Who hadn't heard of the late Professor Edward Said of Columbia University? The great, angry prophet of Palestinian injustice, he railed against the "occupier," mourning his "beautiful" house in Jerusalem from which his family was supposedly thrown out in '48, and his poor father impoverished. All because of the brutal Israeli Jews....
Oh, the terrible injustice! And how all his intellectual and academic friends rallied around him: Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens, Alan Cockburn....
Only one problem: Said grew up in Cairo, the son of an American father who owned a very lucrative office supply company. He was driven around with chauffeurs, attended the best private schools. He never even set foot in Jerusalem his entire childhood....
His family did undergo hard times though. When Nasser came to power and nationalized his father's business, the family fled to [his father's native] America.
You'd think Columbia University would have investigated this professor of consummate lies, instead of backing up his "intellectual freedoms," at every turn.
Professor Rene Beres was instrumental in exposing Said.
The complete version of the research on Edward Said (with 141 footnotes, two charts, and a photograph) is available at http://www.commentarymagazine.com/9909/weiner.html.
See also letters and responses on the article in Commentary (January 2000). Author Justus R. Weiner is an international human rights lawyer and a member of both the Israel and the New York Bar Associations. He is currently a Scholar in Residence at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and an adjunct lecturer at Hebrew and Tel Aviv Universities.
The author wishes to express his appreciation to Judy Shulewitz and Zev Kanter for their assistance.
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Naomi Ragen
http://www.NaomiRagen.com
