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Arab Media: Barometer
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Wishing Our Friends and Customers
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New Year!
t every critical juncture in
Arab-Israeli negotiations,
Israeli officials have
sought to answer three
key questions:
1. Can we trust these and fu-
ture Arab leaders to maintain an
agreement?
2. What assurance and guar-
antees can be part of agreements
that will insure compliance or de-
ter their unraveling?
3. Are Arab attitudes toward
Israel changing?
Regardless of whether the for-
mula for reaching additional
Arab-Israeli agreements is "land
for peace" as the Arab states ve-
hemently advocate, or "land for
security" as Israeli Prime Minis-
ter Netanyahu strongly prefers,
Israelis need to know their Arab
partners and whether Arab soci-
eties intend to preserve peace
and security.
From Israel's establishment in
1948 until after the 1973 war,
Arab leaders uniformly and reg-
ularly spewed hatred against Is-
rael. Those Arab leaders who
had seized political power after
World War II claimed a public
monopoly on truth. Most con-
trolled the radio and press and
turned them into branches of
government. The Arab media be-
came a barometer for under-
standing Arab attitudes toward
Israel.
With the serious beginnings of
Arab-Israeli negotiations after
the 1973 war, segments of the
Arab media reluctantly accepted
Israel as a reality. Today, most
of the Arab media portrays Israel
as a militarily superior Jewish
economic giant enjoying unlim-
ited American support unnatu-
rally placed in the middle of the
Muslim and Arab world. Deep
pockets of Arab distaste for the
Jewish state remain, but blanket
uniformity of Arab dislike for Is-
rael, at least as portrayed by the
Arab media, is gone.
What does the Arab media say
about Israel today? Perhaps it is
all too obvious, but the only ac-
curate generalization is that no
Arab capital, no Arab leader, and
no Arab media outlet is in love
with Zionism or the policies of Is-
raeli leaders.
After that, important distinc-
tions exist. Militant Islamic
groups, such as Hamas, Islamic
Jihad, and Hezbollah, are not
only anti-Israel and anti-Zionist,
but their rhetoric are uniquely
A
Dr. Kenneth W. Stein is a pro-
fessor of Near Eastern history
and political science at Emory
University in Atlanta, Ga.
spliced with passionately anti-
Jewish feeling. These groups and
their media outlets see the Unit-
ed States as inherently evil. The
Syrian Arabic media tends to be
the most shrill, nasty, and ven-
omous in their treatment of Is-
rael and Zionism.
When Palestinian Arab politi-
cians are quoted, they spend al-
most equal time criticizing Israeli
policies as they do chastising
Arafat's autocracy. Egypt's me-
dia attitudes toward Israel can
be differentiated between anti-
government newspapers that are
also pro-Islamic and the more
secular press which tends to be
pro-government. The former
rants against Jews, while the lat-
ter almost exclusively criticizes
Israeli policies and Washington's
support for Israel's political po-
sitions. The secular press in
Egypt easily criticizes Clinton
and Christopher personally and
by name, a tendency less seen in
the Syrian press. And the Jor-
danian press, though often times
critical of Israel, is by far the most
restrained in its use of negative
language.
Those writing in the Palestin-
ian Arab press, fearing reprisals
from Arafat's security devices,
rarely criticize the PLO leader
directly; that is usually done in
Arab media outlets outside of
Arafat's geographic jurisdiction.
Since Netanyahu's election, the
Palestinian leadership has been
emphasizing the need for the
new Israeli government to ad-
here to the agreements already
accepted by previous Israeli gov-
ernments. Venom expressed
against Zionism and Jews ap-
pears less frequently as com-
pared to earlier periods in
Israeli-Palestinian relations. In-
stead, Israeli policies are assailed,
such as those on Jerusalem, the
settlements, closure of the ter-
ritories to Palestinian workers,
and withdrawal of Israeli forces
from Hebron.
Regardless of who has been Is-
rael's prime minister, the con-
trolled media in Damascus has
focused on the uncompromising
demand for Israel to return all of
the Golan Heights to Syrian sov-
ereignty and its desire for Europe
and the United States to pres-
sure Israel into concessions.
Habits of the heart and mind
are difficult to change. Signa-
tures on diplomatic documents
do not erase decades of distrust.
Yet, in a quarter century of Arab- <
Israeli negotiations, some slight
but significant changes have oc-
curred in Arab media portrayal
of Israel, Zionism and Jews.