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BOOKS
TAKING SIDES: a memoir about love, war, and changing the world
Author: Sherine Tadros
Published by: Scribe Publications, Melbourne and London, 2023, 272pp, A$32.99.
In an engaging memoir, Sherine Tadros traces her life and career as a broadcast journalist, from her upbringing in London through the establishment of Al Jazeera English in 2006 and assignments in Beirut, Gaza, Jerusalem and Cairo with that organisation and, later, with Sky News. A self-confessed ‘halfie’ born in England to Egyptian immigrant parents, with two degrees in politics from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Tadros paints a graphic picture of the challenges of reporting while trapped inside the war zone of Gaza in 2008, and of covering the uprisings that led to the ousting of President Mubarak in Cairo over the years 2011–13. Those challenges were personal: family getting caught up in events along the way, suffering sexual abuse in Cairo — and all the while trying to report dispassionately.
With other colleagues, Tadros was nominated for an Emmy Award for the coverage of the Gaza War of 2008, and in 2012 received on behalf of Al Jazeera a Peabody Award for its coverage of the Arab uprisings, notably in Egypt. These accolades came as a result of the highest-quality reporting in the face of the most difficult operating environments. Some of this is captured in the eight pages of colour photographs in the book.
It is a regrettable commentary on the world that there are numerous examples of war correspondents dating back many decades. Peter Arnett, John McBeth and, more recently, Charlotte Bellis are names well-known to their fellow New Zealand citizens. Amongst renowned women correspondents, Clare Hollingworth was the first to report that German troops were crossing the border into Poland in 1939 (and in her latter years was a great raconteur to those who gathered, as I did, in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong). Much later Christiane Amanpour (whom Tadros cites in reference to the campaign for the release of the three Al Jazeera journalists detained in Cairo in 2013) and Lyse Doucet are among those who have reported from other troubled parts of the Middle East. Nor to overlook that it was from Sudan that a subaltern by the name of Winston Churchill reported for a British newspaper in the late 1890s, journalism not, however, being the profession by which he is most remembered.
Notes on reviewer
Tadros, however, is unusual in that while she became accustomed to the constant travel, dangerous environments, daily stress and deadlines for her international audience, she also came to realise that her ‘job ends at the wrong point’. Beyond the reporting on the suffering of refugees and others caught up in war, she wanted to do more about relieving those conditions. Coinciding with a personal upset in her life (her fiancé walking out on her on what would have been their wedding day), she had applied for and was successful in obtaining a position with Amnesty International as the deputy director of advocacy to the United Nations in New York. Tadros admits that while the role of a journalist was more than just neutral reporting, it did not go as far as activism. Indeed, as she notes, when she started as a journalist, ‘it was considered a slur to be called an activist’. But, she adds, things were changing.
The final third of the book covers her move to the world of diplomacy in New York, and the quite different challenges of the interaction of an non-governmental organisation with representatives of governments. Her description of the methods of navigating the UN system, especially with General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, are a sharp reminder to the outsider that diplomatic progress on issues like action to protect refugees or protect civilians in Gaza is far from straightforward. She is particularly scornful about President Trump’s UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, and her bullying tactics over Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Tadros notes that while the United States could and did exercise its veto on a draft resolution opposing the move in the Security Council, its own efforts to avoid being condemned in the General Assembly were roundly defeated. These sorts of manoeuvres are familiar enough to the professional diplomat, but they struck Tadros as quite shocking. They served as initial lessons for how her nongovernmental organisation had to be nimble in pursuing its objectives within the UN system. Interestingly, the Russo-Ukraine War has provided a similar outcome, with the General Assembly used successfully to condemn the invasion after efforts to do so in the Security Council were stymied by a Russian veto.
This is a frank and very personal memoir of the experiences of a journalist-turned-advocate. Understandably, it moves forward and back over time and might have benefited from a little more chronology, if not an index. That said, it remains a fascinating account of the personal transition of a conflict reporter and observer of events in the Middle East to a lobbyist at the United Nations for the protection of human rights.
