Abstract
Based on Daniel Bar-Tal’s theoretical contribution, this chapter explores Egyptian and Israeli perceptions of the Other during the stormy years of 1952–1970, when Egypt was under the rule of its charismatic leader, Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser. The main thesis is that both countries developed a diabolical image of each other, which hampered the chances of conducting a serious peaceful dialogue. These mutual negative images trickled top down to society and became an integral part of each nation’s collective memory. Interestingly, however, these negative images of the Other eventually did not prevent the conclusion of a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, in March 1979, between Anwar al-Sadat, the Egyptian President, and Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
It is interesting to note that one of my Ph.D. students, Nimrod Goren, whose dissertation was jointly supervised with Daniel Bar-Tal, founded later a think tank called Mitvim—The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies—one of the major tasks of which is to deal with Israel’s place in the Middle East.
- 2.
Many years later, Daniel Bar-Tal and Sami Adwan collaborated in an international research team (in which this author was involved as well) in a project initiated and sponsored by the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land, called “Victims of Our Own Narrative: Portrayal of the ‘Other’ in Israeli and Palestinian Schools Books.” http://d7hj1xx5r7f3h.cloudfront.net/Israeli-Palestinian_School_Book_Study_Report-English.pdf.
- 3.
References
Aburish, S. K. (2004). Nasser: The last Arab. New York, NY: Thomas Dunne Books.
Bar-Tal, D. (1998). The rocky road toward peace: Beliefs on conflict in Israeli textbooks. Journal of Peace Research, 35, 723–742.
Bar-Tal, D. (2001). Why does fear override hope in societies engulfed by intractable conflict as it does in the Israeli society? Political Psychology, 22, 601–627.
Bar-Tal, D. (2013). Intractable conflicts: Socio-psychological foundations and dynamics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bar-Tal, D., & Bennink, G. H. (2004). The nature of reconciliation as an outcome and as a process. In Y. Bar-Siman-Tov (Ed.), From conflict resolution to reconciliation (pp. 11–38). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bar-Tal, D., & Hammack, P. L. (2012). Conflict, delegitimization, and violence. In L. R. Tropp (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of intergroup conflict (pp. 29–52). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Bar-Tal, D., & Teichman, Y. (2005). Stereotypes and prejudice in conflict: representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bar-Zohar, M. (1965). The hunt of the German scientists. Jerusalem: Shoken (in Hebrew).
Beinin, J. (1998). The dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, politics, and the formation of modern diaspora. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Doran, M. (1999). Pan-Arabism before Nasser: Egyptian power politics and the Palestine question. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
George, L. A. (1980). Presidential decisionmaking in foreign policy: The effective use of information and advice. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Gershoni, I., & Jankowski, J. P. (1995). Redefining the Egyptian nation, 1930-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gordon, J. (2006). Nasser: Hero of the Arab nation. Oxford: Oneworld.
Harkabi, Y. (1967). The indoctrination against Israel in UAR armed forces. Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense (in Hebrew).
Harkabi, Y. (1976). Arab attitudes to Israel. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House.
Heikal, H. M. (1986). Cutting the lion’s tail: Suez through Egyptian eyes. London: Andre Deutsch.
Isaacs, R. H. (1975). Some concluding remarks: The turning mirrors. In A. Iriye (Ed.), Mutual images: Essays in American-Japanese relations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
James, M. L. (2006). Nasser at war: Arab images of the enemy. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Khalidi, W. (1973). Nasser’s memoirs of the first Palestine war. Journal of Palestine Studies, 2, 3–32.
Klein, M. (1997). Ikhtarna Laka (We have selected for you): A critique of Egypt’s revolutionary culture. Orient, 38, 677–691.
Laqueur, W. (1969). The road to war: The origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Laskier, M. M. (1992). The Jews of Egypt 1920-1970: In the midst of Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the Middle East conflict. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Lazarus-Yaffe, H. (1999). The transplantation of Islamic studies from Europe to the Yishuv and Israel. In M. Kramer (Ed.), The Jewish discovery of Islam: Studies in honor of Bernard Lewis (pp. 250–253). Tel Aviv: The Moshe Dayan Center for African and Middle East Studies.
Lewis, B. (1986). Semites and Anti-Semites: An inquiry into conflict and prejudice. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Mayer, T. (1987). The image of the Egyptian Jewry in recent Egyptian studies. In S. Shamir (Ed.), The Jews of Egypt: A Mediterranean society in modern times. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Milson, M. (1997). The beginnings of Arabic and Islamic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In S. Katz & M. Heyd (Eds.), The history of the Hebrew University: Origins and beginnings. Jerusalem: Magness Press (in Hebrew).
Mohi El Din, K. (1995). Memories of a Revolution: Egypt 1952. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.
Nasser, G. A. (1955). Egypt’s liberation: The philosophy of the revolution. Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press.
Podeh, E. (1997). Rethinking Israel in the Middle East. Israel Affairs, 3, 280–295.
Podeh, E. (2002). The Arab-Israeli conflict in Israeli history textbooks, 1948-2000. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey (Greenwood).
Podeh, E. (2004). Demonizing the other: Israeli perceptions of Nasser and Nasserism. In E. Podeh & O. Winckler (Eds.), Rethinking Nasserism: Revolution and historical memory in modern Egypt (pp. 72–99). Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Podeh, E. (2006). Israel in the Middle East or Israel and the Middle East: A reappraisal. In E. Podeh & A. Kaufman (Eds.), Arab-Jewish relations: From conflict to resolution? Essays in honor of Professor Moshe Ma’oz. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
Podeh, E. (2007). Normal relations without normalization: The evolution of Egyptian-Israeli relations, 1979-2006—The politics of Cold War. In E. G. Corr, J. Ginat, & S. M. Gabbay (Eds.), The search for Israeli-Arab peace: Learning from the past and building trust. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
Podeh, E. (2015). Chances for peace: Plausible missed opportunities in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Austin, TX: University Press of Texas.
Podeh, E. (forthcoming). A distorted other: The Jews, Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict in Egyptian school textbooks. In E. Podeh, & S. Alayan (Eds.), The view of the other in school textbooks in the Middle East. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Ram, H. (2009). Iranophobia: The logic of an Israeli obsession. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Rejwan, N. (1974). Nasserist ideology: Its exponents and critics. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
Sela, A. (1998). The decline of the Arab-Israeli conflict: Middle East politics and the quest for regional order. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Shafik, V. (2007). Popular Egyptian cinema: Gender, class and nation. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.
Shalom, Z. (1995). David Ben-Gurion, the state of Israel and the Arab World, 1949-1956. Sde Boker: The Center for Ben-Gurion Heritage (in Hebrew).
Sheffer, G. (1996). Moshe Sharett: Biography of a political moderate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shemesh, M. (1996). The Palestinian entity 1959-1974: Arab politics and the PLO (2nd revised.) London: Frank Cass.
Somekh, S. (1996). The image of Jews in modern Arabic literature. In H. Lazarus-Yafeh (Ed.), Muslim authors on Jews and Judaism: The Jews among their Muslim neighbors. Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History (Hebrew).
Stein, E. (2012). Representing Israel in modern Egypt. London: I. B. Tauris.
Telhami, G. H. (1992). Palestine and the Egyptian national identity. New York, NY: Praeger.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Podeh, E. (2016). “Seeing Through a Glass Darkly”: Israeli and Egyptian Images of the Other During the Nasserite Period (1952–1970). In: Sharvit, K., Halperin, E. (eds) A Social Psychology Perspective on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Peace Psychology Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24841-7_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24841-7_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-24839-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-24841-7
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)