The Daily Star, Lebanon
July 29 2004
Muslim Democrats hopeful but wary
By Ashraf Fahim
Special to The Daily Star
NEW YORK: Maya Berry remembers a time when, as an Arab-American
delegate to the 1992 Democratic convention, she held aloft a placard
that read – “Palestinian Self-Determination” – and was trailed by
security guards bearing walkie-talkies for her troubles. That
incident came at a time when Arab-Americans were struggling to get
onto the political map.
“To be frank, I felt fairly unwelcome,” recalls Berry, a Michigan
delegate to this week’s Democratic convention in Boston,
Massachusetts. “And now it’s like night and day. The Democratic Party
organizes around ethnic constituencies and we’ve become part of that
coalition.”
With issues like Iraq and civil liberties at the heart of the
Democrats’ critique of the Bush administration, and even a formal
recognition of the right of Palestinians to a state in the party
platform, Berry and the over 70 other Arab and Muslim delegates (out
of 4,300-plus) at the convention feel slightly more at home than in
the past.
“Our issues are the national issues when it comes to the presidential
race for the first time ever,” says Berry. “Now everybody’s talking
about Iraq, everybody’s talking about the Patriot Act, everybody’s
talking about the Palestinian-Israeli problem.”
Indeed, numerous speakers at the convention have attacked President
Bush’s Iraq policy, and in his Monday night speech former President
Carter criticized Bush for failing to attempt “to secure a
comprehensive peace for Israel with hope and justice for the
Palestinians.”
Illinois Senatorial candidate Barack Obama also got a rousing
response during his Tuesday night keynote address when he said: “If
there’s an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of
an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.”
But the enthusiasm Berry and other Arab and Muslim delegates feel for
their party’s leader, John Kerry, who will today be confirmed as the
Democrats’ candidate for the Presidency, is tempered by what many see
as his continuation of the Bush administration’s confrontational
approach toward several Arab and Muslim countries.
Even the party’s support for a Palestinian state has come at an
extortionate price. Kerry has spoken out in favor of Israel’s
separation wall, while the party platform calls Jerusalem Israel’s
undivided capital, accepts Israel’s right to annex illegal
settlements and rejects a Palestinian right of return.
Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, have likewise supported
sanctions on Syria, taken a hawkish line on Iran’s nuclear program
and vowed a reckoning with Saudi Arabia for its alleged support of
terrorism.
The anti-Saudi rhetoric has disappointed Berry. “In politics
sometimes you do what you think will work in focus groups,” she says.
“And the average American is unhappy with gas prices, so it’s really
easy to beat up on the Saudis. Frankly, I think it’s beneath someone
like John Kerry.”
Arab and Muslim-American delegates have refused to despair over those
foreign policy positions, however, placing faith in Kerry’s promise
to rebuild America’s ties with the rest of the world, while
channeling their enthusiasm into his domestic agenda.
“In the end we’re picking the party that, I think, is pro-minority.
The party has stood for civil rights and that is my basic concern,”
says Zafar Tahir, a Muslim-American delegate from Bush’s home state
of Texas. “Foreign policy is very important, but I think a mistake we
have made in the past is that we have allowed foreign policy issues
to overtake our immediate concerns.”
As momentum builds toward the November election, polls suggest most
Arab and Muslim voters – many of whom live in “battleground” states
like Florida and Michigan, where the tight presidential race is
expected to be decided – are inclined toward the same pragmatism
shown by their delegates in Boston. Recent surveys by the
Arab-American Institute (AAI) and the Council on American-Islamic
Relations put support for Kerry above 50 percent among those
overlapping constituencies.
However both polls also indicate a far higher percentage of undecided
voters than the national average, and strong support for independent
candidate Ralph Nader.
With few voters on the fence nationally, the Kerry campaign has
focused on energizing its traditional constituencies. On touchstone
issues like Israel-Palestine, this has meant deferring to Jewish
Americans, who Bush has courted with his pro-Israel stance. But
Kerry’s deference to right-wing Jewish opinion is a strategy
independent pollster John Zogby believes is not only “ham-fisted and
gratuitous,” but unnecessary.
“All of my evidence suggests that Kerry is going to get 75 percent of
the Jewish vote regardless,” he says. And were he to express balance
on Israel-Palestine and speak more forcefully on Iraq and civil
liberties, “he would energize a group of Arab and Muslim-Americans
who can help him win in several key battleground states.”
As the Kerry-Edwards campaign’s director of ethnic outreach, George
Kivork is tasked with ensuring the Arab-American vote is pro-Kerry
rather than anti-Bush. And Kivork, an Armenian-American who was born
in Syria, does his best to talk up Kerry’s position on
Israel-Palestine.
“John Kerry has made a commitment that under his administration the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not going to be an afterthought,” he
says, recalling Kerry’s pledge to dispatch a high-profile
representative to the region. “Bush wants to make this a wedge
issue,” he cautions, “but Arab-Americans are not single issue voters.
They have the same concerns as other Americans.
“At the end of the day Arab-Americans are heard in this campaign,”
says Kivork. “They have an opportunity to be at the table. … That’s
something that they don’t have with the Bush-Cheney campaign.”
The Kerry-Edwards campaign may be listening, but first-time Florida
delegate Neal Abid is not certain his community is being heard.
“They’ve said they’ll work with us, and they’ve always had an open
mind to listen,” says Abid, who remains an avid Kerry supporter. “But
so far, if you want the truth, we don’t feel that they’ve changed
their positions or really taken us into consideration.”