I could offer many specifics about the state of politics in Egypt and the Middle East. Instead, I’m going to try to use broad strokes to deliver the main ideas we received from three of the last sessions in which we participated. One speaker was the Chief of the Cabinet of the Secretary General of the Arab League, another was an expert in Egyptian-Israeli relations, and another was an expert in the media in Egypt and the Middle East.
First, there seems to be little optimism about where the Middle East is headed, particularly in light of the way Palestinians are treated inside Israel and the way the war in Iraq has headed. Our Arab League speaker explained that dialogue has been cut off at the knees at almost all passes by the US for resolution from the increasing chaos in Iraq. When asked about prospects for the future, he explained that things are only going to get worse before they get better, both for Iraq and the region as a whole
Our specialist on the media also explained that because of the rise of Al-Jazeera, there is an increasing sense of kinship among the various people in the Middle East who receive their information from this news outlet. While recognizing that no news outlet is unbiased, she explained that the West, particularly the US, has a very schewed view of who Al-Jazeera is (and, please note, there are other satellite stations that compete with Al-Jazeera, but they are less watched because of the positive reputation Al-Jazeera has here). She explained that the media in the US are very reluctant to include the Arab perspective in the news and that we don’t dialogue with voices representative of the Middle East. Every morning, I have received an English newspaper printed here in Cairo, and almost every day, above the fold on page one is a photo of the latest atrocity committed against the Palestinians. This is a perspective we don’t often see in the US.
The Egyptian-Israeli relations expert explained that most Egyptians do not think they will ever again be at war with Israel, but that the perception of Israeli Jews is a negative one here. That is also what I have observed in my research, both formal and informal, here in Egypt. I am not surprised by the perceptions, but I am surprised at the seeming lack of willingness to engage in dialogue with Israelis. The expert explained that she had never been to Israel before. I just talked with my academic advisor, a professor here in Egypt, and she said that in a conference in Jordan last year, an Israeli woman was discussing how much she sensed the reluctance of Egyptians to even want to talk with her because she is Israeli. I wonder what can come of the conflict when even the experts cannot talk with each other.
I don’t want to convolute Iraq and the Palestinian issue here, but they seem to be intertwined among perceptions Egyptians have. Egyptians and other viewers of Al-Jazeera have said several times that they see what is happening to their “brothers,” and somehow the US and Israel blend together,and the anger people feel about the situation is directed at both countries, including their people. Egyptians see the way Palestinians are bombed and mistreated and the way Iraqis live in fear and are mistreated (think Abu-Ghraib as a simple example), and a lot of anger forms. Historically there has been deep mistrust and rumor-mongering here as well about Israel—that Israel is, for instance, selling shorter, more toxic cigarettes to Egyptians on purpose (this was during the 90s, and there have been other documented situations similar to this as well).
Then I don’t have understandings of the way the Gulf states operate, the kinds of agreements they form, the role Iran and Syria might be trying to play. I’m not sure anyone has this understanding. But the more antagonism develops between the war in Iraq and the troubles of the Palestinians, things are not going to get better. I think of my friend who lived through the war in Lebanon last summer who was disgusted by Condeleeza Rice’s depiction of the situation as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East,” and can’t help but question the sincerity of the rhetoric.
What can be done to ameliorate this situation? Dialogue and trust building. A willingness of stakeholders to give up possible gains to see real democracy and education. I know there have been some attempts. There’s such a deep history of mistrust, it’s hard to make sense of the dialogue. Like the speakers we talked with, I believe that things will, unfortunately, get worse before they get better.
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July 24th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
I struggle too with this particular vantage point of Al Jazeera and how Middle Eastern media is portrayed. This was a commonly debated subject during last summer’s war in Lebanon where Al Jazeera and other Middle Eastern media was accused of inciting emotion, to the extent of locals storming the UN office in downtown Beirut after viewing the carnage of a basement full of children having been killed that morning. The other side of the picture with Western media (which was discussed at length last summer as well) in contrast is that America and the West is showed a ’sanitized’ view in carefully chosen soundbites, more easily digestible to the Western palette. How the media addresses these and other events is probably one of the larger questions we face as an international community these days and I do not believe it is fair to point fingers in only one direction for misrepresentation of what the ‘truth’ may be. Just as the West has a suspicious viewpoint of Al Jazeera (even though it now has a base in the US and is translated into English – the translation of which I have heard in NY Times reports is often misinterpreted from Arabic to English), people elsewhere in the world are equally entitled to feel pretty jipped when it comes to news sources like Fox News, Time Magazine, etc. who cover the issues in broad strokes, while other times missing the point entirely. It may be easy for me to delve into this issue after having lived day-to-day in 2 Middle Eastern countries for nearly 5 years and where my work and life in this region has taken me inside many different dimensions and layers here. In any case, it’s an issue that I hope will not continue to polarize Western – Eastern media and dialogue.