Imprimir

An Egyptian professor is sentenced to seven years in prison.

Three recent instances of human-rights abuses in countries neighboring Israel have shed new light on how adrift the long-held Western policy of appeasement to dictatorships has been.

The first case involved an American-Egyptian scholar sentenced by a State Security Court in Egypt. Saad el-Din Ibrahim – a human-rights activist, professor at the American University in Cairo and head of the Cairo-based Khaldoun Center for Social Research — produced a documentary film exposing fraud in past Egyptian elections.

Considering that Hosni Mubarak regularly gets 99 percent of the vote, one can assume that the film was not needed at all to prove what common sense already can see. But this scholar’s crusade for truth should nonetheless be applauded — especially for taking place in a country were such initiatives are virtually nonexistent.

And to make sure that such initiatives won’t recur, Mubarak’s regime intervened with full force. The professor and 27 of his students and assistants were charged with disseminating false information harmful to Egypt. They also were charged with accepting foreign donations without official permission (the money came from the European Union).

The professor was sentenced to seven years in prison — with forced labor — whereas his assistants received jail terms ranging from one to three years.

The second case involved a Lebanese-American journalist sentenced in absentia by a Military Court in Lebanon. Raghida Dergham, a reporter for Al-Hayat and a frequent political commentator on Mideast issues, was accused of «dealing with the enemy» for daring to take part in a debate last May at a Washington-based think tank along with an Israeli — as well as with two other analysts, one American, the other British.

The fact that she was regarded a traitor, in spite of being an ardent critic of Israel who minces no words of public condemnation when it comes to Israeli policies, only highlights the level that political temperature and official radicalism have reached in Lebanon.

In the third case, an Arab-Israeli journalist and poet was kidnapped and tortured — no trial on this occasion — by the Palestinian Authority. Youssef Samir, a veteran staffer of Israel’s Radio Arabic Service and noted advocate of Palestinian nationalism, made a routine visit to Bethlehem with his wife in April, only to be ordered by the Palestinian police to leave the city at once.

He left, insulted, but decided to come back to show his many works to the Palestinian officials to prove his loyalty to the Palestinian people. He was arrested on the spot and went missing. After two months at the mercy of his captors, Samir escaped, running away barefoot with his hands tied behind his back. He reached a friend’s house, and was soon taken to an Israeli checkpoint.

«When I saw the Israeli soldiers, I nearly fainted from happiness. I fell on the floor and kissed the earth before their feet,» he recounted. «I saw a country that cared about its citizens, something that would not happen to such an extent even in Western cultures like the United States. . . .

«A lot has changed in my outlook.»

Whether his statement was exaggerated due to the stress and trauma of the moment is beyond the point. What is significant is how just a taste of life under the PA made a zealous Palestinian nationalist more appreciative of the freedom, individual rights and civil liberties he can enjoy at his own country.

This episode should also invite honest reflection on the part of those tireless apologists of Arab totalitarianism who wouldn’t survive a week under any Arab regime, and yet enthusiastically defend the many despots of the Middle East.

The Western nations, with the European Union and the United States at the vanguard of the initiative, have been investing considerable amounts of political and financial capital in the Arab world in order to promote a more-benign foreign policy there.

But the promotion of democratic government, freedom of the press, respect for individual liberties and advocacy for human rights has been, unfortunately, conspicuously absent in the West’s attitude toward the Middle East.

Philosopher Immanuel Kant was right when he wrote in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace that democracy is a necessary requirement for peace to prevail among the nations. The three instances of official harassment cited aptly — and all too dramatically — show just how much work must be done in the Middle East.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.