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Palestinian Heritage Foundation Honors
Dr.
Edward Said
By Richard Curtiss
The Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs
June 1997
Archbishop Philip Saliba, primate of the Antiochian
Orthodox Christian Diocese of North Ameri ca, was the principal speaker at an
April 3 fund-raising dinner of the Palestinian Heritage Society in honor of Dr.
Edward Said, university professor of English and comparative literature at
Columbia University, where he has taught since 1973. Dr. Said is the author of
16 books, which have been translated into 26 languages, and was a member of the
Palestine National Council from 1977 until 1991.
Dr. Edward Said and Artist Jihan Tannous
At the dinner, held at the Marriott at Glenpointe
Hotel in Teaneck, NJ, Metropolitan Saliba saluted Hanan and Farah Munayyer on
the 12th anniversary of their founding of the Palestinian Heritage Foundation.
The foundation has assembled a large collection of authentic Palestinian
regional dresses as well as other authentic examples of traditional Palestinian
arts and crafts, which are lent as traveling exhibits to museums and for special
occasions all over the United States.
Dr. Said’s life, Metropolitan Saliba said, is
consumed by “the tragedy which befell the people of his beloved Palestine. No one has better
a rticulated or worked harder to bring this 20th century tragedy
to the attention of the American people.” After discussing
Dr. Said’s
article in the Jan. 10 issue of The New York Times Magazine entitled, “The
One-State Solution: Why the Only Answer to Middle East Peace is Palestinians and
Israelis Living as Equal Citizens Under One Flag,” the archbishop said it is
similar to a plan he advocated in 1968 which he called “One Land for Arabs and
Jews.”
Mtropolitan Saliba, MP Naela Muawad
and Farah
“I hope and pray that the one-state solution of
Professor Said will not meet the same fate as my plan, and that his voice will
not be one that cries in the wilderness.” Archbishop Saliba said. “Very
soon, the Palestinians will have lost everything, rendering any negotiation with
the Israelis nearly pointless.”
Though pessimistic in the short run, the archbishop
expressed optimism in the long run, predicting that “the Palestinians and the
Arabs in general will emerge in the new millennium, picking up all the modern
tools of science and technology to rebuild and rewrite the future for their
posterity. Thus, beyond the long and dark night, there is a new dawn, a new day
and a new history.”
Other speakers paying tribute to Dr. Said, and to
the Munayyers and the Palestinian Heritage Foundation, were Prof. Norman
Finkelstein of New York University, Prof. Rashid Al Khalidi of the University of
Chicago, Richard Curtiss of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and
Dr. Clovis Maksoud of American University in Washington, DC.
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