CAIRO // For Irina Bokova, who was nominated as director general of Unesco (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), the past week of voting must have felt like a Cinderella story.
In an election that some have seen as a clash of civilisations writ large, the career Bulgarian diplomat rose from relative obscurity to win a nail-biting fifth and final vote on Tuesday night against Farouk Hosni, the well-known and controversial Egyptian culture minister.
If Unesco's general conference of 193 nations approves her nomination next month, Ambassador Bokova will become the first woman and the first Eastern European to lead the global cultural institution.
But her win - or rather Mr Hosni's defeat - is a bitter pill for many in the Middle East to swallow. The minister's defenders say that he fell victim to a media campaign that sought to discredit him with accusations of anti-Semitism. Upon his return from Paris yesterday, Mr Hosni told reporters that Unesco had allowed the vote to be "politicised" under US pressure and blamed "Zionist pressure" for his loss, according to Agence France-Presse, adding that the US ambassador to Unesco did "everything he could" to keep him from winning the election.
Central to the arguments against Mr Hosni's candidacy were comments he made in front of Egypt's parliament last year, when the culture minister told legislators that he would burn Israeli books in the Alexandria Library.
Mr Hosni has repeatedly apologised, saying his comments had been taken out of context.
"I didn't say exactly what was written in the newspapers. The MP said: 'There are Israeli books that insult Islam in the libraries of the ministry.' I insisted there weren't. He insisted there were," said Mr Hosni in an interview with The National in July. "I said: 'OK, show me this book and I'll burn it in front of you.' Someone took half of what was said and put it in the newspapers: Farouk Hosni is going to burn Israeli books. This is crazy." Despite the apology, Mr Hosni's candidacy has attracted criticism from western intellectuals and newspaper columnists.
Earlier this year, Bernard-Henri Lévy, a prominent French intellectual; Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate; and Claude Lanzmann, a French filmmaker; wrote an open letter in the French newspaper Le Monde that harshly criticised Mr Hosni's candidacy.
"Mr Farouk Hosni is the opposite of a man of peace, dialogue, and culture; Mr Farouk Hosni is a dangerous man, an inciter of hearts and minds," they wrote. "There is only little, very little time left to avoid committing the major mistake of elevating Mr Farouk Hosni above others to this eminent post."
In response to questions sent by e-mail yesterday, Mr Lévy said that it was Mr Hosni's dubious record as the doyen of Egyptian culture that caused him the most concern.
"If yesterday's vote represents anything, it is as a victory for all those filmmakers, screenwriters, writers, poets, bloggers and artists, with whose cases I have grown familiar, who have been stifled or censored during Hosni's long reign as the head of the culture ministry," wrote Mr Lévy. "My approach has been very straightforward. I discovered last May that this man was going to rule over world culture through Unesco. So I just looked at what he had done when he served as the culture director of his own country. And what I discovered was, unfortunately, terribly discouraging."
Jewish leaders in the United States have agreed. Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a US-based Jewish-rights organisation, praised Unesco's 58-member executive board yesterday for rejecting "the bias and hostility to cultural openness and free expression that Mr Hosni promotes".
As the ADL celebrated, Egyptian newspapers condemned what they saw as a Jewish-led campaign to smear Mr Hosni and characterised it as part of a broader effort to discredit Arabs and Muslims in general.
"The United States, backed by a fierce Jewish information campaign, sought with full force to stop the advance of Farouk Hosni, the Egyptian and Arab candidate," said one article in the government-run Al Ahram newspaper yesterday.
However, at a meeting earlier this year between Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, and Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, the Israeli leader promised that the Jewish state would lift its objection to Mr Hosni's candidacy. But the anti-Hosni campaign continued with Israel's blessing, said Mohammed Salmawy, the head of the Egyptian Writers' Union, because Israel had "violated all the rules and laws of Unesco" with its destruction of Islamic monuments in Jerusalem and feared an unsympathetic leader for the world culture body. "It wasn't the fact that he had said something that alarmed them because if this had been the case, the moment he had retracted it and expressed his regret that it had been misunderstood and published it publicly in front of everybody, they would have taken account of that," Mr Salmawy said.
