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Affluent Egyptians in Cairo Gloat
Over Attacks While Eating Big Macs
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By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
CAIRO, Egypt -- As the Bush administration works to draw moderate Arab states into its coalition against terrorism, it must consider the mood at a gleaming McDonald's outlet here on Arab League Street, a cosmopolitan avenue in a well-heeled neighborhood of Cairo.
Sandwiched between a Rolex watch store and a BMW car dealership, the restaurant is packed with affluent university students dressed in American garb and aware of the billions of dollars in foreign aid that the U.S. has pumped into Egypt. It's the sort of place where one would expect to find sympathy for the American cause.
But listen to what they're saying.
Sitting under a poster advertising "Crispy and Delicious McWings," Radwa Abdallah, an 18-year-old university student, is explaining that she rejoiced when she learned that thousands of Americans had probably died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "Everyone celebrated," Ms. Abdallah says, as her girlfriends giggle. "People honked in the streets, cheering that finally America got what it truly deserved."
Fellow student Raghda El Mahrouqi agrees: "I just hope there were a lot of Jews in that building," she says. Sherihan Ammar, an aspiring doctor in elaborate makeup and tight T-shirt, sums up her feelings this way: "America was just too full of itself," she says with a dismissive gesture.
Many Americans and Europeans have been shocked by television footage of Palestinians celebrating the terrorist attacks. But such feelings are hardly limited to Palestinians who live on the West Bank and Gaza and find themselves, all too often, looking down the barrels of American-made weapons. A trip around the capital of Egypt, one of America's main Mideast allies and the biggest Muslim recipient of U.S. foreign aid, shows that educated, relatively wealthy and seemingly Americanized Arabs just as openly express their joy at the carnage in the U.S.
Those sentiments, shared by about half of several dozen people interviewed in Cairo, also provide a clue to the motives of the hijackers themselves. They, too, appear to have come from relatively well-to-do families and had little in common with the desperate and usually uneducated Palestinians who make up most of the suicide bombers in Israel.
Although all Arab governments except Iraq's have condemned the U.S. attacks, the prevailing view even among those horrified by the killings is that what happened in New York and Washington isn't all that different from what America itself has inflicted on Iraqis, Palestinians, Sudanese and other Muslims. That sentiment isn't limited to Arab states, either: Opinion surveys conducted in Greece, a NATO ally, indicate that anywhere between 5% and 17% of those polled believe that the U.S. somehow "deserved" the attacks, according to the Greek media.
In the Arab world, public opinion doesn't have the same importance as in the West: No Arab ruler has to worry about winning Western-style elections. But there's only so much that the region's governments can do to help the U.S. without risking serious upheaval at home. "Any Arab country that will ally itself with the U.S. will incur public-opinion losses, and will see its stability undermined," warns Gehad Auda, professor of international relations at Egypt's Helwan University.
Lawyers and Editors
Irritation with American foreign policy runs right through Egyptian society. Sameh Ashour, head of the influential Egyptian Lawyers Association, greets visitors in a building whose facade is draped with a black banner that reads, "Jerusalem Calls! Where Are the Muslims?" He dismisses the attacks in New York and Washington as a "natural result" of American foreign policy. "The U.S. itself practices terrorism when this suits it around the world," he says, "and tries to prevent terrorism when it doesn't suit it."
Mohammed Tantawi, editor of the government-controlled Akhbar Al-Youm newspaper, wrote this weekend that the attacks should be seen as a rather ordinary event. After all, he wrote, "thousands of innocent people, including many children, women and elderly citizens are being killed every day" in Palestinian territories by U.S.-supplied Israeli jets.
This might be a gross exaggeration: About 630 Palestinians, including gunmen and suicide bombers, were killed in the 12 months since the latest round of the Palestinian uprising began, while Israel counts about 170 deaths among its own. But that's exactly how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is perceived by many in the Arab world. That perception is fueled by independent Arabic-language satellite TV channels, which tend to give gruesome details of Palestinian suffering and pay scant attention to victims on the Israeli side.
More Guarded in Marrakech
Even in thoroughly Western-oriented countries like Morocco, a nation far removed from the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and a one-time applicant to join the old European Community, many voice sneaking admiration for the terrorists. In a convenience store in Er Rachidia, a sand-swept town at the threshold of the Sahara, the first television images of the World Trade Center towers engulfed in smoke were greeted with a roar of approval. "Of course we are happy," says the storekeeper as he invited a group of foreigners to stop and watch the news.
In Marrakech, the hub of Morocco's tourist industry, reactions were only a little more guarded. "What happened is a terrible thing for all the people involved," says Abdou Hamaoui, a 29-year-old civil engineer sipping a glass of lemon Schweppes at the Cafe Glacier on the main square of the city's old town. "But the U.S. government deserves this."
Herwig Bartels, a former German ambassador to Morocco who now runs the lavish Riad El Cadi inn, says that sentiment reflects "a very strong resentment toward American politics, which is fuelled daily by television reports showing Palestinians being killed." He thinks initial jubilation among Moroccans has waned "now [that] people have seen the civilian side of the attacks." Yet he's still bracing for a drastic decline in American tourists.
'Two Separate Things'
Back in Cairo, those cheering America's loss in Cairo see no contradiction with the fact that they also eat American foods, wear American clothes and watch American movies -- nor with the fact that their country receives $2 billion (2.17 billion euros) in U.S. aid each year. "It's OK to eat at McDonald's because it is managed by Egyptians," says Ms. Abdallah, the 18-year-old university student. "But in general, I do try to avoid American companies -- because, you know, every Saturday they give money to the Jews."
In an outdoor cafe a short drive away, Ahmed Ahmad Tarif, a 21-year-old business-administration student, is wearing a Nike T-shirt. He bought it, he says, because it's good quality, even though he believes that "America stands for racism and for being against freedom and democracy."
Fellow student Ahmed Hussein, bespectacled and with a thin mustache, reflects for a moment when asked about U.S. economic assistance for Egypt. "The money we receive from America and the hatred we feel for America are two separate things," he finally says, "and should not be mixed together."
--Alessandra Galloni in Marrakech, Morocco, contributed to this article.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com. |
