Terrorism Jars Jewish, Arab Party Loyalties
By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 7, 2003; Page A01
President Bush has her vote, said Dina Shapiro, standing in line at Bagel Power, a Jewish bakery in Scarsdale, N.Y. She applauds his war on terrorism.
Bush won't get her vote, said Alia Charara, standing in line at New Yasmin Arabic bakery in Dearborn, Mich. She fears his war on terrorism.
Shapiro, who comes from a family of liberal Jewish Democrats, sees Bush as a man who is looking after her kin. Her nephew lives in Israel: "Just as I feel Bush is taking care of me, he's taking care of my sister's son."
Charara, whose Muslim family voted for Bush in 2000, sees the president as a man who is persecuting her kin. Her uncle was arrested recently in New York, she said: "They said he was giving secrets to Lebanon when all he was doing was calling his wife."
In the last presidential election, Arabs supported the Republican candidate while Jews overwhelmingly backed the Democrat. That was before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Bush's response. Since then, the political moorings of the two communities have come loose. Democratic and Republican leaders are trying to catch them as they drift. Though they are small in numbers, Arab and Jewish populations are concentrated in several swing states, such as Michigan and Florida. And Jewish donors play a role in many campaigns.
Sensing an opening, Democratic presidential contenders have reached out to Arab voters, speaking at an Arab American Institute conference this fall in Detroit. AAI President James Zogby, a Democrat, quipped: "They didn't come because we have pretty brown eyes." But then, the Democratic National Committee also held an emergency strategy session last year to address reported Republican gains among Jews.
Republicans, meanwhile, describe a White House so at ease with Judaism that Jay Lefkowitz, then deputy assistant for domestic policy, blew a three-foot shofar, or ram's horn, at a senior staff meeting during the High Holy Days, drawing laughter and applause from senior strategist Karl Rove. But when asked to invite a Sunni Muslim leader to a White House event supporting the Iraq war, Khaled Saffuri, chairman of the conservative Islamic Free Market Institute, said no one would go.
"If you defend this administration, it's like saying cancer is good for you," Saffuri said. Arabs tell him they will vote for a Democrat -- "any Democrat."
Jack A. Abramoff, a lobbyist and a leading Jewish Republican fundraiser, is predicting a more favorable trend in his community. "We could see a tremendous shift," he said. "Bush is the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history."
To be sure, neither the Arab community nor the Jewish community is a monolith. Committed Republican Arab leaders such as Yahya Basha remain loyal to Bush despite "a great deal of stress on the mind and body," Basha said. "I keep gaining weight, and losing hair and teeth." Many Iraqi Americans are pro-Bush because he ousted Saddam Hussein. Dearborn resident Sahib Al-Hathaf, an Iraqi American who fought with a U.S. infantry regiment in Baghdad, described Bush as "second only to Allah" and said, "I'd vote for him 20 times if I could."
Moreover, claims of defections among Jews are exaggerated, Democratic operatives said. Steve Rabinowitz, a Jewish media strategist, dismissed them as Republican spin. "Every two years, our Republican Jewish friends -- both of them, I like to joke -- say this is going to be the year Jews trend Republican," he said. "In November, it proves not to be true."
Jews have been a mainstay of the Democratic Party ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president. That is changing, say Republicans, especially among younger, suburban voters. As one senior Bush administration official put it: "I don't get the eye-rolls at bar mitzvahs anymore."
Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said that when he campaigned for Bush in 2000, "everyone was suspicious" of Bush's intentions. As governor of Texas, Bush had questioned whether Jews could enter heaven. His father had a strained relationship with the community. In 2000, Bush scraped together 19 percent of the Jewish vote. Since taking office, however, he has cried during a visit to Auschwitz, cold-shouldered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and embraced Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as "a man of peace."
Some link Bush's positions to his support from evangelical Christians. "The Bible Belt is Israel's security belt," said Daniel Lapin, a rabbi allied with Christian groups. Others point to Bush's war on terrorism.
"There's a natural synergy. We're all in the same struggle," Brooks said. Indeed, after the attacks in 2001, a group of rabbis wrote a prayer for the president and the military, which Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, recited in Hebrew at the start of a Cabinet meeting this summer: "Heavenly Father . . . protect the defenders of the United States of America wherever they may be. Bless them with victory."
Arab American leaders cite no post-Sept. 11 Arabic prayer for Bush. Instead, some quote a saying: "Bush is bosh," slang for "Bush is a losing bet." Ahmad Chebbani, a Democrat and president of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn, said, "Now I feel like a hero."
