Stones, Glass Houses, Sontag and Said

Beat The Devil

By Alexander Cockburn

This article appeared in the April 23, 2001 edition of The Nation.

April 5, 2001

To put it all in a nutshell, come the month of May Edward Said won't be traveling to Vienna; Susan Sontag will be traveling to Jerusalem.

It's a backhanded tribute to his effectiveness as a spokesman for the Palestinian cause that the attacks on the Palestinian Said have, across the past couple of years, reached new levels of envenomed absurdity.

The latest uproar over Said concerns a trip to Lebanon he made last summer, in the course of which he and his family took the opportunity to travel to the recently evacuated "security zone" formerly occupied by Israeli forces. First they visited the terrible Khiam prison and torture center, then a deserted border post, abandoned by Israeli troops and now crowded with festive Lebanese exuberantly throwing stones at the heavily fortified border.

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About Alexander Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn has been The Nation's "Beat the Devil" columnist since 1984. He is the author or co-author of several books, including the best-selling collection of essays Corruptions of Empire (1987), and a contributor to many publications, from The New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and the Wall Street Journal to alternative publications such as In These Times and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. With Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the newsletter and radical website CounterPunch, which have a substantial world audience. more...
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