted with him.

01:21:26.650 --> 01:21:27.490 align:middle line:90%
There were other things.

01:21:27.490 --> 01:21:32.010 align:middle line:84%
When I criticized him openly,
in the Arab press through an

01:21:32.010 --> 01:21:37.830 align:middle line:84%
interview I gave in \'88 and \'89,
our relationship became

01:21:37.830 --> 01:21:40.720 align:middle line:90%
quite fraught.

01:21:40.720 --> 01:21:43.410 align:middle line:84%
But I didn\'t realize how
far he would go.

01:21:43.410 --> 01:21:49.360 align:middle line:84%
And after the Gulf War and the
Madrid conference, by that

01:21:49.360 --> 01:21:50.940 align:middle line:90%
time I was already ill.

01:21:50.940 --> 01:21:53.630 align:middle line:90%
And I felt very alienated.

01:21:53.630 --> 01:21:58.590 align:middle line:84%
I realized that he was
up to something.

01:21:58.590 --> 01:22:02.800 align:middle line:84%
And I could see that the West
Bank and Gaza delegation that

01:22:02.800 --> 01:22:04.990 align:middle line:84%
had been appointed to negotiate
with the Americans

01:22:04.990 --> 01:22:08.830 align:middle line:84%
and the Israelis in Washington
were a front for him, and that

01:22:08.830 --> 01:22:12.360 align:middle line:84%
the real sort of
behind-the-scene power was

01:22:12.360 --> 01:22:16.470 align:middle line:84%
Arafat himself, who had a man,
Nabil Shaath, on that

01:22:16.470 --> 01:22:18.350 align:middle line:84%
committee reporting
back to him.

01:22:18.350 --> 01:22:20.490 align:middle line:84%
So whenever they took a very
strong stand against the

01:22:20.490 --> 01:22:23.940 align:middle line:84%
Israelis in their negotiations,
Shaath would

01:22:23.940 --> 01:22:26.750 align:middle line:90%
telephone Arafat.

01:22:26.750 --> 01:22:30.100 align:middle line:84%
And then Arafat, through Shaath,
would undercut the

01:22:30.100 --> 01:22:34.310 align:middle line:90%
position by offering more.

01:22:34.310 --> 01:22:36.340 align:middle line:84%
And of course, the Israelis
understood that and they would

01:22:36.340 --> 01:22:38.430 align:middle line:90%
then stiffen.

01:22:38.430 --> 01:22:41.670 align:middle line:84%
And gradually he drew these
the Israelis to him.

01:22:41.670 --> 01:22:43.730 align:middle line:84%
And then, as you know, they
started having these secret

01:22:43.730 --> 01:22:46.940 align:middle line:84%
meetings in Oslo and in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.

01:22:46.940 --> 01:22:49.400 align:middle line:84%
There were a whole set of
meetings that took place in

01:22:49.400 --> 01:22:53.930 align:middle line:84%
\'92 that led finally to Oslo and
the signing on the White

01:22:53.930 --> 01:22:56.570 align:middle line:84%
House lawn in September
of 1993.

01:22:56.570 --> 01:23:01.400 align:middle line:84%
And most of the world praised
that signing, and said,

01:23:01.400 --> 01:23:04.220 align:middle line:84%
possibly even believed, that it
was peace at last between

01:23:04.220 --> 01:23:05.720 align:middle line:84%
the Israelis and the
Palestinians.

01:23:05.720 --> 01:23:09.860 align:middle line:84%
You were one of the few
Palestinians, [INAUDIBLE]

01:23:09.860 --> 01:23:14.400 align:middle line:84%
was another, to say,
no, this is a sham.

01:23:14.400 --> 01:23:15.840 align:middle line:90%
Why did you say it was a sham?

01:23:15.840 --> 01:23:19.360 align:middle line:84%
Well, A, because I knew
what was in the text.

01:23:19.360 --> 01:23:22.200 align:middle line:84%
I mean, I remember talking
again, to be Nabil Shaath, who

01:23:22.200 --> 01:23:27.750 align:middle line:84%
was not at Oslo, but he had been
telling me how much the

01:23:27.750 --> 01:23:32.930 align:middle line:84%
Shamir government was sort of
blocking any agreement during

01:23:32.930 --> 01:23:33.430 align:middle line:90%
the ongoing--

01:23:33.430 --> 01:23:35.830 align:middle line:84%
of course, I didn\'t realize that
he was feeding Arafat all

01:23:35.830 --> 01:23:37.580 align:middle line:90%
this stuff.

01:23:37.580 --> 01:23:39.810 align:middle line:84%
And he was taken quite
by surprise.

01:23:39.810 --> 01:23:44.570 align:middle line:84%
But he immediately, being the
loyalist that is, put a very

01:23:44.570 --> 01:23:45.350 align:middle line:90%
bright face on it.

01:23:45.350 --> 01:23:46.640 align:middle line:90%
He said, they\'ve done--

01:23:46.640 --> 01:23:47.220 align:middle line:90%
I said, listen, Nabil.

01:23:47.220 --> 01:23:49.040 align:middle line:90%
I\'ve seen the text.

01:23:49.040 --> 01:23:51.170 align:middle line:84%
There\'s no mention of the
end of the occupation.

01:23:51.170 --> 01:23:52.680 align:middle line:84%
There\'s nothing about
settlements.

01:23:52.680 --> 01:23:55.170 align:middle line:84%
I mean, these people are going
to go on planning settlements.

01:23:55.170 --> 01:23:57.050 align:middle line:90%
And he said, they\'re only 1%.

01:23:57.050 --> 01:23:58.155 align:middle line:90%
I said, 1% of what?

01:23:58.155 --> 01:23:59.390 align:middle line:90%
What are you talking about?

01:23:59.390 --> 01:24:01.690 align:middle line:90%
He said, well, land surface.

01:24:01.690 --> 01:24:03.620 align:middle line:84%
I said, you don\'t
know the area.

01:24:03.620 --> 01:24:05.800 align:middle line:84%
Not that I had been there, but
none of the people who

01:24:05.800 --> 01:24:08.200 align:middle line:84%
negotiated had been to the West
Bank and Gaza, didn\'t

01:24:08.200 --> 01:24:09.890 align:middle line:84%
realize what we were
talking about.

01:24:09.890 --> 01:24:12.635 align:middle line:84%
I had some idea, certainly
more than them.

01:24:12.635 --> 01:24:13.950 align:middle line:90%
And I\'d looked at the maps.

01:24:13.950 --> 01:24:15.950 align:middle line:84%
So there was nothing about the
stopping of settlements.

01:24:15.950 --> 01:24:17.060 align:middle line:84%
There was nothing
about Jerusalem.

01:24:17.060 --> 01:24:18.870 align:middle line:84%
There was nothing
about refugees.

01:24:18.870 --> 01:24:21.020 align:middle line:84%
There was nothing about
sovereignty.

01:24:21.020 --> 01:24:22.500 align:middle line:84%
It was a complete
sham, I thought.

01:24:22.500 --> 01:24:23.900 align:middle line:84%
I was outraged by
the document.

01:24:23.900 --> 01:24:28.700 align:middle line:84%
And I was astonished at the
lengths to which Arafat went

01:24:28.700 --> 01:24:34.120 align:middle line:84%
to make himself, to market
himself as an apostle of peace

01:24:34.120 --> 01:24:36.570 align:middle line:84%
and the man who was finally
reconciling

01:24:36.570 --> 01:24:40.260 align:middle line:90%
himself with the Israelis.

01:24:40.260 --> 01:24:41.030 align:middle line:90%
That was number one.

01:24:41.030 --> 01:24:44.800 align:middle line:84%
And number two, I also
had spent years

01:24:44.800 --> 01:24:46.420 align:middle line:90%
studying the Israelis.

01:24:46.420 --> 01:24:50.730 align:middle line:84%
And I realized that if they were
going be as concessive as

01:24:50.730 --> 01:24:54.190 align:middle line:84%
the world seemed to think, they
would have said something

01:24:54.190 --> 01:24:55.120 align:middle line:90%
more explicit.

01:24:55.120 --> 01:24:57.910 align:middle line:84%
All you had to do was look
dramatically, as it were, at

01:24:57.910 --> 01:25:00.990 align:middle line:84%
the two documents, the letters
that were exchanged between

01:25:00.990 --> 01:25:02.750 align:middle line:84%
the PLO and the Israeli
government.

01:25:02.750 --> 01:25:05.220 align:middle line:84%
The Israeli government letter to
the PLO was one and a half

01:25:05.220 --> 01:25:09.350 align:middle line:84%
lines, in which it says, the
government of Israeli

01:25:09.350 --> 01:25:12.290 align:middle line:84%
recognizes that the PLO is
the representative of the

01:25:12.290 --> 01:25:13.440 align:middle line:90%
Palestinian people.

01:25:13.440 --> 01:25:16.640 align:middle line:90%
Sincerely, Rabin.

01:25:16.640 --> 01:25:20.240 align:middle line:84%
The Palestinian letter was a
page and a half long, written

01:25:20.240 --> 01:25:24.950 align:middle line:84%
by Arafat and his people,
single-spaced, apologizing for

01:25:24.950 --> 01:25:27.230 align:middle line:84%
terrorists, saying that
we\'ve taken back this.

01:25:27.230 --> 01:25:28.430 align:middle line:84%
We\'re not going to
do this again.

01:25:28.430 --> 01:25:31.900 align:middle line:84%
We recognize Israel, the right
to live in peace, recognize,

01:25:31.900 --> 01:25:35.250 align:middle line:84%
we\'re-- all this stuff dealing
with a state that until today

01:25:35.250 --> 01:25:37.880 align:middle line:84%
still hasn\'t declared it\'s
international borders.

01:25:37.880 --> 01:25:41.190 align:middle line:84%
I mean, it\'s the only state in
the UN that has no recognized

01:25:41.190 --> 01:25:43.960 align:middle line:84%
international borders, and still
doesn\'t to this day.

