Monday, January 09, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
The Arab Opinion Index for 2022 has been released by the Doha Institute, and it shows that Arabs in the countries surveyed overwhelmingly oppose their countries recognizing Israel:
Look how Saudi Arabia's score for Israel plummeted from 40% to only 3% thinking Israel is their biggest enemy. Iraq's score also dropped a huge amount, from 42% to 7%, Libya's from 44% to 7%, Tunisia from 42% to 9%.
Moroccans were the least opposed, but that is only 20% of those surveyed.
Unfortunately, Bahrain and the UAE were not part of this survey.
One other question where Israel is a prominent component was more interesting.
When asked which world country is the biggest threat to their home countries, Israel received over 50% from only two set of nationals: Palestinians and Lebanese.
The other answers are fascinating:
In 2014, Israel's and the US' scores were much higher as to being considered a threat:
I would say that while the diplomatic recognition question reflects sky-high Arab antisemitism, the "threat" question is more reflective of whether the respondents believe the anti-Israel conspiracy theories claiming that Israel wants to take over the entire region, as well as a more sophisticated understanding of how Arab states relate to each other and to other nations.
At any rate, far fewer Arabs look at Israel as their main enemy than eight years ago. That is a very big deal. It means that the opportunities are opening at least for the possibility of dialogue and to discuss common interests, something impossible with a perceived enemy.
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