I was born in Beirut but New
York is my home by choice. For 25 years, as a reporter and student of
American-Arab relations, I've played the role of cultural interpreter,
attempting to explain each side to the other. There has always been a
profound disconnect, a deep mutual suspicion and lack of trust. Now the
rift is almost incalculably large. Reason, moderation and sobriety are
never more needed than in crisis. Yet seldom have such qualities been so
absent, nowhere more so than in the media. Following the news in both my
worlds since Sept. 11, I find troubling common denominators- -a tenor of
coverage that seems destructive in intent as well as effect, coupled
with a partisanship that is as irresponsible as it is harmful.
Whether it's the sound-bite quality of American television or the
"pontificator monologues" of Arab commentators, the result is similar:
the erosion of the media's role in learning and, then, educating. Its
place has been usurped by a collective "us" versus "them." Blame for
that is evenly shared. In some Arab media, venom has poured forth,
alternately defensive and aggressive. A very few gloated at what
happened to America, considering it a natural consequence of arrogant
and cocky behavior. But even those who utterly condemned the terrorist
attacks failed to take the debate over American policies in the Middle
East to a new threshold.
American coverage has been only superficially moderate, even
after the first bellicose few days when journalists hastened to teach
Americans all about countries, peoples and Islamic groups that they
hitherto knew little or nothing about. I use the word "superficial"
deliberately, because to me the lessons learned strike me as having less
to do with real understanding than the (I hope unconscious) agenda of
"know thine enemy."
How disheartening that is. Confronted daily with the opposite
mind-sets of opposing camps, I try to reconcile, defuse, explain. Maybe
living in New York, this truly magnificent, multiethnic, multilingual,
international city, has made me an idealist. Faced with "them" and "us,"
I ask, "Where's the 'we'?"
It's as if I live two lives, torn between them. But I am a
realist, too--enough to be impressed by the taxi driver who stared
intimidation down by hanging from his front mirror Surat Assafar (Prayer
for Travel) from the Holy Quran with the American flag next to it. I am
aware of the magnitude of what has happened when my 11-year-old daughter
prays, "God, please capture them and bring them to justice so that we
can have a normal life again." And I am concerned when an Egyptian
vendor shakes with fright as I greet him in Arabic, for fear of being
"discovered" an Arab. "Be careful," says my mother, who deep down wishes
I would not write or say a word, aware of the long hand of extremism. So
I find myself careful not to carry an Arabic newspaper openly when
walking the street.
Worried about ethnic profiling, I decide not to fly up to Harvard
University to teach a seminar in interethnic relations. Fearfulness has
never described me. Over the years I have received letter bombs and been
put on military trial. The bomb was addressed to my office, not to me,
but the trial, in Lebanon, was to silence me and deny my right to
practice my profession freely.
Throughout much of the Arab world, either the security apparatus
or extreme fundamentalists rule. The public is lame, lacking the civil
institutions or voice necessary to make a difference. But this majority,
like the American majority, which in the past has not cared about
foreign policy, must be heard and engaged.
To my American friends, in their confusion, I say that most Arabs
do not hate them. They do, however, have legitimate issues with American
policies--namely the unqualified support of Israel, even in the face of
the terror it inflicts on Palestinians, from killings and the
destruction of homes to the collective punishment of isolation and
economic strangulation. Is that right?
To my Arab friends, in their anger, I say Americans do not know
you. They know only the extreme fundamentalists in our midst and mean
the rest of us no harm or disrespect. Americans may act in the world, I
explain, but they are not worldly. As for U.S. policymakers, they take
Arabs for granted or channel support to some governments that are
distrusted and despised by their peoples. This is not the arrogance of
might so much as shortsightedness and ignorance. We are both so much
alike, in the end, living each in our worlds, disconnected, talking past
one another.
Lost in our own reflections, neither of us sees the other, or
(too often) ourselves.
Raghida Dergham is Senior Diplomatic
Correspondent for the London-based Arabic daily Al Hayat
