CHICAGO: Although many Arab and Muslim Americans believe Vice President Kamala Harris failed to stop the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, the leader of an influential political organization has cautioned Arab voters to not lose sight of what the presidential hopeful achieved at the Democratic National Convention.
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, which was founded in 1985 to strengthen Arab American voter awareness and influence, said community voters were wrong to focus on what was not achieved at the convention, including the DNC’s decision to prevent Palestinian delegates from speaking.
During a taping of “The Ray Hanania Radio Show” this week, Zogby, a Democrat party delegate at the convention, said Harris did what no other president had done since the 1980s, which was to say the word ‘Palestine’ in a convention acceptance speech and force the media and country to see the issue more clearly.
He said that Harris’ comments were “significant” and that “Palestine won at the convention.”
“Go back in history and look at past presidents, and no one has ever actually mentioned the word ‘Palestine’ or talked about self-determination. Her words about suffering were quite extraordinary.
“We’re not in a sprint, we’re in a marathon and the progress that gets made is slow. But it’s a step forward,” he said.
Efforts to silence pro-Palestinian voices at the DNC had actually made their voices louder, Zogby said.
“When you reach a certain threshold, even when you’re ignored, you win. Even when you’re shunted aside, you win. Because they didn’t let a Palestinian speak. Guess what happened? It became the news story for two, three, four days running.”
Zogby, who serves as chair of the DNC Ethnic Council, an umbrella organization of Democratic Party leaders of European and Mediterranean descent, said: “I think the (Harris) campaign made a strategic error. But what they did was they elevated Palestinian voices. By denying them a voice, they elevated the voice.”
Zogby, who co-organized public forums on Gaza and Palestinian rights that ran parallel to the convention, said Arab Americans could not act like “petulant teenagers who stomp their feet when they are mad and don’t get what they want, throwing everything that they do have away.”
“So, it’s a question of do we approach this as petulant teenagers who get mad because they didn’t let anybody speak or do we approach it as serious political folk who say they blew it and we’re taking advantage of their mistake?”
The decision to prevent Palestinian delegates from speaking after the Israelis was a “boneheaded mistake and we benefited from it,” he said.
“It may not be the election you want but it’s the election you’ve got. And if we want people to support us, and we do, then we’ve got to support them,” Zogby said of the need for Arab American voters to stay focused on the bigger picture and not surrender to their emotions.
Arab Americans must be loyal to the American people who speak out and support them, including minority and ethnic groups like African Americans who have always stood for Palestinian justice, he said.
“Our allies are in the civil rights movement. Our allies are in the women’s movement. Our allies are in the folks who’ve marched against guns. Look at the marches that have taken place over the last eight years. It’s the same people in those marches that are in the marches for Palestine now.
“We can’t expect them to march for us and with us and we not march for and with them. It may not be perfect and may not be all that we want but we build allies by being allies,” he said.
“We have a right to be angry but we don’t have the luxury of being angry.”
You can listen to the entire interview with James Zogby on Thursday at 5 p.m. EST and again on Monday on WNZK AM 690 radio in Michigan, or by visiting ArabNews.com/RayRadioShow.
