My Role With the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee « LobeLog
My Role With the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee
by James J. Zogby
I wasn’t going to write about this subject, but something happened yesterday over lunch that prompted me to reconsider.
I was having a peaceful meal with my wife when two men sat down in
the next booth. In loud voices they began to discuss the state of the
presidential contest. At one point, the gentleman directly behind me
said, “and Sanders picked that Cornel West and that guy who’s the head
of the Arab League who has it in for Israel…”.
That did it. I spun around and said, in a polite but firm voice, “I’m
that guy. I’m not the head of the Arab League and I’m asking you to
change the subject now.” Shocked, the man responded “you’re him!” and
began asking me questions. I cut him off making it clear that I was
having lunch and wasn’t interested in pursuing the matter. They promptly
changed the subject, as I had requested. After we finished eating, I
turned to the two men and explained who I was and why I found the crude
description of me to be so aggravating.
In some ways I fault The Washington Post and other mainstream news
outlets for having unleashed the mini-firestorm that followed my recent
appointment to the Democratic Party’s platform drafting committee. When I
first heard from DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz that I was to be
named to the committee, I held my breath, fully expecting an attack from
the usual collection of far-right, anti-Arab, and hardline pro-Israel
groups. Sure enough, they didn’t disappoint. I was called “a
professional Israel-hater”, “a defender of terrorism”, “Bernie’s
Svengali”, and it was claimed (falsely) that I had “accused Israel of
committing a Holocaust”.
This, unfortunately, is what I have learned to expect from that
crowd. What, however, I found most troubling was the first headline
that appeared in The Washington Post announcing “Sanders wins greater
say in Democratic platform; names pro-Palestinian activist”. With this,
the die was cast. Other major newspapers and media outlets followed suit
framing the entire discussion of the platform and my appointment around
Israel/Palestine—culminating in a call I received yesterday, right
after lunch, from a journalist who asked if he was right in assuming
that Bernie had appointed me as his hatchet man on this Israel.
I am, of course, a strong supporter of Palestinian rights, so is
Bernie Sanders, and so, according to a recent Gallup poll, are a
majority of Democrats. But the crude effort to reduce Sanders’ entire
campaign and my entire life’s work to an effort to “get Israel” betrays
an unsettling anti-Arab bias and a bizarre obsession to which I must
respond. It does damage to Sanders, to me, and to our nation’s ability
to have an honest conversation about a critical issue of importance.