In 2000, Chebbani supported Democrat Al Gore at the endorsement meeting of the Arab American Leadership Council. The majority favored Bush. Gore was seen as too pro-Israel; his running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), was a religious Jew. Bush, on the other hand, had courted the Arabs, advocating the elimination of the use of secret evidence for prosecuting suspected terrorists. At the AALC meeting, Chebbani recalled, "people were shouting, almost throwing chairs at each other. I was pounding the table, 'This is a huge mistake!' "
In the general election, Arabs chose Bush over Gore by 14 percentage points. (Arab analysts say the margin would have been bigger, but Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, a Lebanese American, took 17 percent of the Arab vote.) Since then, the Bush administration has imposed stricter immigration policies and has eased restrictions on the use of secret evidence with the USA Patriot Act. Many view Bush's occupation of Iraq and aid to Israel as part of a global war on Islam.
"Now people say, 'We should have listened to you,' " Chebbani said.
In a poll by John Zogby, an Arab American (and James Zogby's brother), 33 percent of Arab Americans said they would vote for Bush, compared with about half of the general population. The 2000 census reported that people of Arab descent were 0.43 percent of the U.S. population and 1.2 percent of the population of Michigan, a swing state.
Jews, on the other hand, are drifting toward the GOP. In 2002, the American Jewish Committee estimated that Jews are 2.1 percent of the U.S. population and 3.9 percent of Florida, also a swing state. A poll by Steven Cohen of Hebrew University found that almost half the Jews who chose Gore over Bush are uncertain they would vote the same way today. Perhaps even more crucial, prominent Democratic donors have crossed party lines. Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress and a supporter of Democrats, wrote a $100,000 check last year to the Republican National Committee. "It would be a mistake for the Jewish community not to show our appreciation to the president," Rosen said.
There have been crossovers in the Arab community as well. Nabil Sater, a Michigan businessman who calls himself "a Republican orphan," said he feels "lied to, and cheated on," by Bush and by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), a staunch ally of Israel. For the first time, Sater said, he is giving thousands of dollars to Democrats.
Arab Americans, however, are not a major source of campaign funds. Jews provided at least half the money donated to the DNC in the 1998 and 2000 election cycles. At the RNC, Lew Eisenberg, who is Jewish, was finance chairman until he became finance chairman of the host committee for the Republican National Convention recently. At Bush-Cheney fundraisers in Washington, California, New York and Florida, rabbis gave the invocations.
Ira N. Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, said that Jews are the most politicized ethnic group in the country. "Karl Rove has a Jewish strategy," Forman said. "It's largely about money -- but it goes way beyond that."
Democrats have a Jewish strategy, too, they say. For some candidates that has meant shaking the family tree. Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) recently discovered he had Jewish grandparents. Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark talks of his Jewish father. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean's wife and children are Jewish. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich's Jewish girlfriend brags that Kucinich is a vegan out of respect for her kosher dietary laws and knows the Passover Seder by heart. But Lieberman, the only Jew in the race, has been disappointed by lackluster Jewish support, campaign workers said; many Jews, especially older, wealthier ones, feel the time is not right to have a Jew at the top of the ticket.
Lieberman shared a synagogue pew for 10 years with Richard Heideman, honorary president of B'nai B'rith International. "We know him. We love him. I respect him," Heideman said. Even so, Heideman, a lifelong Democrat, has decided to give money to Bush: "Things have changed in this country."
Things have changed indeed, said Imad Hamad, director of the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee in Michigan. "People would rather swallow Lieberman than deal with Bush," he said. "That's how bad it is."
In September, the FBI told Hamad that he would receive the bureau's plaque for exceptional service. Two days before the ceremony, the award was withdrawn. Agents were concerned about his "problematic" associates who support terrorism, an FBI statement said. Hamad, who campaigned for Bush in 2000, is supporting Dean, the favored candidate of many Arab Americans. "People don't have illusions that the Democrats are the salvation," he said. "But we hope they'll be more evenhanded."
"Evenhanded" has become a trigger word in the Dean campaign. In September, Dean said the United States should be "evenhanded" between Israel and the Arabs. His comments provoked such an outcry among Israel's supporters that Dean hired a Jewish public relations expert, Matt Dorf.
"It was 'Oh, my God, everyone and their mother is criticizing us on Israel,' " said Dorf, who called hundreds of Jewish leaders as part of a damage-control effort. "It was unfair. His heart is with Israel."
His campaign chairman is also with Israel. Steve Grossman, Dean's aide-de-camp, is the former president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby. "Even if the Jewish elites aren't supporting Dean," said Grossman, "the grass roots has been passionate about Howard Dean, and many are Jews." Bush might do better than he did in 2000 among Jews, he said, but there would be no fundamental realignment.
John Zogby agreed. The pollster's data put a majority of Jews in the Democratic camp, along with the Arabs. In fact, Zogby said, the communities agree on more than one might imagine: They both believe in Israel's right to exist; majorities believe in a Palestinian state; neither likes secret evidence or the Patriot Act -- Arabs because they're the victims, Jews because they're liberals.
His numbers give him hope.
"If I were a political person, I'd put on a loincloth, call myself Gandhi and say, 'Hey, let's talk, guys,' " Zogby said with a laugh. " ' 'Cause it gets settled here.' "
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