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co-writes song about peace with Israeli president Shimon Peres. 
Guess I won't be buying any of her albums like ever.
Home / News / World / Middle East In Egypt, artists pay a price for reaching out to Israelis
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Los Angeles Times / December 25, 2008
Email| Print| Single Page| Yahoo! Buzz| ShareThisText size – + CAIRO - It has been a tough peace for Ali Salem. His plays don't have a stage. Intellectuals shun him; the writers union refuses to pay his pension. He sits in a cafe window, typing on his laptop and defending his choice long ago to cross the border into Israel and make friends.
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Egypt and Israel made peace in 1979, but that treaty remains as irritating to Egyptian artists and intellectuals as a sliver of glass just beneath the skin. Most of them don't accept it, and those who do are often vilified, their voices muffled by condemnation.
"Producers are afraid to come near me," said Salem, who in 1994 drove his car across Israel and wrote what critics considered a sympathetic book about the journey. "I anticipated there would be a strong reaction, but I didn't expect it would be so mean."
Salem, a columnist for Al Hayat newspaper and a co-founder of the Cairo Peace Movement, added, "Peace is the right idea. But Egyptian intellectuals are afraid and can't get rid of their ancient fears. They still think Israel and the US will inflict something bad upon us."
There are degrees of resistance among intellectuals toward rapprochement with Israel. Many oppose improving relations until Palestinians have their own state; others support limited peace but are guarded when discussing the passions around the Arab-Israeli conflict.
And, occasionally, an artist unwittingly becomes the target of screeds and opinion page vitriol. Filmmaker Nadia Kamel's recent documentary about her mother's xxxish roots was attacked as a call to "normalize" relations with Israel. Opera singer Gaber Beltagui had his membership in the Egyptian musicians union suspended in 2007 when he sang at the 100th anniversary of a Cairo synagogue.
"How can he go sing at a synagogue while they [Israelis] are killing our sons?" Mounir Wasseemy, the head of the Musical Artists' Syndicate, said in statement denouncing Beltagui.
The Cairo synagogue is "officially recorded as an Egyptian monument," said Beltagui, who has filed suit against the union. "I did not expect this reaction. I did nothing wrong."
Similar furor has engulfed Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the grand sheik of Cairo's Al Azhar Mosque, the leading Sunni institution in the Islamic world. Writers and newspapers have called for the Tantawi's resignation after he was photographed shaking hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres at a recent international conference on religious understanding.
The sheik said he had not recognized Peres and has called his detractors "a group of lunatics."
Gamal Ghitani is one of Egypt's most popular novelists. He covered the 1973 Egyptian-Israeli war as a correspondent and is curious to visit the land of his enemy across the Sinai. That is not likely to happen soon; Ghitani's refusal to travel to Israel has not wavered in more than three decades. "Cultural exchange can't be fruitful unless Israel achieves peace on the ground," he said. "How can I be at peace with this peace if Israel relies on its military superiority, builds fences and settlements and keeps kicking Palestinians out?"
Salem, the playwright, was young when Cairo was ostracized by the Arab world after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David peace accords with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
His open support of that peace, and his befriending of xxxish intellectuals, have cost him. The Egyptian Writers' Union stopped paying his pension in 2001, and he hasn't had a play produced in his native country in years. So he has turned his newspaper column into a kind of one-man show. It's not the same as a production, but it allows him to vent. "Peace will not come to you; you have to make it, you have to sculpt it," he said.
Guess I won't be buying any of her albums like ever.
Home / News / World / Middle East In Egypt, artists pay a price for reaching out to Israelis
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Los Angeles Times / December 25, 2008
Email| Print| Single Page| Yahoo! Buzz| ShareThisText size – + CAIRO - It has been a tough peace for Ali Salem. His plays don't have a stage. Intellectuals shun him; the writers union refuses to pay his pension. He sits in a cafe window, typing on his laptop and defending his choice long ago to cross the border into Israel and make friends.
Discuss
COMMENTS (0)
Egypt and Israel made peace in 1979, but that treaty remains as irritating to Egyptian artists and intellectuals as a sliver of glass just beneath the skin. Most of them don't accept it, and those who do are often vilified, their voices muffled by condemnation.
"Producers are afraid to come near me," said Salem, who in 1994 drove his car across Israel and wrote what critics considered a sympathetic book about the journey. "I anticipated there would be a strong reaction, but I didn't expect it would be so mean."
Salem, a columnist for Al Hayat newspaper and a co-founder of the Cairo Peace Movement, added, "Peace is the right idea. But Egyptian intellectuals are afraid and can't get rid of their ancient fears. They still think Israel and the US will inflict something bad upon us."
There are degrees of resistance among intellectuals toward rapprochement with Israel. Many oppose improving relations until Palestinians have their own state; others support limited peace but are guarded when discussing the passions around the Arab-Israeli conflict.
And, occasionally, an artist unwittingly becomes the target of screeds and opinion page vitriol. Filmmaker Nadia Kamel's recent documentary about her mother's xxxish roots was attacked as a call to "normalize" relations with Israel. Opera singer Gaber Beltagui had his membership in the Egyptian musicians union suspended in 2007 when he sang at the 100th anniversary of a Cairo synagogue.
"How can he go sing at a synagogue while they [Israelis] are killing our sons?" Mounir Wasseemy, the head of the Musical Artists' Syndicate, said in statement denouncing Beltagui.
The Cairo synagogue is "officially recorded as an Egyptian monument," said Beltagui, who has filed suit against the union. "I did not expect this reaction. I did nothing wrong."
Similar furor has engulfed Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the grand sheik of Cairo's Al Azhar Mosque, the leading Sunni institution in the Islamic world. Writers and newspapers have called for the Tantawi's resignation after he was photographed shaking hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres at a recent international conference on religious understanding.
The sheik said he had not recognized Peres and has called his detractors "a group of lunatics."
Gamal Ghitani is one of Egypt's most popular novelists. He covered the 1973 Egyptian-Israeli war as a correspondent and is curious to visit the land of his enemy across the Sinai. That is not likely to happen soon; Ghitani's refusal to travel to Israel has not wavered in more than three decades. "Cultural exchange can't be fruitful unless Israel achieves peace on the ground," he said. "How can I be at peace with this peace if Israel relies on its military superiority, builds fences and settlements and keeps kicking Palestinians out?"
Salem, the playwright, was young when Cairo was ostracized by the Arab world after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David peace accords with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
His open support of that peace, and his befriending of xxxish intellectuals, have cost him. The Egyptian Writers' Union stopped paying his pension in 2001, and he hasn't had a play produced in his native country in years. So he has turned his newspaper column into a kind of one-man show. It's not the same as a production, but it allows him to vent. "Peace will not come to you; you have to make it, you have to sculpt it," he said.
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