01:25:43.960 --> 01:25:45.660 align:middle line:84%
And this apologetic
stuff from them.

01:25:45.660 --> 01:25:49.700 align:middle line:84%
And they got, in my opinion,
very little in return.

01:25:49.700 --> 01:25:52.250 align:middle line:84%
So I was quite outraged
by this.

01:25:52.250 --> 01:25:53.880 align:middle line:90%
And when they invited me--

01:25:53.880 --> 01:25:57.080 align:middle line:84%
I was invited four or five
times, kind of a snafu in the

01:25:57.080 --> 01:25:59.960 align:middle line:84%
White House by various
secretaries and so on, who

01:25:59.960 --> 01:26:01.080 align:middle line:90%
invited me to the ceremony--

01:26:01.080 --> 01:26:01.880 align:middle line:90%
I refused to go.

01:26:01.880 --> 01:26:04.080 align:middle line:90%
I said it was a day of infamy.

01:26:04.080 --> 01:26:07.820 align:middle line:84%
And that very night, as if to
confirm what I had been

01:26:07.820 --> 01:26:12.000 align:middle line:84%
saying, the BBC did an interview
with me and with

01:26:12.000 --> 01:26:16.430 align:middle line:84%
Amos Oz, one of the leading
Israeli novelists and a member

01:26:16.430 --> 01:26:17.870 align:middle line:90%
of Peace Now.

01:26:17.870 --> 01:26:19.520 align:middle line:84%
It was done by Michael
Ignatieff.

01:26:19.520 --> 01:26:23.610 align:middle line:84%
And Oz went first and then
I came after Oz.

01:26:23.610 --> 01:26:25.170 align:middle line:90%
So Oz concluded--

01:26:25.170 --> 01:26:28.270 align:middle line:84%
Ignatieff said to him, well,
what do you think about this?

01:26:28.270 --> 01:26:30.670 align:middle line:84%
And he said, this is the second
greatest victory of

01:26:30.670 --> 01:26:34.210 align:middle line:90%
Zionism, this document.

01:26:34.210 --> 01:26:38.080 align:middle line:84%
And of course I knew what he
meant, that it was a victory,

01:26:38.080 --> 01:26:42.910 align:middle line:84%
that they had sort of seduced
the Palestinians into

01:26:42.910 --> 01:26:46.360 align:middle line:84%
basically giving up and signing
everything over,

01:26:46.360 --> 01:26:48.840 align:middle line:84%
placing all their hopes on the
Israelis and the Americans,

01:26:48.840 --> 01:26:52.910 align:middle line:84%
who if you knew anything about
either certainly didn\'t have

01:26:52.910 --> 01:26:54.160 align:middle line:84%
Palestinian interests
at heart.

01:26:54.160 --> 01:26:56.500 align:middle line:84%
And of course I took off on
that, because my interview

01:26:56.500 --> 01:26:57.130 align:middle line:90%
came after.

01:26:57.130 --> 01:26:58.610 align:middle line:84%
And I went into all
these things.

01:26:58.610 --> 01:27:05.540 align:middle line:84%
And of course, from then until
about 1995 or 1996, I became

01:27:05.540 --> 01:27:08.870 align:middle line:84%
an enemy of Arafat and people
would bad mouth me and they\'d

01:27:08.870 --> 01:27:12.410 align:middle line:84%
say that I\'m a wet blanket and I
was jealous because I hadn\'t

01:27:12.410 --> 01:27:14.060 align:middle line:90%
been given a ministerial job.

01:27:14.060 --> 01:27:16.020 align:middle line:84%
And you know, that was the
last thing in my mind.

01:27:16.020 --> 01:27:19.620 align:middle line:84%
I didn\'t want to work in a
position of that sort.

01:27:19.620 --> 01:27:24.080 align:middle line:84%
But I really was terribly
disheartened.

01:27:24.080 --> 01:27:27.530 align:middle line:84%
And it was at a moment when
I was getting sicker.

01:27:27.530 --> 01:27:31.870 align:middle line:84%
But I felt that it was a moment
where you had to either

01:27:31.870 --> 01:27:34.750 align:middle line:84%
have determination and press
on, even if it meant quite

01:27:34.750 --> 01:27:40.160 align:middle line:84%
literally for years being
alone and attacked.

01:27:40.160 --> 01:27:42.230 align:middle line:84%
And my books were banned
by Arafat in 1996.

01:27:42.230 --> 01:27:45.040 align:middle line:84%
I remember you were in the
predicament of having your

01:27:45.040 --> 01:27:47.920 align:middle line:84%
books banned by Arafat in the
Palestinian areas but not

01:27:47.920 --> 01:27:48.480 align:middle line:90%
banned in Israel.

01:27:48.480 --> 01:27:49.190 align:middle line:90%
Not banned in Israel.

01:27:49.190 --> 01:27:49.900 align:middle line:90%
Exactly.

01:27:49.900 --> 01:27:51.040 align:middle line:90%
I mean, it was quite terrible.

01:27:51.040 --> 01:27:54.580 align:middle line:84%
Not only that, but to show the
mendacity of the regime and

01:27:54.580 --> 01:27:57.080 align:middle line:84%
the kind of mentality
he established.

01:27:57.080 --> 01:28:00.660 align:middle line:84%
He taught Palestinians
how to lie, I felt.

01:28:00.660 --> 01:28:04.670 align:middle line:84%
But the person who signed the
edict against me banning my

01:28:04.670 --> 01:28:07.770 align:middle line:84%
books refused to acknowledge
that he signed it.

01:28:07.770 --> 01:28:10.670 align:middle line:84%
And a couple of years later--
this was in \'96.

01:28:10.670 --> 01:28:14.130 align:middle line:84%
A couple of years later I ran
into him in the American

01:28:14.130 --> 01:28:14.990 align:middle line:90%
Colony Hotel.

01:28:14.990 --> 01:28:16.020 align:middle line:90%
He was a minister--

01:28:16.020 --> 01:28:18.120 align:middle line:84%
he\'s still a minister in
Arafat\'s government.

01:28:18.120 --> 01:28:19.530 align:middle line:84%
And I said to him, how
could you do that?

01:28:19.530 --> 01:28:21.170 align:middle line:84%
He said, I had nothing
to do with.

01:28:21.170 --> 01:28:24.860 align:middle line:84%
I said, but it was signed on
stationery from the Ministry

01:28:24.860 --> 01:28:27.740 align:middle line:84%
of Culture and Information
and you were both.

01:28:27.740 --> 01:28:28.960 align:middle line:84%
He said, no, I had nothing
to do with it.

01:28:28.960 --> 01:28:30.360 align:middle line:90%
You\'ve got the wrong idea.

01:28:30.360 --> 01:28:32.570 align:middle line:84%
And even friends of mine who
were in the government said,

01:28:32.570 --> 01:28:33.810 align:middle line:84%
we know nothing about
this thing.

01:28:33.810 --> 01:28:36.670 align:middle line:84%
But wherever you went, you
couldn\'t get the books.

01:28:36.670 --> 01:28:38.290 align:middle line:84%
My books were-- because
they were in Arabic.

01:28:38.290 --> 01:28:38.620 align:middle line:90%
That\'s it.

01:28:38.620 --> 01:28:42.740 align:middle line:84%
They had been translated from my
columns and put together in

01:28:42.740 --> 01:28:49.640 align:middle line:84%
a fairly cheap edition, all
about Oslo, from Cairo.

01:28:49.640 --> 01:28:51.090 align:middle line:84%
And they were immediately
distributed all

01:28:51.090 --> 01:28:51.840 align:middle line:90%
over the West Bank.

01:28:51.840 --> 01:28:55.620 align:middle line:84%
So that went on until it became
intolerable for most

01:28:55.620 --> 01:28:56.340 align:middle line:90%
Palestinians.

01:28:56.340 --> 01:29:01.110 align:middle line:84%
And gradually the tide turned
and opinion went my way.

01:29:01.110 --> 01:29:02.720 align:middle line:84%
Because circumstances
got worse.

01:29:02.720 --> 01:29:02.930 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

01:29:02.930 --> 01:29:04.470 align:middle line:90%
Circumstances got worse.

01:29:04.470 --> 01:29:07.240 align:middle line:84%
And he tried, Arafat and his
people tried often during the

01:29:07.240 --> 01:29:10.050 align:middle line:84%
\'90s to arrange meetings
with me, et cetera.

01:29:10.050 --> 01:29:11.770 align:middle line:84%
But I refused to have anything
to do with him.

01:29:11.770 --> 01:29:14.290 align:middle line:84%
I remember once somebody
asked me this on an

01:29:14.290 --> 01:29:15.130 align:middle line:90%
American talk show.

01:29:15.130 --> 01:29:18.130 align:middle line:84%
He said, well, what are
your relationships

01:29:18.130 --> 01:29:19.040 align:middle line:90%
with Chairman Arafat?

01:29:19.040 --> 01:29:21.590 align:middle line:84%
Because I used to be known as
Arafat\'s man in New York

01:29:21.590 --> 01:29:23.050 align:middle line:90%
during the \'80s.

01:29:23.050 --> 01:29:24.990 align:middle line:84%
And I said, well, you know, I
have nothing to do with him.

01:29:24.990 --> 01:29:27.820 align:middle line:84%
I think he did something
very bad.

01:29:27.820 --> 01:29:28.540 align:middle line:90%
Is he in touch with you?

01:29:28.540 --> 01:29:29.670 align:middle line:84%
I said, yes, he\'s in
touch with me.

01:29:29.670 --> 01:29:30.710 align:middle line:90%
But I don\'t answer.

01:29:30.710 --> 01:29:32.580 align:middle line:84%
Well, doesn\'t that show
that he\'s a more

01:29:32.580 --> 01:29:33.790 align:middle line:90%
decent person you are?

01:29:33.790 --> 01:29:34.060 align:middle line:90%
I said, yeah.

01:29:34.060 --> 01:29:34.830 align:middle line:90%
I suppose he is.

