Hlehel: “I was pushed to resign”

The article written two weeks ago by colleague Alaa Hlehel in Fasl al-Maqal provoked a sharp debate within the Balad party and extended further, to the point that the Islamic Movement demanded his resignation. How did the affair begin? How was the decision to put a “clarification” [to the article] taken by the Political Bureau? How did Hlehel decide to resign from his post after this “clarification” was imposed on him? What was he accused of in Friday sermons? Who is behind this whole affair? Al-Madina Newspaper documents the story in detail and interviews Hlehel about what happened.

Reportage: Majd Kayyal, Al-Madina, Haifa
September 12, 2008

“The Hlehel Case”. That’s how it was named by one of the dozens of bloggers who fiercely debated, from both of the “conflicting” sides, the article titled “A Nightmare Called Ramadan” (August 22, 2008), written by Alaa Hlehel, the (then) editor of Fasl al-Maqal. The discussion went on to far surpass the effect of a normal article.

The first week after the publishing of the article was “relatively calm”, with only somewhat angry responses from the newspaper’s readers, who considered it “provocative”. On the second day after its publishing (Sat. August 24), a party meeting was convened in Nazareth, in which Tamim Mansour, member of Balad’s Political Bureau, opened fire on Hlehel by accusing him of being an “atheist, infidel, apostate and ignorant [jahil]”, detailing that his article was “impudent and insulting to Muslims.” But the affair was blown wide open as an issue a week after this, when Mansour published an article in Hadith al-Nas, where he launched a sweeping attack on Hlehel, both personally and for his article.

In this situation, Balad saw it fit to publish a “clarification” to the readers underneath the article. But this clarification reached the newspaper on Thursday afternoon, without the knowledge of the editor-in-chief and without him being consulted in this decision. The clarification stated that the expressions in this article “do not represent the position of the Balad party and the management of Fasl al-Maqal, and that its printing in the newspaper was a mistake.” Hlehel rejected this, refusing the imposition of this clarification on him without consultation and eventually decided to resign from his post. He indicated that this (or any other) kind of “clarification” has to be agreed upon by the editor-in-chief, at least in terms of its content, stressing his refusal on principle of any kind of “clarification”.

Three days after the happening, things took a sharper turn, when Zahi Njaydat, the Islamic Movement’s official spokesperson, presented a letter to the leader of Balad’s parliamentary bloc in the Knesset, MK Jamal Zahalka, that decried the article as “a disdainful and mocking insult of one of the five Pillars of Islam” and a series of ill-informed, ungrounded attacks on the holy month, thus an offense to the sentiments of every Muslim. And in an unprecedented step for the Arab parties [of Israel/Historic Palestine], the Islamic Movement demanded Hlehel’s removal from his post as editor-in-chief.

The letter reached all the major Arab online portals and garnered a lot of attention. `Awad `Abd al-Fattah, Balad’s General Secretary, issued a reply to the Islamic Movement’s letter, saying that Hlehel had tendered his own resignation after the imposition of the above-mentioned clarification. But things did not calm down, since readers had begun to get interested and there were far more comments than the average. There was a clearly sharp tone against Hlehel and his article to point of losing control against him, though there were also some commentators who considered his article as falling within the freedom of one’s expression and that it was the author’s right to use a sarcastic tone.

The discussion extended to the issue in question and did surpassed the bounds of the internet, as al-Madina learnt that it was brought up in Friday sermons of some of the mosques in Arab [Palestinian-Israeli] villages, in which a sweeping attack was launched on Hlehel. Some of the accusations against him reached the point of describing him as an “infidel” and “apostate”. “This kind of an attack,” said Hlehel, “cannot be taken lightly. I don’t know what it holds for the future.”

“I have not changed”

al-Madina asked Hlehel some of the questions posed by observers on the contradiction between the freedom of expression and the interests of one’s party. “Until the crisis arose, I saw no contradiction between the two,” says Hlehel, “as I am in a secular, liberal party that calls for the democratizating of the Arabs, and who’s chair [Azmi Bishara] teaches the rest of the Arab world what it means to be democratic. Its manifesto and literature indicate that clearly. The contradiction arises from changes within the party itself, not in its principles. I see no contradiction between editing the newspaper and my individual belief in a party that represents my thoughts and principles.”

He adds: “The painful part is that the first shot in this war came from a member of the party’s Political Bureau and not from outside the party. That member published an article attacking me and accusing me eleven times of being ignorant, an infidel and unbeliever, demanding I be countered. This gave the Islamic Movement the green light to go ahead…but at least they do not claim to be liberal or democratic, they viciously defend everything sacred and spiritual, so we shouldn’t find it strange coming from them. They haven’t suddenly become hard-liners after talking about secularism or the Enlightenment, there hasn’t been any shift here. We are the ones who’ve shifted. And I also tie in the way the party has dealt with these things to getting ready for elections and to opportunistic calculations that are unacceptable.”

