Rolling Back Incitement In Egyptian Media
For the many people of good faith in the Middle East and beyond who would like to see our region overcome its fractures and strife, there is some good news.
First, the moral victory of peace and coexistence is, at least in the abstract, now won. Few beyond the realm of extremist groups deny the overriding virtues of national reconciliation or underestimate the dangers of a culture of exclusion. This achievement has been hard earned. It is born of great suffering, not only in the past but still today before our eyes. We are witness to it in war-torn Libya. We are witness to it in war-torn Yemen. We see it even in some neighborhoods of our own beloved Cairo. We know, once and for all time, the price of false pride and fevered illusion. We have experienced the burdens of denying reality, and of bathing ourselves in the foul waters of wishful thinking. Time has made us wiser, so that we now say enough! No more. No longer.
Second, still more good news: This new dawn of understanding is now shared by senior figures in many media outlets, and as befits our role we are ready to speak out. We understand that the messaging of media in particular—in addition to the great value of schools and religious platforms—must play a pivotal role in promoting a culture of reconciliation.
Here, in Egypt, we have the added benefit of a leadership that has been urging us to embrace a culture of reconciliation, and that understands the power of media. President Sisi has said in a public forum: “I think the media has a decisive role to play. We have a problem with our religious discourse, a big, big problem. It’s a factor that has prevented us from comfortably moving forward. . . [T]he Egyptian consciousness is formed within the family, through worship, in school, and the media may be the most important factor of all at the present time. . . that needs to act together to restore the fabric of Egyptian social life.”
Sisi’s statement clearly aligns with his successive calls for a new settlement in the Middle East, inclusive of an Israeli-Palestinian peace but extending to a larger swath of territory than any previous peace agreement has accomplished. Sisi wants to broaden and deepen regional peace, not just between Arabs and Israelis, but among Arabs as well both between and within countries. He doesn’t try to cover over this latter part of the challenge, which of course affects the first part as well. And he understands that there will be no peace unless our youngest generation is reared in a message of peace.
Egyptians know that the article in the Camp David Accords that calls for normal civil relations has never been truly applied. The result has been forty years of “cold peace” between governments during which Egyptian citizens have lost countless opportunities for productive and profitable cooperation with Israelis. Egyptians have also denied themselves multiple opportunities to exercise a salubrious influence on Israelis, on the basis of friendship, with respect to their engagement with Palestinians and others. This wasted opportunity has gained new awareness, particularly among the young.
Despite all this good news, entrenched sectarian and ethnic loyalties are often manipulated to short-circuit the high principles people say they embrace. These manipulated loyalties can shut down positive, forward-looking enterprises. We see this in the popular treatment of Jews and Israelis in media across the region, but it is bigger than that. Hate-drenched broadcasts also target the sectarian “other.” They work as tools of psychological warfare, first and foremost for the Iranian war machine. But they also deflect the efforts of moderate Arab powers as they strive to muster a reasoned and effective response to the challenges we face.
Here in Egypt, I manage political programming for Sada El Balad, one of the country’s leading TV channels. I know well the history of demonization of Israel. Egyptian media from Ahmed Sa’id on Voice of the Arabs to Horseman without a Horse were complicit in sharpening the fangs of war and later poisoning the promise of peace. The voices behind these incendiary enterprises have long won the day, and they are still disproportionately represented at senior levels of media. But a great many, especially younger, voices want to turn a new page. This too is good news, very good news.
What would it take to achieve this? In our favor, we have the benefit of an Egyptian president who has already expressed his desire to advance Arab-Israeli relations. He has already signaled his concern, too, about the damage that incitement and demonization is doing to the Egyptian body politic. We Egyptians in political media have an unprecedented opportunity to follow the logic of the President’s policies to its application in our profession.
A reformist venture with respect to our messaging would begin with a principle: While a full settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is essential, no narrowly defined diplomatic process can achieve it unless the populations on both sides are prepared to accept it. We in Egypt are not best-suited to influence the infosphere of Israeli or Palestinian society; this is something the protagonists must do for themselves. But we are not entirely helpless here. We certainly can help orient the Egyptian public discussion in favor of peace. How?
By adopting a set of commitments as a community of channels and outlets that will move the Egyptian body politic away from being a source of pressure against a political settlement with Israel to one in which they are its loudest and clearest cheering section. In that way we can inspire and embolden Israelis and Palestinians alike to muster the courage to reach their own accommodations.
In the meanwhile, too, we can at last begin to develop the conditions by which Egyptians can redeem the lost promise of the Camp David Accords and the March 1979 Treaty of Peace. We must consistently call for normal relations between the Egyptian and Israeli peoples.
The potential requirements of such a project are no secret. I would stress three basic points of process.
Foundational content: We must recognize that honest and accurate information about Jews, their history, and the young country they have built are not readily available in Egypt. The distortions of Nasserist and Brotherhood propaganda, which have poisoned generations of minds, require a corrective that will not necessarily come from within. We need a working group of scholars of Jewish and Israeli history, culture, and politics to work with us to develop foundational content that can become a basis of our programming.
Improved professional standards: We as Egyptian media professionals must adopt a code of conduct in the content we develop that would exorcize the poisons of the “Ahmed Sa’id school” of incitement and conspiracy mongering from our midst. All employers must commit to hold their broadcasters accountable to a new melodic “code” that young recruits to our companies hear all around them as they come of age in our employment. There must also be accountability measures — for more veteran employees who grew up under the shadow of Ahmed Sa’id, and for younger workers whom they have mentored. For both young and old the government’s broadcast regulatory bodies should make clear that the mandate for reform does not stop at the head of the company.
Desegregate the infosphere: Our commitment to a “peace between peoples” means modelling it on screen. Guests of every nationality in our region— including Israelis—should participate in our political programming. It is a virtue of our profession to be able to expose audiences to the range of voices that matter in our region. Merely allowing Israelis and Jews to speak for themselves would work as a salubrious corrective to their demonization.
Better foundational content, improved professional standards, and the desegregation of the infosphere are specific steps we can take, together, to magnify the good news at our doorstep and shrink what remains of the self-defeating illusions that have harmed us for so long. We can do this. We must do this, together.