Democracy inaction
The Arab-American community won't do what it takes to give AIPAC a run for its money.
cairotimes.com
Ashraf Khalil
"It's like the old joke. Q: Where does an 800 lb gorilla sit? A: Wherever it wants. In Washington DC, the 800 lb gorilla of US foreign policy influence is AIPAC -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- and where it sits is right on top of the US congress.
Long acknowledged as a grassroots political steamroller -- Fortune magazine recently dubbed AIPAC the second most powerful political lobby after only the American Association of Retired Persons -- AIPAC's presence has rarely been as strongly felt as this year.
A true glimpse of AIPAC's power and tactics came in late March as the Clinton administration's frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rewriting of the peace process came close to boiling over into a public spat. With the Americans threatening to make Israel look bad by publicly releasing details of the latest American land-withdrawal proposal should Netanyahu reject it, AIPAC swung into action. Within days, a letter arrived at the White House, signed by 81 of the total of 100 US senators, urging Clinton not to release details of the American proposal.
All in all it was a thoroughly impressive display of muscle-flexing that couldn't help but make the Clinton administration take notice. The details of the US proposal were never released, and US rhetoric against Netanyahu has toned down considerably since then. One senior administration official, in an article published by The New York Times, said, "The letter was meant as a shot across our bow."
All of which begs the question, just where were the Arab-American political institutions designed to temper AIPAC's power over the American government.
"We don't have any counterpart to AIPAC," says a Washington-based Egyptian-American political activist, speaking on condition of anonymity. "When AIPAC begins to mobilize like that, basically what you do is put on your seatbelt and brace yourself for the crash.... Once that letter from AIPAC started going around, every senator knew that they had to sign it."
Arabs in America still lag behind the Jewish community in terms of population and wealth. But at the same time, Arab activists maintain that Arab-Americans have enough votes and money to be far more of a political force than they are. The reasons for this political underachieving are far-ranging, and vary depending on who you ask.
"We've got the money, and we've got the numbers. What we don't have is the political might and the belief in ourselves," says Rania Masri, national coordinator for the Iraq Action Coalition. "A lot of Arabs -- even those who were born here -- don't think of themselves as Arab-Americans. They still think they're just staying here until their home countries get fixed. So they don't really feel a part of American political life."
Many Arabs and Arab-Americans espouse the almost fatalistic belief that the US government is hopelessly ideologically biased toward Israel. But Arab-Americans involved in Washington politics dismiss such beliefs as the victim mentality of a community unwilling to admit that the other side is simply playing the game better.
"That's just a cop-out.," says Chris Mansour, administrative assistant to Congressman Dale Kildee of Michigan. "They're not doing anything illegal. They're not doing anything magic. They're doing what we need to do."
That means coming up with money, votes, and volunteer time. When it comes down to it, politically active Jewish-Americans do what it takes to make their voices heard in Washington in a way that Arab-Americans simply won't. They write the check; they call their congressman; and they vote.
"The community has not really engaged in the political process enough to form an effective lobby," says Jim Zogby, President of the Arab-American Institute -- the most powerful of the Arab-American political organizations. Zogby described political lobbying as "the art of collecting on debts. You work in the campaign, you donate your time and your money, and then you say: 'Well we helped you, now we'd really like you to do this.'"
All of which is easier said than done in Arab communities across America. Activists and political insiders complain of a fundamental political immaturity among the community -- a naive belief that simply protesting loud and long enough will convince an elected official to jeopardize his career by crossing AIPAC.
"We don't appreciate the system. We don't know how to work it," says the anonymous Egyptian-American activist. "We want to be able to just walk in the room and get indignant and demand that congressmen vote their conscience without having the money and votes to back it up. The community has to change. They need to wake up to the reality of what it's going to take."
The mother's milk of politics runs dry
What it takes, above all else, is money; and Arab-American communities -- which have no shortage of wealthy businessmen -- have proven notoriously tight with the purse strings.
At the national convention of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee held in Washington, DC in June, Randa Fahmy, a senior advisor to Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan, conducted an informal survey.
Fahmy asked the room:
How many of you voted in the last election?
About 30 hands went up.
How many know your congressman personally?
15 hands.
How many have donated more than $50 to your congressman?
