We deserve a little more forethought than to blindly copy a slanted article like “Criticism of U.S. Swells in Israel” (Jan.14), taken from the routinely Israel-chiding chain of McClatchy Newspapers. With the exception of Israel’s former U.S. ambassador, who states the direct opposite, this article quotes three of the most notorious far-left “researchers” in Israel-Alpher, Gilboa, and Heller-whose voices unite to scorn the U.S. in the exact same tones they use to mock their own moderate government, as led by the Kadima party. No doubt the follow-up to this article will seek comment from respectable American “researchers” such as Mearsheimer and Jimmy Carter.

Contrary to the article’s emphasis, Bush and Rice remain the most popular U.S. politicians in Israel of any in the past century, and not because they utter pro-Israel slogans but rather due to their underlying geopolitical strategy. Unfortunately, it turns out that Bush was right in his first speech after Saddam’s fall: the West would be engaged in an ideological struggle that may go on for at least a generation and become the defining struggle of the new century. To suggest that our unpopularity in Arab countries is at a “low” is childish-it has always been at a low. One exception that proves the rule was right after the Sadat-Begin accords, when Menachem Begin was welcomed to Cairo with mass enthusiasm, becoming far more popular than any American. Yes, that lasted but a moment, but so did American popularity in Egypt (we were already hated in Syria and Jordan for generations). Most critically, the U.S. was widely proclaimed to be “the Great Satan” by millions of students and marchers in Iran in 1979. Now those students have grown up and have become hard-core politicians, their ideology unchanged. And yet we are still exposed to articles that marvel at our “growing unpopularity” in the Middle East.

Rhonda Rosenberg

Research Assistant Professor

Stempel School of Public Health

Florida International University

Miami, FL