E Pluribus Umbrage

The long, happy life of America's anti-defamation industry.

Tim Cavanaugh from the December 2002 issue

(Page 3 of 7)

"Pipes was humiliated. His plans were foiled once again. Bigotry was on display, but failed to reign supreme. Hooray for America. Pipes will forever remain in the garbage bin of history, and rightfully so."

Needless to say, very little of this has to do with fighting discrimination. "We're a civil rights organization, but much of what we do is devoted to foreign policy," says Ibish. "Much of the discrimination Arab Americans face stems from disagreements between Arab Americans and the rest of society over our policies toward the Middle East. Until we can create a more reasonable foreign policy, we'll face defamation in the form of films, television, discrimination in the workplace...I believe this absolutely."

Nevertheless, Arab-American leaders concede that animosity toward their ethnicity may be less than advertised. "Is there a generalized antagonism?" says Zogby. "No. Was there a problem immediately after 9/11? Yes...the country doesn't have much tolerance for hearing Arabs whine. There are people who try to make politics out of whining. I choose not to be a professional victim, because I don't think it's true and because people don't have much tolerance for it."

Victimization politics also holds tactical disadvantages. Anti-Semitism remains a concept with much more punch than such recently diagnosed maladies as "Anti-Arabism" or "Islamophobia." Reference to the Holocaust is still sufficient to shout down any discussion about the plight of Arab Americans. "I don't think anything in the Arab experience can resonate similarly, because I don't think anything in the Arab experience is similar," admits Ibish. "But since we can't counter that emotional appeal honestly, we can question its relevance to the Arab-Israeli conflict."

Big Trouble in Little Poland

For an odder case of emotional appeal turned into political ordnance, consider the City of Big Shoulders, where the slow-motion implosion of the Polish American Congress (PAC) mirrors the political decline of Chicago's Polish community.

Since 1996 PAC President Edward Moskal has been making statements that can charitably be called ill-considered. "The spilled blood of those Jews, however torrential it may have been, cannot wash away the blood of their Christian neighbors," Moskal wrote in a 1996 article that defended a commemorative cross at Auschwitz. (Elsewhere in the piece, he averred that Jews collaborated with Poland's Soviet occupiers.) He dismisses evidence of Polish collaboration with the Germans as "twisted history," an assault on Polish sovereignty. Moskal ridicules attempts by Poland's leadership to offer restitution to Jews and implies Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, generally considered a resistance hero, was a Nazi collaborator.

Moskal's impatience with talk of Polish guilt is partly understandable.

"[Poles] see themselves as victims, which they were," says Guy Billauer, director of the National Polish-American-Jewish-American Council, which broke with PAC in 1996. "They have a right to think that way. But [the Moskal controversy] has opened our eyes. We believe it's hard to reform somebody who holds these views. It's like mending fences with Arafat."

"I think people should welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues with somebody who speaks his mind," counters PAC spokesman T. Ron Jasinski-Herbert, "rather than saying the right things and thinking all the bullshit inside." Whatever Moskal's true feelings may be (he did not consent to an interview for this article), his comments have diminished both membership and clout for PAC, an umbrella group for 3,000 religious, fraternal, and political orders.

The situation came to a head during this year's Democratic primary in the 5th Congressional District, which pitted former state legislator Nancy Kaszak against combative Clinton administration apparatchik Rahm Emanuel. Because of demographic changes and redistricting in Chicago's 30th Ward, the Polish-American voting bloc is declining. "We do have a valid gripe," says Jasinski-Herbert. "If we lose this one we have no more Polish representatives from the largest Polish community outside Poland."

But it may not have helped when, a few weeks before the election, Moskal gave Kaszak a contribution and then denounced Emanuel as a "millionaire carpetbagger" with divided U.S.-Israeli loyalties, accusing Emanuel's Polish supporters of accepting "30 pieces of silver to betray Polonia." "The country from which Poles come struggled for democracy," Moskal said. "While the country...to which [Emanuel] gave his allegiance defiles the Polish homeland."

Kaszak publicly rejected Moskal's endorsement. Emanuel insisted that Kaszak go further and order Moskal to "cease and desist." The incident received wide media play, and in the weeks after Moskal's comments Emanuel closed an eight-point deficit in polls to win the primary. The loss of Polish-American political clout turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Celtic Twilight

But what is ethnic cleansing or the Holocaust compared to the scourge of stage Irishmen? For Ultan O'Broin, founder of San Francisco's Celtic Tiger Anti-Defamation League, the great issues of the day include Angela's Ashes, Fighting Fitzgeralds, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, and presumably the Star Trek episode wherein Kirk beats the stuffing out of an arch-rival tellingly named Finnegan.