The Arab-Israeli Conflict in the Arab Press: The First Three Decades
280
The Arab-Israeli Conflict in the Arab Press: The First Three Decades
280eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783209118 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect Books |
| Publication date: | 12/15/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 280 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
William W. Haddad is professor of history emeritus at California State University Fullerton.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to the Manuscript
Notes on Transliteration and Translation
In the transliteration of Arabic into Latin script, I use the US Library of Congress system.
This includes the 'to represent the Arabic ayn and the' to represent the hamza. I have used the Syrian J instead of the Egyptian G.
Arabic places that have a commonly accepted, enduring, and familiar spelling in English are used. Thus, Palestine instead of Filastin, Cairo in place of al-Qahirah, Beirut not Bayrut, and so forth. Arab editorialists who wrote for the French or English-language press, largely in Beirut, have their own method of transliterating their names, I have retained their spellings.
One other important characterization of the transliteration system has been the rejection of Western renderings of leaders' names. This has led me to spell, for example, Nasser as 'Abd al-Nasir and Abdullah as 'Abd Allah.
I have attempted to be as accurate as possible in my translations. However, sometimes direct translations from Arabic to English are difficult; for example the second line of the headline on the cover. Therefore I have in some instances translated liberally with the purpose of conveying the meaning if not the exact wording.
The Focus
This manuscript focuses on the Arab-Israeli conflict as seen through opinion pieces and editorials in the Arab print media between 1947 and 1978. It is rare for the defeated in a war to tell their story; this is an attempt to allow the voices of Arab writers to be heard so that we may grasp the perspective of the Arab side in the struggle for Palestine.
The time period was chosen purposefully, from the time of the adoption of the United Nations Partition Resolution until the end of a free press in the countries under examination. As explained in the forward, the papers examined come exclusively from Egypt, Jordan (or Transjordan), Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.
It is important to emphasize that this study is limited because only one segment of Arab opinion, albeit important, was studied. A further limitation is the issue of literacy: absent subscription and circulation data we cannot be sure how widely disseminated the opinion pieces examined in this study extended. We know that literacy was very low in the Arab states in this study for at least two decades after the Second World War. Nonetheless, I believe the views expressed within newspapers reached the illiterate through oral transmission and informal networks. For example, in my ancestral village of Khirbah Qanafar as well as many other towns, there were literate men who read the newspapers to their communities. More importantly, the newspapers in this study were ordinarily published by political parties, governments, branches of the military and patrons in support of one tendency or another. A reader of a newspaper, for example, al-'Amal in Lebanon, which was the spokesman of the Phalangist Party, would receive the party line and presumably act on this knowledge to disseminate the party's platform. Thus, even though circulation might be small, there was a multiplier effect on public opinion.
Approximately 60 newspapers were examined over three decades. I started reading a newspaper beginning in 1947, and thereafter perused every available issue through the 1978 conclusion of the study. I view this monograph as an historical record of the Arab-Israeli conflict as seen by the losing side. Such an account has not previously been available to non-Arabic speakers.
The Historical Context
Just as the end of the Second World War saw the rising Zionist crescendo that would result in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, Resolution 181 of November 1947 and the subsequent establishment of the State of Israel, so too did it mark the nominal end of the British and French occupation of the Levant. The newly independent states also saw the rise of an independent press. This golden period lasted for slightly more than a decade, until 1958, when the press passed from a relatively free era into a time when it was less independent. This was the year of the unification of Egypt and Syria into the United Arab Republic (UAR), initiating a process that would lead to state control of the press in those two countries. One of the first acts of the president of the UAR, Jamal 'Abd al-Nasir, was to ban all political parties in the Syrian province. As a result, the Syrian press lost much of its income from political subsidies. The Syrian press was also subject to competition from Egyptian papers that were flown to Damascus and sold at a cheaper rate. In this manner, many Syrian newspapers declined precipitously. I calculate that of nineteen Damascene dailies in print prior to unification, only four survived. Moreover, the editorial opinion found in those papers that survived was quite sterile. The demise of the Syrian press was formalized in December 1958 with a presidential order banning a large number of Syrian papers. 1958 was also the year of the first Lebanese civil war, during which the Lebanese press was much less interested in Palestine and Israel than with domestic concerns. The Lebanese government was also less inclined to allow its press to operate freely. Thus, 1958 marks the disappearance in Lebanon, even for a short period, of a free press. In Jordan, the political events of 1957 and 1958 destroyed the free press. Beginning as early as the abortive pro-Egyptian Abu Nuwwar coup in April 1957, the Hashimite Kingdom found itself tempted to stifle dissent in whatever form. The subsequent Egyptian campaign to prevent Jordan's joining Iraq and the West, culminating in the landing of British troops in Jordan three days after the July 14 Iraqi coup and the overthrow of the Hashimite monarchy, provided further inducement to muzzle the press. Between 1958 and 1978, freedom of the press in Jordan all but disappeared and editorials in that country reflected a sad sameness.