"It would have focused on any Arab who had reached that position. If Hosni hadn't said that particular phrase, which they used and reused and tried to exploit in all ways possible, they would have found another pretext." Opinions among Egyptian intellectuals were hardly united in favour of Mr Hosni's candidacy. Many see Mr Hosni, whose 22 years in the cabinet makes him Egypt's longest-serving minister, as a political survivor who is willing to say anything to mollify his critics.
In 2006, Mr Hosni told an Egyptian journalist that the hijab, one form of the veil commonly worn by Muslim women, is "a step backwards for Egyptian women". Egyptian parliamentarians were outraged.
Alaa al Aswany, an Egyptian author and political commentator, said Mr Hosni's veil comment was nothing more than a naked attempt to endear himself to the West. "One terrible thing about him is that you will never know exactly what is his real opinion about any issue because he is this kind of guy who will always be capable of saying anything contrarian just to keep his post," said Mr al Aswany, who added that talk of a "clash of civilisations" from Mr Hosni's defenders is "silly".
Mr Hosni is unfit to lead Unesco less because of his perceived anti-Jewish comments, said Mr al Aswany, and more because of his complicity with Mr Mubarak's autocratic regime during his long tenure as Egypt's culture minister.
"There is a very big contradiction from the beginning because Mr Hosni is a minister in a dictatorship and he is a minister in a regime that has not been elected by the Egyptian people," said Mr al Aswany. "As the director of Unesco, you're supposed to support human rights, democracy, equality between people, free elections - elements that are especially absent in Mr Hosni's regime."
mbradley@thenational.ae
The bio
Favourite book: Peter Rabbit. I used to read it to my three children and still read it myself. If I am feeling down it brings back good memories.
Best thing about your job: Getting to help people. My mum always told me never to pass up an opportunity to do a good deed.
Best part of life in the UAE: The weather. The constant sunshine is amazing and there is always something to do, you have so many options when it comes to how to spend your day.
Favourite holiday destination: Malaysia. I went there for my honeymoon and ended up volunteering to teach local children for a few hours each day. It is such a special place and I plan to retire there one day.
Company Profile
Company name: Cargoz
Date started: January 2022
Founders: Premlal Pullisserry and Lijo Antony
Based: Dubai
Number of staff: 30
Investment stage: Seed
Profile of Udrive
Date started: March 2016
Founder: Hasib Khan
Based: Dubai
Employees: 40
Amount raised (to date): $3.25m – $750,000 seed funding in 2017 and a Seed+ round of $2.5m last year. Raised $1.3m from Eureeca investors in January 2021 as part of a Series A round with a $5m target.
SPECS
Engine: 4-litre V8 twin-turbo
Power: 630hp
Torque: 850Nm
Transmission: 8-speed Tiptronic automatic
Price: From Dh599,000
On sale: Now
The years Ramadan fell in May
Monster Hunter: World
Capcom
PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Company Profile
Company name: Namara
Started: June 2022
Founder: Mohammed Alnamara
Based: Dubai
Sector: Microfinance
Current number of staff: 16
Investment stage: Series A
Investors: Family offices
Company profile
Name: Yabi by Souqalmal
Started: May 2022, launched June 2023
Founder: Ambareen Musa
Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: undisclosed but soon to be announced
Number of staff: 12
Investment stage: seed
Investors: Shuaa Capital
EMILY IN PARIS: SEASON 3
Created by: Darren Star
Starring: Lily Collins, Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Ashley Park
Rating: 2.75/5
More from Neighbourhood Watch
Zimbabwe v UAE, ODI series
All matches at the Harare Sports Club:
1st ODI, Wednesday, April 10
2nd ODI, Friday, April 12
3rd ODI, Sunday, April 14
4th ODI, Tuesday, April 16
UAE squad: Mohammed Naveed (captain), Rohan Mustafa, Ashfaq Ahmed, Shaiman Anwar, Mohammed Usman, CP Rizwan, Chirag Suri, Mohammed Boota, Ghulam Shabber, Sultan Ahmed, Imran Haider, Amir Hayat, Zahoor Khan, Qadeer Ahmed
NYBL PROFILE
Company name: Nybl
Date started: November 2018
Founder: Noor Alnahhas, Michael LeTan, Hafsa Yazdni, Sufyaan Abdul Haseeb, Waleed Rifaat, Mohammed Shono
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Software Technology / Artificial Intelligence
Initial investment: $500,000
Funding round: Series B (raising $5m)
Partners/Incubators: Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 4, Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 6, AI Venture Labs Cohort 1, Microsoft Scale-up
How to invest in gold
Investors can tap into the gold price by purchasing physical jewellery, coins and even gold bars, but these need to be stored safely and possibly insured.
