The issue of normalization with Israel is back in the spotlight following two controversial incidents last week. The first was the invitation of Egyptian journalists Magdi al-Gallad and Fahmi Heweidi to the meeting held by US President Barack Obama immediately after his speech at Cairo University. This meeting was attended by seven journalists representing the region's press. One of these journalists was Israeli. Therefore, the question now is: Is it permissible for an Egyptian journalist to attend a press conference attended by Israeli journalists? The second incident was the contacts made by the Egyptian National Center for Translation, which is supervised by Gaber Asfour, with a number of international publishers to translate a number of Israeli books into Arabic within the framework of the national project for translation. This incident raised this question: Is it permissible to translate Israeli books into Arabic? Is it permissible for the Arabs to read books written in Hebrew?
In the first case, the Egyptian journalists who were selected to represent the Egyptian press in the meeting with Obama had different reactions when they were surprised by the presence of an Israeli journalist. While al-Gallad did not feel embarrassment at attending the meeting and doing his professional duty, Heweidi felt embarrassment and withdrew from the meeting. In addition, there were different reactions to the principle of attending Obama's speech at Cairo University at the presence of the Israeli ambassador and a number of Israeli journalists. Hewidi attended the speech while MPs like Hamdeen Sabahi and Mustafa Bakri, who reject normalization, boycotted the meeting because they saw it as a kind of normalization.
I think there is no contradiction between these three incidents, which reflect different views. Al-Gallad has abided by the decision taken by the Syndicate of Journalists' general assembly, which prohibits any union or professional or personal normalization with the Israelis before the achievement of just and comprehensive peace and the establishment of a Palestinian state. Therefore, he attended the meeting because it had nothing to do with the union activity. Moreover, the meeting was not organized by an Israeli, the speech was not delivered by an Israeli, and the meeting was not held in Israel. In addition, al-Gallad did not speak with the Israeli journalist. Nor did he make any personal normalization with him. The logic says that if the Arabs decided not to attend the press conferences attended by the Israelis, the Arab journalists would withdraw from all international arenas and all press conferences held by the policy-makers in the world, such as Sarkozy, Gordon Brown, Dmitry Medvedev, and Ban Ki-moon.
The Syndicate of Journalists' decision is a "minimal" that should be abided by all journalists. However, it does not deny the journalists' right to do more, as was the case with Heweidi, Sabahi and Bakri. Journalists do not have the right to blame anyone for abiding by the syndicate's minimal decisions, because this would be a kind of exaggeration raising suspicion over other targets that have nothing to do with the issue of normalization itself.
On the other hand, the Arab libraries are packed with books that have been translated from Hebrew, either before or after the establishment of the Israeli State and at all times, including the ages of the national tide, which were known of their radical hostility to Israel and their commitment to the Arab League's decisions in 1950 on boycotting Israel. Moreover, the Ministry of Culture, which translated Hebrew books titled "Know your enemy" in the era of Dr. Hatem Abdel Kader in the sixties, has recently translated a number of Israel books. The General Egyptian Book Organization translated the autobiography of the former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the seventies. In 1999, the General Authority of Culture Palaces translated a Hebrew book entitled "Yellow Time". In 2001, the National Project for Translation itself published a book titled "The Arabs in the Israeli Literature".
However, this trend came to a halt after signing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and a convention for the protection of intellectual property, which forced the publishing houses to get permission from the original publisher prior to the translation of any book.
The translation department does not want to deal with the Israeli publishers, so it started to negotiate with the world publishers, including British and French publishers, who got the right of translating the Israeli books into foreign languages. The same thing applies to the Israeli publishers themselves when they want to translate the Egyptian literature into Hebrew. They bought the rights to translate Naguib Mahfouz's novels from the American University in Cairo and not from the Egyptian publisher!
The question now is: When will those who reject normalization close up their ranks and establish a national popular authority with authorized representatives of trade unions, political parties and active associations in this area? This authority should coordinate between different positions and activities, re-define the term of normalization and expand the anti-normalization front, especially as all evidence confirm that the region will face a new wave of normalization attacks during the coming period.