01:29:34.830 --> 01:29:36.670 align:middle line:90%
He\'s a great man and I\'m not.

01:29:36.670 --> 01:29:40.210 align:middle line:84%
But I was frequently asked by
his people whether I would

01:29:40.210 --> 01:29:41.310 align:middle line:90%
meet with him.

01:29:41.310 --> 01:29:42.520 align:middle line:84%
And I\'d say, yeah, of course
I\'d meet with him.

01:29:42.520 --> 01:29:43.820 align:middle line:90%
But on one condition.

01:29:43.820 --> 01:29:44.420 align:middle line:90%
They said, what?

01:29:44.420 --> 01:29:47.320 align:middle line:84%
That it be a public meeting and
that we would meet on the

01:29:47.320 --> 01:29:51.140 align:middle line:84%
stage of a theater or assembly
hall and we would discuss the

01:29:51.140 --> 01:29:51.970 align:middle line:90%
issues in public.

01:29:51.970 --> 01:29:52.890 align:middle line:90%
They started to laugh.

01:29:52.890 --> 01:29:54.650 align:middle line:84%
They said, you know he
can\'t accept that.

01:29:54.650 --> 01:29:56.460 align:middle line:84%
I said, then what does
he want from me?

01:29:56.460 --> 01:29:57.610 align:middle line:90%
He just wants you--

01:29:57.610 --> 01:30:00.350 align:middle line:84%
after all, it\'s a common
struggle, all that nonsense.

01:30:00.350 --> 01:30:01.460 align:middle line:90%
So I absolutely refused.

01:30:01.460 --> 01:30:01.890 align:middle line:90%
I never saw him.

01:30:01.890 --> 01:30:05.030 align:middle line:84%
Last time I saw him was
in the summer of \'92.

01:30:05.030 --> 01:30:07.570 align:middle line:84%
He was recuperating after
his operation

01:30:07.570 --> 01:30:09.880 align:middle line:90%
in a Jordanian palace.

01:30:09.880 --> 01:30:12.190 align:middle line:84%
And Mariam and the children
and I had just come

01:30:12.190 --> 01:30:13.030 align:middle line:90%
from the West Bank.

01:30:13.030 --> 01:30:16.420 align:middle line:84%
And it was exactly the day of
the election, so they brought

01:30:16.420 --> 01:30:19.790 align:middle line:84%
the Labor Party to power
in what presaged the

01:30:19.790 --> 01:30:21.760 align:middle line:90%
whole march to Oslo.

01:30:21.760 --> 01:30:22.840 align:middle line:90%
I saw him then.

01:30:22.840 --> 01:30:24.100 align:middle line:90%
I\'ve never seen him since.

01:30:24.100 --> 01:30:26.570 align:middle line:84%
But you did go back during
the Oslo period and--

01:30:26.570 --> 01:30:26.930 align:middle line:90%
Yes.

01:30:26.930 --> 01:30:27.390 align:middle line:90%
Frequently.

01:30:27.390 --> 01:30:31.790 align:middle line:84%
--as I recall, in one of your
films, confronted soldiers who

01:30:31.790 --> 01:30:33.940 align:middle line:84%
were in the process
of taking land.

01:30:33.940 --> 01:30:34.250 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

01:30:34.250 --> 01:30:35.910 align:middle line:84%
I mean, it was a complete
coincidence, the

01:30:35.910 --> 01:30:38.470 align:middle line:90%
film I made in \'98.

01:30:38.470 --> 01:30:40.460 align:middle line:90%
And we did the usual thing.

01:30:40.460 --> 01:30:43.670 align:middle line:84%
It was a personal kind of film,
a narrative about in

01:30:43.670 --> 01:30:44.385 align:middle line:90%
search of Palestine.

01:30:44.385 --> 01:30:47.877 align:middle line:84%
And we went and filmed the house
and places I knew and

01:30:47.877 --> 01:30:49.720 align:middle line:84%
all this sort of thing,
and talked with--

01:30:49.720 --> 01:30:52.890 align:middle line:84%
I did an interview with Mahmoud
Darwish, the great

01:30:52.890 --> 01:30:56.190 align:middle line:84%
poet who is a friend of mine,
and with Daniel Barenboim and

01:30:56.190 --> 01:30:58.440 align:middle line:84%
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod,
various people.

01:30:58.440 --> 01:30:59.795 align:middle line:84%
And we\'re near the
end of the shoot.

01:30:59.795 --> 01:31:03.930 align:middle line:84%
And we were on our way to
Hebron to [INAUDIBLE].

01:31:03.930 --> 01:31:05.930 align:middle line:84%
And as we were driving on
the road, there\'s this

01:31:05.930 --> 01:31:08.815 align:middle line:84%
extraordinary sight I saw which
completely riveted me.

01:31:08.815 --> 01:31:10.420 align:middle line:84%
And I asked them to
stop the car.

01:31:10.420 --> 01:31:13.720 align:middle line:84%
And there was this quite
obviously fertile

01:31:13.720 --> 01:31:16.350 align:middle line:90%
field, a small one.

01:31:16.350 --> 01:31:19.510 align:middle line:84%
In the back, sort of on the
horizon was a village.

01:31:19.510 --> 01:31:22.800 align:middle line:84%
And this was obviously part
of the village land.

01:31:22.800 --> 01:31:26.770 align:middle line:84%
And there was this Israeli
bulldozer plowing up the field

01:31:26.770 --> 01:31:28.060 align:middle line:90%
and tearing up the trees.

01:31:28.060 --> 01:31:31.560 align:middle line:84%
And there was a small group of
Palestinian man in their

01:31:31.560 --> 01:31:35.220 align:middle line:84%
hattahs standing there and sort
of arguing with two or

01:31:35.220 --> 01:31:36.230 align:middle line:90%
three Israeli soldiers.

01:31:36.230 --> 01:31:42.780 align:middle line:84%
So we immediately stopped, got
down, and I immediately

01:31:42.780 --> 01:31:45.310 align:middle line:84%
inquired from one of the
men what was happening.

01:31:45.310 --> 01:31:46.530 align:middle line:90%
And he said, this is our land.

01:31:46.530 --> 01:31:48.310 align:middle line:90%
They decided to take it.

01:31:48.310 --> 01:31:49.700 align:middle line:90%
And I said, how could that be?

01:31:49.700 --> 01:31:51.120 align:middle line:84%
And so I went over to
the Israeli soldier.

01:31:51.120 --> 01:31:54.180 align:middle line:84%
I was really incensed,
you know.

01:31:54.180 --> 01:31:56.360 align:middle line:84%
And I said to him, what
are you doing?

01:31:56.360 --> 01:31:58.970 align:middle line:84%
He said, well, we\'re
enlarging the road.

01:31:58.970 --> 01:31:59.930 align:middle line:90%
And I said, listen.

01:31:59.930 --> 01:32:01.010 align:middle line:90%
I have a camera.

01:32:01.010 --> 01:32:02.580 align:middle line:90%
Would you speak on camera?

01:32:02.580 --> 01:32:06.810 align:middle line:84%
He said no, we\'re not allowed
to talk on camera, so if you

01:32:06.810 --> 01:32:08.550 align:middle line:84%
have your camera here
I\'ll either smash it

01:32:08.550 --> 01:32:09.380 align:middle line:90%
or you turn it off.

01:32:09.380 --> 01:32:11.560 align:middle line:84%
So we turned it off and
I talked with him.

01:32:11.560 --> 01:32:14.920 align:middle line:84%
But we recorded some of
it, a voice recording.

01:32:14.920 --> 01:32:16.650 align:middle line:84%
And he proceeded to tell
me that they were

01:32:16.650 --> 01:32:17.500 align:middle line:90%
expanding the road.

01:32:17.500 --> 01:32:20.710 align:middle line:84%
It happened to be a settlers\'
road which they were building.

01:32:20.710 --> 01:32:23.460 align:middle line:84%
And I think I was the only
person in American who was

01:32:23.460 --> 01:32:26.050 align:middle line:84%
commenting on this road system
that was being built, which

01:32:26.050 --> 01:32:26.970 align:middle line:90%
you could see.

01:32:26.970 --> 01:32:29.410 align:middle line:84%
But none of the reporters, you
see, who were talking about

01:32:29.410 --> 01:32:33.520 align:middle line:84%
peace and reconciliation between
Palestinians and

01:32:33.520 --> 01:32:36.680 align:middle line:84%
cooperation-- and of course, in
all the NGOs and the Ford

01:32:36.680 --> 01:32:40.070 align:middle line:84%
Foundation, the aid agencies
were sponsoring seminars and

01:32:40.070 --> 01:32:43.550 align:middle line:84%
projects, and a whole new class
was emerging of NGOs who

01:32:43.550 --> 01:32:45.130 align:middle line:90%
cooperated with Israel.

01:32:45.130 --> 01:32:48.240 align:middle line:90%
And there were dialogues and--

01:32:48.240 --> 01:32:52.060 align:middle line:84%
all fig leafs for this horrible
expansion, this

01:32:52.060 --> 01:32:54.560 align:middle line:90%
metastasis of the thing.

01:32:54.560 --> 01:32:58.980 align:middle line:84%
What then happened was that
I said to him, this man is

01:32:58.980 --> 01:33:01.970 align:middle line:84%
telling you that his livelihood
depends on it.

01:33:01.970 --> 01:33:04.630 align:middle line:84%
And you just tell me it\'s
the land of Israel.

01:33:04.630 --> 01:33:06.500 align:middle line:84%
What kind of inhumanity
is that?

01:33:06.500 --> 01:33:07.910 align:middle line:90%
He said, listen.

01:33:07.910 --> 01:33:09.540 align:middle line:90%
Think of it this way.

01:33:09.540 --> 01:33:11.980 align:middle line:84%
We have sent people
to the moon.

01:33:11.980 --> 01:33:13.670 align:middle line:90%
We build cars.

