A Clash of Civilizations
By Michael Kimmelman
In a dingy storefront on a noisy block in the middle of Gaza City, metal shelves bulge with dusty audiotapes extolling Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad. Alongside them, a pouty Jennifer Lopez beckons from the cover of a CD.
DVDs are also on display, of movies not yet officially released, like “Wanted,”"Hancock” and “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” the Adam Sandler comedy about a Mossad agent-turned-hairdresser in a New York City salon run by a Palestinian woman.
Amer Kihail, 32, a slender man with an elastic, hangdog face, runs the store, called New Sound. Do Gazans living under Hamas buy much Western music or many Western movies? Kihail looked baffled, and maybe even a little annoyed, by the question.
“Of course,” he said.
Ruled by Hamas, penned in by Israel, grappling with daily shortages of food and supplies, Gazans need an escape. Culture turns out to be not just an afterthought but, many say, essential to surviving here.
Especially for young Gazans, what’s on satellite television and the Internet, on tapes and compact discs, is a window to the world beyond the armored checkpoints, and a link to Arab society elsewhere and, crucially, to the West.
And in what is clearly an emerging struggle within Hamas between political pragmatists, trying to consolidate their new authority, and extremists who have begun pressing a more fundamentalist agenda, culture is a central battleground for control of Gaza. A release from confinement and hardship, even mundane television becomes freighted in this context.
As much as the Pakistan-Afghan frontier, this is a front line in the so-called global war on terror, in which anti-Western strains of Islam rub up against the social and cultural proclivities of many, perhaps most, Muslims. How the West fares, improbable as it might seem, may depend as much on whether people in this forsaken strip of land and elsewhere in this part of the world are watching “Zohan” and Dr. Phil as on skirmishes in the mountains south of Kabul. What’s happening in a humble Gazan music store, it turns out, has repercussions across the region and beyond.
Like the West Bank, Gaza occupies a special place in the Middle East: Gazans may loathe Israel but have worked there or spent years in Israeli prisons, and while they haven’t taken up Jewish culture, they’ve experienced Western life as many other Arabs have not. This has encouraged a sensibility that, until lately anyway, had a moderating effect on both religion and society.
As they do throughout much of the Arab world these days, the streets here clear each night when “Noor” comes on the television. Centered around the title character and her rich Muslim family enduring the usual soap opera imbroglios, the Turkish show has become so wildly popular that imams in Saudi Arabia and Gaza have lately issued fatwas against anyone who watches it. Nobody pays much attention.
Even Hamas tunes in. Imad Alifranji is helping to start up Al Quds, a new Islamic television station, Gaza’s second after Al Aqsa, the Hamas station, which recently devoted three full days of programming to stories about promising Gazan high school students. Alifranji is wrestling with what might attract just a few more viewers.
“There’s so much pressure here to find jobs, because of the Israeli siege, because of internal fighting, and with no places for young people to go out, that Gazans take comfort in a Turkish soap opera,” Alifranji said with a shrug.
“It is true, Hamas is upset with some scenes in ‘Noor,’ which it fears provide a bad example for Palestinian families, scenes of sex before marriage. My 15-year-old daughter is obsessed with ‘Noor.’ My son, Mosab, who’s 18, tries to stop her from watching. He disapproves.”
As if on cue, Mosab, who looked 12, walked into Alifranji’s office.
The only time he visited a Gazan cafe, Mosab said, he left because “Noor” was on the television. He used to listen to Arab pop stars like Elissa and Tamer Hosni but now finds “they have no respect for religion.” He prefers Jackie Chan movies and rap.
‘”Noor,’” he said, “doesn’t know the difference between what should be taboo and what is acceptable.”
Suddenly, Mosab’s cellphone rang. He blushed.
The ringtone was the theme from “Noor.”
Gaza has not had a movie house since the last one burned two decades ago during the first intifada. The Palestinian territories are bitterly split, with the more moderate Fatah ruling the West Bank, and Gaza under the control of Hamas, which won the Palestinian popular election two years ago and fought back an attempted coup by Fatah last year. Now Gaza has become isolated. The French Cultural Center is virtually the only institution that organizes the occasional art exhibition or music recital.
But that doesn’t mean Gazans don’t consume and make culture themselves.
At a recording studio called Mashareq, Rima Morgan, a 28-year- old business student-turned-singer in a white head scarf and black leotard, was recording a jingle for a West Bank radio station. “My family, which is traditional, didn’t want me to sing, because it meant late nights, at parties, with men and women together,” she said. “But for me singing is the only way to keep going.”
She said she listened to Indian music, to Celine Dion and Julio Iglesias, and to Arab pop stars like Elissa.
On television, she watches “Friends.”
And “Noor,” of course.
“We can’t travel, so it’s our exposure to another Islamic society,” she said.
Ramy Okasha, a fellow singer, who was also there, shook his head.
“The man is not a man,” he complained about Noor’s husband, Mohannad, the soap opera’s blue-eyed answer to Fabio. His face, like that of Noor’s, hangs on the bedroom walls of countless Gazan teenage girls. “She’s too stubborn,” Okasha grumbled.
What does he watch instead?
‘”The Bold and the Beautiful,’” he answered.
Hamas, too, produces its own version of culture.
The cartoonist Omayya Joha’s caricatures appear in many Arab magazines and newspapers. She’s the widow of a Hamas fighter killed by Israelis. She married another fighter after he died. “I have a quill in one hand and a gun in the other,” she likes to say.
At a Hamas office not long ago, sitting reservedly in hijab and black gloves before a conference table and tray of candy and fruit juice, she said coolly: “Israel thinks of me as a radical anti- Semite, but I’m not. I simply do not think that we can ever have peace. No way. Never.”
She studies Western cartoons. “The exposure is very important,” she explained, brightening at the prospect of talking shop, not politics. Lately, the Fatah-linked newspaper in the West Bank rejected some of her work, and that saddened her. “You start to think about self-censorship,” she frowned, “anticipating what Fatah will not like.”
This is exactly what many Gazans say Hamas has lately caused them to do.
She stiffened at that remark. “There is a price to pay for your affiliations,” she said.
Eyad Sarraj shook his head when this was repeated to him.
“Hamas has not yet officially imposed its cultural program, but it’s in place,” he said. He is a Gazan psychiatrist. “After the election last year, we were assured Hamas would not infringe on our personal freedom, but now they are trying hard to prove us wrong. They are coming into our homes.”
He was alluding to an incident last month in which hooded Hamas police officers broke into the rooftop apartment of a businessman and his wife, who were quietly drinking with guests. The police officers beat up the men and confiscated the liquor.
Ayman Taha, a Hamas leader, claimed that was a mistake. “Those were wrongdoings by some individuals in Hamas who don’t reflect the movement’s position,” he said.
Stone-faced, built like a weightlifter, he was sitting on a patio overlooking the sea. Below, teenage boys played paddle ball in the surf and women in head scarves, and also some without, sat under makeshift tents. Rifles across their laps, black-clad police officers, who are everywhere in Gaza, perched on an embankment beside the patio, watching.
“Hamas has not implemented any restrictions regarding cultural life,” Taha said. Aside from slowing Internet access, ostensibly to deter Gazans from looking at pornography, that’s technically true. But there is also no law here against alcohol, and you won’t find a bar in Gaza.
“If some people are restricting their own freedoms as a reaction, out of fear, that is their decision,” he went on in a deadpan voice.
“Do you hear that music?” A restaurant was piping Steely Dan across the patio. “Do I use my power to stop this? No. People are entitled to their behavior – so long as they do not harm this culture.”
Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.
(c) 2008 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.