Wednesday, June 23, 2010

World Cup and Pan-Arabism

This afternoon is the World Cup match between Algeria and the US. Being American, I know nothing about soccer (or "football"), and care even less. But the conversations I've had as the match approaches shed interesting light on the always fun issue of pan-Arab relations.

My conversations with a few cabbies can hardly be representative of 6.5 million Jordanians, or 300+ million Arabs, but it's all I have to go on for now. But Algeria, as the only Arab country with a team in the World Cup, commands the loyalties of many of the Jordanian's I've spoken to about the ongoing tournament. My driver today was taking the afternoon off to watch the match, and didn't mind dissing the American team in front of a passenger who had already identified himself as American.

But head over to Egypt, and the situation is different. Egypt and Algeria fought a very nasty qualifying tournament last fall, causing not only bad blood, but also a minor international incident. The Egyptian government, in a "bread and circuses" move, exploited historical tensions with Algeria during the qualifiers to distract the population from the more pressing failures of Egypt's leadership. Riots broke out, Egypt recalled its ambassador from the Algerian capital, and the Arab League had to get involved to try to patch things up. I'm really not sure where many Egyptians would come down on an Algeria-Israel matchup. So, while I'm not in Cairo to watch the game, I'd expect to see more American flags than Algerian over there tonight.

Then, there are the outliers, like the cab driver who told me yesterday that he's rooting for the Argentinean team. Go figure.

1 comment:

  1. http://arabism-islamism.webs.com/index.htm
    The twin fascisms that causes most massacres, wars, "conflicts" today:

    Arabism is racism (Arab racism)
    Millions upon Millions are/became victims of [pan-] Arabism which is the worst current form of racism in its gigantic proportions, like: Kurds, Jews (not just in Israel), Berbers (the real natives of North Africa), Africans (not just in the genocide in the Sudan or the slavery in Mauritania or persecution in Egypt on native Nubians by Arab invaders – till today), Persians, Copts, Phoenicians
    , Assyrians, etc.

    Islamism is bigotry (Islamofascism)!
    The Islamic supremacy that “works” towards its vision of “final Islamic domination on the entire planet”, from Middle east to Africa from Asia to Eurabia, from forced conversions, terrorism, & massacres in multiple countries (like: Thailand, Phillipines, China, Indonesia, Tunisia, Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon India, USA, France, Israel, Russia, UK, etc.) to propaganda, the war includes on Muslims who are not radical enough...,

    Let’s face it! that entire war on Israel & the Jews since the 1920’s by infamous facsist Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini who started the “genocide campaign” [and continues by the children, grand children of Arab immigrants into Israel - Palestine - now convenienently called "palestinians"] in a clear outlined declaration to 'kill all Jews', is nothing but out of pure Arab Muslim bigotry.

    ---

    Why does biased media blame Israel defenders from vicious Arab Muslims who use civilians when they attack Israeli civilians... so that their civilians (they prefer kids to) die, then parade with their INTENDED/ORCHESTRATED casualties as "innocent victims"???

    BTW
    While the Islamo Arab dictatorship (& real Apartheid upon the non-Arabs, non-Muslims) goes on...
    Israeli [ungrateful] Arabs won't mention FAVORITISM by democratic pluralistic multi-racial Israel in: land, courts & universities, by the same token, the totalitarian & mullahcracy dictators of Iran with its Hezbollah thugs & militant "Palestine" anti-freedom forces cast their genocide plan under "freedom fighting."

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