Why did it take so long for US President George W. Bush to prepare his Middle East policy speech in June? Because, Arabs jest, it had to be translated from Hebrew.
The joke reflects how people in the region, from officials to ordinary folk, perceive - and resent - US policy.
Arab anger is rising over a US "war on terrorism" that appears to give Israel a free hand to crush a Palestinian uprising, while targeting Iraq and demonising Muslims and Arabs.
Mahmoud al-Tohami, a columnist for Egypt's business daily al-Alam al-Youm, said the United States had not modified its policies despite the widely reported wave of anti-Americanism. "It seems no one in Washington pays attention," he said.
Streets and mosques are seething in countries allied to the United States as well as in Washington's regional foes.
Bush's talk of ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for his alleged pursuit of doomsday weapons has fuelled anti-US sentiment already fired by the two-year-old Palestinian revolt.
"When I hear the American position regarding Palestine, my blood boils. I feel anger, I feel injustice. It is beyond what one can take," said Syrian hotel manager Roula Rikbi, 46.
"America doesn't care if there is a dictator in Iraq or not, it does not care either if there are human rights or not, all it wants is control," said Jihad Tarabey, a Lebanese banker.
From Beirut to Baghdad, many Arabs see themselves as victims of attacks by the United States or its ally Israel.
Citing Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and its virtual reoccupation of the West Bank two decades later, they point to thousands of Arab and Palestinian deaths inflicted by a foe that gets a generous flow of American weapons and aid dollars, and is shielded from international censure by a rarely interrupted series of US vetoes in the UN Security Council.
US military or financial support for Arab governments in countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia is seen, at least at street level, more a cause for shame than gratitude.
Few Arabs defend Saddam, but most are outraged at the plight of his people after 12 years of punitive UN sanctions and at the prospect of American firepower again laying waste to Iraq.
"Israel is America's spoiled brat," said Syrian employee Mo'taz Shihabi, asking why Bush acts resolutely only against Iraq, not Israel, which has also defied council resolutions.
Many Arabs see the right-wing, evangelical Christian supporters of the US administration as especially dangerous.
Bush himself has been at pains to reach out to Muslims and to tell the world that his campaign against Osama bin Laden and his followers, wanted for the September 11 attacks that killed about 3,000 people in the United States, is not a war on Islam.
But many Arabs are unconvinced. They think the United States has placed a face on terrorism - an Arab and Muslim face.
"Bush is a spiteful enemy of Islam... It was no slip of the tongue when he called his war on Afghanistan a crusade," said a Syrian driver of Bush's use of a word that recalls mediaeval Christian Europe's attacks on a Muslim-dominated Middle East.
Some Westerners feel that Arab anger is shifting from the abstractions of US policy to their own presence, for example in Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers.
"What's undeniable is that US foreign policy is increasingly causing concern among American expatriates, some of whom are talking about leaving," said Stephen Shroeder, an American medical specialist in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
A British employee of Saudi Arabian Airlines said radicals could strike at Westerners if the United States attacked Iraq.
"At the moment I don't sense any animosity just because I'm British... but if Bush's hands-off policy with Israel continues, and if that's coupled with a war in Iraq, I imagine it could expose us as easy targets for the militants and radicals who obviously do exist in Saudi Arabia," he said.
An estimated 120,000 Westerners live in Saudi Arabia, including 50,000 Americans and 30,000 Britons.
A string of bombings in the last two years, which killed at least three Westerners and wounded several more, has alarmed expatriates in the conservative kingdom. Saudi authorities blame score-settling between alcohol smugglers, but some analysts say they believe the blasts were motivated by hostility to the West.
Many ordinary Arabs have sought to boycott Coca-Cola and other famous US brands. Tirades against the United States in media commentaries have become more frequent and virulent.
One Saudi national, who declined to be named, said calling someone an American was now regarded as an insult.
Burning the Stars and Stripes has become a common ritual in some Arab capitals where governments now tolerate anti-American protests which they would once have instinctively banned.
In a move that further inflamed Arab and Muslim resentment, Bush signed a law last week that requires his administration to identify disputed Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
"The Americans don't give a damn about the Arabs. They think we are backward, but bin Laden showed them that when the Arabs want to do something they can do it," said one Syrian citizen.