01:33:13.670 --> 01:33:15.980 align:middle line:84%
This road-- and he pointed
to the settler road--

01:33:15.980 --> 01:33:18.310 align:middle line:84%
he said, this road needs
to be expanded.

01:33:18.310 --> 01:33:21.740 align:middle line:84%
So in order to do that, you have
to excavate more land and

01:33:21.740 --> 01:33:22.350 align:middle line:90%
take more land away.

01:33:22.350 --> 01:33:24.070 align:middle line:84%
I said, yeah, but you\'re
killing the trees.

01:33:24.070 --> 01:33:25.370 align:middle line:90%
You\'re killing the crops.

01:33:25.370 --> 01:33:26.100 align:middle line:90%
He said, it doesn\'t matter.

01:33:26.100 --> 01:33:27.700 align:middle line:90%
It\'s progress.

01:33:27.700 --> 01:33:29.330 align:middle line:84%
And then he refused
to say anything.

01:33:29.330 --> 01:33:33.690 align:middle line:84%
And then, the worst thing
I think that--

01:33:33.690 --> 01:33:36.720 align:middle line:84%
I\'m not even sure we got
it in the film--

01:33:36.720 --> 01:33:40.400 align:middle line:84%
was that I went back to him
after I talked to the man.

01:33:40.400 --> 01:33:44.290 align:middle line:84%
And I said, well, I mean,
what about Oslo?

01:33:44.290 --> 01:33:45.840 align:middle line:84%
What about these agreements
that you made with the

01:33:45.840 --> 01:33:46.480 align:middle line:90%
Palestinians?

01:33:46.480 --> 01:33:47.230 align:middle line:90%
He said, no.

01:33:47.230 --> 01:33:49.170 align:middle line:84%
This is being done with the
knowledge of the authorities.

01:33:49.170 --> 01:33:52.240 align:middle line:84%
So I asked one of the
Palestinians, is that true?

01:33:52.240 --> 01:33:53.230 align:middle line:90%
He said yes.

01:33:53.230 --> 01:33:55.010 align:middle line:84%
He came and he talked
with them.

01:33:55.010 --> 01:33:56.540 align:middle line:90%
And apparently--

01:33:56.540 --> 01:33:59.700 align:middle line:84%
then I found out, that what the
Israelis had done during

01:33:59.700 --> 01:34:03.600 align:middle line:84%
that period, it was in \'98,
they would announce in the

01:34:03.600 --> 01:34:06.540 align:middle line:84%
local press, there would be like
a box or something saying

01:34:06.540 --> 01:34:11.130 align:middle line:84%
that we\'re going to come and
take land for the road, the

01:34:11.130 --> 01:34:13.830 align:middle line:84%
expansion of the road, on
such and such a date.

01:34:13.830 --> 01:34:17.270 align:middle line:84%
So rather than dramatizing that,
the [FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

01:34:17.270 --> 01:34:19.270 align:middle line:84%
or the authority, would
go along with

01:34:19.270 --> 01:34:20.190 align:middle line:90%
it, would say nothing.

01:34:20.190 --> 01:34:21.440 align:middle line:90%
They had been informed.

01:34:21.440 --> 01:34:23.050 align:middle line:84%
Maybe people had been
bought off.

01:34:23.050 --> 01:34:27.460 align:middle line:84%
But that\'s where I felt really
the failure of Oslo was the

01:34:27.460 --> 01:34:31.130 align:middle line:84%
inability of Arafat
and his people to

01:34:31.130 --> 01:34:32.390 align:middle line:90%
protect their own people.

01:34:32.390 --> 01:34:34.430 align:middle line:84%
I mean, that was to me
the great crime.

01:34:34.430 --> 01:34:37.310 align:middle line:84%
Not that the people were
unwilling to sacrifice, that

01:34:37.310 --> 01:34:42.550 align:middle line:84%
they weren\'t willing to march
and to be steadfast,

01:34:42.550 --> 01:34:43.110 align:middle line:90%
[SPEAKING ARABIC]

01:34:43.110 --> 01:34:47.070 align:middle line:84%
as it\'s called in Arabic, but
rather that the authority

01:34:47.070 --> 01:34:48.680 align:middle line:90%
showed no care for them.

01:34:48.680 --> 01:34:50.910 align:middle line:84%
And that\'s the thing
I found most--

01:34:50.910 --> 01:34:53.560 align:middle line:84%
just as the Israelis didn\'t care
about them, neither did

01:34:53.560 --> 01:34:54.840 align:middle line:90%
the authority.

01:34:54.840 --> 01:34:59.870 align:middle line:84%
And earlier that week I recall
another terrible, terrible

01:34:59.870 --> 01:35:02.860 align:middle line:84%
sequence similar to this one,
where there was a group of

01:35:02.860 --> 01:35:07.880 align:middle line:84%
Bedouin who had been living in
the Jordan Valley, not far

01:35:07.880 --> 01:35:09.800 align:middle line:84%
from Jerusalem, actually,
on the way to--

01:35:09.800 --> 01:35:10.430 align:middle line:90%
[INAUDIBLE]

01:35:10.430 --> 01:35:11.250 align:middle line:90%
The [INAUDIBLE].

01:35:11.250 --> 01:35:13.440 align:middle line:90%
I saw what they did.

01:35:13.440 --> 01:35:15.600 align:middle line:84%
And I got there just after the
Israelis had been there.

01:35:15.600 --> 01:35:17.640 align:middle line:84%
And I saw that these
people were out.

01:35:17.640 --> 01:35:19.250 align:middle line:84%
Their tents had been
destroyed.

01:35:19.250 --> 01:35:20.780 align:middle line:84%
They were sitting out in
the open, exposed.

01:35:20.780 --> 01:35:23.650 align:middle line:84%
It was a rather severe
early spring.

01:35:23.650 --> 01:35:25.990 align:middle line:84%
It was in February or
March or something.

01:35:25.990 --> 01:35:27.670 align:middle line:90%
And it was raining and cold.

01:35:27.670 --> 01:35:32.350 align:middle line:84%
And it was children running
around, and dogs, and women

01:35:32.350 --> 01:35:33.470 align:middle line:90%
huddling together.

01:35:33.470 --> 01:35:36.680 align:middle line:84%
And it was a heart-rending
sight.

01:35:36.680 --> 01:35:41.650 align:middle line:84%
And the men spread this
blanket or rug.

01:35:41.650 --> 01:35:44.200 align:middle line:84%
And we sat together and
they made me tea.

01:35:44.200 --> 01:35:46.220 align:middle line:90%
And we started to talk.

01:35:46.220 --> 01:35:48.830 align:middle line:84%
And then as we talked, I asked
them questions about had they

01:35:48.830 --> 01:35:49.450 align:middle line:90%
been helped by anybody.

01:35:49.450 --> 01:35:50.520 align:middle line:90%
He said, oh, yes.

01:35:50.520 --> 01:35:51.730 align:middle line:90%
The Red Crescent came.

01:35:51.730 --> 01:35:53.280 align:middle line:90%
The Red Cross came.

01:35:53.280 --> 01:35:56.550 align:middle line:84%
And Faisal Husseini-- he
died earlier, about a

01:35:56.550 --> 01:35:59.300 align:middle line:90%
year ago, in 2001--

01:35:59.300 --> 01:36:01.870 align:middle line:84%
who was the representative
for Jerusalem, had come.

01:36:01.870 --> 01:36:03.340 align:middle line:84%
And they had all
been very kind.

01:36:03.340 --> 01:36:04.500 align:middle line:90%
And they brought us blankets.

01:36:04.500 --> 01:36:05.310 align:middle line:90%
Oh, I said, very good.

01:36:05.310 --> 01:36:07.050 align:middle line:90%
And then we stopped filming.

01:36:07.050 --> 01:36:10.152 align:middle line:84%
And then I told one of the men,
informally, I said, you

01:36:10.152 --> 01:36:11.660 align:middle line:84%
know, it\'s really good what
you said, that they

01:36:11.660 --> 01:36:12.490 align:middle line:90%
cared when they came.

01:36:12.490 --> 01:36:13.090 align:middle line:90%
He said, no, no.

01:36:13.090 --> 01:36:14.240 align:middle line:84%
I just said that
for the camera.

01:36:14.240 --> 01:36:16.030 align:middle line:84%
Nobody\'s paid any
attention to us.

01:36:16.030 --> 01:36:18.700 align:middle line:90%

01:36:18.700 --> 01:36:26.720 align:middle line:84%
Why is it that the Palestinians
for all of their

01:36:26.720 --> 01:36:29.315 align:middle line:84%
relative level of education
compared to the rest of the

01:36:29.315 --> 01:36:31.820 align:middle line:84%
Arab world, and sophistication,
have ended up

01:36:31.820 --> 01:36:34.765 align:middle line:84%
with a leadership that
so badly serves them?

01:36:34.765 --> 01:36:37.530 align:middle line:90%

01:36:37.530 --> 01:36:41.380 align:middle line:84%
I think it\'s an impossible
question to answer.

01:36:41.380 --> 01:36:44.990 align:middle line:84%
It\'s certainly been the fact of
my life that ever since I

01:36:44.990 --> 01:36:47.890 align:middle line:84%
can remember we\'ve been very
badly served by leaders to

01:36:47.890 --> 01:36:50.010 align:middle line:90%
whom we seem loyal.

01:36:50.010 --> 01:36:55.120 align:middle line:84%
And the only thing I can offer
by way of explanation is that

01:36:55.120 --> 01:36:59.880 align:middle line:84%
there is this tremendously
fraught sense of

01:36:59.880 --> 01:37:02.100 align:middle line:84%
precariousness surrounding
Palestinians as a

01:37:02.100 --> 01:37:03.600 align:middle line:90%
collectivity.

01:37:03.600 --> 01:37:06.870 align:middle line:84%
And if a reassuring kind of
father figure appears, people

01:37:06.870 --> 01:37:08.750 align:middle line:90%
flock to him.

