The sad news was not just the loss of great figures of journalism, as Dina Ezzat read. Worse was loss of dignity Behind the non-ending stories on the spread of bird flu in Egypt and the panic caused thereby, there seemed to be a much more disturbing story that the press told this week. One of a nation (the Arab nation) where supposedly pride comes before all else -- but where pride seems now to be just going. The Arab world -- and Egypt is in the heart of it -- seems to be more occupied with its basic survival than with its right to live in liberty with dignity, something it fought so hard for. It is this diluted sense of dignity that could explain why small issues are making front page stories. This week for example, the very personal, and actually irrelevant, story of the divorce of the star couple of Egyptian cinema Nour El-Sherif and Poussi made a prominent presence on the front pages of some leading papers at a time when a most disturbing story of exclusion from the membership of the International Union of Chemistry was rendered to an inside story in only one or two papers. And while many contemplated the real reasons and exact date of the divorce, there was hardly any attention accorded to the fact that Egypt was kicked out of world chemistry after it failed, as Al-Masry Al-Yom reported on Saturday, for three consecutive years to pay its annual subscription of $3,000. The lessened sense of dignity could explain why the sports pages of leading national dailies and weeklies, including some issued by no other than the prestigious Al-Ahram Foundation, would find it right to print what would have been otherwise thought as unbecoming pictures of members of the football team receiving plump envelopes of cash from Arab businessmen following Egypt's winning of the African Nations Cup. This could also be the reason why some government officials found no shame in telling the Egyptian press on Tuesday that the government would allow the French carrier Clemenceau to pass through the Suez Canal once more on its way back to France where it would be dismantled after Indian environment activists refused categorically to allow the ship to be taken apart in their country for obvious environmental hazards. Egyptian officials, of course, made no reference to the fact that it was these environmental hazards that had originally prompted Green Peace activists to oppose the passing of Clemenceau through the Suez Canal on its way to India a few weeks ago. Nobody could explain why the government of India worries more about the environmental hazards of Clemenceau than the Egyptian government. And in one of the worst indicators of the diluted sense of dignity and pride that were offered in abundance by the Egyptian press this week, Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the liberal Wafd Party, dedicated large chunks of its front pages throughout the week to the newly released episode of horror from the Abu Ghraib torture camp that the American occupation forces in Iraq call a prison. Perhaps what was most humiliating were not the pictures of Iraqi men being tortured at the hands of American troops but the fact that the pictures prompted hardly any angry Arab reaction. And in a further demonstration of loss of dignity the news of threats and declared punishments directed by Israel and the US against the Palestinians for their election of Hamas were printed in the Egyptian press with hardly any reaction from the Arab world. Not a single Arab capital declared its determined willingness to reach out and help the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, the statement by the Arab League secretary-general suggesting that Arab nations should spare the Palestinian people the humiliation of begging the West for assistance was given very little attention by the press. This poor Arab show of pride came at a time when Al-Ahram 's Middle East affairs page reported on Tuesday that the Israeli ambassador to Turkey refused an invitation for talks by a senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official to discuss a Hamas visit to Turkey against which Israel strongly protested. It also came at a time when the culture weekly Al-Qahira reported the pressure being exercised by Israel on the American Motion Pictures Academy to prevent it from awarding a prize to Paradise Now a Palestinian film that reflects the human face of two Palestinian suicide bombers. Some Egyptian commentators had the courage to admit that unlike the Arab world, Israel is flexing its muscles right, left and centre. In "A foot in the mouth" in Al-Ahram on Tuesday, foreign affairs analyst Farahat Hossameddin bluntly stated that "Israel wants to put a foot in the mouth of anyone who would dare criticise its policies." Indeed, as Al-Ahram 's prominent commentator Fahmi Howeidi noted in the same issue, "Israel has become addicted to the policy of take and no give... it has succeeded, while the Arabs are in a deep coma, and in association with the Americans, to completely overlook international legitimacy... in fact the Arabs have become so weak to the extent that they have turned into a burden and not an asset to the Palestinian cause." It seems the exercise of pride has become so scarce that a success story was subject to humble attention. Only a few papers took note of the fact that the Egyptian diplomatic mission to Sweden succeeded in getting the Swedish government to prevent an online Swedish magazine from printing new cartoons slandering the Prophet Mohamed. And even fewer papers noted that Danish factories had offered to sell their products through other European countries without the Danish label on them to cut the huge economic losses they have sustained as a result of a Muslim and Arab boycott. But above all, and as Ahmed Abdel-Hafez rightly noted in the opinion page of the weekly Al-Arabi, the mouthpiece of the Nasserist Party, the insults directed at the prophet of Islam are only a side effect of the overall state of weakness and shame to which the Arab and Muslim worlds have surrendered to. Abdel-Hafez argued that Muslims and Arabs have been insulted over and over again. "And it's only when the nation comes to recognise this fact that it will regain its sense of pride." Against this backdrop was the passing away of Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, a true intellectual and a genuine hero of modesty and pride. The press also lost Hassan Fouad, a dedicated foreign policy analyst who dedicated a good part of close to half a century of journalism in spotlighting the weaknesses of the nation. It was indeed a sad week for the Egyptian press.
