Edward Said OUT OF PLACE

I watched “Edward Said OUT OF PLACE” directed by Makoto Sato. Edward Said was a comparative cultural scholar, a postcolonial commentator who always spoke out for the Palestinian people's right to life, and a professor at Columbia University in the United States. Following in the footsteps of Edward Said, who died in 2003, director Makoto Sato traveled with his camera to New York, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine in 2005 to film the recent scenes of people living there.

The lands of the Middle East that they have traveled seem to be filled with the tears of suffering and sorrow of the Palestinian people whose land was taken from them, and the suffering and sorrow of the Israeli people who live on the land that was taken from them. The narration is interrupted by a quote from Edward Said's book. The Arabs of Egypt who have a land called Egypt are called Egyptians, the Arabs of Jordan who have a land called Jordan are called Jordanians, the Arabs of Morocco who have a land called Morocco are called Moroccans, but the Arabs of Palestine who do not have a land called Palestine are not called Palestinians. I ask why they are not called Palestinians but Arabs. It is also a sharp question about nation and colony, and ethnicity as identity.

I suddenly recalled that when Yukio Mishima had a discussion with the Zenkyoto, a student-like member of the Zenkyoto asked him if he could not transcend the limits of being Japanese by doing so, to which he replied that he was fine being Japanese. Mishima further stated that there is history and there is Japan. Mishima's words seem to echo what I heard Aida, a Palestinian living in Japan, say at the demonstration in Shinjuku: “Palestinians are Palestinians.

The year 1948, the year of the founding of Israel from Aleppo, Syria, in this film “Edward Said,” was also the year when the Palestinians lost their land and their country, and the Jews who fled to Israel in that year came to Israel because the Jewish quarter in the old city of Aleppo was burned to the ground. He said. He said that until then, Jewish Jews, Muslim Arabs, and Christian Arabs had lived together as neighbors, and he wants to return to Aleppo before 1948.

I believe that the establishment of the State of Israel was a sinful mistake, and I must state clearly and repeatedly that we must of course protest the bombing and killing of civilians, including children and babies in Gaza that is now being carried out by the Israeli government, the Israelis who direct it, and their army. We must protest. We must protest the cruelty with which civilians are being burned alive in Rafah.

I only pray that one day the time of reconciliation will come, the real flowers will bloom, the violence will cease, and peace will come to this land that is soaked with the tears of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people.