My Blog

While Barack Obama spent many months responding to Republican groups trying to employ Islamophobia and Arab-hating to discredit him, he nevertheless could not escape the all-too-often descriptors of Arab and Muslim till the end of the campaign. At a McCain rally a few weeks before the election, the Republican candidate was told by an audience member that she didn't trust Obama because he was Arab. If one could overlook the racist undertones and overtones of that statement (and the less redeeming and undignified response from McCain), all the while Arab-Americans were busy rallying the vote in their community in his support. Simultaneously, their kin in the Arab world expressed confusion about the prospect of an Obama presidency and what it would mean for American foreign policy in the region, the Palestinian-Israeli impasse, and the economic crises which is striking the Arab world hard.

I was asked a couple of days ago on Al-Jazeera's show Min Washington (From Washington), whether I thought Arab-Americans were hopeful or pessimistic about the future of an Obama White House. It is hard to tell, but there are several contradictory feelings that pervade the minds of most Arab and Arab Americans. Who is the real Obama? Does he actually have sympathies for Arab causes? (Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, America's unfounded war on Iraq and the subsequent bloodletting, the political standoff in Lebanon, the overt threats directed at Syria, etc etc.) Is Obama a pawn of the Israeli lobby? Can he alleviate the mistrust and animosity between the US and the Arab world? Can he change the image of the US in the eyes of Arabs? As the 300 some million Arabs wait and watch, it may be interesting to see what Arabic press has to say about Obama. Here is a sample of some of the cartoons that went to print in the past week or so that depict Obama.

There seems to be a tale of two Obama's with irreconcilable motifs in the Arabic cartoon and caricature press. He is either a foot soldier in the ongoing political battle for the Holy Land, vouching for Israel without equivocation, a continuation of the same decades-old pro-Zionist policies of the US regime, or a messianic final salvo in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Alternatively Obama is also a darling symbol of emancipation, hope, change, peace and other seemingly Utopian ideals as he reinvents American democracy, redeems a state built on slavery and entrenched in racism, and represents a better future for all citizens in the world.