Perspectives and insights from writers in the Arab media

Wednesday last week marked the 46 years since the Egypt–Israel peace treaty was signed in Washington, DC, between then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin and then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, making Egypt the first Arab country to officially recognize Israel. Despite the peace treaty holding – and that it also marked Egypt as the first Arab country to officially recognize Israel – it was unmentioned and most likely, intentionally ignored in the Egyptian press. Clearly, with the peace treaty remaining so unpopular with the Egyptian public, the local Egyptian media avoided it like the ‘plague’ – no inference to upcoming Passover!

Instead, what was reported relating to Egyptian-Israeli relations was that Israel’s newly appointed ambassador to Egypt, Ori Rotman, was disinvited from the accreditation ceremony last week, where he would have presented his credentials to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi.

Sisi received the credentials of 23 new ambassadors at the Heliopolis Palace in Cairo. Israel’s ambassador should have made it 24, and in an Al-Araby report, it was made clear that the “disinvite” was due to the “ongoing aggression in the Gaza Strip,” as well as Egypt holding Israel responsible “of breaching the agreement reached with Egyptian and Qatari mediators.” 

This should not have come as a surprise. As Yaakov Katz in an opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post explained, that Egypt’s “diplomatic freeze did not occur in a vacuum.” He drew attention to a recent study by the Glazer Foundation Information and Consulting Center at the Jewish People Policy Institute that reviewed thousands of opinion pieces published in two of Egypt’s most influential newspapers: Al-Ahram, the country’s most widely read paper, and Al-Gomhuria, a state-owned publication once edited by none other than Egypt’s late president and signatory of the Camp David peace agreement, Anwar Sadat.

“The findings are sobering,” writes Katz. “Of the articles that mentioned Israel, over 85% were negative, with many veering into outright antisemitism. These weren’t simply political critiques; some employed classic antisemitic tropes: claims about Jews loving money, being disloyal, or Judaism being a “fake” religion founded on myths.”

Up against Egypt’s media mindset, the focus on Israel is expected to be only in the negative.

It was illuminating to read how Arab media covered – if they did at all – the protests in Gaza against Hamas. Hundreds of Palestinians bravely took to the streets in northern Gaza in defiance of Hamas to demand an end to war and the immediate release of Israeli hostages – not as a concern for the hostages – but as a means to put an end to the cause of their misery as a consequence of the war. Noting little to no concern for Israelis by Gazan protesters other than their own suffering, Cookie Schwaeber-Issan asks in ‘Have Gazans finally seen the light? (JP March 18)  :

“What about the hostage families who have lost all that was dear to them? Add to that the parents, wives, siblings, and children of the dead Israeli soldiers whose young lives were extinguished in the service of their country. And what about Diaspora Jews who were harassed, threatened, and derided just for having been born into an ethnicity that, overnight, became synonymous with hated members of society?”

While it’s gratifying to see Gazans finally identifying the true villains, it would be encouraging to see that extend to the misery inflicted by these same “villains” on Israelis. It’s unlikely for the foreseeable future.

See below and article by London-based Palestinian political analyst Ahmed Najar who writes that although “Some Arab media… have downplayed the recent protests, calling them isolated incidents or ignoring them altogether,” nevertheless, fails to mentions once the Israeli hostages, the pain, misery inflicted on Israelis by a war started by Gazans. The focus of his narrative is: “The people of Gaza cannot take this genocide anymore.”

With such reportage and accusations in the Arab media, is it ever likely that there will be an honest reckoning, particularly in Palestinian society, of what took place on October 7 and who the real criminals are?

David E. Kaplan
Editor, Lay of the Land
30 March, 2025

PALISTINIANS ARE PLEADING FOR AN END TO THE GAZA WAR. NO ONE IS LISTENING
By Ahmed Najar

Published on 27 March 2025 in Middle East Eye, a news platform covering the Middle East and North Africa.

Protesters are calling on both Israel and Hamas to relieve their misery, while the media only amplifies whatever angle suits its narrative.

The people of Gaza are revolting against their killing and starvation. In the north, the streets are packed with desperate voices chanting: “We want to live! End the Israeli killing! We are peaceful people! Out, out, out! Hamas, out!” 

My social media has been flooded with videos of these demonstrations by people who have lost everything, who are starving, who just want the killing to end.

Western media, of course, have amplified this, reporting it as a major event. I just wish they had shown the same urgency when thousands of Palestinians were being slaughtered. 

Our deaths were barely a footnote. When Israeli bombs reduced homes to rubble, with entire families buried under the debris, there were no breaking news alerts, no in-depth analyses, no panel discussions dissecting the scale of Palestinian suffering. 

Our deaths came and went in a single line of text at the bottom of the screen – cold, distant and insignificant. 

Some Arab media, meanwhile, have downplayed the recent protests, calling them isolated incidents or ignoring them altogether.

But no one is asking why people are out on the streets. No one is acknowledging their desperation, their unbearable grief. These are not people playing politics; these are people who have lost their families, their homes and their futures. They are starving. They are broken. And they are willing to pay any price just to make it stop.

How much pain must a person endure before they stop fearing bullets in the hands of the powerful? How much hunger must a child feel before their parents are willing to stand in front of guns and demand that something – anything – change?

I have heard from people in Gaza who have lost their parents, children and siblings. Still, through their devastation, they say: “I accept it, just let the war end.”

When my nephew Fouad was killed, I called my mother. Through her pain, she simply said: “May God bless his soul. We accept what has been written for us. But let the killing stop. I hope we lose no more.”

There was a deep, quiet grief in those words – a grief that has learned not to scream, because screaming does nothing. A grief that is tired of waiting for the world to notice.

The people of Gaza cannot take this genocide anymore. They understand now, more than ever, what kind of world they live in. It is a world where they are just numbers; where their lives mean nothing. They know that Israel has been given free rein to kill as many of them as possible, and that they are trapped in a brutal game of regional and political calculations.

They know that their suffering is useful to some, inconvenient to others, and irrelevant to most.

They see Israel carrying out its greed-driven, genocidal agenda.

One protester told CNN: “Our message is to the Israeli army to stop the bloodshed and the war that has drained our energy and caused us to lose all our loved ones and friends.”

There is something deeply tragic in these words, in how Palestinians – my people – have been reduced to figures in a brutal equation. And yet, the world only listens when it suits them.

Suffering in silence

No one wants to hear what the people of Gaza actually want. The anti-Hamas voices in the West only amplify their suffering when it serves their agenda. They were silent when Gaza was screaming in agony, in mourning, in starvation. 

They want to use our voices when we chant against Hamas, but they mute us when we cry out for our murdered families. They never want to hear us demand an end to Israel’s slaughter.

On the other side, some voices dismiss this suffering. They act as though these protests are nothing; as if people risking their lives to demand an end to this nightmare are somehow irrelevant. Their voices, too, have only ever amplified what suits them.

And in the end, no one cares.

No one has pointed out that not all of Gaza is Hamas, that not all of Gaza is fighting. Israeli politicians once justified their mass killings by claiming otherwise. They have spent years conditioning the world to believe that Gaza is nothing but Hamas, that every Palestinian in Gaza is part of some vast, faceless enemy.

But if that were true, then why are these same civilians now in the streets, demanding peace? Why are they risking their lives to demand an end to this war?

And why is Israel still starving them? Why is Israel still bombing them?

If they are not Hamas, if they are civilians, if they are now standing in the open, asking for nothing but survival – why is the world still watching them die in silence?

The truth is in their slogan, in their plea: “We want to live.”

Ahmed Najar is a Palestinian political analyst and a playwright based in London.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).