AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s turn now from National Public Radio to The New York Times.

EDWARD SAID: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: It was a great photo. It was spread large across The New York Times. In it, the renowned middle-aged English professor, standing at the Lebanese border, winding up to pitch a stone, according to the caption, at Israeli soldiers. It turns out that the only bull’s eye the professor hit was a wall of biases and preconceptions. Yesterday, the Times ran a correction. It said that the caption on Said’s photo, quote, “misstated his target. He was aiming,” the Times continued, “toward an Israeli guardhouse at the Lebanese border, not at Israeli soldiers.” But damage had already been done — not to the guardhouse, which was, in any case, a half-mile away, but —

EDWARD SAID: And empty.

AMY GOODMAN: And empty? — but to professor Edward Said. When members of the Freud Society of Vienna saw the photo, they canceled Said’s invitation to give a lecture on Freud’s fascination with ancient civilization of Egypt, Palestine and Greece. And in a telephone interview from Vienna, the society’s president said, “A lot of members of our society told us they can’t accept that we’ve invited an engaged Palestinian who also throws stones at Israeli soldiers.” Well, what professor Said was engaged in when he cast the far-from-first stone was what he called a symbolic gesture of joy at the end of Israel’s occupation of Lebanon. We’re going to break to — for stations to identify themselves. When we come back, we want to get your response both to the running of the photograph and how you ultimately got the retraction in yesterday’s New York Times. You’re listening to Democracy Now! We’ll be back with professor Edward Said in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue with professor Edward Said. He’s a professor of comparative literature at — of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, well-known Palestinian scholar, has written many books. Today we’re talking about — well, actually, there are several corrections, it seems, in The New York Times. The photo ran this past weekend, and underneath it said that Professor Said was throwing a stone at Israeli soldiers. Then, on Monday, the Times ran a correction admitting that the target was a guardhouse, not soldiers. But then, today, we see there is another correction. It says, “A picture caption in Arts & Ideas on Saturday with an article about the Vienna Freud Society’s cancellation of a lecture by Prof. Edward Said of Columbia University after members saw a photograph of him throwing a stone on the Lebanese border, referred incompletely to his act. And a correction in this space yesterday omitted attribution for a differing account. It was Professor Said who said he had been throwing toward an Israeli guardhouse, not at Israeli soldiers.” So now we have two corrections.

Professor Said, what’s going on?

EDWARD SAID: Well, you know, there are many things going on. I mean, the most indecent, of course, of all is that they are niggling over this — it wasn’t a stone, it was a pebble — and ignoring the horror of what the Israelis not only are doing in the West Bank and Gaza, which is to mount a four-, five-month campaign to starve and imprison Palestinians, against all — we’re talking about 3 million, two-and-a-half million people — against all international law and the Geneva Conventions, but also to ignore the fact that Israel had spent 22 years in Lebanon occupying a so-called security strip, about 130 miles square, where they maintained not only a considerable armed force and presence, but a mercenary army. And this explains the immediate — the immediate event before my going to the border. A prison, called Khiam prison, which they built in 1987 against all — again, all laws of war, where they incarcerated and, above all, tortured 8,000 people — I mean, these are Amnesty and U.N. human rights reports. It is one — it is, without a doubt, the worst prison and torture center I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen many of them all over the world, including the ones in South Africa. So, all of that was subordinated to whether or not I threw a stone and to whom I threw it and all the rest of it.

What The New York Times failed to say was that the attribution of where I was was not mentioned, either. I mean, the whole photograph could have been dreamed up. How did they know it was Lebanon? They didn’t give that. I mean, it just shows you the kind of insanity of Zionist propaganda, which I think is driving itself more and more into a frenzy as to what to do with a state and a policy that have completely backfired and completely run aground and is now totally bankrupt — killing and maiming people, ethnic cleansing of the worst sort — and concentrating on whether, as you charitably put it, a middle-aged professor threw stones or not.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, now explain —

EDWARD SAID: And — yes, go ahead. Sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: Now explain what has happened. First, the picture that ran —

EDWARD SAID: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — on Saturday about the Vienna Freud Society’s cancellation of your lecture.

EDWARD SAID: Right. Yeah, well, can we back up a little bit? The picture —

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, go ahead.

EDWARD SAID: The event itself, this important, world historical event, took place on July the 3rd, 2000. The picture — I didn’t know there was a photographer there, obviously. I was on a family visit. My son and wife and daughter and many friends were there, as were several hundred Lebanese. This was an event — a place to which people went, the border. The Israelis had been unceremoniously driven out by the Lebanese resistance. And so people go to the border to see all these vacated torture centers and interrogation posts and so on. There was nobody there except Lebanese. Across the border, about, I would say, 250 to half a — to a quarter of a mile away, was an empty Israeli guard post, you know, tower. Between that and where everybody stands are, you know, piles and piles of concrete and barbed wire and so on, put up by the Israelis. So there’s no way anybody could reach anybody, but there wasn’t a soul in sight on the Israeli side. The nearest town is probably 10 miles away. So all this stuff about endangering Israelis, it’s a complete fabrication. It’s just total nonsense, as any reporter who has been there says. So that occurred on July the 3rd.

