Josette Combined

Josette Combined , from her true name Josette David, is born the November 25th 1929 with the Ferté-Bernard in the Sarthe. Raised in a medium of very republican teachers - his father is director of elementary school -, it follows secondary studies to the Mans before integrating the Institut of political studies of Paris in 1948. Germanist, it follows a formation of international relations which leads it to work with the businesses of the Saar of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. But after his marriage with Raouf Benbrahem (July 1952), a pediatrist resulting from the upper middle classes tunisoise, the nationality of her husband obliges it to leave his station and to follow it in his country.

In 1956, it is thus without professional outlets in a country of which it does not have a command of the language. On the impulse of Claude Nicolet, it thus follows studies of Latin archeologies to the University of Tunis. But wearied by in particular medieval history, it gives up archeology to launch out in journalism. It thus animates about fifty female emissions on Radio Tunis. Then, by the means of her husband, close friend of the son of the president and brother of lawyer of the Néo-Destour, it is brought to attend the close relations of Bourguiba at the point to bind friendship with his wife. She draws from her relations a financial support for launching, with her friend Safia Farad, the first Tunisian female newspaper, Faïda, at the same time French-speaking and Arab.

In 1960, it starts its collaboration with Africa-Action, carrying out its first reports there, like that of Bizerte in July 1961. Covering North Africa, it integrates thus the “Maghreb Circus”, this group of western journalists who cover this area for their respective newspapers (Guy Sitbon for Le Monde, Jean Daniel for the Express train, Tom Brady for NewYork Times, etc) and which is close to the left anticolonialist and the FLN. With the independence of Algeria and the departure of Guy Sitbon for Algiers, it replaces it at the post of correspondent of the Monde in Tunis. Without ceasing its collaboration with Jeune Afrique, it then covers Tunisia for the daily newspaper of the evening, in particular the round of Bourguiba to the Middle East (April 1965). The first months, its signature is not shortened of it to let plane ambiguity on the nature of a sex of which the persons in charge of the street of the Italians fear than it causes a lack of credibility near the assistantship. In parallel, as from 1965, she collaborates episodically in the Nouvel Observateur through an interview of Haouri Boumediene, some articles on the business Ben Barka or a comment of the debate Mendès-Debré (December 1965). But in December 1966, a paper on police repression at the University is worth to him to be assigned with residence and threatened two years of forced labors for breach of security of the State. The intercession of Jean Daniel at Bourguiba then enables him to leave the country.

Giving up goods and husband in Tunisia, it is found in Paris deprived of all financial means more especially as Hubert Beuve-Méry and Jacques Fauvet refuse to help it. Jean Daniel then accommodates it readily with the drafting of Nouvel Observateur where it takes definitively the pseudonym of Combined. It is initially sent to cover the legislative countryside of Mendès France in Grenoble (January-March 1967) within the framework of the Rhone-Alps edition that Nouvel Observateur launches on this occasion. Of return to Paris, it quickly sets out again for Egypt to cover the Six Day old war (May 1967). It then is essential like “international reporter” newspaper on the questions of the Middle East, collaborating in particular with the correspondent of Nouvel Observateur in Israel, Victor Cygielman. Between two reports, it continues however to treat political life like illustrates it the portraits which it traces of Chaban-Delmas (January 24th, 1968), of Jacques Duhamel (February 14th, 1968), Alain Savary (July 21st, 1969) or Michel Rocard (November 3rd, 1969).

But at the dawn of the years 1970, it turns more and more worms of the security questions like the wage inequality between the sexes, “the sexuality of the children” or “the new high-school pupils”. If it sometimes happens to him to treat political questions such as “the financing of the P.C.F. ” or the business of “the Church and the Touvier business”, it thus chooses to collaborate more actively in the service “Our Time” within the framework of great investigations. It is following discussions with Philippe Viannay on the need for clarifying the inequalities which it coordinates thus the investigation into “the price of French” (September 1975), larger sale of the newspaper on Paris-surface. But it leaves also one on education (March 8th, 1976), the “fortune of French” (October 25th, 1976), sciences (March 7th, 1977), or carries out there a discussion with Francoise Dolto in October 1977.

She continues however to deal with the Middle East, thus interviewing personalities like Sadate (December 15th, 1975), Rabin (L January 5th, 1976; December 12th, 1977), Boutros Ghali (November 28th, 1977) or Bourguiba (February 1980). But, in April 1975, an article of December 1973 allotting to the general Gonen the responsibility for the reverses undergone by Israel at the time of the war of Kippourlui is worth a judgment with a door amends (150 000 FF) by Israeli Justice. Its refusal to pay having put it on the red list prohibiting at condemned to leave the Israeli territory, it is retained at the time of a voyage in November 1976. Thanks to its passport in the name of Ben Brahem, it succeeds in leaving Israel and making it possible the newspaper to draw some for a quite lower fine.

Incontestably the journalist most general-purpose of the newspaper and the most appreciated of Jean Daniel, it is, in November 1978, promoted Rédactrice of chief-assistant without at the very least exerting true administrative duties. It is rather about the recognition symbolic system of a talent which continues to be exerted in its reports abroad (in particular in Lebanon) or in its treatment of certain security questions such as the abortion.

Price of Best the Journalist in 1980, it is, with the approach of the great electoral deadlines, mobilized in interior policy. Thus, whereas it was limited to talks of political personalities second-rate or to questions in connection with instruments of national independence - as the nuclear power or the atomic weapon -, it comes from there, at the time of the presidential campaign of 1981, with successively interviewing Pierre Mendès France (April 13rd, 1981), François Mitterrand (May 5th, 1981) and Pierre Mauroy (June 15th, 1981).

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