A cheaper and more straightforward way to benefit from gold price growth is to buy an exchange-traded fund (ETF).
Most advisers suggest sticking to “physical” ETFs. These hold actual gold bullion, bars and coins in a vault on investors’ behalf. Others do not hold gold but use derivatives to track the price instead, adding an extra layer of risk. The two biggest physical gold ETFs are SPDR Gold Trust and iShares Gold Trust.
Another way to invest in gold’s success is to buy gold mining stocks, but Mr Gravier says this brings added risks and can be more volatile. “They have a serious downside potential should the price consolidate.”
Mr Kyprianou says gold and gold miners are two different asset classes. “One is a commodity and the other is a company stock, which means they behave differently.”
Mining companies are a business, susceptible to other market forces, such as worker availability, health and safety, strikes, debt levels, and so on. “These have nothing to do with gold at all. It means that some companies will survive, others won’t.”
By contrast, when gold is mined, it just sits in a vault. “It doesn’t even rust, which means it retains its value,” Mr Kyprianou says.
You may already have exposure to gold miners in your portfolio, say, through an international ETF or actively managed mutual fund.
You could spread this risk with an actively managed fund that invests in a spread of gold miners, with the best known being BlackRock Gold & General. It is up an incredible 55 per cent over the past year, and 240 per cent over five years. As always, past performance is no guide to the future.
About Takalam
Date started: early 2020
Founders: Khawla Hammad and Inas Abu Shashieh
Based: Abu Dhabi
Sector: HealthTech and wellness
Number of staff: 4
Funding to date: Bootstrapped
Company profile
Company name: Fasset
Started: 2019
Founders: Mohammad Raafi Hossain, Daniel Ahmed
Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: $2.45 million
Current number of staff: 86
Investment stage: Pre-series B
Investors: Investcorp, Liberty City Ventures, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Primal Capital, Wealthwell Ventures, FHS Capital, VN2 Capital, local family offices
KEY DATES IN AMAZON'S HISTORY
July 5, 1994: Jeff Bezos founds Cadabra Inc, which would later be renamed to Amazon.com, because his lawyer misheard the name as 'cadaver'. In its earliest days, the bookstore operated out of a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington
July 16, 1995: Amazon formally opens as an online bookseller. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought becomes the first item sold on Amazon
1997: Amazon goes public at $18 a share, which has grown about 1,000 per cent at present. Its highest closing price was $197.85 on June 27, 2024
1998: Amazon acquires IMDb, its first major acquisition. It also starts selling CDs and DVDs
2000: Amazon Marketplace opens, allowing people to sell items on the website
2002: Amazon forms what would become Amazon Web Services, opening the Amazon.com platform to all developers. The cloud unit would follow in 2006
2003: Amazon turns in an annual profit of $75 million, the first time it ended a year in the black
2005: Amazon Prime is introduced, its first-ever subscription service that offered US customers free two-day shipping for $79 a year
2006: Amazon Unbox is unveiled, the company's video service that would later morph into Amazon Instant Video and, ultimately, Amazon Video
2007: Amazon's first hardware product, the Kindle e-reader, is introduced; the Fire TV and Fire Phone would come in 2014. Grocery service Amazon Fresh is also started
2009: Amazon introduces Amazon Basics, its in-house label for a variety of products
