States By Edward Said Essay

The west had been essential to the nation’s creation, and exerted its power in Israel. Israel’s leaders developed allegiances with western countries which had been essential in the formation of their country. Tension in the area grew, both inside and outside of the state, and violence was used against both sides. However, measures were not taken to undue the problems that had arisen from the unfair nature of the agreement. “Palestinians had been branded as ignorant, hostile, and violent” and non-Jewish groups found it difficult to practice their religion as they had before. Despite the obvious inequities that were growing, the west did little to alleviate the pain that it played a large part in creating. It seemed as if “People in the west seem so taken with material things, It’s as if they have nothing in their spirit, so they need to surround themselves

Edward Said's States is an excerpt from his book After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. It's a story about Palestine, once a country, but now spread out into a million pieces of the people that once called it home. The pieces being more of memories of a time when Palestinians could be who they are, not a scattered and forgotten people. They all face a new struggle, a struggle to find their identity. "Identity- who we are, where we come from, what we are- is difficult to maintain in exile. Most other people take their identity for granted. Not the Palestinian, who is required to show proofs of identity more or less constantly." (Page 546) Said, being Palestinian himself, tells us this story in what was called a

In addition, I will examine the current state of political and human rights in Israeli occupied West Bank and analyze how they are approaching a level of apartheid. Finally, I will summarize the effects of these social tensions between Israel and Palestinians in the terms of how potential open conflict could reignite.

Growing up in Palestine, I had contradicting Feelings towards my identity as a Palestinian. I often felt the euphoria and nationalism hearing the word Palestine, revolution, Israel, Yasser Arafat, and resistance. The ecstatic feeling of belonging to a glorious nation and dedicated countrymen equipped me with sufficient mental and emotional dosage to enjoy living in a war zone and ultimately a honourable goal worth sacrificing my life for- freedom.

America has long promised a life of ease for all citizens. Today, our technological and scientific developments keep thousands of people, if not happy, then comfortable. Correspondingly, the inhabitants of the World State portrayed in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World live entirely content lifestyles due to their technological and scientific advances. Both the World State and modern American societies share a common background, and while Huxley’s futuristic world may have advanced farther than our society has, America is continually developing into a Brave New World. Parallels of the two worlds exist in abundance within the novel, perhaps the most obvious examples of which lie in the desire to retain youth and the use of drugs in both societies.

Ever since, Palestinians have had to adapt to new places and cultures in order to survive, which makes it more difficult for them to preserve their own. Said presents several examples of transculturation throughout the essay. For instance, the use of the Mercedes, even though Said describes it in negative terms, the use of the Mercedes has come in handy for Palestinians. Enduring one disaster after another, Palestinian identity is arduous to preserve in exile. It is a struggle of having no country. Our country is a big part of who we are. As we are born, we are destined to become a part of it. It becomes part of our identity. Things that we grew up with meant something to us. We usually treasure things that became part of our lives. Even unconsciously, we take hold of it. Home brings us memories, memories that we want to hold on up to our last breath.

Joe Sacco's graphic novel, Palestine, deals with the repercussions of the first intifada in Israel/Palestine/the Holy Land. The story follows the author through the many refugee camps and towns around Palestine as he tries to gather information, stories, and pictures to construct his graphic novel. While the book is enjoyable at a face level, there are many underlying themes conveyed throughout its illustrated pages and written text.

To sum up, this art piece asks for Americans to dare and pull off the blindfold. It dares people to question what is written in the media, and whether or not what is written truly matters in the grand scheme of world events. Knowledge is the first step in the process of justice, and the Palestinians deserve

Throughout Edward W. Said’s essay, “States”, he discusses the past of the Palestinians and expresses the struggles that arose and still occur. Palestinian nationalism was once an independent force in the Middle East. Yet, when the Palestinian’s homeland came to an end, destruction and dispossession began. Various wars emerged leaving the Palestinians to suffer. During this time period of violence, Palestine was being destroyed. In the process, Israel began to take over. Said tries to get readers to see what people don’t see about the hardships that came with being Palestinian. He writes about the destruction of their culture, land, value, homes, and their way of living due to violence.

Said starts his essay "States" off with an attention grabber and sets the scene. He is reeling his readers in, making the reader feel sympathetic towards the lifestyle of the people outside Arab City by using words and phrases such as "meager", "surprised", "sad", and "slightly uncomfortable". He lays out the setting in a refugee camp during a disastrous time. I feel he does this in hopes of readers wanting to find out more about the Palestinian people and the lives they have led. His test is not arranged in the general arrangement of essays. Instead, Said talks about the history of the Palestinians while putting some of his own past of him and his family in. He uses pictures to help the reader grasp how times were for them, which is a feature

To a Palestinian that has been displaced from his/her long time homeland, completely displaced by a foreign power. The tone of victimization is easily created. But to an Israeli, that has found security from, long term discrimination, in Israel’s own borders, it is easy for an Israeli perspective to claim the Jewish people had a legitimate claim to the land. Accounts from the Palestinian narrative will often, as Sylvain Ehrenfeld a writer for Ethical Culture, writes “[F]ocus on victimhood, their suffering and dispossession and their deep sense of injustice at being punished because of Europe’s treatment of Jews.”. Moreover, he goes on to elaborate that the Israeli have also created a tone of an unfailing connection to its land, and argues legitimacy for claim to the land that was found in former Palestine, present day Israel. He goes on to mention that both sides are guilty of creating their perspectives so single-mindedly. Both sides will often misrepresent the reality of the situation to gain the support of historians. This distortion of reality will in often cases skew accuracy, therefore creating a limitation to the recording of history.

He also uses descriptions of the images to add to their detail. Using these images and their descriptions can classify States as an autoethnographic text, as it was written to show the troubles faced by those who identify themselves as Palestinians. The

The Palestinians had a robust social, political, and class identity within Palestine; however, after the nakbah this life was systematically dismantled and reconstituted along national, radical, and traditionalist lines, the result of which is the new Palestinian-ness to which the national movement is oriented. Of course the Palestinian people existed before the nakbah, however, their consciousness was typical of agrarian peasants, based not in a national identity, but upon kinship ties, regional networks, and limited class solidarity (Sayigh, R., 13). This identity was perpetuated through many traditions and familial conditioning, which also formed the basis of extended kinship-solidarity networks (ibid.

The conflict between the nations of Palestine and Israel holds a lot of significance in today’s current events, and is a greatly debated and controversial topic. The conflict, commonly attributed to Jewish Zionism movements and forward settlement in the areas surrounding Jerusalem, is often seen as a two sided, illogical aggression between the neighbouring states. However; the conflict has roots that reach back to the age of imperialism, and to the conflict of World War I.

The graphic novel Palestine, published by Maltan journalist Joe Sacco in the early ‘90s, is a journalistic piece that represents his recollections of two months spent talking to and living with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The casual narrative style, which some might say is too shallow for such heavy subject matter, in fact allows Sacco to avoid many of the pit falls that have made Western reporting on non-Western conflicts unhelpful at the very least and more often incredibly damaging.