The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East

265 Pages·2013·3.04 MB·English

by  Shibley Telhami

THE WORLD THROUGH ARAB
EYES
Shibley Telhami:
ALSO BY
The Stakes
THE
WORLD
THROUGH
ARAB
EYES
ARAB PUBLIC OPINION AND THE RESHAPING OF THE MIDDLE EAST
Shibley Telhami
BASIC BOOKS
New York
Copyright © 2013 by Shibley Telhami Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part
of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West
57th Street, New York, NY 10107.
Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States
by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special
Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103,
or call [phone], ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-0-465-02983-9 (hardcover) ISBN: 978-0-465-03340-9 (e-book) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of my parents, Terese Khalil Kabour Telhami and
Zeki Shibley Telhami, who had been prevented by war from
achieving their dreams, but who had the courage to send their
firstborn teenaged son across a continent and an ocean to live
his.
CONTENTS
Introduction: Two Decades of Studying Arab Public Opinion
1. Arab Identities
2. The Information Revolution and Public Opinion
3. The Network Americans Love to Hate: Al Jazeera
4. Incitement, Empathy, and Opinion
5. The Arab Prism of Pain
6. How Arabs View Their Uprisings
7. Trends in Arab Attitudes Toward the United States
8. Attitudes Toward Iran
9. Attitudes Toward Democracy, Women, and Religion
10. Global Perspectives
11. From 9/11 to Tahrir Square: The Arabs Through American Eyes
12. Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East
Acknowledgments
Public Opinion Polls
Index
INTRODUCTION
TWO DECADES OF STUDYING ARAB PUBLIC OPINION
FOR THE PAST TWO DECADES I have sought to understand the attitudes of
ordinary Arabs and to make a case that these attitudes fueled politics in the
region in both the short and the long term. When I started this work, in 1990,
most political scientists and foreign policy analysts discounted the importance of
public opinion because the countries of the region were dominated by
authoritarian rulers. Then the 2010 Arab uprisings arrived, seemingly from
nowhere, and suddenly the attitudes of ordinary Arabs were inarguably the
driving force across a large swath of the Middle East, not only shaping events as
they happened but also laying the foundation for politics in the years ahead.
In a way I felt vindicated. Mostly, though, I wondered—and still do—whether
and when this awakened giant will find its bearings. In my view, the key to
understanding the region still lies in looking closely at the strongly held values
and beliefs of people in the region and how they define themselves. Of course,
these beliefs and notions of identity did not emerge from whole cloth in 2010;
they evolved over time. And we now are better able to study their evolution,
using the accumulated public opinion research of the past decade. That is the
purpose of this book.
*
MY JOURNEY INTO understanding Arab hearts and minds began as the cold war
ended and just as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was emerging as the perceived winner
of the devastating Iraq-Iran war that dominated the 1980s. To be exact, it started
with a trip to the region that took me to Baghdad in early June 1990, just two
months before Iraq’s army invaded Kuwait. I had taken a leave from teaching
political science at Ohio State University to serve, through a Council on Foreign
Relations International Affairs Fellowship, as advisor to Congressman Lee
Hamilton, then chair of the House Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle
East. I would tour the region that spring and summer to research a report for
Hamilton on the implications of developments in the region for the global
balance of power.
The Arab governments and people I met and interviewed on that trip were
clearly apprehensive about an impending era of American dominance, without
the counterweight of the Soviet Union. To their minds, America now would be
free to intensify its support for Israel, leaving Arabs still more vulnerable. Ever
since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the United States had been the principal supplier
of cutting-edge weapons to Israel, a substantial provider of economic aid, and
Israel’s protector at the United Nations. Indeed, the majority of cases in which
the United States employed its veto power at the UN Security Council during the
cold war had related to Israel. The prevailing sentiment was that American
support for Israel stood in the way of compelling Israel to withdraw from the
Arab territories it occupied in 1967—and that in the post-cold-war era, this
would be even more the case.
No Arab leader, however, had expressed these concerns publicly more often
and more forcefully, and in some ways more surprisingly, than Iraq’s ruler,
Saddam Hussein. Although it seems almost impossible to believe now, Saddam
had been on America’s good side throughout his eight-year war with Iran, which
he fought with significant U.S. military and intelligence support. By the start of
the new decade, though, the bloom was off that rose. In a speech in Amman in
February 1990, Saddam expressed what I discovered to be a common feeling
among Arabs: “Given the relative erosion of the role of the Soviet Union as the
key champion of the Arabs in the context of the Arab-Zionist conflict and
globally, and given that the influence of the Zionist lobby on U.S. policies is as
powerful as ever, the Arabs must take into account that there is a real possibility
that Israel might embark on new stupidities within the five-year span I have
mentioned. This might take place as a result of direct or tacit U.S.
encouragement.”1
By that summer, anger with American policy was more widespread. Driving