From The Rubin Report, Sunday, August 9, 2009, by Barry Rubin:
I don’t know anything about the controversy regarding where Barack Obama was born, but I’m surprised this issue hasn’t brought up the memory of two cases in the Middle East where birthplaces or childhood homes were misstated for political purposes.
The first of these was Yasir Arafat, founder of Fatah and leader of the Palestinian movement for many decades. Arafat always said he was born in Jerusalem....
In the end, a British journalist found Arafat’s birth certificate in Cairo, Egypt. He had been lying for years to enhance his Palestinian nationalist credentials. (Of course, that’s not the only thing Arafat lied about.) ....
...Arafat’s was not the only case of misrepresenting one’s natal and thereafter experiences. Edward Said, who turned Middle East studies from scholarship to propaganda ...patron saint of Palestinian nationalism made totally false claims in his writings about his time spent in Jerusalem.
... there are many who are taken in by such myths and misrepresentations.
When Justus Weiner carried out the research to expose Said, he was subjected to considerable abuse ...[and] treated as something of a thought criminal.
Said had told beautiful and politically useful lies and ... Who cares what really happened if it helps the cause? ...
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