The picture, obtained from a photographer who happened to be there and took my picture — as somebody who’s well known, I guess that’s what happened — appeared on the front pages of the Israeli press on the 5th of July, and pretty much thereafter, in the early part of July, was, you know, broadcast and published in many different places. I received the invitation to lecture at the Freud institute on August the 21st. So, by that time, presumably, they had every knowledge — I mean, my views are not exactly obscure. I’ve written at least nine books on the Palestinian question, and they knew all — many of them translated into German. And I accepted.

And then, when I heard of the cancellation, it was on February the 8th. And by the way, the subject that I was to lecture on was my subject, not theirs. I mean, I was the one — they asked me for a title. I said I want to talk about Freud and the non-Europeans. So it was patently not a political talk, but really — and I was picked because I have written about Freud — again, not as a politician, but as a scholar, and Freud as a great thinker. They suddenly canceled the talk on the 8th.

And this man, Schulein, who was quoted in the Times as saying it was because of the picture, said nothing of the kind to me. I have his letter, and he simply said, “We’ve canceled it because of the situation in the Middle East and the consequences of it.” And then he gives this lying — I mean, I just have to call him a liar straight out — saying about, you know, how it was all about the picture, and — which they knew about six months earlier — and that it had to do with the sensibilities of Austrian Jews — you know, forgetting Austria’s history — and Jörg Haider and the Holocaust, as if I was then a Nazi coming to Austria to defile the memory of the Austrian Jews.

The real reason — and this is the last thing I want to say — is that there’s a collection of Freud’s papers, owned by the Freud institute in Vienna — and Freud, by the way, was kicked out of Vienna by the Nazis, by the Austrian Nazis, I should say — and look what’s happening now to a Palestinian. But in any event, they have a collection of papers that was the subject of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum here in New York. It was then shown in Vienna. And they want to exhibit it in Israel. And it was at that point that their funders — unnamed, of course — in Israel and the United States, who told them that “If you want to mount this exhibition here, you can’t have Edward Said lecturing. So, cancel the lecture” — which, dutifully, of course, good intellectuals that they are, they did. And that’s the story.

AMY GOODMAN: And how did you learn that?

EDWARD SAID: From a source in the Freud Society who asked me not to identify him.

AMY GOODMAN: Has there been dissent within the Freud Society, those that protested the cancellation of your talk?

EDWARD SAID: Well, I suppose, yeah. It seems to me meaningless dissent, in that the people who claim to have dissented, including Schulein, are still members of the society. I mean, that a society should censor somebody and withdraw an invitation in this disgraceful manner says that the — you know, it — how shall I say it? It symbolizes a society that one shouldn’t belong to. So that the director, a woman called Inge Scholz, who had alerted me, the day before I got the letter, to what had happened, you know, is still the director. And she even wrote me a letter yesterday saying she’s coming to New York, could she see me. And I wrote her back, and I said, “Look, so long as you’re an employee of that society and you haven’t resigned, I have no wish to see you. There’s nothing to see you about.”

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to professor Edward Said. Among his many books, Out of Place: A Memoir, and his latest book is Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Well, now can you explain this last two days of corrections —

EDWARD SAID: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — on the photo that ran this past weekend?

EDWARD SAID: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Again, the photo on Saturday, that went with the Freud Society cancellation story, identified you, saying that you were throwing a stone at Israeli border soldiers. And yesterday’s correction said that you were throwing the stone at an Israeli guardhouse.

EDWARD SAID: Yes. Well, I don’t mind telling you this. I rang up, when the paper appeared on Saturday. I was pretty shocked, because I had gone to The New York Times to tell them about this. And, you know, I gave my side of the story, and I was astonished on Saturday, A, to see the picture blown up, you know, to five times its original size — and it had already been published twice by the Times. You know, so I knew that this was not an act of innocent reporting. This was something else. And I was upset by the caption, and I was annoyed — I mean, I think the Times needs an ombudsman. I was annoyed at the fact that this person in Vienna had said that they were doing all of this because of the Holocaust. None of this had been told me. Certainly he didn’t tell me. And the reporter who did the story didn’t tell me. So I told the editor that I thought this was scandalous journalism.

And then he told me the following. This is very interesting for your listeners to know, and I don’t mind quoting him. He said, “When I put the story to bed on Friday night, I was very happy. When I read the paper on Saturday morning, I was shocked.” What he said was that when he saw — that the story went from him to a photo editor, who added the photo and the caption. So, they didn’t do it; somebody else did it. Then he said that the title of the story, which was, he admitted, flip, went to yet another editor, who added it. And the whole thing was put together by yet a third editor, who produced the product that appeared on — it’s not a story, it’s a product — I think one has to understand it that way — that appeared on Saturday.

AMY GOODMAN: What was the — what was the headline?

