Anti-U.S. Feeling Leaves Arab Reformers Isolated

Posted on Aug 9, 2006

From James Hill / The New York Times

The Hezbollah TV station was on at a restaurant in Damascus, Syria. Moderate voices are being drowned out by a rising tide of anti-American sentiment.

From the N.Y. Times: “Moderate reformers across the Arab world say American support for Israel’s battle with Hezbollah has put them on the defensive, tarring them by association and boosting Islamist parties.” As usual, it comes back to America’s unflinching support of Israel, and Muslim fury at Israeli occupation of Arab lands.

N.Y. Times:

DAMASCUS, Syria, Aug. 8 — Moderate reformers across the Arab world say American support for Israel’s battle with Hezbollah has put them on the defensive, tarring them by association and boosting Islamist parties.

The very people whom the United States wanted to encourage to promote democracy from Bahrain to Casablanca instead feel trapped by a policy that they now ridicule more or less as “destroying the region in order to save it.”

Indeed, many of those reformers who have been working for change in their own societies — often isolated, harassed by state security, or marginalized to begin with — say American policy either strangles nascent reform movements or props up repressive governments that remain Washington’s best allies in the region.

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