The fractured globe and the ‘unhappy relationship’ between the North and South
31 Oct 07
Leading Egyptian journalist Mohamed Hasanayn Heikal was at St Anne’s College on 29 October to give the first memorial lecture of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Heikal, a respected commentator on Middle East affairs for more than 50 years, focused on the ‘unhappy relationship’ between the North and South today.
He said that although geographically we inhabit the same fractured globe, the wider the gap, the greater the dangers posed. He added that when channels of transmission between north and south become blocked, ‘the written message becomes a landmine and the picture becomes a bomb’. He issued an ominous warning: ‘If we do not build bridges our worlds will collide, setting off a series of explosions that could prove cataclysmic.’
His argument ran that those in the North took decisions about the South with a ‘callous disregard of their impact’, but also at times ‘with a relish for the violence they unleash with shattering effect’. He said that against this backdrop, the South has come to feel that calls for dialogue are hollow and that the North is barely interested, if at all, in the South’s participation.
Heikal referred to 9/11 as ‘the cynical exploitation of a human tragedy’, since when, ‘with the sleight of hand of a stage magician, turning catastrophe into a protracted optical illusion Muslims, Arab and non-Arab, were lumped together as fanatical terrorists’. The story of terrorism, he said, has been rewritten with the North depicted as innocent, the Far East as too far away to be involved and Islam synonymous with suicide bombing and murder.
But he believes that the role of the media remains valuable, as in the face of Israeli pressure Northerners have learned ‘some of the truth regarding events in Palestine and the cause of a people uprooted from their land and corralled into desolate camps and ghettos’.
Heikal told his audience: ‘In spite of the influence of the Neo-conservatives, and what we might call “Neo-Orientalists”, the truth about Iraq has been revealed: beginning from the unprovoked invasion of an Arab country on the bases of false pretexts; proceeding through its destruction through an arrogant display of might and appalling display of ignorance.
’Nevertheless, he said, it is thanks to the vigilance of journalists in the North that we learned about the sadistic practices conducted in a whole string of fortresses, from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, from Fallujah and Basra to Somalia.Heikal sees three sources of threat to the South: its strategic position, the crucial importance of oil and the illusion of Israel's security. The failed legitimacy of the Arab state and the pressures of development have interacted with these external threats to create great breaches which have attracted dangerous foreign intervention. He admitted that such intervention was often invited and exploited for the sake of domestic political manoeuvres. Heikal concluded by saying that he pinned his hopes on the North and South together constructing a bridge between different shores of a single human civilisation.‘Although some of my observations may appear pointed the last thing I intended was to come here and seek to apportion blame. I want only to share a particular vision of the human civilisation that nourishes us both, though our perspectives over that vast ocean, mine from the South, yours from the Northern shore, may seem to differ.’