Now that it has begun in earnest, the electoral race for UNESCO director-general, a post for which Egypt's minister of culture Farouk Hosni is a strong candidate, has polarised parties on both the domestic and international scenes: Mona Anis sifts through the debate regarding "cultural normalization" between Egypt and Israel, which has had a huge bearing on Hosni's position, while Al-Ahram Weekly's Paris correspondent gauges the mood in UNESCO's host country regarding his nomination At the risk of sounding banal, I would like to begin this piece with a quote which I stumbled on last month while reading Barack Obama's 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father : "There's a struggle going on... it's a struggle that touches each and every one of us. Whether we know it or not. Whether we want it or not. A struggle that demands we choose sides. Not between black and white. Not between rich and poor. No -- It's a harder choice than that. It's a choice between dignity and servitude. Between fairness and injustice. Between commitment and indifference. A choice between right and wrong." It comes from a speech Obama gave in the mid-1980s, while active in the solidarity campaign against apartheid in South Africa. Having myself oscillated for the past few months between excitement at Obama's election as US President, and frustration with his wavering political positions in general, and his pro-Israel statements in particular, I had decided to read Dreams from My Father as an antidote to his 4 June Cairo speech, which left me deeply frustrated. And I was rewarded in a number of ways. For one, I discovered that the US president believes -- or perhaps once believed -- that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that these two moral categories are inexorably linked to such concepts as dignity and servitude, justice and aggression. Being a firm believer in the efficacy of boycott as a civil weapon in the struggle against occupation in Palestine, I was happy to discover that Obama had at least once believed in boycott as a means of struggle against White South Africa. For I am always at pains trying to explain to Westerners how difficult it is for people like myself to have friendly relations with Israeli Jews as long as Israel continues to be the racist and militarily aggressive state it is, and they loyal to that state. Most arguments with Western friends and acquaintances regarding this topic almost always end with them accusing one of chauvinism, xenophobia or both. Perhaps now, I thought, finally, I can give the present president of the US as witness to the validity of my arguments in this context. Any Arab who lived long enough in the West -- or has been exposed to conversations such as this with Westerners -- knows all too well the argument his/her interlocutor will marshal in defence of Israel, beginning with the Holocaust, though hardly ending with the miracle of the Israelis who made the desert bloom. When one tries to argue the immorality of blaming the victim for not accepting more servitude, and for refusing to die without raising a voice, the conversation ends. How many times, especially with the occurrence of every new Israeli massacre of Arabs, have we -- especially those of us who are in intellectual contact with the West -- tried in vain to advance the famous Edward Said line of argument that today's Palestinians are yesterday's Jews, and that Palestine is a moral issue? How many times have we pleaded "Hath not an Arab Eyes," only to be asked to put ourselves in the shoes of the "insecure" Israelis whose appetite for Arab concessions to allay their fears is insatiable. Like Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady, who could not understand "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" many of our Western friends seem not to understand that without righting the wrongs that the Israelis have meted on the Arabs since the establishment of their state on Arab land, most Arabs -- and here I mean ordinary people, not rulers -- will not want to deal with anything Israeli. In that respect, the Arabs are no different from any other people -- including Jews -- when they refuse to forget the crimes committed against them before a just settlement to their ordeal is reached and a historic apology for the crimes perpetuated is tendered. While the Israelis have until very recently refused to allow Wagner's music to be played in Israel because Wagner, who died decades before the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, happened to be the Dictator's favourite composer, in Egypt, people were divided about an Israeli conductor --Daniel Barenboim -- conducting the Cairo Symphony Orchestra. However, the principal issue raised in this context was not so much Barenboim's nationality as the spectacle orchestrated by the cultural establishment to clear Farouk Hosni's name in preparation for the much-desired UNESCO elections. The fact that it was the same Barenboim who broke the boycott on Wagner inside Israel does not take away from the fact that cultural boycott has often proven to be an effective means of civil protest. Though the official term referring to all sorts of exchanges, including cultural exchange, between Israel and the Arab countries is "normalisation", many people -- the present writer included -- find the term both problematic and misleading, and would rather talk of boycott and collaboration instead. To take last April's concert as an example: there was nothing normal about Barenboim conducting in Cairo (whether in the positive or the negative sense of the word). Starting from the innovation of making Omar Sharif introduce the concert before it started, to Barenboim warmly shaking hands with each and every orchestra member after, while the audience applauded and whistled, the scene was extraordinaire. As the first cultural event to bring Egyptians and Israelis together publicly in Egypt, 30 years after the two countries signed the famous Peace Treaty in Washington, the event had to be a spectacle in every sense of the word, if only to launch a long over-due process. That is the process stipulated in the Washington Peace Treaty, which stated that both parties "agree on the desirability of cultural exchanges in all fields, and shall, as soon as possible [...] enter into negotiations with a view to concluding a cultural agreement for this purpose." While the cultural agreement was signed in Cairo on 8 May 1980, "cultural