2010: The foundations for Amazon Studios were laid. Its first original streaming content debuted in 2013
2011: The Amazon Appstore for Google's Android is launched. It is still unavailable on Apple's iOS
2014: The Amazon Echo is launched, a speaker that acts as a personal digital assistant powered by Alexa
2017: Amazon acquires Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, its biggest acquisition
2018: Amazon's market cap briefly crosses the $1 trillion mark, making it, at the time, only the third company to achieve that milestone
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Klipit
Started: 2022
Founders: Venkat Reddy, Mohammed Al Bulooki, Bilal Merchant, Asif Ahmed, Ovais Merchant
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: Digital receipts, finance, blockchain
Funding: $4 million
Investors: Privately/self-funded
The bio
Job: Coder, website designer and chief executive, Trinet solutions
School: Year 8 pupil at Elite English School in Abu Hail, Deira
Role Models: Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk
Dream City: San Francisco
Hometown: Dubai
City of birth: Thiruvilla, Kerala
In Full Flight: A Story of Africa and Atonement
John Heminway, Knopff
Director: Nag Ashwin
Starring: Prabhas, Saswata Chatterjee, Deepika Padukone, Amitabh Bachchan, Shobhana
Rating: ★★★★
The Sky Is Pink
Director: Shonali Bose
Cast: Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Farhan Akhtar, Zaira Wasim, Rohit Saraf
Three stars
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Xpanceo
Started: 2018
Founders: Roman Axelrod, Valentyn Volkov
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: Smart contact lenses, augmented/virtual reality
Funding: $40 million
Investor: Opportunity Venture (Asia)
A QUIET PLACE
Starring: Lupita Nyong'o, Joseph Quinn, Djimon Hounsou
Director: Michael Sarnoski
Rating: 4/5
Confirmed bouts (more to be added)
Cory Sandhagen v Umar Nurmagomedov
Nick Diaz v Vicente Luque
Michael Chiesa v Tony Ferguson
Deiveson Figueiredo v Marlon Vera
Mackenzie Dern v Loopy Godinez
Tickets for the August 3 Fight Night, held in partnership with the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, went on sale earlier this month, through www.etihadarena.ae and www.ticketmaster.ae.
RESULTS
West Asia Premiership
Thursday
Jebel Ali Dragons 13-34 Dubai Exiles
Friday
Dubai Knights Eagles 16-27 Dubai Tigers
More from Armen Sarkissian
Simran
Director Hansal Mehta
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Soham Shah, Esha Tiwari Pandey
Three stars
SPECS
Engine: Two-litre four-cylinder turbo
Power: 235hp
Torque: 350Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Price: From Dh167,500 ($45,000)
On sale: Now
Company Profile
Name: HyveGeo
Started: 2023
Founders: Abdulaziz bin Redha, Dr Samsurin Welch, Eva Morales and Dr Harjit Singh
Based: Cambridge and Dubai
Number of employees: 8
Industry: Sustainability & Environment
Funding: $200,000 plus undisclosed grant
Investors: Venture capital and government
MATCH INFO
First Test at Barbados
West Indies won by 381 runs
Second Test at Antigua
West Indies won by 10 wickets
Third Test at St Lucia
February 9-13
If you go
The flights
Etihad and Emirates fly direct from the UAE to Chicago from Dh5,215 return including taxes.
The hotels
Recommended hotels include the Intercontinental Chicago Magnificent Mile, located in an iconic skyscraper complete with a 1929 Olympic-size swimming pool from US$299 (Dh1,100) per night including taxes, and the Omni Chicago Hotel, an excellent value downtown address with elegant art deco furnishings and an excellent in-house restaurant. Rooms from US$239 (Dh877) per night including taxes.