01:37:08.750 --> 01:37:12.710 align:middle line:84%
And because our lives and worlds
are made up of bad

01:37:12.710 --> 01:37:16.000 align:middle line:84%
news, if they offer, as Arafat
always does, good news-- or

01:37:16.000 --> 01:37:17.730 align:middle line:84%
more importantly, he doesn\'t
say anything at all.

01:37:17.730 --> 01:37:21.230 align:middle line:84%
I mean from the beginning of
Oslo until now, he hardly has

01:37:21.230 --> 01:37:24.070 align:middle line:84%
addressed his people, which he
could do very easily himself,

01:37:24.070 --> 01:37:29.260 align:middle line:84%
and explain to them, as Mandela
does or did, as other

01:37:29.260 --> 01:37:31.520 align:middle line:90%
leaders have.

01:37:31.520 --> 01:37:33.820 align:middle line:84%
And yet people are
loyal to him.

01:37:33.820 --> 01:37:36.740 align:middle line:84%
And whenever he\'s humiliated, as
he has been recently by the

01:37:36.740 --> 01:37:40.050 align:middle line:90%
Israelis, they stand by him.

01:37:40.050 --> 01:37:41.460 align:middle line:90%
And I think--

01:37:41.460 --> 01:37:43.340 align:middle line:84%
we come back now to the question
of intellectuals.

01:37:43.340 --> 01:37:47.060 align:middle line:84%
I think the worst offenders in
this are not the ordinary

01:37:47.060 --> 01:37:51.860 align:middle line:84%
people who are just hanging onto
life and trying to make a

01:37:51.860 --> 01:37:54.890 align:middle line:84%
go of it and for them
it\'s easy to.

01:37:54.890 --> 01:37:58.250 align:middle line:84%
But the intellectual class, the
one that benefited from

01:37:58.250 --> 01:38:01.570 align:middle line:84%
the NGOs and the huge amount
of money and projects that

01:38:01.570 --> 01:38:04.110 align:middle line:84%
were poured in for human
rights this--

01:38:04.110 --> 01:38:07.980 align:middle line:84%
For example, I mean, all these
study centers that were

01:38:07.980 --> 01:38:10.980 align:middle line:84%
established on the West Bank,
somebody counted by the middle

01:38:10.980 --> 01:38:14.110 align:middle line:84%
of \'90, something about 65 or
70 of them, you know, the

01:38:14.110 --> 01:38:18.630 align:middle line:84%
study of women, Palestinian
heritage, folklore, every

01:38:18.630 --> 01:38:19.530 align:middle line:90%
conceivable kind.

01:38:19.530 --> 01:38:21.480 align:middle line:84%
Not a single one was established
for the study of

01:38:21.480 --> 01:38:23.500 align:middle line:90%
Israeli society.

01:38:23.500 --> 01:38:25.810 align:middle line:84%
And that would be serious,
teaching people Hebrew to

01:38:25.810 --> 01:38:28.640 align:middle line:84%
understand what we\'re dealing
with, what the history is,

01:38:28.640 --> 01:38:29.810 align:middle line:90%
what the reality--

01:38:29.810 --> 01:38:31.780 align:middle line:90%
none of that.

01:38:31.780 --> 01:38:33.730 align:middle line:90%
It\'s all personal advancement.

01:38:33.730 --> 01:38:35.000 align:middle line:90%
The absence--

01:38:35.000 --> 01:38:37.500 align:middle line:84%
very important, I think, and
I\'ve been very consciousness

01:38:37.500 --> 01:38:40.900 align:middle line:84%
of this in my own work, the
absence of role models.

01:38:40.900 --> 01:38:46.320 align:middle line:84%
Who do you model your
work and life on?

01:38:46.320 --> 01:38:48.410 align:middle line:84%
After the death of [INAUDIBLE],
really the whole

01:38:48.410 --> 01:38:51.575 align:middle line:84%
idea of a role model in the Arab
world, somebody who tried

01:38:51.575 --> 01:38:55.560 align:middle line:84%
to sacrifice, who remained true
to a cause, that didn\'t

01:38:55.560 --> 01:38:58.340 align:middle line:84%
work for money and wasn\'t
co-opted by a regime-- you

01:38:58.340 --> 01:39:01.530 align:middle line:84%
couldn\'t say about [INAUDIBLE],
for example, that

01:39:01.530 --> 01:39:04.260 align:middle line:84%
he was in the pay of the
Egyptians or he was really

01:39:04.260 --> 01:39:09.270 align:middle line:84%
executing orders from Arafat or
Hafez Al-Assad or Saddam.

01:39:09.270 --> 01:39:12.280 align:middle line:84%
Those kinds of people really
disappeared from the scene.

01:39:12.280 --> 01:39:17.300 align:middle line:84%
And third was the complete
corruption of journalism.

01:39:17.300 --> 01:39:21.240 align:middle line:84%
Journalism becomes who
owns the paper?

01:39:21.240 --> 01:39:25.460 align:middle line:84%
And very cleverly, as so many
people in his position have

01:39:25.460 --> 01:39:28.410 align:middle line:84%
done before in the Arab world
and elsewhere, Arafat bought

01:39:28.410 --> 01:39:31.570 align:middle line:84%
up all the papers, so that one
of the most shocking stories

01:39:31.570 --> 01:39:34.350 align:middle line:84%
of all is when there was a
Christmas Eve service and he

01:39:34.350 --> 01:39:36.680 align:middle line:84%
went to the Church
of the Nativity.

01:39:36.680 --> 01:39:40.820 align:middle line:84%
And he sat next to the cardinal,
the Catholics said

01:39:40.820 --> 01:39:43.470 align:middle line:84%
he wanted-- the picture
inadvertently

01:39:43.470 --> 01:39:44.800 align:middle line:90%
was put on page three.

01:39:44.800 --> 01:39:46.990 align:middle line:84%
He hauled in the editor and
threw him in jail for two

01:39:46.990 --> 01:39:49.340 align:middle line:84%
weeks for not putting the
picture on the front page.

01:39:49.340 --> 01:39:53.130 align:middle line:84%
So the newspaper is thought of
as just part of his authority

01:39:53.130 --> 01:39:56.300 align:middle line:84%
rather than an independent
source of news.

01:39:56.300 --> 01:39:59.640 align:middle line:84%
And as I say, I think it is the
intellectual class that

01:39:59.640 --> 01:40:04.030 align:middle line:90%
never really stood up to him.

01:40:04.030 --> 01:40:08.290 align:middle line:84%
And only recently with the
complete failure and the

01:40:08.290 --> 01:40:11.500 align:middle line:84%
absence of any kind of authority
under this sort of

01:40:11.500 --> 01:40:14.480 align:middle line:84%
permanent Israeli, brutal
Israeli siege of destroying

01:40:14.480 --> 01:40:17.530 align:middle line:84%
the infrastructure, of making
life impossible, has there

01:40:17.530 --> 01:40:20.960 align:middle line:84%
emerged a group of people who
realize that in the end

01:40:20.960 --> 01:40:23.790 align:middle line:84%
they\'re the people, the
teachers, the doctors, the

01:40:23.790 --> 01:40:27.020 align:middle line:84%
lawyers, who are going to have
to keep the society going.

01:40:27.020 --> 01:40:28.100 align:middle line:90%
And it\'s held together.

01:40:28.100 --> 01:40:28.460 align:middle line:90%
It\'s held together.

01:40:28.460 --> 01:40:30.340 align:middle line:84%
Of course, family plays
a very important part.

01:40:30.340 --> 01:40:32.000 align:middle line:90%
Not tribalism, family.

01:40:32.000 --> 01:40:32.840 align:middle line:90%
It\'s different things.

01:40:32.840 --> 01:40:34.470 align:middle line:90%
Tribes suggest something

01:40:34.470 --> 01:40:37.270 align:middle line:90%
anthropologically sort of aberrant.

01:40:37.270 --> 01:40:41.950 align:middle line:84%
But families and a connection
to the land, in spite of

01:40:41.950 --> 01:40:45.800 align:middle line:90%
Arafat and his people.

01:40:45.800 --> 01:40:49.440 align:middle line:84%
And slowly examples of like,
again, my friend Abu-Lughod,

01:40:49.440 --> 01:40:52.920 align:middle line:84%
who went back and really set an
example for others, that he

01:40:52.920 --> 01:40:55.560 align:middle line:90%
gave up in America.

01:40:55.560 --> 01:40:58.640 align:middle line:84%
He was a prosperous, or at
least well-off professor.

01:40:58.640 --> 01:40:59.610 align:middle line:90%
He owned his own house.

01:40:59.610 --> 01:41:01.560 align:middle line:90%
He lived in a Chicago suburb.

01:41:01.560 --> 01:41:04.590 align:middle line:84%
He was a respected member of
the community, as we say.

01:41:04.590 --> 01:41:06.480 align:middle line:84%
And he went back and lived in
Ramallah and offered his

01:41:06.480 --> 01:41:10.090 align:middle line:84%
services for nothing
to the university.

01:41:10.090 --> 01:41:12.330 align:middle line:90%
That has been missing.

01:41:12.330 --> 01:41:15.460 align:middle line:84%
And finally, and ironically,
it\'s been missing not on the

01:41:15.460 --> 01:41:23.850 align:middle line:84%
people who need to do
it, who need jobs.

01:41:23.850 --> 01:41:25.515 align:middle line:84%
But it\'s the people who
don\'t need jobs that

01:41:25.515 --> 01:41:27.200 align:middle line:90%
are the ones who--

01:41:27.200 --> 01:41:30.540 align:middle line:84%
the superbly well-educated, the
well-off, the people who

01:41:30.540 --> 01:41:32.970 align:middle line:84%
would survive just because
their skills and their

01:41:32.970 --> 01:41:37.080 align:middle line:84%
background give them enough
of a head start.

