Cairo – Arab World’s Hope for Obama Dimmed, On al-Jazeera Photographs of Obama In a Yarmulke

Cairo – Across the Arab world, many greeted Barack Obama’s victory in the US presidential election with jubilation and relief. But 10 weeks later, as Obama was sworn into office as the 44th US president and the first African-American to hold the nation’s highest office, people from across the Arab world say they are greeting Obama’s presidency with diminished expectations.

As fighting raged in Gaza over the past three weeks, the influential satellite news channel al-Jazeera ran photographs of Obama wearing a Jewish prayer cap, or yarmulke, on a loop alongside pictures of Palestinian children injured in the fighting.

Such images reflect, and perhaps inform, many Arabs’ view of the new US president, although most say they believe Obama will be better than President George Bush.

Asaad, a young grocer from the Jordanian capital Amman, put it more bluntly: “I believe Obama will not be very different from other US presidents, given his silence over the Gaza massacre. He will stand blindly with Israel,” he said.

Mawledy al-Naqazy, a 57-year-old merchant from Tunis, expressed a similar view in still stronger terms: “It seems that the future of any American president, whether black, white, or yellow, is tied to pleasing the Jews and Israelis and collaborating in their crimes against the Palestinians.”