Four people raised their hands.
That, Fahmy explains, is the Arab-American problem in a nutshell. "For Arab-Americans, fundraising is like pulling teeth," she says. "You get them to write a $100 check and it's like you're asking them for their first-born son. You call a Jewish-American and they just write the check."
One cause versus a dozen AIPAC has a permanent natural advantage over any Arab organization: purity of vision. While the Arab message can get muddled in a myriad of issues and causes, AIPAC's goal and message are simple: unwavering support for Israel no matter what administration is in power in either Washington or Jerusalem. That blind devotion has occasionally put AIPAC out of step with more liberal elements of the American Jewish community -- who have had bouts of disillusionment over the years about Israeli's harsh put-down of the Intifada, regular forays into Lebanon and Netanyahu's hawkish reign.
But at the same time, that singularity of vision can also be AIPAC's greatest strength. No matter what their misgivings, even Jewish-Americans who aren't big fans of Netanyahu or Likud will respond when they feel Israel is being threatened.
"Our problem is that there's just too many issues. Palestine, Iraq, Libya and a whole host of domestic concerns -- it's almost overwhelming," says the anonymous activist. "They have one issue. They have Israel."
Bad habits from back home
Chris Mansour, administrative assistant to Michigan congressman Dale Kildee, has no sympathy for Arab-Americans who gripe that Israel -- and its political lobby the American Israel Public Affairs Commitee -- exerts unfair influence over the US government. Mansour says AIPAC earns its power honestly by supplying the money, votes and support that make politicians listen.
In contrast, the Arab-Americans "cop-out," Mansour says, by refusing to learn the way the game is played and then complaining that it's rigged when they lose.
So what's at the heart of this basic inability to grasp the way things work in American politics? Mansour chalks it up partially to the fact that all Arab immigrants come from countries with less than stellar democratic traditions.
"There's a tradition in the Jewish community of political activism. In the Arab community, especially with people who have come over recently, there's a tradition that people who are active politically could wind up dead or in jail," Mansour says. "They came from countries where being politically active was dangerous. So they kept their heads down, they took care of their families and they left the politics to the professionals."
Contrast that with your typical pro-Israel activist, who won't hesitate to scare the hell out of the news media in defense of the Jewish state. Television producer Danny Schecter recalls a time when he was working for the news magazine 20/20 and the program was preparing to air a particularly critical piece on the nature of the Israeli occupation during the Intifada. "I was in the studio, and the story was set to run at 10 pm," Schechter says. "Starting at 8 pm, the studio began to receive hundreds of telegrams from people protesting the anti-Israel bias of a story none of them have seen yet."
As the grassroots level, Arab-Americans are also limited in their quest for power by that most common of human failings -- racial prejudice. Although they would be considered a minority by most white Americans, many Arab-Americans feel no particular kinship to other minority groups such as blacks or Hispanics. As a result, opportunities to form coalitions with other minority political interests are often passed up.
Michigan Representative John Conyers, an African-American, gripes that the support he has given to Arab politicians and issues has not been returned in kind. At the June convention of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Conyers challenged his Arab audience to step up and build bridges to other communities.
"Your leaders have to link themselves with our causes," Conyers said. "We need you. You are minorities and I am a minority. We have to work together."
While such minority coalitions do take place at a national level, it's a much different story locally. In the cities and neighborhoods of America, Arab/black relations often range from apathetic to outright hostile.
"The problems at the grassroots level are very discouraging," acknowledges ADC President Hala Maksoud. "Cleveland, for example, is a hub of daily tension between the Arab and black communities. We have to rid ourselves of the prejudices we brought with us."
Another grand tradition brought to America from the old world by Arab immigrants is that all-time favorite: The Arab Unity Rhetoric Shuffle.
"What you see here mirrors what you see in the Arab world. Everyone talks about unity, but everyone does the exact opposite," says Wael Masri, chapter president of ADC's North Carolina chapter. "The Palestinians have their causes, the Iraqis have theirs. Everyone's pulling in different directions."
Alphabet soup in Washington
Which is not to say that there are no nationwide political organizations looking out for the Arab cause. Indeed there's a whole raft of them. The ADC, Arab-American Institute (AAI), the National Association of Arab-Americans (NAAA), and occasionally the American Muslim Council all take turns leading the Arab-American political charge. But these organizations tend to be divisive, disorganized and ultimately ineffective.
