[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Like Obama, Said made his deracinated childhood the central, compelling metaphor for his significant life work. His identity as a Palestinian and a refugee, driven from his homeland by Israeli violence, would inform everything he wrote.

Said did not shy from using his grief and his influence to advance his cause. For 14 years, he served on the Palestine National Conference, a kind of parliament-in-exile alongside the likes of the PLO’s Yassir Arafat and still harder core radicals from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the terrorist group that hijacked the Achille Lauro.

Interesting theme, Islamic victimhood. For example:

In a recent association lecture, Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Mansour, an American author and lawyer who now lives in the Middle East, urged the youngsters to study math and science, as well as their own history. ''If I read Jet magazine and nothing else, I can't build a pyramid or a bridge,'' said Al-Mansour. ''If I talk every day only about what white people have done to me, I can't build a road.''

Edition: L5 Page: 1E Column: CITYSCAPE: Record Number: 4910066033 Copyright 1991 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

[maggief]

http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/hinzsight_story/david_hinz/2008/09/05/another_radical_khalid_abdullah_tariq_al_mansour_sponsored_barack_obama_into_harvard_law_s