Chief editor wonders?
A massive billboard recently appeared in Tel Aviv, published by CNNarabic https://arabic.cnn.com/middle-east/article/2025/06/27/israel-huge-billboard-mohammad-bin-salman-trump-arab-leaders-social-reactions, featuring the faces of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and nine other Arab leaders. The banner was emblazoned with a loaded caption in Hebrew:
“A time for war, a time for peace; now is the time for the Abraham Accords.”
At first glance, it might appear to be a symbolic snapshot of a new regional reality. But the deeper question lingers:
Is this image a reflection of truth — or an engineered provocation?
The Battle of Imagery and the Manufacture of Consent
This billboard is not a mirror of diplomatic facts; it is a carefully curated political theater. It is a weaponized image, designed not only to normalize Israel’s regional role but to psychologically and symbolically redefine the Arab relationship with the Zionist project.
The message is clear: the traditional “enemy” is now being rebranded as a regional ally. The image attempts to mythologize normalization — not merely as a political act, but as a spiritual, cultural, and even dietary shift. It aims to demonize the life of the resisting “Other”, turning resistance into an anachronism and submission into wisdom.
Normalization: Israel’s Psychological Victory, the Arab World’s Strategic Defeat
To Israel, normalization is more than diplomatic gain — it is a triumph of narrative. Every handshake, every photo-op, every billboard is a blow to the Palestinian cause and a boost to Israel’s legitimacy.
To the normalizing regimes, however, it is a deep fracture in collective memory and political morality. They sacrifice long-held principles for fleeting diplomatic accolades, often in exchange for strategic guarantees that rarely serve their peoples.
What we are witnessing is not just political alignment but cultural disarmament. Normalization is no longer about embassies and airspace; it seeps into textbooks, media, cuisine, theology, and identity. It reconstructs the Arab psyche to see submission as survival and resistance as extremism.
The Abraham Accords: A Temporal Deception
The phrase “Now is the time for the Abraham Accords” carries a prophetic tone, as if the region has crossed a divine threshold into peace. But in reality, this “time” is carefully manufactured — not by truth, but by geopolitical marketing.
The Accords are not peace agreements built on justice; they are strategic alignments devoid of liberation, orchestrated without dismantling a single checkpoint or recognizing Palestinian statehood. This is not peace; it’s a high-definition mirage.
Division by Design: Who Truly Benefits?
By placing Arab leaders — including some who are not even formal partners in the accords — beside Netanyahu, the billboard delivers a potent message:
“Palestine has been abandoned. The Arab consensus is over.”
This is not a depiction of reality; it is a calculated trap meant to sow discord, not only between Palestinians and their supposed allies but between Arab peoples and their rulers. It is a psychological offensive, aimed at severing the last bonds of Arab solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Conclusion: Who Wins the Battle of the Image?
This billboard is not the end of a story; it is the beginning of a new symbolic war — one fought with aesthetics, language, illusions, and manipulated memory.
In this new theatre of conflict, every act of normalization is a win for Israel’s narrative, and a loss for Arab moral agency. Because normalization that does not restore rights, dignity, and sovereignty is nothing but defeat dressed as diplomacy.
So the question is not only “Who is on the billboard?”
But more urgently:
“Who is writing the story — and who controls the memory?”
