Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 54, No. 49, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 7, 2000 Page: 3 of 48
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HANUKA ISSUE ■ IN OUR 54TH YEARI - THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2000 - TEXAS JEWISH POST
Features
Arab Americans Backed Bush But Future Allegiances Uncertain
By Howard Lovy
DEARBORN, Mich., — Ali
Baze, 29, a Lebanese American
who immigrated to this country
12 years ago, worked behind the
counter of Cafe Ananas on Elec-
tion Day, preparing shwarmas and
mango smoothies.
The cafe is located in this De-
troit suburb that is dominated by
the shadow of a sprawling Ford
auto plant — and by its 300,000
Arab American residents.
Dearborn is home to the largest
concentration of Arabs outside
the Middle East. Its storefronts
and sidewalks feature Arabic
signs advertising halal meat —
the Muslim version of kosher —
and women covered head to toe
in traditional Muslim dress.
Baze, taking his time with the
orders while his customers hung
out near the counter, trying to
make sense of the election returns
on the big-screen TV, looked up
and asked, in broken English, who
everybody voted for U.S. presi-
dent.
“Bush,” was the immediate,
universal response.
About a mile away, at Lowrey
Middle School, a woman wear-
ing a traditional Muslim head-
scarf and a T-shirt emblazoned
with the words, “Yalla, Vote!”
guided a large crowd of Arab
Americans toward the voting
booths.
Most of these voters were re-
cent immigrants to the United
States or first-generation Ameri-
cans. For many, it was their first
time voting as American citizens.
Most of them voted Republican.
With the country still riveted
on the legal wrangling that will
determine the outcome of the pres-
idential elections, Jewish and
Arab analysts are still assessing
the impact of the Arab American
vote and the unprecedented at-
tention it got this election season.
For Jews, the issue raises im-
portant questions about the polit-
ical leanings and new-found in-
fluence of the Arab American
community — and to what ex-
tent, if any, Arab clout could come
at the expense of Jewish interests.
For Arabs, the issue has drawn
new attention to their communi-
ty, and what such attention means.
Arab American leaders said
their community in Dearborn gave
about 70 percent of their vote to
Bush, with about 7 percent going
to Ralph Nader, whose Lebanese
lineage and criticism of Israel
appealed to many.
Leaders also said the commu-
nity surprised even itself in how
many of them turned out at the
polls — about 48 percent — and
that the traditionally Democratic
community went Republican this
time around.
The reasons are many, among
them the perception that Republi-
can George W. Bush paid more
attention to Arab Americans dur-
ing the campaign than his Demo-
cratic opponent, Vice President
A1 Gore.
Designating Michigan as a piv-
otal swing state, which he ulti-
mately lost, Bush visited Arab
American leaders, actively court-
ing their support and even men-
tioning their community by name
in the second presidential debate,
when he said they suffer from
racial profiling.
But the top concern for Arab
Americans, say analysts, was the
violence in the Middle East and
the perception that President
Clirtton has not been a fair medi-
ator in the peace process.
“Obviously the situation in the
Middle East, with the new intifa-
da, did not help emotions in this
community and they linked the
deterioration in the situation with
the Clinton administration,” said
Hassan Jaber, an Arab American
activist in the Detroit area.
If it were not for the violence in
the Middle East, the Democrats
would be a natural ally for Arab
Americans, Lebanese immigrant
Houssam Dakhlallah said.
“Some people actually believe
the Democrats are better for the
country, but they’re thinking about
the people who are dying,” Da-
khlallah said.
“They’re thinking that we can
suffer a little bit, but they’re suf-
fering a lot. We've got to do this
for their sake.”
The more recent Arab immi-
grants are not only bringing to the
United States their passion for
Middle East issues, but are chan-
neling it into the power of their
vote.
It’s an embryonic political con-
sciousness that began with their
interest in the Middle East —
that’s where their families are,
where their passions lie — but is
beginning to develop into a more
complex structure of advocacy
and education in foreign and do-
mestic issues.
David Gad-Harf, executive di-
rector of the Jewish Community
Council of Metropolitan Detroit,
compares it to the American Jew-
ish political awakening at the
opening of the 20th century.
“There were so many different
organizations moving in differ-
ent directions that there wasn’t a
clear voice and clear message that
came out of the Jewish communi-
ty,” Gad-Harf said.
“I see the same kind of evolu-
tion happening in the local Arab
American community, with sev-
eral different organizations rep-
resenting different points of view,
different nations of origin, differ-
ent religious perspectives. There-
fore there’s kind of a cacophony
that's occurring.”
The problem, Jaber said, is that
Arab Americans have no vehicle
by which to organize a clear-cut
agenda. But that is apparently
changing.
“All around us, we see a new
group of activists in this commu-
nity,” motivated by both domes-
tic and Middle East issues, said
Jaber, who also is deputy director
of a local Arab American com-
munity center.
For the newer immigrants, the
ones who have been here 20 and
25 years, “Middle East issues are
No. 1 on their mind and every-
thing else comes second. Maybe
way second,” Jaber said.
But among the second and third
generation, he added, “I believe
they went heavily toward Gore.”
