Politics

Edward Said, Obama’s Founding Father

Sep. 5, 2012 2:40pm

- President of The King's College

Dinesh D’Souza is author of the New York Times Bestseller, Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream and the narrator and co-director of the film 2016: Obama’s America. Mr. D’Souza is also the president of The King’s College in Manhattan, NY.

Throughout his formative years and even later, Barack Obama sought out mentors who could teach him chapter and verse of the anti-colonial ideology. This is the “dream from his father” that Obama refers to in his own autobiography. Since the father wasn’t around–having abandoned Obama at birth–Obama sought our surrogate fathers, and together they form a group I call “Obama’s founding fathers.” This group includes the former Communist Frank Marshall Davis and the incendiary preacher Jeremiah Wright.

One of Obama’s founding fathers who remains relatively unknown is the Palestinian radical Edward Said. Prior to his death in 2003, Said was the leading anti-colonial thinker in the United States. Obama studied with Said at Columbia University and the two maintained a relationship over the next two decades. Obama attended a Palestinian fundraiser in Chicago in 1998 in which Said was the featured speaker, and Obama also befriended Said’s protege Rashid Khalidi, who currently occupies the Edward Said chair of Arab Studies at Columbia.

Said wasn’t a mere academic; for a time, he served as a member of the Palestine National Council. In this capacity he worked closely with Yasser Arafat. Said has been photographed throwing rocks at Israel to symbolize his support for armed resistance against the Jewish state; one Jewish magazine dubbed him a “Professor of Terror.”

While Said was hired by Columbia to teach literature, his main interests were always political. We see this in the titles of his books: Culture and Imperialism, The Question of Palestine, and The Politics of Dispossession. He was a vehement critic of the United State and an even-more-vehement critic of Israel. America, Said argued, is a genocidal power with a “history of reducing whole peoples, countries, and even continents to ruin by nothing short of holocaust.”

Israel, Said conceded, had been a victim of the Holocaust.  Yet Said stressed the irony that “the classic victims of years of anti-Semitic persecution and the Holocaust have in their new nation become the victimizers of another people.”

For Said, Zionism was an expression of European imperialism. “In 1948, Israel was created…as an integral aspect of the great age of expanding colonialism. European Jews…sought to create a Western colony in the East.” And according to Said, European imperialism bred racism against the conquered people, dividing Jews and Palestinians “into a superior ‘us’ and an inferior ‘them.’”

The Palestinians, according to Said, are the victims of “a continuing process of dispossession, displacement and colonial de facto apartheid.”  Theirs is the last anti-colonial struggle, part of what Said terms “the universal struggle against colonialism and imperialism.”  Since 1967, according to Said, the West Bank and Gaza are “occupied territories, military under the control of Israeli soldiers, settlers and colonial officials.”

And now Israel has a new sponsor: in recent decades it is America, not Europe, that has most actively sustained this latest form of colonialism.  “The United States,” Said alleges, “virtually underwrites the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and in effect pays for the bullets that kill Palestinians.”

So naturally the Palestinians have every right to resist, and such resistance cannot be dismissed as terrorism. Rather, Said insists that the Palestinian resistance is “one of the great anti-colonial insurrections of the modern period.” The use of force against Israel is entirely legitimate “to repossess a land and a history that have been wrested from us.”

Obama never mentions Said in his writings or speeches, yet it’s clear from his actions that Obama supports the Palestinian position over Israel’s position on the West Bank and Gaza. Yet Said would not have been content with a Palestinian state that left intact the state of Israel.  Rather, the anti-colonial goal has always been one of getting rid of Israel itself and turning the “occupied” land back to the Muslims.

How could Obama achieve this?  If Said were advising Obama, he might recommend that Obama pressure Israel to grant a right of return with full voting rights to Palestinian refugees. If that happens, then in relatively short order the Muslims would outnumber the Jews. At that point, Israel as we have known it since 1948 as a Jewish state would cease to exist.

Of course American Jews might oppose Obama on this, but if Obama is re-elected, then he won’t have to worry about such opposition. Israel, in that case, is gravely endangered. One wonders if Jews who vote for Obama in 2012 could actually be helping to bring down the state of Israel.  Edward Said won’t be around to see it, but he would have enjoyed seeing his anti-Israel dream carried out by his protege in the White House.

Comments (26)

  • frogg
    Sep. 8, 2012 at 10:41am

    You Guys have all wrong! Israel was created the Second Time when Moses led his people out of Egypt! 1948 was the restoration of the State of Israel!!!!!!!! Read both your history and your Bible! The Arabs have no right to the area! Israel was there first and would have been there continously if not for the Romans.Vote the BUMS out this November! Please! Pretty Please!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Check out http://www.rescueourconstitution.com/

    Report this comment

    frogg  
  • Walkabout
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 9:51pm

    “In 1948, Israel was created…as an integral aspect of the great age of expanding colonialism. European Jews…sought to create a Western colony in the East.”

    Ummm No.

    With a colony you want to put you people there. There are no ethnic Germans, Englishmen, Dutch or French in Israel.

    The second point of a colony is to generate money. Israel is not sending us any money.
    ***
    There were already Jews in the Levant under the Ottoman Turks. From about 1886 many European Jews decided to move there when it was still under Ottoman rule. These Jews held a meeting & decide to move their on their own. No European government suggested it or made them move. In fact until 1048 the British tried to keep Jews from moving to the Levant.

    Edward Said is trying to rewrite history.

    Report this comment

    Walkabout  
    • mharry860
      Sep. 5, 2012 at 10:04pm

      That’w what all of these pro Palestinian asshats do. There never was or will be a Palestine, so how can there be Palestinians?

      Report this comment

      mharry860  
    • Walkabout
      Sep. 5, 2012 at 10:21pm

      correction: 1948 not 1048

      Report this comment

      Walkabout  
    • Le Sellers
      Sep. 7, 2012 at 2:53pm

      mharry860 sed:
      > There never was or will be a Palestine, so how
      > can there be Palestinians?

      There was a “Palestine”. The word comes from the Latin for “Philistia” (i.e., home of the Philistines”).

      What I believe you mean is that there was no “Palestine” in modern times, which is true. It was, until 1948, part of Trans-Jordan (the kingdom that went “across” the Jordan river). They were Jordanians. But with partition, they were abandoned by all of the neighboring Arab states, including the Hassemite king of their old homeland.

      In fact, it works the those Arabs’ advantage to have a people who are impoverished and “without a homeland”. It’s a frequent theme among the Islamists. But they do nothing to improve their plight: that would be counter to the Islamist movement.

      The Palestine Liberation movement was fomented in Moscow. Yassir Arafat was trained there and his mission was to created unrest and take over Israel as Communist state. That’s at least as much the cause of the poverty in “Palestine” as anything the Israelis have ever done.

      Mr. O’bama, where are the Jobs?

      Report this comment

      Le Sellers  
  • TAXEVERYONE
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 8:40pm

    Does anyone know where he lives?

    Report this comment

    TAXEVERYONE  
  • txbaconboy
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 8:00pm

    http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=634

    Report this comment

    txbaconboy  
  • reserver10
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 7:57pm

    If Obama were to get re-elected it is not going to matter too much concerning Israel. Israel is not going to go anywhere. It will be true that in that case Israel will not have any US support. However, Israel doesn’t need it. A time will come in the future when the Jewish people will be driven from their homes back to Jerusalem and when all appears lost and the end has come, then God Himself will destroy the armies which have invaded the land of Israel, saving the Jewish people. Never again will they have to fear anyone.

    Report this comment

    reserver10  
  • ragnarb
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 7:05pm

    Sorry Danish, if obama is re-elected, Israel is gone. In fact, if it becomes apparent that Romney is going to win, watch for the caliphate to move on Israel before the election. Sorry to be such a cynic, but obama and allies will go down swinging, creating as much chaos and damage as possible. That’s the leftist way.

    Report this comment

    ragnarb  
  • mecbb55
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 6:28pm

    what a horrible article. no mention of said’s ‘orientalism’ theory. no mention that said agrees with beck that ’10% of the muslim world are politically radicalized’. no mention of said’s egyptian and british identity (just his palestinian birth). no mention of said’s critique of american ‘judeo-christian’ bias and how that relates to israel. no mention of said’s critique of mainstream media (you blazzers might actually like this). just a really poorly written article meant to further paint obama as a muslim/muslim sympathizer. said (tho i disagree with many of his thoughts) is a brilliant thinker. i challenge any of you to actually read ‘orientalism’ before you condemn this man and his thoughts.

    Report this comment

    mecbb55  
    • blackstone22
      Sep. 5, 2012 at 7:47pm

      Get your head examined it’s a terrific artcle. Thank you D. D’Souza.
      Obama’s mentor, Said, wanted Israel wiped off the face of the earth and if reelected Obama will work towards the same end by the means stated in this article.

      Report this comment

      blackstone22  
    • HappyStretchedThin
      Sep. 5, 2012 at 8:42pm

      Do you understand genre at all? What do you expect in less than 800 words? You’re right that there’s gaping holes in a full representation of Saïd’s thought, but I daresay you or anyone would be hard pressed to package it concisely either. D’Souza may not have captured all the nuance, but he did NOT misrepresent Saïd militant anti-imperialism, and radical communism. I HAVE read Orientalism, and deal with that founding text of postcolonial theory in my field. And although everyone pays him due deference for his seminal idea that the East was only ever a fantasy of the West’s construction, there is also sound criticism of his ideas even within the field. It’s not a crime for a literary theorist to be interested in the intersection of politics and textual representation–this is where I think D’Souza exaggerates his point too far–but the critique of blindly anti-American, anti-Israeli ideologies is NOT what’s wrong with this article. Saïd, for all his supposed brilliance, couldn’t logically distinguish between an apartheid which makes no attempt at inclusion of the other side, and the Israeli position which has always been to include Palestinians as much as securely possible, and therefore all his erudition is moot on this point. As is your own.
      When you stop cherry-picking and start trying to understand in context, you’ll turn conservative, I promise.

      Report this comment

      HappyStretchedThin  
    • capitalman
      Sep. 6, 2012 at 5:34am

      I condemn him Obama and you. Now shut your filthy liberal mouth

      Report this comment

      capitalman  
  • zoro51
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 6:21pm

    jews will volentairly walk into creamatoriums??? one poster wrote.. uh excuse me im part jewish.. ISREAL is for ever.. COMMUNISTS LEFTISTS NON AMERICAN BORN WANNA BEAS wont… the LEFT DEMS will be the ones removed begining in november wiht evita obama tax n speech anti american president.. all if ISREAL belogs to abraham n his decendantds of HIS own flesn not ishmeal…. thusly obama has acted agaisnt isreal his kingdon has already been given to another n HIS removal eminant.. ISREAL IS FOR EVER murdering muslums are NOT

    Report this comment

    zoro51  
  • sbenard
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 4:54pm

    Now I know who Satan was talking to all these years!

    I composed a poem in his honor:
    His name was Said.
    And now he’s dead!
    (Please yawn after reading)

    Report this comment

    sbenard  
  • SUNBURST
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 4:51pm

    Isn’t that Jan Schakowsky on this side of Said?

    Report this comment

    SUNBURST  
  • kalli
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 4:49pm

    I knew before the 2008 election that electing this fraud will bring disaster to our country. The media covered up everything about of this fraud instead of vetting him properly. They are traitors as much as the fraud-in-chief. he has shown the world for the past 4 years his true colors, and his only agenda is for his personal gain and idealogy. He is the terrorist within who is destroying everything that America was built upon. pelosi is guilty of treason for certifying his eligibility. Now that America knows who the communists are serving in congress, it is up to the people to remove them and take our country back. Prosecute, Prosecute, Prosecute. I hear there is a prison not being used in Illinois that would be ideal in creating jobs. These traitors do not deserve a nice place like Gitmo.

    Report this comment

     
  • Dismayed Veteran
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 4:33pm

    American Jews will walk willingly into the crematoriums.

    Report this comment

    Dismayed Veteran  
  • Mr.Fitnah
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 4:25pm

    Edward Said was on of the stupidest crazy talkers I had ever run across.

    Report this comment

    Mr.Fitnah  
  • BODYBAG
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 3:52pm

    This is YOUR President. THIS is who you voted for? Where’s the media on this?
    This guy doesnt even KNOW any REGULAR people

    Report this comment

    BODYBAG  
  • LB
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 3:50pm

    Surprise….not

    Report this comment

    LB  
  • Whistleblower
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 3:32pm

    Is President Barack Obama being blackmailed ?

    http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/09/01/is-president-barack-obama-being-blackmailed/

    Whistleblower  
  • SREGN
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 3:27pm

    Edward said what.

    Report this comment

    SREGN  
  • illinioshoj
    Sep. 5, 2012 at 3:12pm

    Since Barry lost his mom and dad I think Barbara Streisand and Bernie Madoff should adopt him so he can procure the Jewish vote

    Report this comment

    illinioshoj  
    • Constantine Ivanov
      Sep. 5, 2012 at 4:54pm

      This is a great idea, but then Bernie should take care of his newly adopted son…in his prison cell. And the new mom should visit both of them on a regular basis. Better even without leaving for a sec.

      Report this comment

      Constantine Ivanov  

Sign In To Post Comments! Sign In

Sign Up For Our Newsletter!

TheBlaze

Channel Finder

Find TheBlaze on your TV

This zipcode is invalid, please try again

Channel Finder

TheBlaze is available on channel .

Spread the word!

If you can't find TheBlaze, please call to upgrade your package

Channel Finder

Unfortunately, TheBlaze is not available on .

But you can help! Call at or press CONTINUE to email your provider and urge them to add TheBlaze to your channel lineup.

But you can help! Press CONTINUE to email your provider and urge them to add TheBlaze to your channel lineup.

Continue

Request TheBlaze

Please complete the form

I would like to receive news and information from TheBlaze.
Skip

Thank you for supporting TheBlaze

Interested in doing more? Spread the word about TheBlaze to your friends and family.

Spread the word!

TheBlaze Magazine
Restoring Love