Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Here's a revealing piece at the LA Times on the retribution some Egyptian intellectual and cultural figures have faced from their peers just for treating their Israeli neighbors as human -- and not just Israeli, but Jewish neighbors as well, as in the case of the singer who performed at the Cairo synagogue. Brains, education and talent have a limited (and, one could argue, perhaps even an inverse) relationship to a the possession of a moral sense. Hitler's first bastions were the universities. Martin Heidegger was an active Nazi.
Egyptian intellectuals pay price for curiosity
..."Producers are afraid to come near me," said Salem, who in 1994 drove his car across Israel and wrote what critics considered a sympathetic book about the journey. "I anticipated there would be a strong reaction, but I didn't expect it would be so mean. It's hard and this is the wound."
Salem, a columnist for Al Hayat newspaper and a co-founder of the Cairo Peace Movement, added: "Peace is the right idea. But Egyptian intellectuals are afraid and can't get rid of their ancient fears. They still think Israel and the U.S. will inflict something bad upon us."
There are degrees of resistance among intellectuals toward rapprochement. Many oppose improving relations until Palestinians have their own state; others support limited peace but are guarded when discussing the passions around the Arab-Israeli conflict; a few have visited Israel to interact with their Jewish counterparts.
And, occasionally, an artist unwittingly becomes the target of screeds and opinion page vitriol. Filmmaker Nadia Kamel's recent documentary about her mother's Jewish roots was attacked as a call to "normalize" relations with Israel. Opera singer Gaber Beltagui had his membership in the musicians union suspended in 2007 when he sang at the 100th anniversary of a Cairo synagogue.
