Pamela E. Pennock. The Rise of the Arab American Left

The study of the history of Arab American political activism is currently experiencing a renaissance of sorts. Pamela E. Pennock’s The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s–1980s, is a fine addition to recent books by Hani J. Bawardi on pre-1967 Arab American activism and Salim Yaqub on U.S. Middle East policy and Arab Americans in the 1970s. Drawing on extensive archival and interview research, Pennock provides a cogent overview of the formation of radical Arab American organizations and their interactions with allies, as well as many specific examples of local work that intersected with their activism on behalf of various causes in the Middle East, particularly the Palestinian issue. Arab American activism existed long before the June 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, but the resounding Arab defeat provided the impetus for the formation of new organizations. Because Arab Americans constituted a relatively small percentage of the American population, these groups had little chance of impacting the political process through their members’ votes alone. Instead, they sought to influence other sections of the population, whether intellectuals, business elites, or other leftist movements, to make common cause, hoping that this would ultimately steer American policy in the desired direction.

Left-wing politics · Middle East · Political activism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Racism · Sociology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Demography · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies