Wednesday, August 09, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
From reading the media, the impression one gets is that while Arab governments are considering the benefits of closer relations with Israel, the populations are completely against it.
It turns out that this is not exactly true.
The most surprising results come from when Arab youth were asked how strongly they support their government's normalizing relations with Israel.
Among the Abraham Accords countries, there was strong support from the UAE youth, with 75% supporting normalization. For Morocco it was 50%, while it was only 30% in Bahrain and a mere 3% in Sudan.
More interesting were the results from other Arab countries.
An incredible 73% of Egyptian youth support normalization with Israel, which is a complete surprise for anyone who monitors Egyptian media that is virtually unanimous in opposing Israel.
47% of South Sudan youth want to see normalization, along with 39% of youth in Oman.
Even more astonishing is the attitudes of youth in other Arab countries.
Fully 31% of Algerian youth support normalization, at a time when its media is among the most antisemitic - and hugely against Morocco's relations with Israel.
Also surprising is that 19% of Syrian youth want to see normalization with Israel - and in Yemen, 19% strongly support such normalization.
These are numbers that simply would be inconceivable in years past.
Yet in Jordan, which is benefitting from ties to Israel in deals to provide the kingdom with much-needed water and natural gas, only 6% of youth want to see normalization with Israel.
And 100% of Palestinian youth never want to see normalized relations with Israel.
The survey includes this eye-opening graphic:
With the notable exception of Egypt, the countries that are the most antisemitic tend to also be the countries whose youth most reject ties with Israel.
The media has once again dropped the ball on reporting from the Arab world. There are real consequences and policy decisions that can be made based on these results, but the people whose jobs are to analyze these sorts of trends are clueless and instead parrot what "everyone knows."
