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An article in this month's Commentary magazine, a conservative Jewish monthly, says that Said's story of spending his childhood in Jerusalem and being forced out of Palestine by Zionists is false. Said could not be forced to leave Palestine prior to 1947, the article said, because his full-time residence was in Cairo, Egypt. It is in Cairo that the author, Justus Reid Weiner, says Said spent a majority of his childhood, though Said has made statements to the contrary in magazines such as Harper's, the London Review of Books, a BBC documentary entitled In Search of Palestine and newspapers such as The New York Times. The article also said that Said's family did not own its Jerusalem residence and questioned whether or not he was enrolled in a Jerusalem preparatory school, statements he has affirmed on several occasions, most notably in his documentary. Weiner spoke with a man enrolled at Said's preparatory school who Said mentioned as a classmate, David Eben-Ezra. Although Ezra remembered most of the rest of the class, he could not remember Said. "There can be no doubt that a great deal of the moral authority accruing to Edward Said derives as much from his personal as from his intellectual credentials," Weiner wrote. "As a living embodiment of the Palestinian cause, he has made much in print and on film of his birth, childhood and schooling in Palestine, telling a story of idyllic pain while also serving as a powerfully compelling metaphor for the larger Palestinian condition." Said, who began teaching at Columbia in 1963 and became a University professor in 1992, denies any wrongdoing, saying that he has always acknowledged living in Cairo and Jerusalem, in addition to Lebanon. "What [Weiner] cannot understand, and has not been able to understand from any of my writings, is the fact that I have been moved to defend the refugees' plight because I did not suffer and therefore feel obligated to relieve the sufferings of my people, less fortunate than myself," Said said in a written rebuttal. Said, a former member of the Palestine National Council, was the author of Yasir Arafat's 1973 "Gun and Olive Branch" speech to the United Nations General Assembly. He worked with Secretary of State Charles Schultz during the Reagan administration, in addition to serving as an intermediary between Arafat and the Carter administration. Another point of dispute is that Said says he was not contacted for the story, although Weiner, who spent three years researching his article, said he left an unreturned message with Said's office. The Commentary article coincides with the release of Said's memoir, Out of Place, scheduled for later this month. Weiner says that Said had heard of his research and accordingly revised his life story, though Said told The New York Times that such a belief was "rubbish." Said's supporters have questioned Weiner's intentions for writing the article, saying that it was poorly researched and that "it is interesting" that it was published so close to the release of Out of Place. "Weiner's intentions were not to uncover the truth but to slander a man who has been important for the Palestinian cause," said Columbia senior Usama Cortas, president of Turath, the North African and Middle Eastern Club at Columbia. Weiner spent three years and conducted 85 interviews -- including interviews with members of Said's family -- for his article. In his rebuttal, Said asked why Weiner did not name his sources and accused Weiner of threatening one of his cousins in order to interview him. "Weiner is a propagandist who like many others before him have tried to depict the dispossession of Palestinians as ideological fiction. This has been a steady theme of Zionist 'information' since the 1930s," Said said in his rebuttal. "He never gives actual sources but uses innuendos and fraudulent calculations and unsubstantiated assertions." A Columbia spokesperson, Associate Vice President for Public Affairs Virgil Renzulli, said Weiner's article will not have any bearing on Said's status at Columbia. The article, Renzulli said, "does not pertain to his status as a Columbia University faculty member, where his position is as a literary scholar and critic."

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