What was occurring in Syria and to a lesser extent in Lebanon and Jordan was being reenacted on the Egyptian stage. The revolution of 1952 had promised freedom to that country's press. However, the tradition of party subsidies to newspapers was incompatible with the Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council's (RCC) goal of banning political parties. The steps leading to the demise of the press were similar to those seen in Syria. The government abolished all political parties; the Egyptian press gradually became impoverished and in its death pangs, struck out against the RCC. The regime responded with more controls and eventually nationalized the press.
Thus, for all practical purposes, a free press disappeared in a large part of the Arab World in 1958 or shortly thereafter. This study continues to the late 1970s although editorial opinion generally became more homogeneous within a country as papers reflected the opinions held by their governments. Nonetheless, the journals are worth studying because their editorials reflected national differences. An excellent example of a national agenda and its importance to the Arab discourse is the decade-and-a-half after 1958, which was dominated by Muhammad Hasanayn Haykal. He was the unofficial spokesman of the Egyptian government, even serving as a cabinet member. Under his leadership Al-Ahram (the Pyramids) became the premier Arabic-language publication, and the outspoken proponent of 'Abd al-Nasir's Pan-Arabism.
A second phenomenon after 1958 was the gradual emergence of Beirut as the information capital of the Arab world. This was made possible in part due to the results of the suppression of the Arab press elsewhere. Among the city's more notable components were the publications of the Palestinian resistance movement. The Palestinians gained the right to uncensored publication in Lebanon in the 1969 Cairo Agreement. Many Lebanese felt this was an appropriate way to support the anti-Zionist resistance, and because the country prided itself on its free press. In the 1970s, several Arab states purchased newspapers there. Although the civil war, which began in 1975, saw the end of a number of publications, clandestine papers – representing myriad factions – multiplied so that at the height of the war more than 100 publications were in circulation. In October 1976, the Arab League agreed to establish a predominantly Syrian Arab Deterrent Force that was charged with restoring calm. With the Syrian-led occupation, over half a dozen anti-Damascus journals were closed, but Lebanon still had the freest press in the Arab World.
With the exception of Lebanon, a free press ceased to exist in the other confrontation states after 1958. Newspapers were now owned by governments, the military or political parties in one-party nations. It became a truism that there was no censorship in the Arab press, as none was necessary since journalists self-censored or risked losing their jobs and even their lives if they did not adhere to the official line.
Historiography: An Overview of the Research Involving the Evolution of the Arab Press
This historiography is intended to compile what academic scholarship is available concerning the topic of the Arab print media and its relationship to the Arab-Israeli crisis. Considering that the history of the Arab press is a relatively unmined topic in Western research, one must first turn to Arabic sources. We should pay tribute to several books in Arabic from which we have drawn heavily in reconstructing the early history of the Arab press. Especially notable have been Filib di Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sihafah al-'Arabiyah (History of the Arabic Press) (Beirut, 1913); Adib Muruwah, al-Sihafah al-'Arabiyah (the Arabic Press) (Beirut, 1961); Ahmad K. al-'Aqqad, al-Sihafah al-'Arabiyah fi Filastin (The Arabic Press in Palestine) (Damascus, 1966); and Yusuf Q. Khuri, al-Sihafah al-'Arabiyah fi Filastin: 1876–1948 (The Arabic Press in Palestine: 1876–1948) (Beirut, 1976).
The first and most comprehensive source on the history and evolution of the Arab press has been T.arrazi's Tarikh, a four-volume tome published in seriatim between 1913 and 1933 with a second printing in 1948. Scholars generally have looked to Tarrazi's work to learn of the origins of the press in the Middle East, but it does not cover the last hundred years in the evolution of the press, nor does it cover the politics of the era.
More recently, Ami Ayalon, emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University and former head of Shin Bet, has published three important books on the print media. The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History covers the Middle East from the mid-nineteenth century to the Second World War. He focuses on Egypt and Lebanon, arguing that this is where the press began and spread to the rest of the Arab world. Further limiting the work, it is confined to periodicals dealing with "political reportage." Moreover, the author generally excludes Arab newspapers published in French and English because they were "read by a small sector of society whose needs and outlook were generally different from [...] the Arabic [language] press." Nonetheless, it is an important scholarly addition to our knowledge of the origins of the Arab press and is particularly strong in covering the first half of the twentieth century. In The Arabic Print Revolution, Ayalon persuasively shows how at the end of the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century there occurred spectacular changes in Arab society characterized by the appearance of printing presses, publishing houses, a periodical press, and increased literacy. Immortalized by George Antonius as the Arab Awakening, Ayalon takes us on a fascinating trip in cultural transformation. The third monograph, Reading Palestine: Printing and Literacy, 1900–1948, further explores the movement of the Palestinians from an oral society into a literate one. The often overlooked side products of this shift were the growth of an education system, libraries, and reading clubs.
Adnan Musallam at Bethlehem University advances our understanding of the establishment of the Palestinian press during the Ottoman period with his excellent article, "Arab press, society and politics at the end of the Ottoman Era." His article illuminates the activities of mostly Christian Arabs and their European Catholic and Orthodox co-religionists in printing activities in the nineteenth century. Musallam continues his narrative about the Palestinian press in "Turbulent times in the life of the Palestinian Arab press: The British Era, 1917–1948."
