Haidar Eid, Socialist Worker , November 19, 2009

Dear Mr. President:
You will probably not read this letter due to your busy schedule and the huge number of messages you receive from presidents, kings, princes, sheiks and prime ministers. Who is a Palestinian academic from Gaza, after all, to have the guts to write an open letter to the president of the United States of America?
What has triggered this letter is a picture of your Excellency sitting with the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. That, of course, happened before 2004–i.e., before you underwent a process of metamorphosis which I personally think is unprecedented in history.