ADC enjoys the greatest level of grassroots support among Arab-American communities, but the organization isn't an officially registered political lobby. It serves mostly as a media watchdog, community organizer and legal aid body for Arab-related civil rights issues. ADC's lobbying efforts are confined mostly to encouraging letter-writing campaigns among its membership -- and even those efforts are mainly confined to domestic issues. Top on the list is the use of secret evidence for "national security" reasons by government prosecutors in cases of Arab immigrants suspected of ties to terrorist groups. Next come airport security profiling standards, by which Arab travelers are often detained and questioned based solely on their ethnicity.
The AAI, led by former ADC co-founder Jim Zogby, easily has the most influence with the current American administration. President Clinton even spoke at the AAI national conference in May. But ironically, the organization with the most clout seems to have the least credibility among rank-and-file Arab-Americans. The AAI was one of the only national Arab organizations which actually endorsed the use of US troops in driving Iraq out of Kuwait during the second Gulf War. Most of the others took a safer route by condemning both the Iraqi invasion and the use of American force. While the AAI's more administration-friendly stance certainly helped it gain credibility with the politicians, it was taken as a complete sell-out by the Arab community, and many still regard Zogby as an Uncle Tom.
"That did not go well with the community," says the Egyptian-American activist. "Jim's name is dirt in a lot of places ever since."
Political Gulf War syndrome
AAI isn't the only Arab organization suffering long-term effects from the Gulf War. Those organizations such as the NAAA and the ADC which refused to endorse the US military option were penalized by a loss of funding and support from Gulf state donors in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Randa Fahmy, a senatorial aide who was working as a lobbyist for NAAA at the time of the war, says the organization was forced to cut back its staff from 15 to three.
Anyone who wouldn't go on television and endorse the troops got their funding cut, so most organizations had to downsize, and lost effectiveness," says former ADC national board member Talaat Othman.
Which brings up another obstacle these Arab organizations sometimes face -- financial meddling and often outright extortion from back home. While Israeli governments -- no matter what party is in charge -- have always recognized the power of the pro-Israeli lobby and worked to strengthen organizations such as AIPAC, Arab governments, particularly wealthy donor states, have sometimes viewed groups such as ADC and AAI as extensions of their own foreign policy interests.
Officials at the major Arab-American organizations are understandably cautious in discussing the phenomenon. But others, such as Mark Bruzonsky of Middle East Realities, openly deride the major Arab groups as lapdogs for the Middle East power/money establishment. Bruzonsky, who publishes an on-line newsletter that regularly savages the major Arab-American organizations, describes Zogby as a "public relations flack" for Gulf State interests, and ADC as terminally cautious in its approach so as not to offend any potential donors in the Arab world.
"None of the Arab governments want lobbies, so they have a bunch of sponges who soak up money and don't take on anything controversial," Bruzonsky says.
Small victories
After all this doom and gloom, it would be easy to simply write off the Arab-American cause as hopeless. But while the national picture remains bleak, the local picture in certain places is much brighter. Arab-Americans, especially long-standing established communities in places such as Michigan and Ohio, have become a powerful force in local politics.
Michigan in particular, which boasts a huge Arab community that dates back to the early waves of Arab immigrants in the 1920s, has become a major hub for Arab political power. The state has consistently sent to Washington representatives and senators sympathetic to Arab causes -- including Spencer Abraham, currently the only Arab member of the US Senate.
Fahmy, who organized Abraham's winning campaign, says the Arab community in Michigan has realized the power of its own voice -- and politicians have realized that the community has the power to get them elected and keep them in office even if they piss off AIPAC.
"Every politician in the state comes to court the [Arab] community," she says. "They know the road to the governor's mansion, or to Washington, goes through us." So what is it that works so well in Michigan? Not surprisingly, it's the exact same tactics that work for AIPAC on the national level: activism, involvement and unity
"In Michigan, Arabs serve on their school boards, and run for city council, and hold fundraising dinners for the mayor," Fahmy says. "It's simple. They organize, they vote, they volunteer, and they donate." |
