Naseer Aruri died

I was very sorry to hear that Naseer Aruri died.  I have known Naseer since my student days in Washington, DC at Georgetown.  He asked me in 1985 to write something about "the War of the Camps" which was raging between the Amal Movement (and behind it the Syrian regime) and the Palestinian organizations in the camp.  It was published by the AAUG ("Understanding the War of the Camps"), which he and Edward Said and others had founded after 1967, and it helped organize the political activism on Palestine on college campuses in the wake of the 1967 defeat.  In my early years in the US, my very strong criticisms of Arafat rankled this older generation of Palestinian-Americans who were at that point quite sympathetic to Arafat.  Later on after Oslo, Naseer and Edward and many others became quite critical of Arafat.  Naseer was a kind, gentle, polite, honest, and principled man.  Those qualities were often mistaken for moderation but he was quite uncompromising about the liberation of Palestine and the restoration of Palestinian rights.  After his retirement from the University of Massachusetts, at Dartmouth he became--I felt--concerned about the future of Arab-American activism on college campuses and was aware that members of his generation were either retiring or dying.  He expressed a desire that Joseph Massad and I would take over AAUG or that we would lead on behalf of another (next) generation. But neither Joseph nor I are suited for organizational roles--I think.  Only a few years ago, I gave a talk in his town at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and he invited me to his house where I met his wife (she is of Lebanese descent) and we discussed swimming, I remember.  Naseer will be missed and I offer my condolences to his wife and children and grandchildren, and to the entire community of activists on Palestine in the US.  He will be missed.