exchanges in all fields" proved to be a charade, since whichever item of this agreement has been put in effect -- almost certainly some items have been -- it happened without any publicity. Whether Farouk Hosni, the minister in charge of Egypt's official cultural policy for neigh over two decades, was to blame for this "ice cold" state of cultural affairs between the two countries -- "ice cold" is the expression Barenboim used in his opening speech at the Cairo concert -- is not the main issue now. Israel and its friends have decided to consider him the prime instigator against Arab-Israeli cultural cooperation and thus begun a ferocious campaign against him the moment he declared his intention to run for the post of UNESCO secretary-general, to be vacant next autumn. The Barenboim spectacle last April was meant to show Hosni's openness to fair-minded Israelis, and allay the fears of the international community that Hosni had no objection in principle against dealing with Israel. This did not, however, stop three prominent Jewish intellectuals from attacking Hosni in Le Monde, claiming that his election to the post would be "a shipwreck known in advance" (for details, see opposite article). Hosni responded in Le Monde, citing the example of inviting Barenboim as proof in his favour and apologising for any statement he uttered against "normalising" relations with Israel. There is no objection in principle to Hosni apologising for many of the crude and often reckless statements he makes, especially those concerning burning books, but the context of the apology and the way it was tendered indicated a bargain of sorts. Following a meeting on 11 May between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel decided to lift its opposition to Hosni getting the job. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted a classified cable sent by the Israeli foreign ministry to several Israel delegations that had been waging the campaign against Hosny. The cable read: "Following Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to Egypt, and at the request of President Mubarak and in line with understandings with Egypt, Israel has decided to lift its objections to the appointment of Farouk Hosny to the post of UNESCO secretary-general, changing our position to not-opposed." While the "not-opposed" category might mean that Israel will not officially block Hosni's candidature to the post, it does not necessarily mean that the campaign against him will stop. Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of the three signatories of Le Monde 's article, continued with the attack regardless. "That Mr Netanyahu, in the name of whatever obscure realpolitik calculation, is satisfied with this logic, that's his business. To me, this logic seems barely worthy of a vandal in the outskirts of Paris who, when he is questioned after tagging a synagogue or a Jewish community center, responds in the same way: 'You have to forgive me... It's not my fault... It's the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that incited me,'" Lévy said recently. Hosni responded by announcing that translations of books by David Grossman and Amos Oz into Arabic will be forthcoming. But haven't Arabic translations of these two authors, as well as many others, existed for years in the Arab world? Again, that is not the point. The point is, rather, the process whereby, Hosni -- like the PLO leader before him -- will continue responding to this campaign by handing over the last card in his possession. In December 1988, in a statement dictated word for word by the US State Department, Arafat reneged on all those principles constituting the backbone of the Palestinian National Charter. When, after reading the statement, he was asked at a press conference to declare his acceptance of Israel, to boot, he said: "What do you want? Do you want me to do a striptease? It would be unseemly." This week a senior Israeli commentator wrote in Haaretz : "Farouk Hosni now understands very well he will pay too high a price in public opinion for what is seen as reconciliation with Israeli literature. The national hero directly fighting the Zionists has turned into a traitor." A gross misappropriation of the way Hosni is perceived in his own country: Hosni was never a national hero; neither would any enthusiasm on his part for dealing with Israelis turn him into a traitor (whether sincerely intended or a tactical manoeuvre to clear his name). After all, he has been the longest serving minister in a government committed to "normalising" relations with Israelis. The more pertinent question here is: does Hosni have much of a chance to win now that he has paid in advance? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Egypt in UNESCO Visitors to UNESCO's main building in Paris recently have been confronted by a pair of large Egyptian deities guarding access to the UN organisation's conference rooms and introducing an exhibition of some 50 years of UNESCO-Egyptian cooperation. Even those who know little about UNESCO's work in its mandated fields of educational, scientific and cultural cooperation are likely to have heard of the international campaign mounted by the organisation in the 1960s to save the monuments of Nubia from inundation from the rising waters of the Nile as a result of the construction of the Aswan High Dam, one of its best-known and most successful campaigns. The UNESCO-Egyptian cooperation exhibition, which ended last Friday, included archival film of the campaign, documenting the patient dismantling and reconstruction of the monumental temples of Ramses II at Abu Simbel. However, many other more recent projects were also presented. These have taken place either under UNESCO's sponsorship, such as the Nubia Museum in Aswan, which, opening to the public in 1997, won the 2001 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, or with UNESCO's support and cooperation, such as the two large museum projects, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation and the Grand Egyptian Museum, the construction of which is currently underway in Cairo. All this adds up to an impressive historical panorama of cultural activities that have taken place in Egypt with UNESCO's support over the past 40 years, particularly those having to do with the conservation and preservation of cultural heritage. It cannot be any coincidence, either, that this exhibition, open to the general public but perhaps particularly