APN and AAI set up a conference call today to announce their poll results (below) and when I asked AAI’s Jim Zogby why more Arab-Americans (6%) would have the U.S. lean towards Israel in its Mideast policy than lean towards the Palestinians (5%)*, he said this reflected the fact that the Arab-American community was diverse and not that hardline. "Spencer Abraham, Donna Shalala, and George Mitchell are more typical of Arab-Americans," Zogby said: "assimilated."
I found it fascinating that an Arab-American leader would be extolling the idea of assimilation at a time when assimilation is generally a dirty word in the Jewish community. Of course, I’m hoping to change that!
*66 percent called for steering the middle course
This blog has gone from being sometimes excellent, sometimes self-absorbed, to being consistently one of the best on the net. Kudos Phil Weiss for your courage and inquisitiveness. Unfortunately some readers fail to recognize that it is people like yourself who present American jewry in the most positive and sympathetic light, while their own monomania engenders disillusionment among Americans who used to be sympathetic to Israel. Raising awareness as this blog is doing in fact represents the best hope for Israel and the jewish people.
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2007/06/frenzy-of-lobby.html
As much as I enjoy a diversity of viewpoints, please Phil consider deleting comments like the first one here.
Foul language and the crudest of insults belong on aol chat (if anywhere), not mondoweiss.
Also, re: the 6%/5% thing, wasn't the overall margin of error 4.5%?
I came back to this blog via Eric Alterman and the American Conservative essay. And here's my internet buddy George Ajjan, already ensconced. I guess I'm in the right place. Hi George!
I'm touched, Mr. Weiss, by your musings on assimilation. As an Arab-American I can't help but be assimilated – my mother is an American of ten or eleven generations. My issue at the moment is maintaining my connection to my family and my father's country now that he is gone. Oh yes, and my husband is half-Jewish, through his mother no less. So we have an interesting set of cultures to negotiate.
Your questions and struggles, Mr. Weiss, are not exactly like mine, but they remind me of the ways I negotiate the different pieces of my identity.
Thanks for making it all public.
And thanks even more for having the courage to examine assumptions about Israel and Judaism. The times are changing. I'm grateful to hear your voice.
Peter Kaplan, hmmm, I wonder if he's the same Peter Kaplan who lived downstairs from me on 7th Avenue in Park Slope about 15 years ago. Married to Susan the horticulturalist…
BTW, Peter W. Kaplan is not the same Peter Kaplan who lived downstairs from me. Google is amazing… you can find out who they married & their whole career. I knew a different Peter Kaplan long ago.