01:41:37.080 --> 01:41:40.590 align:middle line:84%
They\'re the ones who, alas,
always are flirting with

01:41:40.590 --> 01:41:43.710 align:middle line:84%
Arafat and who want to be called
into the cabinet and

01:41:43.710 --> 01:41:46.410 align:middle line:84%
want to get a ministry and
this sort of thing.

01:41:46.410 --> 01:41:51.000 align:middle line:90%
It\'s extremely disappointing.

01:41:51.000 --> 01:41:55.450 align:middle line:84%
To go back to the beginning of
the present intifada, I said

01:41:55.450 --> 01:41:57.740 align:middle line:84%
earlier that it seemed to me to
be just as much against the

01:41:57.740 --> 01:42:01.390 align:middle line:84%
leadership of Yasser Arafat, who
subsequently co-opted it

01:42:01.390 --> 01:42:03.320 align:middle line:90%
to protect himself.

01:42:03.320 --> 01:42:04.650 align:middle line:84%
What is it directed
against now?

01:42:04.650 --> 01:42:10.760 align:middle line:84%
It seems to be sporadic,
inchoate suicide bombings,

01:42:10.760 --> 01:42:12.750 align:middle line:84%
still some mass demonstrations,
but fewer and

01:42:12.750 --> 01:42:14.880 align:middle line:84%
fewer because of the curfews
and the closures.

01:42:14.880 --> 01:42:15.800 align:middle line:90%
Where is it headed?

01:42:15.800 --> 01:42:17.700 align:middle line:90%
What\'s its strategy?

01:42:17.700 --> 01:42:19.080 align:middle line:84%
Well, I don\'t think it\'s
headed anywhere.

01:42:19.080 --> 01:42:23.180 align:middle line:84%
I think it\'s mostly fueled
by defiance.

01:42:23.180 --> 01:42:26.340 align:middle line:90%
I don\'t think that\'ll stop.

01:42:26.340 --> 01:42:29.640 align:middle line:84%
I think one would be foolish
to deny it, there is a

01:42:29.640 --> 01:42:33.670 align:middle line:84%
considerable amount of religious
and nationalistic

01:42:33.670 --> 01:42:38.530 align:middle line:84%
fervor, which comes out in, to
my way of thinking, useless

01:42:38.530 --> 01:42:41.770 align:middle line:84%
acts of destruction, I mean to
show the Israelis that we

01:42:41.770 --> 01:42:43.975 align:middle line:84%
exist and that no matter
what you do, there

01:42:43.975 --> 01:42:44.980 align:middle line:90%
are going to be responses.

01:42:44.980 --> 01:42:47.280 align:middle line:84%
You can\'t eliminate everything
that we do, which is what the

01:42:47.280 --> 01:42:48.670 align:middle line:84%
Israelis have been
trying to do.

01:42:48.670 --> 01:42:51.520 align:middle line:84%
There are two inhuman logics,
really, at work.

01:42:51.520 --> 01:42:55.140 align:middle line:84%
And I think it\'s very important
for us, for

01:42:55.140 --> 01:42:58.840 align:middle line:84%
Palestinians, to show not only
that suicide bombings are

01:42:58.840 --> 01:43:01.690 align:middle line:84%
useless, but also to show at
the same time that they\'re

01:43:01.690 --> 01:43:04.590 align:middle line:84%
really intimately tied in the
same dialectic with Israeli

01:43:04.590 --> 01:43:08.250 align:middle line:84%
tactics, which are
equally useless.

01:43:08.250 --> 01:43:13.750 align:middle line:84%
I want you to amplify, because
in a way what happened after

01:43:13.750 --> 01:43:17.280 align:middle line:84%
the Camp David talks was what
you\'d predicted would happen

01:43:17.280 --> 01:43:19.810 align:middle line:90%
at the time of Oslo.

01:43:19.810 --> 01:43:20.490 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

01:43:20.490 --> 01:43:20.970 align:middle line:90%
Look.

01:43:20.970 --> 01:43:25.240 align:middle line:84%
I mean, I think the problem
during that whole decade of

01:43:25.240 --> 01:43:28.780 align:middle line:84%
Oslo, from \'93 on, is
that they were--

01:43:28.780 --> 01:43:32.440 align:middle line:84%
thanks to the Americans, let\'s
put it this way, and people

01:43:32.440 --> 01:43:37.550 align:middle line:84%
like Dennis Ross, they created
a kind of space that was

01:43:37.550 --> 01:43:38.800 align:middle line:90%
completely illusory.

01:43:38.800 --> 01:43:40.900 align:middle line:84%
It was called the peace
process, right?

01:43:40.900 --> 01:43:44.010 align:middle line:84%
And that was more and more
distant from the reality that

01:43:44.010 --> 01:43:45.950 align:middle line:90%
most Palestinians were living.

01:43:45.950 --> 01:43:49.840 align:middle line:84%
Their land was being lost
at a terrifying speed.

01:43:49.840 --> 01:43:53.630 align:middle line:84%
Barak himself, who made this
famous generous offer-- which

01:43:53.630 --> 01:43:55.240 align:middle line:84%
he had no right to make
in the first place.

01:43:55.240 --> 01:43:56.780 align:middle line:90%
It wasn\'t his land to offer.

01:43:56.780 --> 01:43:59.330 align:middle line:84%
I mean, it was illegally
taken land.

01:43:59.330 --> 01:44:02.870 align:middle line:84%
And I mean the word, \"generous
offer\" is outrageous in this

01:44:02.870 --> 01:44:04.950 align:middle line:84%
context, totally
inappropriate.

01:44:04.950 --> 01:44:08.770 align:middle line:84%
He had implanted more
settlements than any other

01:44:08.770 --> 01:44:11.410 align:middle line:84%
prime minister, including
Netanyahu before him.

01:44:11.410 --> 01:44:12.970 align:middle line:90%
So that was happening.

01:44:12.970 --> 01:44:18.390 align:middle line:84%
There was an impoverishment
of daily life.

01:44:18.390 --> 01:44:20.890 align:middle line:84%
There was a greater rate
of unemployment.

01:44:20.890 --> 01:44:23.250 align:middle line:84%
More and more people were living
below $2 a day, which

01:44:23.250 --> 01:44:24.280 align:middle line:90%
is the poverty line.

01:44:24.280 --> 01:44:28.390 align:middle line:84%
It went up to about 40%
during those years.

01:44:28.390 --> 01:44:30.660 align:middle line:90%
Movement was impossible.

01:44:30.660 --> 01:44:32.320 align:middle line:84%
The closures became
more and more--

01:44:32.320 --> 01:44:35.720 align:middle line:90%

01:44:35.720 --> 01:44:38.390 align:middle line:90%
impeded life more and more.

01:44:38.390 --> 01:44:43.990 align:middle line:84%
And from the moment that
Barak took office--

01:44:43.990 --> 01:44:47.460 align:middle line:84%
I remember I was in New York
in the spring of \'99, just

01:44:47.460 --> 01:44:49.390 align:middle line:90%
after his election.

01:44:49.390 --> 01:44:50.380 align:middle line:84%
I happened to be
a member of the

01:44:50.380 --> 01:44:51.530 align:middle line:90%
Council on Foreign Relations.

01:44:51.530 --> 01:44:54.350 align:middle line:84%
And I was invited to attend
a meeting lunch for King

01:44:54.350 --> 01:44:56.670 align:middle line:90%
Abdullah of Jordan, right?

01:44:56.670 --> 01:44:58.120 align:middle line:90%
The young king.

01:44:58.120 --> 01:45:02.020 align:middle line:84%
And most of what he had to say
at that meeting was how

01:45:02.020 --> 01:45:04.960 align:middle line:84%
enthusiastic and how optimistic
they all were that

01:45:04.960 --> 01:45:07.100 align:middle line:84%
Barak was coming, and forgetting
about Barak\'s

01:45:07.100 --> 01:45:09.670 align:middle line:84%
background, you know, who he
had killed, things he had

01:45:09.670 --> 01:45:11.210 align:middle line:90%
done, and so on and so forth.

01:45:11.210 --> 01:45:12.880 align:middle line:84%
And they were waiting for
him to do things.

01:45:12.880 --> 01:45:15.550 align:middle line:84%
And then it was quite
extraordinary, that from the

01:45:15.550 --> 01:45:19.620 align:middle line:84%
moment he took office until Camp
David, the Israelis did

01:45:19.620 --> 01:45:24.040 align:middle line:84%
not move one soldier from any
of the occupied territories,

01:45:24.040 --> 01:45:27.500 align:middle line:84%
in flagrant contravention
of the Oslo process.

01:45:27.500 --> 01:45:31.590 align:middle line:84%
They had overstepped the
timetable by three years at

01:45:31.590 --> 01:45:33.230 align:middle line:90%
least, \'96 to \'99.

01:45:33.230 --> 01:45:34.310 align:middle line:90%
They did nothing.

01:45:34.310 --> 01:45:37.310 align:middle line:84%
And all the time the settlers
and the settlements were

01:45:37.310 --> 01:45:38.210 align:middle line:90%
increasing.

01:45:38.210 --> 01:45:42.720 align:middle line:84%
Second, they offered the
Palestinians cantons,

01:45:42.720 --> 01:45:46.550 align:middle line:84%
basically, that were separated
by Israeli roads and

01:45:46.550 --> 01:45:49.420 align:middle line:84%
settlements and so on, so that
you couldn\'t really see it as

01:45:49.420 --> 01:45:50.630 align:middle line:90%
a continuous whole.

01:45:50.630 --> 01:45:53.230 align:middle line:84%
And depending on how you
calculated it, it was nowhere

01:45:53.230 --> 01:45:56.690 align:middle line:84%
near 95%, which is what Thomas
Friedman and some of the other

01:45:56.690 --> 01:45:57.490 align:middle line:90%
colonists have said.

01:45:57.490 --> 01:45:58.930 align:middle line:90%
It was much, much, much less.

01:45:58.930 --> 01:46:00.860 align:middle line:90%
It was closer to 40% or 50%.

01:46:00.860 --> 01:46:01.840 align:middle line:90%
Why?

