I don't think so. What proof do you have that Arabia hated the USA (we're talking the USA here, not "the West") before 1900. Wasn't the USA even on the Arabs side in the Suez Canal crisis? Arabs have no reason to have any opinion, positive or negative, on non-Muslim countries that don't border Muslim lands, ie Japan, USA, South America, Australia.
You can't just talk about the US, that's my point. This is a hatred of the rise of the West and the corresponding fall in power of the Middle East; it gets focused on whoever in the West is seen as wielding the most power. That's the whole point. Israel from this point of view is seen as the tip of the spear, the thorn in their side. It's not a separate issue.
You can't just separate out the US and say, there was no problem before. Yes, there was a problem, one that Eisenhower taking Nasser's side didn't do much to change, simply because after WWII American took on the mantle of the Hegemon of the West, and the Arabs in opposition moved into the Soviet sphere, just as they had moved into the Nazi sphere in the 30s and 40s.
I would recommend reading the classic book by Raphael Patai called The Arab Mind. He has a good chapter on attitude towards the West over the last 200 years. The Arab world still hasn't digested the enormous shock they got when Napoleon invaded Egypt and Palestine, and they found they were helpless to do anything about it. It took the English to chase him out again. It was then they learned that the Europeans had surpassed them, and they've spent the time since trying this and that to fix it. Unfortunately, they have seized on one stupid idea after another and not found the formula. |
