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Dr. Zogby — Washington Watch
Monday October 26, 2009
On Sunday, October 25th, representatives of over three dozen Arab American and American Jewish community organizations met in Washington to make clear their shared commitment to a comprehensive Middle East peace. Hosted by J Street, which calls itself the US’s “pro-peace, pro-Israel lobby” and the Arab American Institute, “the research and policy arm of the Arab American community”, the event was joined by Tina Tchen, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Read More »
Monday October 19, 2009
The Goldstone Report is back, taking center stage in a raging international debate. What is most troubling, is not the circuitous route the Report took on its way to the United Nations Security Council. Rather, it is the fact that those making the most noise about the Report have, I fear, either not read it or are deliberately distorting its contents for political advantage. In fact, it may well be that, by now, the Goldstone Report has eclipsed the Iraq Study Group Report as the most discussed, least read, document of the decade. Read More »
Tuesday October 13, 2009
The immigrant experience in America is a topic rich in meaning. For me, it is personal, since my understanding has been informed both by my family’s story and my work of several decades. Read More »
Monday October 05, 2009
With the dust having settled following President Obama’s New York meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a sober assessment of what actually happened, and what may happen next, is in order. Read More »
Monday September 28, 2009
The last time Democrats won the White House in 1992, they quickly lost ground in the 1993 and 1994 elections. The results were debilitating for President Clinton. With Republicans winning Governorships in Virginia and New Jersey (the only two states that hold elections in the year after a Presidential contest), and then gaining control of both Houses of Congress in 1994, the President’s ability to promote his agenda was severely constricted. Read More »
Monday September 21, 2009
Despite the continuing horrors visited upon Palestinians, their deep political divide, relentless Israeli settlement expansion and more, there are glimmers of hope in the Palestinian skies. What I am referring to here, are not external developments like ongoing U.S.-led efforts to rekindle Israeli-Palestinian peace talks or growing European impatience with Israeli occupation policies. Read More »
Tuesday September 15, 2009
Although President Obama’s Wednesday night address to a special joint session of Congress may not have won the support of many of those hostile to his efforts to reform the nation’s health care system, and exposed the depth of the nation’s partisan divide, it was, nevertheless, a “game changer”. Here’s why. Read More »
Tuesday September 08, 2009
I had the distinct honor of being invited to address this year’s Iftar dinner at the Pentagon, together with Ms. Farah Pandith, the State Department’s Special Representative to Muslim Communities and Ms. Dalia Mogahed, of the Gallup Corporation. In attendance were over 125 American Muslims, members of every branch of the US military, and their guests from the White House, Congress and other government agencies. Read More »
Monday August 31, 2009
It is more than ironic that at the very moment when the US is pressing Arab States to take steps toward normalizing relations with Israel (including measures like: opening airspace to Israeli overflights, exchange of commercial offices, and issuing visas for business and cultural exchange), the government of Israel has taken new measures to further restrict the rights of American citizens visiting Israel and the Occupied Palestinian lands. Read More »
Monday August 24, 2009
Summers are rarely kind to American Presidents. Despite Congress being in recess and Washington slowing to a quiet crawl, it is in August when issues heat up and boil over and when presidents appear to lose control of their agenda. Read More »
Monday August 17, 2009
On August 12, 2008, President Barack Obama awarded the Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor, to 16 individuals whom he described as “agents of change”. Among the awardees were: Senator Edward Kennedy; former Congressman and Cabinet Secretary, the late Jack Kemp; and Grameen Bank founder Muhammed Yunus.
One of the recipients, Mary Robinson, Ireland’s first woman President and world renowned advocate for human rights, was singled out for attack by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and AIPAC. They argued, on the flimsiest of grounds, that Robinson was biased against Israel (though for the ADL and AIPAC, anything short of effusive praise for Israel is seen as evidence of bias).
The case they built against her was based largely on her chairing the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in her capacity as High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights Commission. The Durban Conference has been criticized by supporters of Israel for its harsh criticism of Israeli policies….
Despite the harshness of these attacks, and the hurt, no doubt, they have brought to Ms. Robinson, I am convinced that this entire episode had less to do with her than it does with the President. And the charges against this distinguished Irish leader though not only wrong headed, hurtful to her, and unfair, were also a case of political misdirection.
Read the whole article…
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Monday August 10, 2009
There is a social movement stirring on the far right of American politics and it bodes ill for our future.
If the individuals involved in these currents have anything in common, it is that they are angry and alienated and have identified “government” as a source of their problems and, therefore, as a target of their wrath.
Here we are in the midst of a hot summer, with “birthers” fulminating about Obama’s “foreignness”, angry mobs breaking up town meetings, and polling numbers showing a deepening partisan divide across the nation.
I am reminded of similar developments that occurred in 1919 at the beginning of the “Red Scare.” Then too, a national movement, fueled by fears of immigration, economic dislocation and war-time anti-foreign bigotry was exploited by some, ignored by others, until it got out of control, with lethal consequences…
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Monday August 03, 2009
Barack Obama began his presidency in a rush to put out fires everywhere, at home and abroad. When some have criticized the new President, suggesting that he was “biting off more than he could chew,” his supporters would respond that he had no choice, asking “which challenge could he ignore?”–the collapse of the financial sector; a sagging economy; a health care crisis; two major wars; a web of secrecy masking not only violations of human rights and international law, but US law, as well; or a badly tarnished US image, world-wide. Read More »
Monday July 27, 2009
On July 20th, I was invited by the Department of Justice to deliver the closing remarks at a conference organized to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the Civil Rights Bill, here are some excerpts from my remarks.
