September 18, 2003	Thursday	Rajab 20, 1424

BEIRUT: Divided? Yes. But they are seriously trying to put their act together. Effective? Not particularly. But they have been learning, and learning fast over the last decade, how to play the game after living in the political wilderness for many decades, often caught between their countries of origin and their adopted homeland.

There are about five million Arab Americans whose existence we often forget but conveniently remember when we in the Arab world face a crisis like the one confronting us now as a result of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks and the current conflict between Iraq and the United States. Who are these Arab Americans and what role are they playing in American politics?

They are perhaps among the most diverse groups of immigrants in the USA. They came from most, if not all, Arab countries, but mainly from Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

There are Christians and Muslims among them. Some emigrated as far back as 100 years ago, others after World War II. They emigrated for economic or political reasons. Many of them, especially the Lebanese and Egyptians, have distinguished themselves in professional careers, while other have done very well as public servants, elected officials, businessmen, investment bankers, car workers and grocers.

Some Arab Americans have become mayors and scores are state legislators. But what is more significant is that elected officials on the national and state levels no longer conceal their Arab origins. In fact, many of them now wage their election campaigns as Arab Americans and identify with and take pride in their community.

As individuals then, many Arab Americans have done impressively well. Their organizational achievements as a community, however, are yet to member, however, that they are comparatively recent arrivals in the United States.

James Zoghby, director of the Arab-American Institute in Washington, says that of late Arab Americans were not migrants, who came to America before World War I, were largely peasants and uneducated. They came for purely economic reasons. They did rather well for themselves. But because they came from rural areas, they did not bring with them the features of an urbanized population. Their identity was that of their original village, their family, or the church — the vast majority were Christians. From the 1920s until after the World War II, the door of immigration was firmly shut, which helped the first wave of Arab immigrants, their children and grandchildren to assimilate fully.

It was only after World War II and the upheavals witnessed in the Arab world, especially the 1967 war, that several new waves of Arab migrants arrived. These were mainly urban, educated people who were politically conscious of being Arabs. It was the convergence of the two groups — those who came before World War II and became fully American and those who came later with a strong consciousness of their cultural and political Arab identity — which led to the birth of the Arab-American community as we know it.

A strong and purely Arab identity became the driving force. The best example of this is the organization of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG), whose members often talked of themselves as Arabs in exile or Arabs abroad. This helped in rallying the Arabs, now coming in bigger waves from different Arab countries, around Arab causes such as Palestine.

The descendants of the first wave of Arab immigrants, who were eager to rediscover their cultural Arab identity by joining the AAUG, found that the American dimension of which they were conscious was totally absent in the group. They wanted to express themselves as Americans, too. They wanted the position taken by the AAUG to reflect American interests, which in their view could best be served by the US adopting a fair and balanced attitude towards the problems of the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular.

They also found that the way Arab issues were framed in the AAUG’s resolutions kept them outside mainstream American politics. In reaction, they tried to emphasize not what kind of solution should be found for the Arab-Israeli conflict, but how to get Americans to recognize the human rights of the Palestinians. Hence they established in 1977 Palestine Human Rights Campaign as an American organization, to make the Palestinian problem an American issue.

Another major landmark in the formation of the Arab community came in 1980 when former Senator James Abourzk and James Zoghby founded the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

The ADC succeeded in fusing the different strands of Arab Americans into a single community sharing common interests and objectives.

At the end of 1984, Zoghby and George Salem another descendent of the first wave Arab immigrants decided to join hands and start a project to get Arab Americans into politics. This led to the establishment of the Arab-American Institute.

The institute’s main aim was to develop the Arab-American community into a political constituency, in other words, to change it from a group organized within itself into a group organized for itself. After 12 years of work the results speak for themselves. In 1984 Arab Americans were proud to have had four delegates in the National Democratic Party convention, but lacked representation of the Republican Party convention. Later their combined total in the two conventions was more than 100 delegates and party leaders. In the recent Republican and Democratic conventions, the Arab- American constituency lobbied on behalf of the Palestinian Lebanese and Syrians.

Arab Americans have come from outside the political arena to fight on the inside for the issues important to them. But they have certainly not won the battle, because they still have a long way to go to get more of their community involved in the political process, to unify its ranks and coordinate work among themselves.