In The News

Joy of stoning

Edward Said, celebrated intellectual, professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and among the West’s most prominent Arab voices, has acknowledged throwing stones at Israel’s border fence - but he says it was a harmless act of joy.

Said - whose writings excoriate Western stereotypes that diminish Arabs as primitive and violent - was photographed among Lebanese who show up daily to celebrate Israel’s troop withdrawal from south Lebanon by stoning the new fence between the countries.

Israel has complained the stonings violate U.N. resolutions and have injured several soldiers. The photo of Said with his arm cocked created a stir in Israel.

In a statement faxed to Jerusalem on Wednesday, Said says the crowd threw stones only to see “whether … they could reach the barbed wire.”

“For a moment I joined in: the spirit of the place infected everyone with the same impulse, to make a symbolic gesture of joy that the occupation had ended,” Said wrote. “One stone tossed into an empty place scarcely warrants a second thought.”

Said said that before arriving at the fence, he spent the day seeing and hearing evidence of human rights abuses carried out by the Israelis and their allies in Lebanon.

“Much is now made of an incident that is basically trivial, as if that could ever outweigh … the enormous ravages and suffering caused by decades of military occupation and dispossession,” Said wrote.

Speak peace like a pro

FAPS: framework agreement on permanent status. Essentially, a FAPS is a blueprint for a deal that would permit Palestinians and Israelis to resolve their disputes and live happily ever after, more or less.

CAPS: comprehensive agreement on permanent status. A Manhattan phone book-sized document that would really, truly, this-time-no-kidding resolve the Middle East’s most painful disputes forever.

Clear blood: Palestinians who only wounded Israelis or collaborators. (Those who killed Israelis are known as “dark blood” Palestinians.)

Dead Sea water: If the Israelis don’t like Arafat’s demand for a state with its capital in East Jerusalem, they can “drink the water of the Dead Sea,” the Palestinian leader has declared.

The Dead Sea, with its 30 percent salt content and other high concentrations of minerals, is not potable; a mouthful is enough to induce serious vomiting and much more than that could kill you.