Only so much can be dealt with in a Deborah Solomon interview, given the lack of space. Nonetheless, some criticism can be leveled at this week's "Questions for Jehan Sadat."
Solomon asks an excellent question "Why can't the Palestinians, your fellow Muslims, be part of your country?", to which Sadat responds rigidly, myopically. Solomon should have followed it up.
Secondly, Sadat gives Solomon an opening to talk about the status of women in the Middle East. "From time to time, I teach a class about the status of women in the Middle East, mainly in Egypt," she says. Solomon, however, is too concerned about checking off items on her “progressive” checklist to focus in on the matter. Instead, she quickly moves to the issue of homosexuality and Islam.
The most obvious problem with the interview is how Solomon leads and Sadat follows in linking the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty, which Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, Jehan's deceased husband, forged in the late seventies, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"How do you feel when you read the headlines these days," asks Solomon.
Sadat responds, "Sometimes it's very painful for me...[My husband] paid his life for [the peace treaty], and every day there are either Palestinians sending rockets to Israel or Israelis invading Gaza."
To be sure, Anwar Sadat was assassinated because he signed an Egyptian-Israeli agreement, not an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
What Solomon should have asked Jehan Sadat about is why the Egyptian-Israeli peace has been so cold. Assuredly, she would have blamed Israel for the lack of warmth, but at least, such a question would be within her purview.
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