A new documentary, Edward Said: Between Worlds, about the late “Palestinian” scholar and author of the unfortunately influential tome Orientalism (1978), revered by “post-colonial” academics for supposedly refuting Islamic stereotypes and for laying the intellectual underpinnings of campus anti-Semitism.
Said summarized his world view thusly: “The web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, dehumanizing ideology holding in the Arab or the Muslim is very strong indeed, and it is this web which every Palestinian has come to feel as his uniquely punishing destiny.” Said was notoriously photographed throwing a rock at an Israeli guardhouse at the Lebanon-Israel border in 2000.
Variety mag's chief correspondent Marlow Stern (former entertainment reporter for left-wing publications The Daily Beast and Rolling Stone) talked to Said’s daughter Najla Said, who served as “consulting producer” for the documentary by Alex Gibney. Gibney is also responsible for a new liberal hit-piece documentary on Elon Musk that goes on for four hours.
Stern’s interview, headlined "Edward Said's Daughter on Ed Sheeran, Why Bari Weiss Makes Her 'Blood Boil.'" was bluntly, callously anti-Israel.
Since his passing in 2003, Said’s work has only become more essential as 75,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed by Israeli attacks in the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre….the film paints a loving portrait of Said as a Renaissance man….and tireless voice for Palestinian civil rights who was often met with contempt and mockery in debate halls and on the news….
That 75,000 figure comes from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health and doesn’t include enemy combatants, who cowardly embed themselves among civilians.
Variety spoke with Najla Said about her father and their fight for Palestinians.
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Stern: What made the timing right after Oct. 7?
Said: What happened for many of us who are Arab American or Palestinian American is the time after Oct. 7 was difficult for us in a lot of ways….
“Difficult.” Others had it truly “difficult” on Oct. 7, but Variety made no mention of how Oct. 7 and onward is an ongoing horrific tragedy for Israelis: No Hamas, and the only mention of the significance of Oct. 7 (besides it being a handy time to make a documentary) was a half-sentence in the introduction.
Twenty-three years after his death, Edward Said's still raised as a media critic going against the grain:
Stern: Your father says in the film, “The media has done a tremendous disserve to the cause of peace by misreporting the realities on the ground.” It’s part of an unaired portion of an ABC News interview where he’s discussing media coverage of Palestinians. How do you feel the media is treating the current moment?
Said: ….You’re hearing more pro-Palestine voices in the media, but the actual coverage is unbelievably skewed and outrageous….
Do Stern and Said seriously believe the elitist media takes the side of Israel and not the Palestinian cause?
Stern also defended the Columbia encampments, saying he was teaching at Columbia Journalism School and found any controversial stuff “was happening outside the campus gates” while inside “was mostly kids eating Dunkin’ Donuts in a circle.” The word “mostly” did a lot of heavy lifting here, considering what Columbia itself has admitted about the protests. And the students themselves weren’t harmless -- they took two janitors as temporary hostages during a takeover of a campus building.
Stern: Is a part of you glad he’s not around to see what’s happening over there right now?
What’s actually happening in Gaza, since neither Variety nor Said will tell you: Israel is fighting a defensive war it didn’t start rooting out Hamas terrorists trying to kill Jews.
Stern: I want to ask you about a graduate of the place where your father taught, Bari Weiss. She first made a name for herself trying to get Columbia University professors fired for criticizing Israel and speaking up about Palestinian human rights. Weiss is now running CBS News and is the right hand of David Ellison, who will also be controlling CNN soon.
Said showed a dehumanizing temperament and the emotional control of a toddler when Stern brought up a target out of anti-Semitic central casting: a prominent Jew, Bari Weiss, who apparently controls the media.
Said: You just said Bari Weiss’s name and I got hot inside. It infuriates me to know that these people get rewarded for their absolute, complete and professed racism. To be a “proud Zionist,” as she calls herself, and be able to be in control of a major news organization is so maddening to me. This is someone who tried to get professors like my father fired — as an undergrad! Some 19-year-old person came in and decided that an entire area of scholarship is racist and horrible and should be canceled, so for her to get all this power is very, very upsetting. I won’t even turn on the regular television anymore in case I see something from CBS News. I am really worried. I’m not sure if the average American knows this about her, but she is someone who makes my blood boil.
As a Columbia student, Weiss was indeed active against the harassment and intimidation by pro-Palestinian professors against students with differing views, making a documentary in 2004 on the issue, Columbia Unbecoming.
Stern: It seemed as though pro-Palestinian sentiment picked up during the Black Lives Matter protests — that there was a sense of solidarity between those protesters and the pro-Palestinian movement.
That’s no surprise: Straight-up anti-Semitism infested the Black Lives Matter organization.
