Gallup Poll of Arabs: US is "ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked and biased"
Many media outlets, including FT.com, published the results of a Gallup poll of 10,000 people in 9 Islamic countries. In the survey's words, the respondents held a general "belief that western nations do not respect Arab or Islamic values, do not support Arab causes, and do not exhibit fairness towards Arabs."
Many westerners familiar with the politics of the Islamic world have suggested that these beliefs stem as much from propaganda flowing out of state-controlled media outlets in Middle Eastern countries as they do from any actual U.S. policies or actions. Many Arabs also deny, or do not know, of the obvious culpability of their fellow citizens in terrorist attacks on September 11: "... most of those questioned reject the idea that Arabs, specifically Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, carried out the attacks. Significant numbers believe that Israel, or even the US itself, was responsible."
There is a lot we do not comprehend about each other. For instance, The Associated Press published a photograph of four year old Palestinian boy aiming a real AK-47 while he is in the prone position. The photo was taken Monday at an anti-Israel and anti-U.S. rally organized by the Palestinian Public Resistance on the Gaza Strip. Regardless of how we, in the West, would interpret this provocative picture, do any of us expect a child raised in this environment to be open-minded toward the United States when he grows up?