According to a recent Zogby poll, George W. Bush jumped ahead of Ariel Sharon this year as the world leader Arabs like least. Perhaps Bush owes his remarkable surge to the fact that the former prime minister was in a coma for all but two weeks of 2006. This same poll that surveyed respondents on the popularity of an Israeli leader who for all practical purposes is dead, also reports that the majority of Middle Easterners do not fear Iran. It is the answer to what seems a very fuzzy question, indeed a much politicized one designed to challenge what has recently become the White House’s regional flow-chart: The Sunni Arab states are lined up with the US and Israel, against Tehran and its regional allies, Syria and Hizbullah. You can’t entirely blame the Zogby pollsters for wanting all the traditional enmities to still hold water: Arabs hate Israel and
