Christine,
The United States is considered the Great Satan in the Arab in large part because of their long-term support of Israel. Also because of our military meddling in the region.
Absolutely. I think that both our support for Israel and our distrust for the Arabs are heavily rooted in basic racism, the assumption that Arabs are dark, anti-white as opposed to anti-colonial, another one of those recently subject peoples that could not be trusted to select their own leaders or control their own resources. The Jews, even though widely presumed to be socialist, were at least European, and unlikely to even talk to Russians. There was a cold war going on, remember, and US support for Israel did not pop into being overnight after WWII. I'd have to check the books to be sure, but I'd guess that US aid to Israel took a fast leap after Nasser brought Russian advisers to Egypt.
The point, of course, is that this is a complex political conflict, not something motivated, as Emile seems to feel, in a fundamentally malevolent religion.
Steve |
