Al-Ahram Weekly has an article focusing on Egyptian-UNESCO relations, and especially the campaign of the Egyptian candidate for Director General of UNESCO, Farouk Hosny. His campaign has been controversial on a number of bases, as I have documented in the UNESCO's Friends group on LinkedIn.

Unfortunately, the debate to date has not been on which of the nine candidates for the job, but rather whether Hosny's record of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli comments should disqualify him for the job. UNESCO could and should be an important international force for peace, education, science, culture and development of a knowledge society. Unfortunately, it has failed to achieve as much as one would desire, in part because the United States and the United Kingdom deserted the organization for many years, and in part because power politics has interfered with the organization's efficiency and effectiveness.

Mona Anis states in the article:

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.

Certainly there is much to criticize in the conduct of the Israeli government with respect to the Palestinians. However, many Isrealis also oppose those policies, and many more I would guess either don't fully understand their government's policies or don't think that they can influence those policies, or have other fish to fry that they feel are more urgent. Painting all Israelis with the same brush is prejudice.

I wonder how Ms. Anis would feel about people who would not have friendly relations with her because she is Egyptian, given that the Egyptian government does not have the best reputation in the world either. Would she protest?

I want to deal with another aspect of her article. She wrote:

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.

Why should that not be the main issue now? Egypt had a treaty obligation to promote cultural exchanges. I was involved for years in Isreali-Egyptian scientific exchanges, and I know from personal experience that such exchanges have been possible, and in fact benefitted both countries. Why should Hosny, who served as Minister of Culture for two decades not be held responsible for the failure of his country to live up to its treaty obligation to hold cultural exchanges. And if we do hold him responsible for that failure, do we want him in charge of the international organization responsible for promoting cultural understanding among nations?