An open letter to American-Jewish intellectuals
JVL Introduction
“We are either to fight for justice, truth, and the right to honest criticism, or we should quite simply give up the title of intellectual.”
Thus Edward Said, in a 1989 open letter to Jewish intellectuals that remained unpublished in his lifetime.
In a post on Jewish Currents accompanying the letter his friend Nubar Hovsepian explains Said’s decision not to publish because of the angry denunciations it would have elicited.
But, as Hovsepian makes clear, Said was already under vindictive attack from the very people his letter was a riposte to, and he regrets Said’s caution in the matter.
Peter Beinart, too, understanding Said’s rage, responds to his call as an intellectual should.
We repost the letter below. Nubar Hovsepian and Peter Beinart’s essays are available here and here.
This article was originally published by Jewish Currents on Wed 21 Sep 2022. Read the original here.
An Open Letter to American-Jewish Intellectuals
Edward Said wrote this open letter in 1989, but decided it would be too incendiary to publish. It is appearing here in print for the first time, with introductions by Nubar Hovsepian and Peter Beinart.
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A letter that should be part of Palestinian and Israeli education.
A typically detailed, incisive and immensely perceptive analysis, as you would expect from Said. You can’t help but speculate what might have been the effect on American attitudes had it been published at the time. Someone of his intellectual standing could not have been ignored. Tragically, the plight of the Palestinians is now markedly worse, and a Palestinian state fast disappearing under illegal settlements and hideously violent ‘settlers’ protected and encouraged by successive Israeli governments.
Should I be wary to any way “like” this ? Will there be repercussions? So hello trolls. There are so many of you, so well rewarded, you must be here. What’s your plan? What shall be the punishment for reading this, taking these difficult ( and if I must be honest, utterly loathesome ) truths on board? Or should we all, à la môde Starmer, continue to pretend to love the Israeli state in its current form, the way the Soviet apparatchiks pretended to love Stalin, petrified to be seen as the first to stop applauding?
I read this & started to read it all again. I’d love to share it & save this please tell me how.
Truth is important, urgent, desperately needed
Thank you for this – you should be able to copy and paste from our website or better still from Jewish Currents; the link to the original article is in our introduction so sharing it should be straightforward.