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AAI in the News

Arab American in Chief: (And a big Democrat, too)

By John Miller
National Review
Posted on Monday March 25, 2002

About a week before the 2000 election, Al Gore found himself in a minor flap when a group of Arab Americans said that he told them he opposed moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to the capital, Jerusalem. Earlier in the year, Gore had assured Jewish leaders that he thought the embassy should in fact go to Jerusalem, from Tel Aviv. Gore seemed to be playing both sides of the issue, and the Bush campaign accused him of doing just that.

So Gore’s team put out a press release clarifying his position. His longstanding view, it said, was that the embassy should move, but only if it were done within the context of peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians—a reasonable stance, though different from the one the Arab Americans thought they had heard Gore express. The release quoted James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute, to back up its claim: “Al Gore has had a very consistent position on this issue. What he said in Dearborn [Mich.] is exactly in line with what he has always said.”

What Zogby didn’t say is that he thinks moving the embassy is a very bad idea; back then, it would have meant criticizing one of Gore’s positions. But he’s glad to share his opinion now. “Moving the embassy would be a huge mistake, an absolutely huge mistake,” he told me in February. “I’m totally against it.” Zogby is probably the most important Arab-American leader in the country—but he’s also running an organization that for all practical purposes is an arm of the Democratic party. Journalists reporting on his activities typically neglect to mention this important fact. In February, when the Washington Post described Zogby’s recent criticisms of attorney general John Ashcroft—including the suggestion that Bush fire him—it merely cited Zogby’s affiliation with his Arab American Institute, which it called “influential.” This is accurate, but the Post failed to note an even more important fact: Zogby campaigned hard for Gore and has given thousands of dollars to Democrats, all the time using the Arab American Institute as his base of operations.

If a conservative were allowed to pick his neighbors, Jim Zogby, 56, is the sort of guy who would make the short list. He’s a smart and pleasant fellow, a good conversationalist who is an active member of his church and community. He may be a Democrat, but he’s a pro-life Democrat. “I’ve gone to my party’s convention and worn a pin reading, ‘I’m a pro-life Democrat and I want my party back,’” he says. As a college sophomore, Zogby actually ran a Students for Goldwater chapter, but the Vietnam War and the civil-rights movement convinced him to abandon the GOP. He hasn’t looked back since.

Many people believe that the typical Arab American is a Muslim immigrant, but this is not true—a solid majority of them are U.S.-born Christians. As ethnic profiles go, they are more like assimilated Italian Americans than like today’s big-city taxi drivers. Zogby’s Maronite Catholic parents came to the U.S. from Lebanon, and he was born in Utica, N.Y. (His brother, John Zogby, is a well-known and respected pollster.)

While earning a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from Temple University, Zogby spent time at a Palestinian refugee camp conducting interviews. On his flight back to the U.S., he realized he had stumbled upon his life’s work. He founded the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, left teaching, and became a professional Arab American.

Advocating on behalf of the Palestinians is a messy business, and over the years Zogby has adopted dozens of controversial positions. In 1982, when he was executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, another group he helped found, his organization called the Israelis “Nazis” and compared their activities in southern Lebanon to “genocide” and a “Holocaust.” Following the model of anti-apartheid activists, Zogby has tried to organize boycotts of companies doing business in Israel. He has also criticized antiterrorism efforts. When the United States arrested a Hamas leader in 1995, Zogby called the move “destructive and not helpful to the peace process,” as if letting terrorists run free were somehow in the interests of peace.

A signed picture of Yasser Arafat decorates Zogby’s K Street office a few blocks from the White House, and he becomes prickly when discussing the Palestinian leader. “Arafat has made some horrible mistakes, but he cares about his people and he is their leader,” says Zogby. “The language people use against him is shameful. Nobody talks about Golda Meir or Menachem Begin the way they talk about Arafat, but these were horrible-looking people. Arafat is the victim of the politics of personal destruction.”

In 1997, Zogby accused Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres of “state-sponsored terrorism” for attacking Hezbollah camps. So I asked Zogby: Is Arafat a terrorist? He paused at the question. “The tactics he’s used fit the classic definition of terrorism,” he said at last, “but I wouldn’t want to reduce him to that label. He’s more than that. Name-calling isn’t helpful to the discussion, it doesn’t help the issue move forward, so I don’t engage in it.”

This isn’t quite true. In January, Zogby called Israeli leaders Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu “brutal bullies.” His weekly columns, carried in newspapers throughout the Middle East, accuse his critics and foes of “anti-Arab propaganda” and even “McCarthyism.” More disturbing, however, is the way he characterizes the current wave of violence in Israel and Palestine. Arabs feel “legitimate anger” at the Israelis, he wrote in February. Their terrorism comes from deep despair: “Our young are killing themselves because they see no hope in living. Death has become an attractive alternative to life.” Israel’s actions are “shameful and wicked” and they are “crushing lives and hope.” In December, he wrote of the intifada “having already taken a terrible toll in Palestinian lives”—with hardly a mention of the hundreds of Israelis who also have been killed. (Unlike some Palestinian sympathizers, however, Zogby says he supports the right of Israel to exist.)

Zogby himself is no stranger to violence. In 1980, his office was firebombed, and he’s received death threats in the wake of Sept. 11. He is unsparing in his praise of Bush’s performance right after the attacks. “The president saved lives by speaking out against anti-Arab and anti-Muslim violence,” says Zogby. “There’s no question the collective effort of national leadership stopped hate crimes in their tracks, changed the national discourse, and brought out our better angels. I will never forget what he did.”

Yet these deeds do not make him a Bush fan. “I have deep differences with him on a range of issues,” he says, ticking off tax cuts and school choice as two examples. And truth be told, he really doesn’t think Bush made a vital difference for Arab Americans last September: “I think Al Gore would have done just as well.”

Even though Arab Americans were more likely to support Bush than Gore in 2000—45 percent to 38 percent, by Zogby’s own reckoning (plus 13 percent for Ralph Nader, an Arab American)—Zogby himself says he wishes Gore were president today. This creates a problem. Zogby intends to speak for Arab America, but he plainly does not reflect its political preferences. It’s true that he will occasionally scold a Democrat; Bill Clinton received a sharp word every now and then, and in 1986 Zogby issued a report accusing Senate candidate Tom Daschle of “Arab-baiting” in his fundraising letters. But these are just a handful of exceptions in what is otherwise an iron rule that the interests of Democrats must be advanced. In 1984 and 1988, Zogby was involved in Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns at a high level, and he worked for Clinton in 1992 and 1996.

“I may be partisan, but the institute is not partisan,” he insists. This is a difficult line to walk, and it’s not clear that Zogby succeeds at it. His Arab American Leadership PAC, housed in the same office as the AAI, regularly gives more than 70 percent of its funds to Democrats, including left-wingers such as Jesse Jackson Jr. and Barbara Lee. The 2002 election cycle is still young, but so far Zogby has directed 81 percent of his PAC’s giving to Democrats. That’s downright bipartisan compared to his personal donations—thousands of dollars over the years to the likes of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Exhibit A in Zogby’s defense is board chairman George Salem, a card-carrying member of the GOP. But Salem is a token figure with no real power; the staff’s loyalties are to Zogby, and Zogby controls the $1 million budget. (Zogby admits that about 30 percent of his funding comes from foreign sources. “No governments,” he says, “only individuals.”) “Salem is basically clueless,” says a Republican activist.

Someday the GOP might have a rival organization. But in the meantime, James Zogby sits atop Arab American politics—and he’s trying to make sure as many Democrats as possible join him there.