Although people in both diasporas are glued to their television screens, the parallel ends there. While the American Arab and Muslim groups say they are better organized than ever before, they say they have not made a dent in American foreign policy. Their calls for an immediate cease-fire by Israel have been rebuffed by the White House and most legislators on Capitol Hill.
“I’m devastated,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, in Washington. “I thought we’d come further. We’re doing well, so far, in terms of our capacity to deal with everything from the humanitarian crisis to identifying families and working to get people out. What is distressing is the degree to which this neoconservative mindset has taken hold of the policy debate. It’s like everyone has drunk the Kool-Aid.”
Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said, “This is probably the only issue in Washington where there’s no real debate.”
Which is why the fight has to be more aggressive than this.
You know, when the fight gets more aggressive, the call from anti-Arabs immediately rises up: Terrorist sympathizers! Islamonazis! etc.
Please give Arab-American organizations a break and let them do what they can from where they are at. Believe me, there are groups that talk more aggressively but they get dismissed immediately.
The average American wants to see nice happy smiling faces they can relate to. I find celebrity bashes annoying, myself, but you have to play to the public you’ve got, not the public you wish you had.
There has to be room in the Arab diaspora for the discourse of the assimilated, because if not, you will lose every new generation. Please don’t start judging Arab-Americans based on what you in Cairo want to see. What plays in Cairo does not play in Peoria, and vice versa.
I agree with what you say — I don’t expect the lobbies to act like people in Cairo — but what they have to get aggressive about is the power of the pro-Israel lobby. Plenty of Americans would feel concerned about that if it was explained to them. And you can do the Gibran Khalil Gibran stuff as well. The strategy needs to include negative campaigning on their Hill opponents as well as positive campaigning for themselves.
What escapes many commentators who see Jewish designs in all things evil in the world is the fact that Israel is a sovereign country, and there is only so much its decision making will be affected by an outside power, including the United States. Is Hizballah a puppet of the Iran? Not especially (though I know Nasrallah gets mad when you say that). So why should Israel be viewed as controlled by the US?
And to the converse, the Israel lobby is effective in Washington in large measure because on the scale of things, there are very few of Israel’s supporters who scream for the destruction of the United States. Can any Arab lobby claim the same about its compatriots and not be damned by association? Don’t underestimate the cultural factors that bind the US to Israel. It isn’t all claws, horns, and fiendish laughs.
As the majority of Arab-Americans are Lebanese, very integrated and have been in the US for many generations, few seem to be interested in home-country political developments or US-Arab relations (except for pro-Palestine protests – which are too easily framed as angry-radical events in the US). The conflict in Lebanon may be changing that.
The AAI and ADC have been, to my mind, rather defensive in their approach and focused on discrimination faced by Arabs in the US, though ADC seems to have been galvanized by the Lebanon crisis.
(http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=2877)
Perhaps these organizations could do better by building grassroots voter and activist networks, and focus their energies lobbying on a few important issues (hopefully more tractable than Palestine) instead of protests and general identity-celebration. I wonder if AAI’s recent day of action on the Hill would have been more of a success if they’d had a good database for phone-banking.
It may be asking too much in this current climate to expect any Arab-American efforts to have much success in Washington, but they aren’t going anywhere so long as the initiative for mobilization on Arab issues lies with a rejectionist crowd that dismisses the political establishment as “Zionist” territory, or mosque networks/Islamic Society type organizations, or the socialist Left (bless their hearts, they really care about the issues, but they aren’t very politically effective). And of course the influential Egyptian and Saudi government/diplomatic machines have their own interests and their own networks and will not work with Arab-Americans the way that the Israeli embassy works with Jewish Americans.
Leila, have you been involved in this stuff, what has your experience been?
Plus when are we going to see targeted campaigns against or for specific politicians where this can be a wedge issue or whatever they call it in American politics? The Arab lobbies need to do the same sophisticated number-crunching and loyalty-buying other lobbies do. Is it just that they’re underfunded or what?
Funding is clearly a problem, per this recent article about AIPAC, Arab groups give a comparatively teeny amount to Congressional races.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
> dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201627_pf.html
Not sure what Arab-American groups could tap among general voting public though. Anti-Iraq war sentiment, perhaps?
Sorry that link didn’t post properly
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201627_pf.html