directed at those using the UNESCO building, has come at the same time that the candidature of Farouk Hosni, presently the Egyptian minister of culture, has been officially announced for the next director-general of the organisation, elections for which are scheduled for October. While UNESCO's activities in Egypt are perhaps best known for the campaign to save the Nubian monuments in the 1960s and the construction and fitting-out of the Nubia Museum, as the exhibition reveals the organisation has played a role in many others, including the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation, designed by the Egyptian architect El-Ghazali Kesseiba in 1982 but only more recently commenced on a site in Cairo, and the Grand Egyptian Museum, announced in an international architectural exhibition in 2002 and now under construction on the Pyramids plateau in Giza. The idea in both cases has been to give Egypt the modern museums that it deserves and to take the pressure off the venerable, but too small, existing facility at the present Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square. The latter building, completed in 1900, has long been inadequate to the task of presenting its collections under optimal conditions to the great number of visitors that wish to see them, and the new museum at the Pyramids, the plans for which were included in the UNESCO exhibition together with a spectacular fly-through video of the proposed design, should make up for these problems. In addition to these historical projects, the exhibition also included details of the conservation work carried out over recent years on the built Islamic heritage in Cairo, particularly in Sharia al-Muiz li-Din Allah, which is illustrated in large-scale pictorial form. Finally, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, built according to a design by the Norwegian architects Snohetta and inaugurated in 2002, is also featured, this library, conference centre and exhibition centre, having in turn received the support of UNESCO. These projects draw attention to Egypt's impressive commitment particularly to cultural-heritage projects in recent years, as well as to the activities of the ministry of culture, notably in Islamic Cairo. Will they be enough, however, to sway the vote in Farouk Hosni's favour when elections for the new UNESCO director- general come up in the autumn? According to a list made public on June 1st, there are nine candidates for the post, including Hosni, with the Russian Federation putting forward a candidate (Alexander Yakovenko), along with candidates sponsored by Austria (Benita Ferrero-Waldner), Algeria (Mohammed Bedjaoui), and Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia (Ina Marciulionyte), among others. Hosni is sponsored by Egypt, Kuwait, Sudan and the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Following presentations by each of the candidates to the organisation's ruling body, its Executive Board, a vote will be taken among the 58 members of the Board and a candidate recommended to representatives of all the 193 countries that are members of UNESCO's General Conference. Candidates for the post of director-general had to announce themselves by the end of May, and Hosni's campaign has thus far achieved a clear momentum, perhaps even putting him in the lead. However, there have been dissenting voices, most clearly heard last month when an article appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde above the signatures of Bernard-Henri Lévy, Claude Lanzmann and Elie Wiesel, the first two among France's best-known intellectuals, inviting readers to take stock of "the shame of a shipwreck known in advance," which, according to the authors of the article, would take place were Hosni to be elected as UNESCO director-general. "Who declared in April 2001 that 'Israel has never contributed anything to civilisation at any time, since it has only ever taken over other people's property?'" asked the authors of the article. "Or, answering a deputy of the Egyptian parliament in 2008 alarmed at the fact that Israeli books might be included in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, said that 'we will burn such books. If any are found there, I'll burn them myself in front of you'?" The answer, it seems, was Farouk Hosni, something which, in the eyes of Lévy, Lanzmann and Wiesel, makes him unworthy of holding the post of director-general of UNESCO. "We call upon the international community to save itself from the shame that would come upon it by the appointment of Farouk Hosni as director general of UNESCO," they wrote. Hosni himself replied in a subsequent issue of the same newspaper. Pointing out that he had received the support of the Arab League, the African Union and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, he wrote that, "I would like solemnly to say that I regret the words I used. I could look for an excuse in the atmosphere of tension and polemic in which they were said, but I will not do so. No circumstances can be invoked. These words are the opposite of what I believe and what I am. They have allowed my detractors to associate my name with what to me is most odious: nothing is more foreign to me than racism, the negation of the other, or the willingness to attack Jewish culture or any other culture." Using his reply to present his platform for UNESCO, Hosni wrote that in his view the organisation should "become again a full actor on the international scene in its areas of competence -- education and training, the preservation of heritage and support for cultural creativity, scientific work and intellectual debate -- as well as in contemporary problems, such as the search for a new model of 'living together', responses to the challenge of climate change, new ecological ways of living, and new rules on bioethics." Hosni continued: "UNESCO is the place par excellence for dialogue between peoples, which allows political, religious, ethnic and linguistic differences to be overcome. At a time when it is necessary to fight against the forces of regression and of communities becoming closed in on themselves, forces that are everywhere at work, the choice of an Arab, a Muslim, and an Egyptian, beyond any focus on me as an individual, would be a major message of hope." If elected next October, Hosni will replace the current director-general of UNESCO, the Japanese diplomat Koichiro Matsuura, whose second four-year term is now ending.
