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US policy at heart of Arab
discontent
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Public opinion across the Arab
world is deeply ambivalent about the United States,
which is widely admired for its technological prowess
and political institutions but disdained and even hated
for its policies toward Palestinians and Israel, says an
unprecedented survey released on Tuesday.
The
survey, whose results directly contradict declarations
by top US officials that Arab opposition to Washington
derives from hatred of Western ideals of democracy and
freedom rather than US policies, found that other
Western countries, particularly France and Canada, were
widely respected throughout the Arab world.
"They like our values but are angry at our
policies," said James Zogby, president of the Arab
American Institute (AAI), an influential,
Washington-based lobby and public-education group.
The survey was based on face-to-face interviews
last April and May of 3,800 adult Arabs in eight
countries: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon,
Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE). Each respondent was asked 92 questions, covering
their personal values, political attitudes and
priorities, and views of other countries. It was funded
by the Beirut-based Arab Thought Foundation and carried
out by Washington-based Zogby International.
The
survey was undertaken in part to better define who Arabs
are, particularly in the aftermath of last year's
September 11 terrorist attacks against New York and
Washington, when US public opinion became fixated on the
question, "Why do they hate us?"
The
administration of President George W Bush and its
supporters in the Christian right and the mainly Jewish
neo-conservative movements claimed that the attacks were
inspired by Arab hatred for Western values and "what we
stand for'.
But experts on the region, as well
as Middle Eastern governments, insisted that whatever
anger was directed at Washington was due to the
perception that its policies were unfair, especially to
Palestinians.
An earlier poll released by Zogby
International last April appeared to bear that out. It
found that large majorities of respondents in five
countries, including several Gulf states and Egypt, felt
very positively about US science and technology,
education, exports and political values. "They told us
in effect that they hated US policy toward Iraq, toward
other Arab counties, and most of all, US policy toward
Israel," said John Zogby, the firm's CEO, who is also
James Zogby's brother.
The latest survey was
aimed more at determining the personal values and
perspectives of Arabs. What it found was that Arabs,
like most other ethnic and other groups around the
world, are focused most on matters close to home, said
James Zogby.
Asked to choose among a list of a
dozen values that they felt were important to teach
their children, respondents selected "self-respect, good
health and hygiene, personal responsibility, respect for
elders and working to achieve a better life", according
to the report.
When asked to rank political
issues that were of importance to them, respondents
placed civil and personal rights at the top, followed
closely by health care. But, in a highly significant
twist, respondents ranked "Palestine" and "the rights of
Palestinians' with their personal economic situation as
the next-ranking concern, far ahead of other issues,
such as their national economies and their country's
relationship with other Arab or non-Arab countries.
Palestine ranked as the highest political
concern for Saudis and Moroccans, third highest among
Egyptians, and fourth among Jordanians and Israeli
Arabs. "The issue of Palestine doesn't exist as a
foreign policy concern," said James Zogby. 'Palestine is
an existential, a personal issue," he noted, adding that
Arabs may view it similarly to how US Jews see the Nazi
Holocaust.
As a result, Arabs' views about how
Palestinians are being treated appear to play a major
role in how they rate foreign countries, particularly
the United States, he suggested. Asked to rank 13
foreign countries, Israel consistently scored the lowest
marks by far, followed, almost invariably, by the United
States and the United Kingdom - the two Western
countries most closely identified with support for
Israel - in that order. Respondents from the UAE, Saudi
Arabia and Egypt gave the United States the lowest
marks. "The attitudes toward the US are framed in terms
of its relationship with Israel," said James Zogby.
On the other hand, France, Canada, Japan and
Iran all received positive ratings from six of the eight
countries covered by the survey, while China and Germany
were viewed positively in five of the eight. Those
ranked in the middle included Russia, India, Pakistan
and Turkey, although Turkey also received consistently
negative scores.
Turkey's poor ratings in
comparison to Iran were particularly striking.
Neo-conservative commentators close to the anti-Iraq
hawks in the Bush administration cite Turkey, whose
military has close ties with Israel, as the model on
which a "liberated" Iraq should be rebuilt.
On
other issues, the survey found that a significant
plurality of Arabs in seven of the eight countries
prefer to identify themselves as "Arabs" rather than as
citizens of specific countries or adherents of Islam or
other religions. "The nation-state is still new," noted
James Zogby. The one exception was Lebanon, where
respondents said that they preferred to be identified as
Lebanese rather than as belonging to any specific
religious or ethnic group.
John Zogby said that
the office of public diplomacy at the State Department,
which has mounted a number of major initiatives designed
to affect Arab and Islamic opinion toward the United
States, has taken an interest in his firm's two surveys,
and may have used its earlier work in setting up Radio
Sawa, which broadcasts music and news in the Middle
East.
(Inter Press Service)
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