EDWARD SAID: Something about a Freudian slip gets Said dismissal, or something like that. It was an insulting and undignified headline. So, all this takes place [inaudible]. So he said, when I called him on Monday, that they would run a correction of the caption, which they did. And then yesterday he called me and left a message — I was in hospital, actually — saying that they were running another correction, of attribution. And it would have been — had I the time, which I don’t, I would have rung up and just said that they should also attribute to somebody the fact that this is a picture of me in Lebanon. How do they know that? I mean, you know, if they have to attribute everything, then they should do the full thing and send somebody there and make sure I was there and all the rest of it. But they’ve never done that. So all these attributions and counterattributions and corrections are all a way, obviously, of, you know, sort of tarnishing my reputation, which is — I mean, I’m an inviting, easy target for them. I don’t have a press bureau. I don’t have a paper at my disposal. I don’t have vast funds. I don’t have organizations. I am a lone voice who has never been intimidated, and won’t be now, by the Israeli lobby in this country. And I tell the truth. And I have a lot of readers. And they know that. And that’s what they’re trying to do: to stop me and to defame me.

AMY GOODMAN: Why the correction today, Professor Said, now the second correction? Yesterday, it — based on what you said. And then, today saying we want to make clear that what our correction was based on yesterday was just professor Said’s description.

EDWARD SAID: Well, you know, I think they got a lot of, you know, people sympathetic to Israel, part of the same orchestrated propaganda effort, who called up saying, “How can you take his word for it? He says he does, but it’s quite — you know, I mean, so make clear that he’s saying that, but it’s not necessarily the truth.” I mean, they’re trying to cast doubt on everything I say. Since they’re unable to refute my arguments about Israeli practices of occupation and torture and the whole thing that I, you know, for 30 years have been writing about, this is what they — this is the only tool they have. And if that’s what they want to do, then they should do it.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s end with what’s happening right now. On the West Bank, hundreds of Palestinians today, protesting Israeli travel restrictions —

EDWARD SAID: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — briefly seized an Israeli army checkpoint, planted their national banner on it and opened the road to Palestinian traffic. Palestinian activists have designated today as a day of rage against Israeli blockades that have restricted access to Palestinian towns across West Bank and Gaza since late September. Your response to that?

EDWARD SAID: Well, I mean, it’s the mildest of reactions to what is a barbaric, medieval policy. And it’s been Sharon’s policy all along. He did that in Beirut in 1982, when my family was there. My mother lived in Beirut during the siege. He surrounded an entire city and besieged it, the way, you know, Attila the Hun used to besiege cities, and cut off water, electricity, food and medicine. And they did that a few days ago to the largest Arab town on the West Bank, which is Ramallah, 70,000 people. They dug a ditch around it — again, very medieval — and prevented people from working, from going to hospitals, from going to schools, from getting food. So this is collective punishment on a vast scale. I mean, it is the kind of thing that they’ve been trying to use against Palestinians since 1948 to try and extinguish us as a people. And, you know, under any other dispensation, this would be considered a war crime, which of course it is. But because they have an army of propagandists and supporters in this country — and don’t forget that the U.S. finances Israel in its practices to the tune of $5 billion a year, so U.S. taxpayers are paying for these things. The least the Palestinians who are suffering under this kind of regime can do is to try to remove these obstacles to their daily life and continue with it. So I’m delighted that they did it.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, in this last few minutes, it’s interesting that the photograph of you throwing the pebble on the Lebanese border —

EDWARD SAID: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — as Israel was pulling out of Lebanon —

EDWARD SAID: Had pulled out.

AMY GOODMAN: Had pulled out.

EDWARD SAID: Yes, about two months before.

AMY GOODMAN: That now Ariel Sharon is the prime minister of Israel, who was the general responsible for — well, in the invasion, particularly, the Sabra —

EDWARD SAID: And also the massacres.

AMY GOODMAN: — and Shatila massacres.

EDWARD SAID: Yes, he lost his job because an Israeli court found him responsible for facilitating, if not actually causing, the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, when at least 2,000 people were murdered in cold blood by, one should say it, Lebanese allies of the Israelis, encouraged to do so.

AMY GOODMAN: In 30 seconds, your description of Ariel Sharon, the new prime minister?

EDWARD SAID: He’s a war criminal. And I think he should be taken to The Hague and tried as such. He has a long — it’s not just '82. It's starting in the ’50s, when he was, for example, responsible for the massacre that took place at Qibya. He killed, single-handedly, with his force, you know, about 50, 49 or 50 people, innocent people, in their houses and blew up their houses. And then he was in — I mean, the list is very long. And he was always reprimanded and always involved in the theft of Arab land and the destruction of Arab life.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much, Professor Said, for being with us.

EDWARD SAID: Thank you for giving me the time.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Edward Said, a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia, institute professor at Columbia University. Among his books are his memoir, Out of Place, and his latest book is Reflections on Exile and Other Essays.

That does it for the show. If you’d like to order a cassette copy, you can call the archives at 1-800-735-0230. That’s 1-800-735-0230. Please write to us. Our email address is mail@democracynow.org. That’s M-A-I-L at democracynow.org. Democracy Now! is produced by Terry Allen and Kris Abrams. Anthony Sloan is our engineer, Errol Maitland our technical director. From the embattled studios of WBAI, from the studios of the banned and the fired, from the studios of you, our listeners, I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening to another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!