WASHINGTON — A broad coalition of Arab American groups has launched a campaign to correct what they call the “imbalance” of American Jews working in the Clinton administration.
The effort to convince the Clinton administration to hire more Arab Americans to work at the State Department and White House comes on the heels of the resignation of a State Department aide who has come under fire for his criticism of Israel.
The campaign is “a very direct result of appointments that have come over the last several years,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute.
Zogby’s son Joseph was the aide who resigned.
Referring to at least half a dozen American Jews in senior foreign policy positions, James Zogby said “it is not an issue we feel comfortable in raising. I do not like to get into how many people are Jewish, how many are Arab American.” But this is an issue, he said, because of the “imbalance that exists.”
The call to hire people based on their ethnic background is drawing opposition from many in the Jewish community.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the campaign is based on a “crude anti-Semitism.”
Joseph Zogby, who was the only Arab American at the State Department, wrote at least two articles critical of Israel and U.S. Middle East policy before he was hired last year as a special assistant to Martin Indyk, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.
Last week Zogby rejected an offer to stay at the State Department, instead resigning to work as an attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Zogby had planned to make the move last month but put off his final decision to reconsider an offer to stay at the State Department, with a promotion, after the Zionist Organization of America led a campaign to force his ouster.
Both Zogby and Indyk did not want to appear as if they had caved in to pressure from Jewish groups, sources said.
Zogby is reportedly leaving because he is frustrated that Indyk has not hired more Arab Americans to work on Middle East policy at the State Department.
Citing department rules, Zogby refused to comment last week when contacted by telephone.
Although Zogby has moved on, the controversy is heating up, reigniting debate about the large number of Jews, including Indyk, involved in Middle East policy.
Eleven Arab American groups lobbied the White House and State Department on Wednesday of last week.
“Arab Americans have not sought to impose an ethnic-based hiring policy on the White House or State Department. But neither can we tolerate a policy where it appears that Arab Americans are excluded from policy positions in the administration,” said James Zogby, reading from a statement at a news conference on Thursday of last week.
Clinton administration officials agreed to establish a recruitment program for Arab Americans, hire more Arab Americans and meet monthly to follow up on the efforts, Zogby said.
At a news briefing on Friday of last week, Indyk defended his department against charges that it lacks diversity.
“There is no lack of diversity of opinion in the State Department, and that is as it should be as we go about trying to formulate policy,” he said. “However, the president and the secretary of state have made clear from the beginning of this administration that the U.S. government — and the State Department is no exception to that — should look like America in terms of its makeup.
“What we have said is, No. 1, that we think there should be more Arab Americans in the U.S. government and in the State Department, and that we will organize an outreach program to see if we can’t recruit more of them to the foreign service.”
Controversy over Zogby’s appointment came after the ZOA released two published letters written in 1998 from Israel and the West Bank in which he criticized the Oslo peace accords for producing “Swiss-cheese cantons and de jure discrimination.” It is “undeniably accurate” that the Palestinians live in an “apartheid state,” he wrote. He also criticized the United States for “willful ineffectuality” and for not acting to “level the power imbalance between the two parties.”
Zogby also accused Israel of abusing human rights and acting like a colonizer, similar to the “genocidal treatment of the Native Americans and enslavement of African Americans.”‘
Zogby grew up in the United States but spent two years in Israel and the West Bank. He founded the Palestine Peace Project, which brings American lawyers and law students to land under the Palestinian Authority’s control to volunteer with local legal and human rights organizations.