A welcome addition to our understanding of the Arab press comes from Ghada Talhami's Palestine in the Egyptian Press (New York: Lexington Books, 2007). She draws heavily from Egyptian authors who have studied their national press and its relationship to the conflict with Zionism and later Israel. Talhami's monograph is especially useful in relating how Egyptian intellectuals viewed the evolution of their press. As a result of her research, she strongly denounces the notion of the subservience of the Egyptian press to the interests of the state; arguing that competition with the state in the defining of a national discourse more accurately describes the Egyptian press. Talhami argues forcefully that the Western interpretation of freedom of the press and its critique of Egyptian press freedom are parochial and ethnocentric. She chooses, rather, to listen to Egyptian intellectuals who argue that its press confronted "Egypt's rulers and its public over a period of two centuries" and unlike the West has not been subservient to corporate interests or foreign concerns. While it may be true that Egyptian journalists confronted government control and corporate and foreign intrigue, how successful this was is debatable. The Egyptian government and, especially, political parties exerted considerable influence over the printed word. The most important journalist of the period under examination was the previously mentioned Muhammad Haykal of al-Ahram. For 17 years as editor-in-chief of al-Ahram, he was deeply embedded in the governments of Jamal 'Abd al-Nasir and Anwar al-Sadat. He was a member of the ruling political party, Minister of Information to both 'Abd al-Nasir and al-Sadat, and 'Abd al-Nasir's ghostwriter for which he was chidingly called "his master's voice."
Despite my disagreement with Talhami on influence, she uses her skills as an historian to write a book that is especially useful in interpreting the early origins of the Egyptian press. Unlike previous works, like Tarrazi, which are chronological narratives, Talhami interprets the impetus for the Egyptian press's evolution. Especially useful is her dealing with the birth of a native press during the reign of the Khedive Ismail Pasha (ruled 1863–79). She depends heavily on Egyptian authors so that her monograph is more about interpreting them as primary sources for the times in which they lived and what they had to say about the Palestine question than it is a reading of the press itself as a primary source. She has a remarkable grasp of Egypt and its history, so that intertwining her narrative of that past with others' writings about the press produces a compelling and exhaustive study of Egypt and the Palestine question.
Talhami's work is important for another reason; she introduces us to Egyptian journalists and intellectuals who wrote about the condition of the press in their nation. Most notable, for those who wish to examine the Egyptian press from an indigenous point of view, are the works of Muhammad Sa'ad Ibrahim, Hurri-yah al-Sihhaf-ah (Freedom of the Press), (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub, 1999) and Awatif 'Abd al-Rahman, Humum al-Sihhafah wa al-Sihhafiyin fi Misr (Concerns of the Press and Journalists in Egypt), (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-'Arabi, 1995). Another piece of scholarship that adds to our knowledge of the Arab press and the Arab-Israeli conflict is Zeki M. Al-Jabir's 1978 doctoral dissertation at the University of Indiana, which dealt with the journals of Lebanon and Egypt between 1966 and 1973 and focused on how those two countries covered the Arab-Israeli conflict.
William A. Rugh has produced numerous works on the field of communication. His earliest contribution, Arab Perceptions of American Foreign Policy During the October War (Washington, 1976), examined editorial opinion in Lebanon, Kuwait, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria. Rugh's study is more a defense of US policy in 1973 (the October War) than a critique of Arab perceptions of that policy. He goes to great lengths to try to prove that the United States was even-handed during the war despite considerable evidence to the contrary. Still, if one keeps in mind that Rugh was an employee of the American government, serving as ambassador to Yemen and the United Arab Emirates, his work provides insight into the US government's perception of the Arab press. His most germane work, The Arab Press (Syracuse University Press, 1979 and 1987), is a study of the then current Arab media, discussing how media operates within constraints imposed by different governments. A later work, Arab Mass Media: Newspaper, Radio and Television in Arab Politics (Greenwood Publishing, 2004), is an update of The Arab Press that continues the analysis of political influences and adds a discussion of off-shore pan-Arab media and expanded coverage of radio and television.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Arab-Israeli Conflict in the Arab Press: The First Three Decades"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Intellect Ltd..
Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword: The Arab-Israeli Crisis in the Arab Press: An Untapped Resource
Mary Marki
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Manuscript
Chapter 2: Editorial Opinion on May 1948
Chapter 3: From the Palestine War to the Assassination of King ‘Abd Allāh
Chapter 4: The Decline of Western Influence from the Death of ‘Abd Allāh to the 1956 Suez Crisis
Chapter 5: From Sinai to the End of a Free Press in the UAR, 1956–58
Chapter 6: The Period Dominated by ‘Abd al-Nāsir: 1958–70
Chapter 7: The Arabs Move to the Offensive: 1970–74
Chapter 8: Al-Salām or Al-Istislām? 1974–78
Chapter 9: Conclusion