Sunday, February 19, 2017

Union of Arab Writers and measuring Arab public opinion

I am always looking for evidence of Arab public opinion especially that Arab public opinion surveys can't always be trusted because 1) regimes often manipulate results; 2) Western polling firms often mistranslates questions and answers and often sub-contract their work to local unreliable firms; 3) polling don't take place in a free climate.  But here is one interesting case: the Union of Arab Writers met in Algeria and the statement was surprisingly (given regimes and Arab League's subservience to US-Israeli-Saudi alliance) tough against Israeli occupation and Trump's Muslim ban and hailed resistance to Israeli occupation and condemned all forms of normalization.