Arab hatred temporary, expert says

PROVO — A day after President Bush agreed to help Israeli and Palestinian leaders reach their ambitious goal of a peace treaty by the end of next year, a Jordanian professor told Brigham Young University students that such a peace would resolve 80 percent of Arab anti-Americanism.

"If you do not recognize the Palestinian state, you will not have peace," said Abdelmahdi Alsoudi, who doubles as a professor at both Jordan University and Denver University.

Alsoudi, who spoke Wednesday, described the broad anti-American sentiment shared by most Arabs as temporary, subject largely to continuing tensions between Israel and Palestine and frustration with the Iraq war and American military presence in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.

The vast majority of Arabs like Americans and would like to live, work and study in the United States, he said. They also appreciate American culture: More than 50 percent of Arab TV programming consists of American shows, and five TV stations in the Persian Gulf broadcast only in English.

But Arabs strongly dislike U.S. foreign policy, especially American support for Israel. The United States has given Israel more than $100 billion in aid since 1949, money Arabs perceive as propping up the Israeli economy and financing an Israeli military that has humiliated Arabs and continues to kill Palestinians.

Since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, polls have showed overwhelming foreign distaste for what is seen as American unilateralism. For example, of the people living in the world's 22 Arab countries, one poll found only 11 percent approved of U.S. foreign policies. Just 12 percent believed the United States respects Muslim values.

Only 6 percent of Moroccans and Jordanians and a scant 3 percent of Saudis had favorable opinions of America in a 2004 Zogby poll. Alsoudi said those perceptions have improved little since then and are not isolated to Arab countries.

"There is almost no place in the world where the United States is not facing a rising trend of anti-Americanism," he said.

Among Arabs those feelings are caused by U.S. support for Israel, American aggression against Arab states and perceptions of American discrimination against Muslim-Americans, U.S. support of oppressive Arab regimes and a lack of support for Arab democracy.