The Radio War

Over the throbbing beat of John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance, the mellifluous voice of a onetime hamburger impresario wafts daily across the Middle East air waves: "This is the voice of peace, broadcasting on 1,542 kilocycles from somewhere in the Mediterranean.

This is the voice of love." For the next nine hours, there is a mixture of music, news and cheerful chatter. The music is often hard: lots of rock interspersed with golden oldies sung in Arabic, Hebrew and English. But the main pitch is soft: "We will sell peace with music, for everyone with music has a right to love."

The purveyor of harmony in a region of no war, no peace is Iranian-born Abraham ("Abie") Nathan, a former Israeli air force pilot. After making a financial killing with an American-style restaurant in Tel Aviv, in the late 1960s Nathan developed an insatiable hunger for peace. Three times he flew to Egypt, unsuccessfully trying for interviews with Gamal Abdel Nasser. Undeterred, he circled the globe promoting peace.

Last month he set up his love-oriented radio station aboard a former Dutch coastal vessel, which roams 15 miles off the coasts of Israel and Lebanon. He has pledged not to leave the ship until it can sail through the Suez Canal and dock at Eilat.

Nathan is not exactly entering a vacuum with his seductive propaganda for peace. For more than 25 years, Middle East listeners have been caught in an ideological crossfire of radio rhetoric.

Currently, for instance, Israel broadcasts more than 14 hours a day in Arabic over a powerful network that reaches an enormous area that includes Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon. The Israelis also offer a regular schedule of telecasts in Arabic.

Cairo Radio aims at Israel twelve hours of daily broadcasting in Hebrew, English and French. Other Hebrew radio programs emanate from Damascus, Baghdad and Amman, which also recently started telecasts in Hebrew.

Voice of Love. Particularly in Arab countries, where illiteracy rates run high, radio is heavily relied on as a source of both entertainment and information. Almost every family can afford a cheap transistor, which is able to pick up most of the high-powered stations--including special services of the Voice of America, the BBC, Radio Moscow and Albania's Radio Tirana--as well as local broadcasts. On the night of a speech by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Cairo streets echo with the sound of his harsh voice.

By far the most inflammatory of the propaganda programs are those by the Palestinian guerrilla movement. After the Israeli commando raid on Beirut in April, a Voice of Palestine broadcast from Algiers called on Arabs to "kill everyone who is American because all of them work for American intelligence."

Like Abie Nathan's new voice of love, the two most influential stations, Israel Broadcasting and Cairo Radio, emphasize persuasion rather than aural assault. "The Arabs do not know Israel," says Iraqi-born Zadok Ben-Meir, director of Israel's Arab station. "One of our tasks is to try to sell Israel to them." Cairo Radio's Hebrew service, inaugurated a year ago under the direction of Information Minister Mohammed Abdel Kader Hatem, takes the position that most Israelis do not know Israel either. Hatem asserts that the Hebrew service can "tell the Israelis the rest of the truth, the part denied in Israel, that the violence used by the present government of Zionists will not give the Jews the security they seek."

Nobody in Israel would particularly care to emulate the heavily accented and often unidiomatic Hebrew spoken by Cairo Radio announcers. Still, the service in general is a low-key, if sometimes awkward attempt to persuade instead of conquer. A three-hour morning program is specially aimed at Israeli forces in the Sinai. It asks, in effect: "What's a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a desert like this?" Just in case the Israeli soldiers don't bother to tune in on their radios, some programs are recorded and blared across the Suez Canal by loudspeaker.

Another target of Cairo's Israeli broadcasting is the Jewish immigrant from Arab countries. If Jews and Arabs were able to coexist peaceably in the past, the broadcasts rationalize, they can do so again. Some Arabs would like to see more programs aimed at young Sabras (native-born Israelis), in an attempt to exploit their discontent with their aging leaders.

Israel's propaganda broadcasts attract Arab listeners by playing recordings of famed Egyptian Songstress Umm Kulthum for two hours each day.

Her latest songs are monitored off Cairo Radio and played by Israel even before stations in other Arab countries can air them. Some Arabs have accused Israel of stealing Umm Kulthum's melodies. Ben-Meir replied on the air:

"When there is peace, we will settle the bill." The rest of the programming for Arabs is laden with news--150 minutes a day. Sometimes the items include exclusive details designed to show that Israel has eyes and ears in major Arab capitals. Israel Broadcasting once announced the answers to Egyptian school examinations the night before the tests were to be given.

Editorials and talk programs often criticize Arab leaders, of course. But some criticism of Israel is also allowed. An Israeli TV discussion included an Arab author's complaint that "Israel is the fingernail of American imperialism." Both the radio and television broadcasts to Arab countries benefit from well-spoken Arabic, and programs invariably begin with readings from the Koran. One of the most effective TV broadcasters is an Israeli of Arabic descent, Said Kassem, whose voice has been taped by Jordan for use in broadcasting courses.

Jordan, which often finds itself a target of both Arab and Israeli propaganda broadcasts, scored a coup recently by hiring a winsome female announcer for its Hebrew TV service. Born near Jerusalem, Afa Zabaneh, a Moslem, is greeted as a celebrity by old Jewish friends when she returns home for summer visits. If Abie Nathan ever gets around to opening a television station, he might consider hiring her.

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