01:46:01.840 --> 01:46:04.150 align:middle line:84%
Because the Israelis and the
Americans with them, in this

01:46:04.150 --> 01:46:06.450 align:middle line:84%
illusory process
had invented--

01:46:06.450 --> 01:46:11.350 align:middle line:84%
I mean, had produced a scheme
that was positively Kafkaesque

01:46:11.350 --> 01:46:14.840 align:middle line:84%
in its complexity, all the time
presenting to the world a

01:46:14.840 --> 01:46:16.450 align:middle line:90%
picture of great simplicity.

01:46:16.450 --> 01:46:17.820 align:middle line:90%
We are moving towards peace.

01:46:17.820 --> 01:46:19.180 align:middle line:84%
In the end the Palestinians
will have their

01:46:19.180 --> 01:46:20.920 align:middle line:90%
independence date.

01:46:20.920 --> 01:46:23.400 align:middle line:84%
At the same time, the other
side of it, a much more

01:46:23.400 --> 01:46:25.590 align:middle line:84%
complicated narrative, where
instead of giving back

01:46:25.590 --> 01:46:28.480 align:middle line:84%
Palestinians land, which is
what people thought was

01:46:28.480 --> 01:46:31.600 align:middle line:84%
happening, they gave
bits of land.

01:46:31.600 --> 01:46:35.380 align:middle line:84%
And they called it Area A, which
never amounted to more

01:46:35.380 --> 01:46:37.700 align:middle line:90%
than 16% or 17% of the whole.

01:46:37.700 --> 01:46:41.320 align:middle line:84%
But Area A was bounded by Area
B, which was jointly

01:46:41.320 --> 01:46:44.650 align:middle line:84%
controlled by Palestinians and
Israelis, but entrances and

01:46:44.650 --> 01:46:49.280 align:middle line:84%
exits were Israelis and security
for Area A and Area B

01:46:49.280 --> 01:46:51.450 align:middle line:84%
was under the control
of the Israelis.

01:46:51.450 --> 01:46:54.380 align:middle line:84%
Then there was Area C, which was
everything that was left,

01:46:54.380 --> 01:46:56.750 align:middle line:84%
which was mostly Israeli, the
settlements, the military area

01:46:56.750 --> 01:46:57.860 align:middle line:90%
and so on and so forth.

01:46:57.860 --> 01:46:59.630 align:middle line:84%
So the process was totally
meaningless.

01:46:59.630 --> 01:47:01.580 align:middle line:84%
What the Palestinians were
getting back and Arafat was

01:47:01.580 --> 01:47:04.110 align:middle line:84%
accepting and his leaders and
so on were accepting were

01:47:04.110 --> 01:47:08.960 align:middle line:84%
smaller and smaller bits of land
entailed for generations

01:47:08.960 --> 01:47:15.140 align:middle line:84%
to come just like property in a
Jane Austen novel, or Bleak

01:47:15.140 --> 01:47:19.010 align:middle line:84%
House, Jarndyce versus
Jarndyce.

01:47:19.010 --> 01:47:22.560 align:middle line:84%
You never see anything because
it\'s all salamied out into

01:47:22.560 --> 01:47:24.190 align:middle line:90%
tiny little pieces.

01:47:24.190 --> 01:47:26.640 align:middle line:84%
And we were told that
this was peace.

01:47:26.640 --> 01:47:30.330 align:middle line:84%
So I think this is what brought
the whole thing down.

01:47:30.330 --> 01:47:36.040 align:middle line:84%
And finally, and to me most
important, there never was the

01:47:36.040 --> 01:47:38.170 align:middle line:84%
realization that some
of us had that--

01:47:38.170 --> 01:47:41.840 align:middle line:90%

01:47:41.840 --> 01:47:44.780 align:middle line:90%
how shall I put it?

01:47:44.780 --> 01:47:49.410 align:middle line:84%
There was a fundamental
irreconcilable between

01:47:49.410 --> 01:47:52.680 align:middle line:84%
Israelis, or the Zionist
movement, and Palestinians.

01:47:52.680 --> 01:47:55.790 align:middle line:90%
It wasn\'t about reconciliation.

01:47:55.790 --> 01:47:57.780 align:middle line:84%
It wasn\'t about living
in the past.

01:47:57.780 --> 01:47:59.150 align:middle line:84%
It wasn\'t about all
this other stuff.

01:47:59.150 --> 01:48:02.570 align:middle line:90%
It really was about land.

01:48:02.570 --> 01:48:08.210 align:middle line:84%
And unless you devise a category
by which land is not

01:48:08.210 --> 01:48:12.150 align:middle line:84%
exclusively owned,
there\'s no hope.

01:48:12.150 --> 01:48:14.640 align:middle line:84%
And what the Israelis were doing
and have done since the

01:48:14.640 --> 01:48:19.200 align:middle line:84%
beginning, since the end of the
19th century until now, as

01:48:19.200 --> 01:48:21.320 align:middle line:84%
the Zionist movement, was to
take more and more land.

01:48:21.320 --> 01:48:23.880 align:middle line:84%
And Palestinians have lost
more and more land.

01:48:23.880 --> 01:48:27.580 align:middle line:84%
And there\'s no way of
reconciling between these two

01:48:27.580 --> 01:48:31.560 align:middle line:84%
sort of opposing movements, one
losing and dispossessing

01:48:31.560 --> 01:48:33.300 align:middle line:90%
and the other one--

01:48:33.300 --> 01:48:36.440 align:middle line:84%
I mean, losing land and being
dispossessed and the other one

01:48:36.440 --> 01:48:38.150 align:middle line:90%
taking more.

01:48:38.150 --> 01:48:41.830 align:middle line:84%
And that\'s where I came to the
conclusion that the only

01:48:41.830 --> 01:48:47.470 align:middle line:84%
sensible resolution given the
obstinacy and the obduracy of

01:48:47.470 --> 01:48:50.330 align:middle line:84%
the Israelis, who had so much
power, thanks to the United

01:48:50.330 --> 01:48:53.830 align:middle line:84%
States, that they could afford
to ignore the facts and

01:48:53.830 --> 01:48:57.660 align:middle line:84%
reality, was to think about a
way in which they could live

01:48:57.660 --> 01:49:02.370 align:middle line:84%
together as equals, not on a
partition plan, but as equals

01:49:02.370 --> 01:49:03.890 align:middle line:90%
on a land called Palestine or

01:49:03.890 --> 01:49:05.480 align:middle line:90%
Palestine-Israel, depending on--

01:49:05.480 --> 01:49:09.280 align:middle line:84%
in which people were equal and
not defined by their ethnos or

01:49:09.280 --> 01:49:10.760 align:middle line:90%
by their religion.

01:49:10.760 --> 01:49:14.200 align:middle line:84%
But this is very difficult for
above all American Jews.

01:49:14.200 --> 01:49:16.610 align:middle line:84%
I think many Israelis
would accept that.

01:49:16.610 --> 01:49:19.440 align:middle line:84%
But American Jews I think are
the main obstacle in this,

01:49:19.440 --> 01:49:22.005 align:middle line:84%
because for them, Israel is a
kind of secular religion and

01:49:22.005 --> 01:49:24.860 align:middle line:84%
it has to be a place to which
they can retire or return or

01:49:24.860 --> 01:49:26.530 align:middle line:90%
retreat or whatever.

01:49:26.530 --> 01:49:28.140 align:middle line:90%
And they resist this idea.

01:49:28.140 --> 01:49:30.140 align:middle line:84%
But there\'s no other way
you could deal with the

01:49:30.140 --> 01:49:33.210 align:middle line:84%
Palestinians as an
actuality without

01:49:33.210 --> 01:49:36.280 align:middle line:90%
thinking in terms of equality.

01:49:36.280 --> 01:49:39.620 align:middle line:84%
I believed for a long time in
the proposition that you could

01:49:39.620 --> 01:49:42.740 align:middle line:84%
partition the land again, as
the British tried to do in

01:49:42.740 --> 01:49:44.700 align:middle line:90%
1947 and \'48.

01:49:44.700 --> 01:49:47.940 align:middle line:84%
But partition brings more
problems, as we know from

01:49:47.940 --> 01:49:48.870 align:middle line:90%
India and Pakistan.

01:49:48.870 --> 01:49:49.790 align:middle line:90%
We know from Ireland.

01:49:49.790 --> 01:49:52.580 align:middle line:84%
We know from Cyprus that if
you keep partitioning the

01:49:52.580 --> 01:49:58.440 align:middle line:84%
land, you either propagate and
continue the conflict, or you

01:49:58.440 --> 01:50:00.330 align:middle line:84%
resolve nothing, as the
case was in Lebanon.

01:50:00.330 --> 01:50:01.150 align:middle line:90%
They fought the civil war.

01:50:01.150 --> 01:50:02.880 align:middle line:90%
150,000 people were killed.

01:50:02.880 --> 01:50:06.730 align:middle line:84%
And they\'re back to where they
started from, in a kind of--

01:50:06.730 --> 01:50:08.520 align:middle line:84%
Many Israelis would say, though,
that what you\'re

01:50:08.520 --> 01:50:11.950 align:middle line:84%
talking about means the end
of the Jewish state.

01:50:11.950 --> 01:50:13.450 align:middle line:84%
And they don\'t want to give
up the Jewish state.

01:50:13.450 --> 01:50:15.210 align:middle line:90%
Not necessarily.

01:50:15.210 --> 01:50:21.920 align:middle line:84%
If they want to have a Jewish
state, which has a kind of

01:50:21.920 --> 01:50:25.450 align:middle line:84%
primary importance for Jews, I
have nothing against that.

01:50:25.450 --> 01:50:28.030 align:middle line:84%
But they can\'t have a Jewish
state which contains Arabs.

01:50:28.030 --> 01:50:31.080 align:middle line:84%
I mean, the solution to that
problem of a Jewish state is

01:50:31.080 --> 01:50:32.110 align:middle line:90%
to kick out all the Arabs.

