Syria Today | New Kids on the Washington Block

New Kids on the Washington Block

Words Dalia Haidar

The influence of the Zionist lobby on the American political process is well known: one only has to look at the speaking list of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual convention last June, which included all presidential candidates, to see America’s most powerful Israeli lobby group has a clear voice in Washington.

So where are the Arabs? After all, during the last presidential election in 2004, Arab Americans made up around 1 percent of the national vote. American Jews made up around 3 percent. On a recent trip to America, Syria Today sat down with James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a research institute which serves as the political arm of a growing Arab American community, to discuss the world’s most high-profile democratic process, one that has been ongoing for two years now.

“It’s been exhausting,” Zogby said from his Washington office. “This is probably the earliest and longest running election we’ve had that I can recall. People started running two years ago. More than a billion dollars has already been spent, half of which was spent by the two democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I kept thinking that people would tire of the election and give up on it, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. The issues

are growing in importance every day and people know that the stakes are very high this time around.”

The American Arab voice

The AAI estimates there are around 3.5m Americans of Arab descent. The largest group, 39 percent, has Lebanese origins, while Syrians and Egyptians make up 12 percent each. Around 63 percent of Arab Americans are Christian, 24 percent Muslim and 13 percent express no religious affiliation. Arab Americans live in all 50 states, but two thirds reside in 10 states and one third of the total live in California, New York and Michigan. About 94 percent live in metropolitan areas. Los Angeles, Detroit, New York, Chicago and Washington DC are the top five metro areas of Arab American concentration.

Overall, Arab Americans make up 0.42 percent of the American population. However, because of higher than average political involvement – generally only half of all eligible American voters exercise their right to cast a ballot – Arab Americans make up 1 percent of the national vote. Historically, the community has split fairly evenly between Democratic and Republican candidates.

Since the 2000 election there has been a surge in Arab American voter registration and political participation. There has also been a move to vote Democrat. This election is likely to see a record turnout among this increasingly organised community.

“The Arab American community is highly energised in this election,” Zogby said. “We are trying our best to mobilise them in all the key states to make a difference, to vote and to organise in order to get involved in the campaign and play their role. Having come from countries in the Middle East, the American Arab community has a direct connection to the problems the US has created in the region. And we have a fear that if we don’t get it right here in the US, the Middle East will only get worse.”

In a bid to ensure the maximum Arab American voter turnout come November, the institute has launched a national campaign called “Yalla Vote 08” to encourage all Arab Americans to take part in next month’s presidential election. The campaign also includes a national declaration calling for presidential leadership based on consensus building, respect for all faiths and ethnicities and an American foreign policy that “will bring peace with justice and self-determination to the Palestinians, reconciliation and full sovereignty to Lebanon, and security and an end to the occupation and war for the people of Iraq”.

While the AAI operates on a non-partisan basis, Zogby, like the majority of Arab Americans, will be voting for Obama this November. “The damage Bush has done to the region has been extraordinary,” he said. “If Barack Obama does nothing, at the very least he will stop digging deeper. But still, I don’t want to create the expectation that change will come as quickly as people expect.”

Not without opposition

The rise in Arab American political participation has not gone unnoticed by groups like AIPAC. “The more organised we become, the more opposition we receive from some elements in the Jewish community to keep us out of the political process,” Zogby said. “But we have had to fight for thirty years now to break down the barrier of being excluded and take the right to vote for this country. We have succeeded up until a point. We are a little bit stronger and the country knows us a little bit better. But if we relax for a year, we will go backwards, so we won’t let that happen.”

Muscling in on groups like AIPAC is, as Zogby openly admits, no easy task. “They have more money and they fight as if their life depends on it,” he said. “They work as nobody else does.” According to Zogby, 60 percent of all political donations in America come from the Jewish community. “They have long understood the importance of this game and they play it to win, but our people don’t.”

A change within the American Jewish community is taking place, however, with a new, more moderate voice emerging; one that is looking for practical solutions to problems in the Middle East. “American Jews are more closely allied with our views than with the hardliner pro-Israel views,” Zogby said. “They are pro-Israel, but not hard line. Looking to the future we have to build links with this section of the American Jewish community. It has got to be us allied with the Jewish community versus Jewish hardliners and I think we are going to get there.”

The identity of the Arab American community is also in flux, with a new wave of Arab immigrants identifying themselves as American Muslims rather than Arab Americans.

“We see many people coming out and saying: ‘We are not Arab Americans, we are Muslims,’” Zogby said. “This is something new and mainly comes from more recent immigrants. It is different from my youth. We went to college and met other people who came from the same background and we formed a common bond upon a common culture and heritage. That was an Arab heritage.”