But without what Jaber calls a
political “machine,” Arab Amer-
icans are casting their votes based
on pure emotion — and some-
times rumor.
For example, word going
around the polls in Dearborn on
Election Day was that Gore had
said he didn’t need the Arab
American vote to win the presi-
dency — a rumor that Jaber
guessed came from Arab Ameri-
can Republicans.
James Zogby, president of the
Arab American Institute and an
ethnic adviser to the Gore camp,
attributed the rumor campaign to
political immaturity in his com-
munity.
“Frankly, my sense about this
election is that we all learned a
great deal and have a great deal
yet to learn, one of which is there
has to be a tolerance for diversity
of opinion in the country and in
our community,” said Zogby, who
lives in the Washington area.
“This is a community that’s
divided, it’s a community that
has mahy different views,” Zog-
by continued. “We have Demo-
crats, we have Republicans. I
think that our vote probably tilted
George Bush's way. But I don’t
think it did more than tilt.”
Zogby said this diversity was
not reflected in the endorsement
of Bush by many Arab American
organizations.
“The United Auto Workers en-
dorsed A1 Gore,” Zogby said.
“There are more Arab Americans
in the UAW than there are in all
the organizations that endorsed”
Bush combined.
Zogby said that an important
part of his community's political
awakening is not merely getting
Arab Americans into the voting
booth, but giving them power with
more appointments to govern-
ment positions.
He said the next president will
have to “do better on appoint-
ments in the administration,”
Zogby said, that he intends to
push for that.
He added, “We are beyond the
point where Arab Americans do
not Find their place at the table.”
Gad-Harf, whose Jewish coun-
cil has worked side by side with
the local Arab American commu-
nity on issues of common con-
cern such as welfare and immi-
gration reform, believes that pol-
iticians will pay more attention to
the Arab American community
in the future.
But, he said, that increased at-
tention will not necessarily take
away from the Jewish agenda,
especially because much of it,
particularly on domestic issues,
is shared by the two communi-
ties.
He said that he hopes that pol-
iticians can get a common mes-
sage from the communities —
that they want the Mideast vio-
lence to end and a return to the
peace table.
He also said that Jewish-Arab
cooperation, which has declined
in recent weeks as a result of the
violence in the Middle East, can
resume once things quiet down.
“Whenever there's a crisis in
the Middle East, we go through a
period of estrangement,” Gad-
Harf said. “It doesn’t sever ties,
but it strains ties between our two
communities. It makes it much
less possible for us to do things
publicly together.”
Jaber agreed that an Arab-Jew-
ish political alliance on certain
issues will have to wait until things
calm down in the Middle East.
That was evident at the polling
site in Dearborn on Election Day,
when Ghassan Darwich, 46, a
cook who originally came from
Syria, said he voted for Bush “be-
cause AI Gore is Zionist.”
A group of young Arab Amer-
ican teen-agers overheard and
said, seemingly reflexively, “Zi-
onist? Kill him.”
But one of the teens, when asked
to elaborate, apologized for the
comment, and said, in a quiet,
serious voice, “War is stupid.
Killing is stupid over a piece of
land.”
Howard Lovy is a TJP/JTA cor-
respondent.
No More Arab Representatives Remain in Israel After Egypt Recall
By David Landau
and Naomi Segal
JERUSALEM — Egypt has be-
come the latest Arab country to
take diplomatic action against Is-
rael because of the ongoing vio-
lence in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip.
In a sudden turn from its role of
mediator in the regional conflict,
Egypt recalled its ambassador to
Israel on Nov. 21.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Amre
Moussa cited “Israeli aggression”
for the decision, adding that it re-
flected Cairo’s “extreme displea-
sure” with the way Israel was treat-
ing the Palestinians.
Egypt's announcement came one
day after Israel launched missile
strikes on Gaza City to retaliate for
a deadly terrorist attack hours be-
fore on an Israeli school bus else-
where in Gaza.
The planned departure of Egypt’s
longtime envoy in Israel, Moham-
med Basiouny, leaves no Arab rep-
resentatives remaining in the Jew-
ish state.
Jordan, the only Arab country
besides Egypt to have signed a
peace treaty with Israel, has de-
layed sending its newly appointed
ambassador to Tel Aviv to protest
what it also sees as Israeli aggres-
sion against the Palestinians.
The ongoing violence has also
prompted Morocco, Qatar, Tuni-
sia and Oman to sever the low-
level economic links that each es-
tablished with Israel during more
promising times in the Israeli-Pal-
estinian peace process.
Egypt’s recall of Basiouny —
which could lead to an eventual
downgrading of relations between
the two countries — caught the
Israeli Foreign Ministry by sur-
prise and prompted diplomatic
scrambling to understand its im-
plications.
Israeli officials expressed dis-
appointment with Cairo’s decision,
but said they do not believe the
development indicates the Israeli-
Palestinian violence was heading
toward a wider conflict.
Israeli President Moshe Katsav
said it was reasonable for Egyptian
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 54, No. 49, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 7, 2000, newspaper, December 7, 2000; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth754264/m1/3/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .