Nizar Jwaideh

By Michael Baris

Last year Nizar Jwaideh took leave from his duties at the Arab League Mission in Washington, DC, to take on a special assignment in strife-torn Beirut, a city he had known from his years as a foreign correspondent. This time he had gone there not to report on a war but to resurrect a newspaper—the English-language Daily Star, which had stopped publishing in 1975. While rival militias skirmished in the streets, Mr. Jwaideh patiently went about the business of setting up new offices, recruiting a staff, and making arrangements for printing and distribution. "It was dangerous, but interesting—and, of course, very challenging," he concedes.

His Beirut mission accomplished, Mr. Jwaideh has now settled back in as advisor to the Arab League in Washington, helping Ambassador Clovis Maksoud, who heads the League of Arab States Mission to the United Nations, disseminate information about the Arab world to the American public. Mr. Jwaideh finds this work every bit as interesting and challenging as reviving the Daily Star.

"The difficulty is that the average citizen in this country has a lot of information about the Arab World, but most of that information is wrong," he explains. "We, therefore, must break through their misperceptions and dispel their misinformation before we can help them see the Arab world as it really is."

From "Wires" to Magazines

And for this important task few men or women would seem better qualified than Nizar Jwaideh. Before he joined the Arab League in 1981, he had accumulated nearly 30 years of experience working in all levels of journalism, both in the U.S. and overseas.

He started out in the 1950s as a foreign correspondent for several American and European publications—including wire services—with assignments in London, Rome, Paris and various capitals in the Middle East and North Africa. In 1960 he joined the Chicago Sun-Times as a news analyst, and later became national and foreign editor. In 1975 he left the newspaper business, but not the business of covering news. In that year, and for the next five, his job was that of diplomatic editor for the respected weekly magazine, U.S. News & World Report.

He also brings to his current job some intangible assets. Whether he is discoursing on the historical relation between the Arabs and the West, the Israeli lobby, or the evolution of American misperceptions of the Middle East, he displays impressive powers of argumentation, and a keen ability to put issues and events into historical perspective.

Mr. Jwaideh believes that a proper understanding of the Mideast by Americans will be achieved only through a gradual, evolutionary process, requiring perseverance and patience on the part of those who would help foster it. "The misperceptions were decades in the making," he points out, with his customary sense of perspective. it It takes time for ideas to sink in and for perceptions to be reformed. We must be patient and repeat and repeat what is true about the Arabs until Americans are prepared to understand it."

The five Arab League offices in the United States (Chicago, Dallas, New York, San Francisco, and the headquarters in Washington, D.C.) contribute to this process through their publications and the many requests they meet for speakers and general information. Mr. Jwaideh believes that these efforts and those of like-minded American organizations have begun to show positive results. "There are many more Americans who understand the Arabs today than there were twenty years ago," he notes. "Americans are beginning to understand the Palestinian situation. They're beginning to notice all the positive things that are happening in the Arab World—the economic and social development there." Mr. Jwaideh is quick to add that what the Arab League is doing in the United States is only part of a worldwide effort.

On Becoming a Journalist

If what he has to say about the Middle East occasionally ruffles a few feathers, so do his views on getting started in journalism, a profession which he says is a "very serious" business. "I strongly believe that schools of journalism are a waste of time," he says now and then when speaking to students seeking advice. Courses in the humanities offer a better background, according to Mr. Jwaideh, because journalists need to know how the world works, and classes in political science, economics, and history, for example, help impart that knowledge. He himself followed exactly that path, studying economics in Europe as an undergraduate and Russian history and Soviet studies at the University of Chicago as a post-graduate student.

Mr. Jwaideh looks forward with confidence to the day when his work at the Arab League will no longer be needed. "I have faith in both the Arab people and the American people—faith in the Arabs for their continuing progress, and faith in Americans for their basic sense of fairness. If I could say one thing to the American people, I would say to them: Find out the facts about the Arab world."

Michael Baris is a freelance writer and editor.