According to one Egyptian editor, who spoke with Israeli journalist Amos Elon shortly after the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty was concluded, the Egyptian press had indeed shown a dramatic turnabout with the onset of peace.
The editor, Anis Mansour, had been confronted by Elon with quotations from articles Mansour had published years before in his popular weekly, October Magazine, calling the Jews “traitors and bloodsuckers” and declaring that “it is a good thing Hitler slaughtered six million of them.” Mansour explained how he, an ardent supporter of the peace process who prides himself on his vast intellect, could say what he had said.
“There was a war on when I wrote all that,” Mansour explained, in a meeting in Cairo related by Elon in his book, “Flight into Egypt.” “In times of war a writer’s tongue must be his cannon. Today, I would not write that stuff, of course. No! In times of war I tell people that their enemies are terrible. In times of peace I say that they are humans just like themselves.”
Mansour, said to have been a close friend of President Anwar Sadat, took little time himself, as relations with Israel became strained, in reverting almost to the style of his war-year writing.
LIVING WITH CONTRADICTIONS
The ease with which the now retired editor was able to swing from war to peace propaganda and practically back, seems to reflect the shaky psychological foundation that had been established for warm relations with Israel. When flagrantly anti-Semitic articles stopped appearing for awhile in the press, the negative images they presented of the Jews could hardly have been expected to disappear as swiftly from people’s minds.
Yet, rather than see these images as justification for a continued state of war, and rather than reject them as myth, a common pattern perceived by this writer in discussions with many Egyptians was to overlook the stereotypes without rejecting them, and welcome peace with Israel with all the contradictions this seemed to imply.
Then came a series of Israeli measures that Egyptians perceived as a deliberate effort to embarrass them, or at best, an expansionist campaign insensitive to Egypt’s position: the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor, annexation of the Golan Heights, settlement policy in the West Bank, and finally, the invasion of Lebanon. Whether or not the reactor could produce a nuclear weapon, the status of the Golan was reversible, or the PLO was terrorizing northern Israel, seemed to have no relevance.
EBB AND FLOW OF ANTI-SEMITISM
When the anti-Semitic symbols had settled back into their familiar home in the Egyptian press, a minister in Cairo explained to Prof. Shimon Shamir, former director of the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo, the difference between the old and the new anti-Semitism like this: “The Egyptian elite then (before the war) secretly knew in its heart that all this was propaganda, whereas today it knows it to be true.”
Eventually, however, the wrath of autumn 1982 appeared to ebb, leaving a residue of resentment used to justify a continued chilly peace. Pronounced anti-Semitism in the leading daily newspapers came to appear in spurts, rather than as a conscious and constant campaign.
In 1983, for example, after Israel released the findings of the commission investigating the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, the national press in Egypt joined with other Arab countries in using the occasion to churn out a new string of rabidly offensive cartoons and articles.
Then, the anti-Semitism seemed to fade out once again for awhile, so that even a Western reader familiar with Egypt’s semi-official press was shocked to see the old images reemerge sometime later as if from nowhere, in the form of an isolated article in one newspaper, a cartoon in another.
NO EQUIVALENT GUSHES OF PHILO-SEMITISM
While the worse the relations between Egypt and Israel the more pronounced the anti-Semitism in the government-controlled press, Egypt’s periodic goodwill gestures to Israel have not been accompanied by any equivalent gushes of philo-Semitism in the leading newspapers.
The invitation extended to Israel to participate in Cairo’s annual international book fair last January, for example, was hardly noticeable in the national press. On the other hand, the opposition papers predictably turned it into a scandal for their more critical–though limited–readership.
This year’s book fair was not the first such cultural event in which Israel had participated following Egypt’s effective reversal of the normalization process. An attempt to get negotiations going again on the Taba dispute appeared to be the motive behind Egypt’s inviting an Israeli exhibit at the international trade fair two years ago.
BOOK FAIR PROTEST
But the protest elicited by Israel’s participation in this year’s book fair, after a two-year absence from the annual event, was strong enough to force the government to close the the entire international wing much earlier than scheduled. In addition to protests in the opposition papers, several parties, including the opposition Wafd Party, called for a boycott of the Israeli exhibit.
An alternative fair set up by the Egyptian Lawyers Syndicate, a mainstay of Wafd Party support, carried exhibits of some 20 Egyptian publishing houses. Protest demonstrations at the main fair grounds ultimately brought an early closing to all but the Egyptian wing.
This year’s trade fair, held in Cairo last month, brought further protests at the fair grounds, including the burning of an Israeli and American flag. A number of people who participated were arrested and have since been released.
The trade fair was held just as strong criticism was appearing in the opposition press of official efforts to present President Hosni Mubarak’s recent visit to the U.S. as a success.
A COMPLETE FAILURE CITED
“Egypt’s gamble on America to solve our economic problems and to persuade Washington to abandon its 100 percent support for Israel is a complete failure,” read an editorial in the Wafd newspaper following Mubarak’s return to Egypt last month.
Mubarak has sought increased American aid to Egypt, as well as renewed U.S. activity in the Middle East. Specifically, he appealed for a U.S. meeting with a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation that would include PLO members. He left Washington with no commitments from the White House.
The Wafd editorial chastised the national press for misrepresenting the results of the trip. “People will know the truth. They must know the truth, ” the paper said.
To some extent this criticism from the Wafd and other opposition groups reflects their frustrations at the government’s continued monopoly over the shaping of public opinion in Egypt. But it is also a reminder that public opinion is not entirely dictated by Mubarak and his regime. The chilly state of relations with Israel appears to be as much a reflection of domestic sentiment as it is its creator.
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