He goes on: “Whoever attacked me did so from a personal standpoint, merely because I requested him to lighten up the tone of writing to so as to make space for other writers in the paper. Suddenly, this person transformed into a ferocious defender of Ramadan, while six months earlier he had been demanding that veiled women be barred from entering universities, and was one of the symbols of radical secularism!”

Some have criticized Hlehel for resigning from Fasl al-Maqal and for “quitting the battle”, even as he revealed that he was pushed to resign: “Even though I’m a person that tends to be rebellious and tries to cross boundaries, in the end I believe in personal responsibility and administrative and professional hierarchy. When the chair of the board of directors wants me to resign, I cannot stay on by force. I was clearly pushed to resign, after they imposed the publication of the ‘clarification’ on me. It is sad and insulting to me and Bal
ad that some of the front-line leadership in the party who spoke tried to absorb the Islamic Movement’s anger by saying I resigned, instead of countering attempts to forcibly intervene, demanding the Islamic Movement withdraw its request, and defending the party and its establishments, instead of going on the attack as any body with prestige and dignity would do. But the party did not act as a frontline alternative for secularism and enlightenment. I am amazed that a party that follows an enlightened leader that teaches open-mindedness and rationality to the rest of the Arab world, cannot even achieve this in its own newspaper.

“I see that there is an essential misunderstanding about the place of an editor-in-chief. His job is not to review the paper’s headlines, or correct grammatical errors, even though that’s one of his duties. His job is to put together the newspaper’s agenda and it’s intellectual, political and social trajectory. The newspaper’s (and its editor) job is to expose corruption, to ignite debates and wars. They ask why the editor-in-chief is provoking trouble? His job is to be fearless in front of these ‘problems’ to prove the power of the fourth estate. This defines the integrity of the journalist and the newspaper. My basic intellectual agenda is in part taken from the party literature and from Azmi Bishara, and my work is to put in place on a weekly basis the thought of Balad according to what was in the National Democratic Delegation, the party program and Bishara’s writings. Whoever has issues with this can re-read the party’s literature.”

He concludes: “I was representing a current, the free, liberal and enlightened current. We as a current oppose an alliance at any cost with the Islamic Movement. It is unfortunate however that those I relied upon, those that filled our ears with talk about enlightenment, women’s liberation, secularism and freedom of expression have suddenly vanished. Where are you? There is incitement against me in all the mosques and no one writes a word. Not even a letter. Why this spinelessness? Except for three articles supporting the freedom of speech, by Nawaf `Othamina, Marzuq Halabi and Haneen Zu`bi,[a couple of others added their support a few days later] no one, whether groups or parties, has spoken a word.”

Abdel Fattah: “We respect Hlehel while differing with some of what was in the article”

In response to what Hlehel said, the General Secretary of Balad, `Awad abdel Fattah, said to al-Madina: “First and foremost, we take pride in the writer and intellectual `Alaa Hlehel, just as every society and vanguard party should. There were some sentences and expressions in the article written by Hlehel that were considered offensive by a portion of the readers. Publishing it in a newspaper tied to the Balad party was thus a mistake.

“We agree with some of what was written,” he added, “and stress on rejecting some of the negative social customs in this month, such as over-extravagance and the enslavement of women, that is imprisoning women in the kitchen for the whole month. But the writer presented the subject in a style that contributes to the social changes we believe in as a party, and that he too believes in. We call for a serious and civilized dialogue on all issues, sensitive or not, in our society.

“From another angle, we refuse the meddling of any political groups in the administration of our newspaper as moral guardians,” he concluded, “and we decry the use of this topic for political goals, as this was not an offense to any political party or movement, but an offense to one of the pillars of Islam. And we reject offending any pillar of any religion.”

Press Release from the `Ilaam center and the Arab Journalists’ Forum

In light of the article by the journalist `Alaa Hlehel, editor-in-chief of Fasl al-Maqal, and the responses and actions that followed it, we confirm the following:
• Respect of the freedom of expression as a basic human value that applies to everyone, meaning the right to write an article and consequently, the right to respond to it.
• We reject dealing with the practicing of one’s freedom of expression in a punitive or provocatory fashion, just as we reject intellectual policing. Based on this, we call on those concerned to reinstate our colleague `Alaa Hlehel to his position as editor-in-chief of Fasl al-Maqal, if he had actually been dismissed based on this, just as we reject incitement against him based on this.
• We demand all the concerned parties to not inflate the matter and raise it to a degree that it does not actually deserve, and to not employ it in intra and inter-party conflicts.
• We turn to all our journalists and writers to deliver the idea [of his article] in a form that heeds human and religious sentiments, by relying on our great Arab-Islamic culture, which encompassed and co-existed with different religious interpretations and political and intellectual movements, without its history witnessing inquisitions.

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