01:50:32.110 --> 01:50:32.640 align:middle line:90%
That\'s why--

01:50:32.640 --> 01:50:33.910 align:middle line:90%
That\'s Benny Morris\' solution.

01:50:33.910 --> 01:50:34.170 align:middle line:90%
I beg your pardon?

01:50:34.170 --> 01:50:35.340 align:middle line:90%
That\'s Benny Morris\' solution.

01:50:35.340 --> 01:50:37.180 align:middle line:90%
Well, Benny Morris\' solution.

01:50:37.180 --> 01:50:38.420 align:middle line:90%
It\'s Sharon\'s solution.

01:50:38.420 --> 01:50:39.510 align:middle line:90%
It\'s [INAUDIBLE]

01:50:39.510 --> 01:50:40.300 align:middle line:90%
solution.

01:50:40.300 --> 01:50:43.090 align:middle line:84%
A lot of people believe that
that\'s the only way to do it.

01:50:43.090 --> 01:50:45.020 align:middle line:90%
And I am against that.

01:50:45.020 --> 01:50:47.430 align:middle line:84%
I neither want to throw out
every day Jew who came to

01:50:47.430 --> 01:50:51.210 align:middle line:84%
Palestine after 1948, or
whatever the formula is, nor

01:50:51.210 --> 01:50:53.070 align:middle line:84%
do I want Palestinians to
be thrown out again.

01:50:53.070 --> 01:50:54.180 align:middle line:90%
So I say, listen.

01:50:54.180 --> 01:50:56.950 align:middle line:84%
Isn\'t it possible, I mean,
just rationally isn\'t it

01:50:56.950 --> 01:51:00.260 align:middle line:84%
possible that you can live
in any way you choose.

01:51:00.260 --> 01:51:03.180 align:middle line:84%
If you want to live as a
Jew, you can do that.

01:51:03.180 --> 01:51:06.570 align:middle line:84%
But you cannot ignore the
presence in your midst of

01:51:06.570 --> 01:51:11.540 align:middle line:84%
another people who have been
there and have rights to

01:51:11.540 --> 01:51:15.280 align:middle line:84%
existence there for at least
as long as you have.

01:51:15.280 --> 01:51:18.170 align:middle line:84%
I mean, I\'ve studied the
history of Palestine.

01:51:18.170 --> 01:51:20.675 align:middle line:84%
And actually, the period of
Jewish ascendancy in Palestine

01:51:20.675 --> 01:51:21.740 align:middle line:90%
is very short.

01:51:21.740 --> 01:51:23.280 align:middle line:90%
Historically, I mean.

01:51:23.280 --> 01:51:25.530 align:middle line:90%
It\'s about 200 years between--

01:51:25.530 --> 01:51:26.520 align:middle line:90%
The Israel kingdom.

01:51:26.520 --> 01:51:27.370 align:middle line:90%
The Israelite kingdom.

01:51:27.370 --> 01:51:28.530 align:middle line:84%
But there were many
other kingdoms.

01:51:28.530 --> 01:51:30.060 align:middle line:84%
And they were never the
only people there.

01:51:30.060 --> 01:51:34.000 align:middle line:84%
They had ascendancy during the
period of the kingdoms, right.

01:51:34.000 --> 01:51:35.490 align:middle line:90%
It lasted about 200 years.

01:51:35.490 --> 01:51:37.170 align:middle line:84%
But in the meantime,
there were Greeks.

01:51:37.170 --> 01:51:37.750 align:middle line:90%
There were Byzantines.

01:51:37.750 --> 01:51:38.720 align:middle line:90%
There were Turks.

01:51:38.720 --> 01:51:40.920 align:middle line:84%
There were the crusaders
and so on and so forth.

01:51:40.920 --> 01:51:42.040 align:middle line:90%
So who knows?

01:51:42.040 --> 01:51:45.450 align:middle line:84%
Who knows who is purely Jewish
and purely Arab, et cetera?

01:51:45.450 --> 01:51:46.880 align:middle line:90%
It\'s basically a mixture.

01:51:46.880 --> 01:51:49.890 align:middle line:84%
But to decide by draconian means
that only Jews have the

01:51:49.890 --> 01:51:52.150 align:middle line:84%
right to this land and it\'s
written in the Old Test--

01:51:52.150 --> 01:51:54.010 align:middle line:90%
that\'s fantasy.

01:51:54.010 --> 01:51:56.900 align:middle line:84%
For me, the most dramatic thing
that occurred in the

01:51:56.900 --> 01:52:00.320 align:middle line:84%
last five years was the
proposition in parliament put

01:52:00.320 --> 01:52:06.100 align:middle line:84%
forward by Maritz about three
years ago that as an optional

01:52:06.100 --> 01:52:09.550 align:middle line:84%
component of the Israeli
baccalaureate, the high school

01:52:09.550 --> 01:52:13.830 align:middle line:84%
degree, they should be
encouraged or offered the

01:52:13.830 --> 01:52:16.550 align:middle line:84%
opportunity to read Palestinian
literature and the

01:52:16.550 --> 01:52:18.210 align:middle line:90%
poetry of Mahmoud Darwish.

01:52:18.210 --> 01:52:19.760 align:middle line:90%
They went hysterical.

01:52:19.760 --> 01:52:20.680 align:middle line:90%
They didn\'t want that.

01:52:20.680 --> 01:52:22.580 align:middle line:90%
Why should we do that?

01:52:22.580 --> 01:52:26.840 align:middle line:84%
And that struck me as a terrible
augury for the

01:52:26.840 --> 01:52:31.640 align:middle line:84%
future, because if you can\'t
admit into your consciousness

01:52:31.640 --> 01:52:35.270 align:middle line:84%
the existence of another people,
then, I mean, you\'re

01:52:35.270 --> 01:52:38.120 align:middle line:84%
really on the road to
ruin of some kind.

01:52:38.120 --> 01:52:42.780 align:middle line:84%
And I felt that my role has
been precisely to make it

01:52:42.780 --> 01:52:46.800 align:middle line:84%
possible through rational means
for Jews to admit the

01:52:46.800 --> 01:52:51.660 align:middle line:84%
existence of Palestinians and
for Palestinians to admit the

01:52:51.660 --> 01:52:55.890 align:middle line:84%
existence of Jews, to think in
terms of equality, to think in

01:52:55.890 --> 01:52:59.230 align:middle line:84%
terms of citizenship, rather
than in terms of--

01:52:59.230 --> 01:53:00.170 align:middle line:90%
alas, which has gone

01:53:00.170 --> 01:53:02.870 align:middle line:90%
completely against my formula--

01:53:02.870 --> 01:53:08.850 align:middle line:84%
to think in terms of nations and
blood and language and all

01:53:08.850 --> 01:53:11.490 align:middle line:84%
those potentially
divisive things.

01:53:11.490 --> 01:53:13.000 align:middle line:90%
It\'s been very, very hard.

01:53:13.000 --> 01:53:16.750 align:middle line:84%
But the reaction to the merits
proposal to teach Darwish

01:53:16.750 --> 01:53:20.370 align:middle line:84%
poems in the Israeli curriculum
is evidence that

01:53:20.370 --> 01:53:22.050 align:middle line:84%
what you\'re talking about
is a Utopian idea.

01:53:22.050 --> 01:53:22.300 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

01:53:22.300 --> 01:53:23.010 align:middle line:90%
It is Utopian.

01:53:23.010 --> 01:53:23.940 align:middle line:90%
Yeah, it is.

01:53:23.940 --> 01:53:25.560 align:middle line:84%
But I mean, look at
the alternative.

01:53:25.560 --> 01:53:29.800 align:middle line:84%
The alternative has been
bloodletting on a scale that

01:53:29.800 --> 01:53:30.790 align:middle line:90%
no one can afford.

01:53:30.790 --> 01:53:32.480 align:middle line:84%
I mean, the Israelis think
they can afford it.

01:53:32.480 --> 01:53:37.600 align:middle line:84%
But I think they\'re banking
too heavily on unlimited

01:53:37.600 --> 01:53:38.990 align:middle line:90%
United States munificence.

01:53:38.990 --> 01:53:41.720 align:middle line:84%
Who knows with these people in
the White House and people

01:53:41.720 --> 01:53:43.700 align:middle line:90%
afterwards?

01:53:43.700 --> 01:53:46.260 align:middle line:84%
They\'re counting on the fact
that Palestinians in the end

01:53:46.260 --> 01:53:46.840 align:middle line:90%
will give up.

01:53:46.840 --> 01:53:47.710 align:middle line:90%
They\'re not going to give up.

01:53:47.710 --> 01:53:50.840 align:middle line:84%
I mean, that seems to be
absolutely clear to me.

01:53:50.840 --> 01:53:52.720 align:middle line:84%
There\'s not even a formula
for them to give up.

01:53:52.720 --> 01:53:54.660 align:middle line:84%
All that\'s being offered them
is that they negate

01:53:54.660 --> 01:53:56.000 align:middle line:90%
themselves.

01:53:56.000 --> 01:53:57.260 align:middle line:90%
You know, that\'s not--

01:53:57.260 --> 01:53:59.830 align:middle line:84%
so I think the alternative is
much, much worse than the

01:53:59.830 --> 01:54:04.690 align:middle line:84%
so-called Utopian vision or at
least the Utopian proposition.

01:54:04.690 --> 01:54:08.830 align:middle line:84%
But I think on the other hand,
that if one could multiply

01:54:08.830 --> 01:54:13.090 align:middle line:84%
these kinds of efforts such as
mine, I think the chances of

01:54:13.090 --> 01:54:16.930 align:middle line:84%
success are far greater than
people suspect, you know.

01:54:16.930 --> 01:54:18.580 align:middle line:84%
But that\'s all that\'s
before us.

01:54:18.580 --> 01:54:21.920 align:middle line:84%
There aren\'t too many other
offerings on the plate.

01:54:21.920 --> 01:54:55.236 align:middle line:90%