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Hitchens, Pipes and Said

Speaking of Protocols, the blog Protocols refers to an article in Slate today by Christopher Hitchens.

In the article, Hitchens launches a screed against Daniel Pipes. The piece is consistent with Hitchens' animus toward Israel (it refers to IDF actions as Israel's "ruthless policy of collective punishment"), and is not especially interesting. However, Hitchens shows his ignorance (and bias) when he writes that "Pipes has maintained that professor Edward Said of Columbia University is not really a Palestinian and never lost his family home in Jerusalem in the fighting of 1947-48. I have my own disagreements with Said, but this is a much-discredited libel that undermines the credibility of anybody circulating it. Professor Said is deservedly respected for his long advocacy of mutual recognition between Israelis and Palestinians."

Said is no advocate of mutual recognition between Israelis and Palestinians. For example, in an article last year, he expressed oppostion to any negotiaton with Israel until after Israel returned to the 1967 borders. Said wrote: "Negotiations can only be about when the total withdrawal will take place, not what percentage Israel is willing to concede. A conqueror and a vandal cannot concede anything: he must simply return what he's taken and pay for the abuses that are his responsibility to bear, just as Saddam Hussein should and did pay for his occupation of Kuwait."

Even if Israel were to unilaterally withdraw to the 1967 borders, Said would still be opposed to recognition of it. Instead, he insists on a return of refugees to Israel and the replacement of Israel with a binational state. Indeed, in an interview with Haaretz, Said stated that "the two-state solution can no longer be implemented... Jewish sovereignty as an end in itself seems to me not worth the pain and the waste and the suffering it produced."

As for Hitchens' claim that it is a libel that Said is not really a Palestinian, this was in fact established by Justus Reid Weiner in Commentary. While the full article is apparently no longer online, Weiner's Wall Street Journal piece is, and can be read here. As Weiner made clear, Said and his family lived in Cairo in the 1940's, and while they visited his aunt's home in Jerusalem, they never resided in pre-Israel Palestine.

I was able to find this piece in less than 30 seconds. Hitchens never bothered to search for it. Instead, in accusing Pipes of libel, Hitchens committed a libel against Pipes.

UPDATE: Thanks to a reader/blogger who kept it on her hard drive, the full text of Weiner's Commentary article is available here. It is also available, with all of Weiner's footnotes, here.
posted on 8/11/2003