The story of Arab Americans coming of age, as an organized community, is a classic American tale–of immigrants seeking opportunity, benefiting from America’s freedoms, while also experiencing the dark side of discrimination that has haunted our nation’s history.
Although most Americans of Arab ancestry are descendants of that wave of immigrants who came to America in the pre- and post-World War One era—our development as an organized community is more recent.
As a result of The National Origins Act of 1924, quotas for Arabs were near zeroed out, and maintained at low levels until the 1960’s. Partly due to this growth-stunting exclusion, and the intense pressure of assimilation that characterized the American scene in that era, the impetus toward becoming a self-conscious organized community did not take hold until the late 1960’s–a bi-product of the transformative power of the civil rights movement.
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Friday July 24, 2009
With Benyamin Netanyahu agreeing to a Palestinian State (albeit one that meets his specifications), and the European Union’s Javier Solana calling for a Security Council resolution to recognize a Palestinian state by a date certain, the idea has now become commonplace. Even here in the US, it is a near “article of faith” to project a two-state solution as the only acceptable outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Because this has not always been the case, it is useful to trace the evolution of this acceptance in our political discourse–recalling, as we do, how difficult it was just a few decades ago to support Palestinian rights.
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Monday July 13, 2009
In 1991, as part of its overall approach to post-Gulf War peace-making, the Administration of George H. W. Bush secured an Arab agreement to suspend their secondary boycott against companies doing business with Israel, in return for an Israeli commitment to freeze settlements.
Three years later, in 1994, as Co-Chair of Builders for Peace, a US private sector initiative launched by then Vice President Al Gore, I made the first of many visits to Israel/Palestine accompanying Mr. Gore, Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown or delegations of Arab American and American Jewish businessman.
We had just arrived in Ben Gurion Airport and were heading to a meeting in Tel Aviv. I was riding with an American Jewish colleague, who, it turns out, had in the past, been a frequent visitor to Israel, but who had not been there in three years. As we approached Tel Aviv, looking at the city’s night lights–neon signs aglow, advertising a broad array of products, my companion noted with delight “these signs are the first fruits of peace. Because of the boycott, many of these businesses weren’t here three years ago. Now they are.”
The next day, we left our hotel in Jerusalem traveling north to Ramallah. On our way, we passed massive construction sites of new housing up and down the hills surrounding the Holy City, encapsulating tiny Palestinian villages now trapped in their shadows. “Are these new settlements?” I asked. “No,” was the reply, “this is just an extension of Ramot”–pointing to another large aggregation of homes, on an entirely different hill.
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Monday July 06, 2009
Largely because the Obama Administration has directly challenged Israel’s continuing settlement expansion in the West Bank, the issue has been receiving unprecedented US press coverage. Last week alone, there were several dozen editorials, commentaries and news articles appearing in major US dailies. Read More »
Monday July 06, 2009
On June 29th, in keeping with the timetable set by the US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement, the US redeployed its combat forces out of major Iraqi cities–the first phase of a plan that should lead to a complete US withdrawal from Iraq by December 31, 2011.
The Iraqi government declared this move a victory and set June 30th as “Sovereignty Day,” a national holiday. In the US, a Washington Post writer stated that Iraq “is no longer an American war,” (certainly, I must add, not the view of the Obama Administration). Nice words, but more dangerous exaggeration than a depiction of reality. Victory has not been won, nor has America’s responsibility ended.
It is good that the US has redeployed and it is equally important that the Iraqi military and government must now find a way to assume primary responsibility for internal security. But there will be difficult days ahead with dangers on many fronts. These must be faced squarely.
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Monday June 29, 2009
During the 2008 election there was a television ad featuring a late night phone call on the White House hot line. “It’s 3:00 am,” the narrator said, “there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing, something is happening in the world…who do you want answering the phone?”
During the closing weeks of the election while campaigning for Barack Obama, I would refer to this ad, noting “I know who I want to answer the phone at 3:00 am, the one who will think before he speaks and who has the judgment to weigh consequences before he acts.” I would also add that when Air Force One landed for the first time in the heart of the Arab world at 10:00 pm, I knew who I wanted to disembark from the plane. “Barack Obama. Not only because of what he would say, but because of the message his election would send to the Arab and Muslim worlds.”
During the past few weeks, I was reminded of these observations both by President Obama’s remarkable Cairo address, which no other President could have, or would have, given, and by his thoughtful response to the crisis in Iran.
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Monday June 22, 2009
On June 17, 2009 I was in Danbury, Connecticut, invited by the Lebanon-American Club to be the keynote speaker at their annual Lebanon Day Celebration.
Danbury, a city of 75,000, is home to more than 4,000 Arab Americans, most of Lebanese descent. The first immigrants from Syria/Lebanon settled there at the end of the nineteenth-century. Today, they are among the city’s most prominent and prosperous citizens (the Lebanon American Club was founded over 80 years ago).
As the day’s events began, Jimmetta Samaha, a leader in Connecticut’s Democratic Party and I were asked to raise the Lebanese flag over city hall, as both the US and Lebanese anthems were sung. Recognition was given to several local and state elected officials–many of Lebanese descent. And special tribute was accorded to octogenarian Taffy Jowdy, a World War II veteran–one of the very few survivors of the historic battles at Normandy Beach (D-Day) and Iwo Jima.
In many ways, Danbury is a typical northeastern US city, one in which Lebanese Americans have integrated and excelled, yet never forgotten their heritage. They are an American success story, remarkable for their achievements, and yet, too often, unrecognized.
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Looking at Iran by James Zogby
Kahlil Gibran Awards Gala - April 16, 2013
