His advocacy for the Palestinian cause went beyond intellectual criticism. For academics, Said provided "a model for being engaged in political activities outside the university" (Grant Farred). For example, he helped Yassir Arafat, the PLO leader, to write his 1974 speech before the United Nations. To his fundamental rejection of Zionism, he added the idea of Palestinian-Israeli coexistence. Consequently, he broke with Arafat over the PLO's signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords. Said advocated a single-state solution whereby Jews and Palestinians would live jointly in a nonsectarian nation (boston.com).
Saids activism was the activism of an intellectual. 2 months after ISM activist Rachel Corrie was killed in Gaza, he met her parents and sister and published an article about the meaning of her activism in the US radical intellectual magazine counterpunch.
The only reference to something that bears similarity to „direct action" in a narrow sense was an incident in 2000, when Dr. Said threw a rock (or, as he said, a pebble) at an Israeli guardhouse on the Lebanese border - an action that sparked off controversy. However, Tanweer Akram said that "Professor Said would be proud of the initiatives of the younger generation of Palestinian scholars and activists, and solidarity groups, such as International Solidarity Movement."
In a 1999 Globe interview, Dr. Said was asked whether he ever resented the time he devoted to politics at the expense of his literary work. "I've always felt that if someone was a person of privilege . . . the least you could do was help those who were not as fortunate as you. I've always thought that Palestine was a service . . . not something about political parties or positions or organizations, but rather an individual commitment. Which I don't regret at all."

Reading through the obituaries, I get the impression that maintaining friendships must have been an important part of Said's way of live - or, as Ahdaf Soueif puts it, "Edward and his 3,000 close friends".
One of these close friends was the Israeli/Argentinian conductor Daniel Barenboim. Together they set up the "West-Eastern Divan," an orchestra of musicians from across the Middle East which also performed in London. This year, Barenboim played a concert in Ramallah.
Barenboim about Said: "He was one of those rare people who was permanently aware of the fact that information is only the very first step toward understanding. And he always looked for the "beyond" in the idea, the "unseen" by the eye, the "unheard" by the ear."

Much of Saids writing is about this "beyond", "unseen", and "unheard", the discourses behind the plain facts. His theory of Orientalism said that false and romanticised images of the Middle East and Asia were used to justify Western colonialism and imperialism there. Said's books include Orientalism, A Question Of Palestine and The End Of The Peace Process.
A 1984 article for the London review of books is titled „Permission to Narrate". „These three words described what Said felt was most denied to the Palestinians by the international media, the power to communicate their own history to a world hypnotised by a mythological Zionist narrative of an empty Palestine."
With this phrase in mind, the web-team of the Palestinian Birzeit University set about creating their own realisation of „permission to narrate" by starting their own website in 1995. One of their first media experiments was an online diary about Ramallah. One of the team: „For the first time, I deeply experienced the potential of the Internet to empower those without a voice."

I am part of a different media experiment - indymedia, an open platform for people to raise their own voices, tell their own stories, especially those who are denied „permission to narrate". Sometimes I'm shocked to see how the outrage against the Israeli government turns into antisemitic rants. Indymedia gives a space to disseminate stories - including rants and misinformation. For me, Edward Said's now sadly completed work stands out as one signpost in the whirlwind of the newswires - pointing to the "beyond" in the idea, the "unseen" by the eye, the "unheard" by the ear.

Read an interview with Edward Said, browse the Edward Said Archive, or look at some additional obituaries:
New York Times | Guardian | Albawaba |