A Hesitant Dialogue with ‘the Other’: The Interactions of Arab Intellectuals with the Israeli Culture

Abstract

The Arab-Israeli conflict has provided fertile ground for stereotypes, prejudices, and antagonistic dialogue between the two sides. This hostile atmosphere led to a lack of public and academic interest in Israeli culture on the part of Arab intellectuals until the late I96os. The military defeat in the 1967 war persuaded various elements in the Arab world, particularly Egyptian and Palestinian, to invest a good deal of effort into gaining knowledge of the Israeli 'Other'. Research and translation activity on the subject of Israeli culture has broadened and improved over the years, but it is trapped between two conflicting attitudes to this culture. Scholars and translators close to nationalistic, leftist, and fundamentalist circles adopted an extreme antagonistic attitude, which emphasized the view of 'the Other' as alien and threatening; this standpoint encouraged tendentious methods of research and translation which supported and strengthened it. As against this, other scholars and translators adopted a liberal and pragmatic attitude, which did not negate fruitful dialogue with 'the Other'. This attitude encouraged more objective research and translation, which placed emphasis on the aesthetic and literary value of the translated texts.