Global Policy Forum

By Emily Wax

At the small farm where he grows onions and oranges, Hady Said Hassan wraps a pet sheep around his shoulders and stretches out his legs as his friends gather to watch the U.S.-led war against Iraq unfold on television. "America has killed thousands of Iraqi children," said Hassan, 34, in this small town an hour's drive north of Cairo, the Egyptian capital. "They want to destroy Islam as a religion."

From his hairdressing salon in Amman, Jordan, Abdullah Alami, 37, said he believes the United States started the war to steal truckloads of oil for Israel. In glittery downtown Beirut, Hani Dannawi, 28, a bank employee, said he thinks the war is a ploy by the United States to colonize the Middle East; he thinks Syria and Lebanon will be next. For some Arab citizens, beliefs are not the product of academic analysis or editorial writings. Reality, political analysts say, is the product of images, impressions shared with friends and word of mouth. As a result, the analysts say, Arabs and Americans are interpreting what they see of the war in vastly different ways. It is evident, said Nihal Saad, senior political correspondent at Nile TV International, an English-language Egyptian station, that neither Arab countries nor the United States are receiving an unbiased view of the Iraq invasion.

"The world is watching two entirely different wars," Saad said. "And everybody is reporting from their perspective of the truth. We of course think we are accurate." There is a fabric of belief among people interviewed in several Arab countries that the United States is lying about the war. The conclusions are the product of mistrusting the United States, and are fueled by a barrage of Arab satellite television. Just as American media produce moving stories about missing and wounded U.S. soldiers, their Arab counterparts run in-depth stories on the victims of U.S. and British attacks.

Many newspapers this week ran full-color, graphic photo spreads of Iraqi victims. There was a dead boy with his brains leaking out of his skull and another with his twisted, bloody guts being stuffed back into his stomach by emergency workers. Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite network that reaches 35 million Arabic-speakers worldwide, broadcast the now infamous footage of dead American soldiers and terrified prisoners of war.

It also offered interviews with the first Iraqi casualties at a Baghdad hospital, along with constant updates from Iraqi officials on how they are moving the war forward. Al-Jazeera provided in-depth coverage of antiwar protests around the world and last week broadcast a special report detailing ties between senior members of the Bush administration and U.S. oil companies. Many people in Arab countries are led by what they see in the media to conclude that there are far more American casualties in the war than the United States is reporting, that the United States is targeting Iraqi women and children, and that the war is a crusade against Islam. "This is our perspective of the war," said Gamal Ghitany, a respected Egyptian writer. "I don't think many people here believe that [President] Bush wants to bring democracy to the Middle East. That would be laughable. So we watch on television what is happening to Arabs and that stirs the pot even more."

Rami G. Khouri, executive editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut, wrote that Arab and U.S. media are playing to their own biases. Arab and U.S. networks "broadly provide a distorted, incomplete picture of events while accurately reflecting emotional and political sentiments on both sides," Khouri wrote. "If you're getting your news and views from either Arab or American television, it is now very clear: You're getting only half the story."

Beneath all of this is the simmering frustration with the failed peace process in Israel and deep mistrust of U.S. sincerity when it comes to helping Arab countries, they said. In private conversations, diplomats, analysts and ordinary citizens said the Israeli-Palestinian issue colors their view of the United States and the invasion of Iraq. "If this is a war to win Arab hearts and minds, then the U.S. is in deep denial of the reality," said Hani Shukrallah, managing editor of the al-Ahram weekly, the English-language version of the al-Ahram newspaper in Cairo.

Western diplomats said they believe these feelings will fade if President Saddam Hussein is ousted and the United States takes on the task of rebuilding Iraq. Some people are not so sure. "What I know is that war is the business Americans are best at. Every now and then, they meet and they decide which country they are going to hit next. They need to do it for their economy to stay good," said Yvonne Deeb, 50, a housewife in Beirut who was shopping for groceries.

"When did the Americans ever care about the Arab people? Why do you think this war is happening? They came to occupy us to control the world," said Layla Salah, 42, a housewife who lives in Amman. "We don't know the fate of our Arab countries," said Ahmed Mohamed Ali, 63, who was smoking in a Cairo coffeehouse. "They could come for us next. Americans love Egypt," said Salid Gomaa, 30, as the men in the coffeehouse shook their heads in agreement. Then the men sat. They smoked some more, all the while watching television news, as they would continue to do all night long.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.