April/May 1997   pg. 98

Seeing the Light

Thus I Became a Mideast Addict

by Paul Findley

To this day people ask how and why I became entangled in Arab-Israeli politics. Sometimes I scratch my head and wonder the same thing. It was an unintended, accidental, unnatural attachment, and occasionally—as at this moment—I sit back, stare through the bay window by my desk in this small Midwestern city, and ponder the amazing extent to which my life is dominated by events in the far away Middle East.

Beyond the computer on which I type these words is a tall case where I keep books autographed by the authors and another filled with unautographed books. Nearby, six four-drawer filing cabinets—four of them in the basement—are full of correspondence. Almost all these books and letters relate directly to Mideast politics. One drawer in frequent use is reserved for current correspondence with people who live abroad, mostly in Israel or Arab states.

Seven years ago, I helped found the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based organization that advocates policies that serve the U.S. national interest in the Mideast. I serve as chairman of the council and frequently consult by telephone and fax with Gene Bird, the retired foreign service officer who serves as president.

Since leaving Congress I have written two books, both on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and have discussed the subject in dozens of university lectures and in more than one hundred appearances on television and radio programs. I have written more than 300 articles for publication, over 90 percent of them on the Mideast.

I rationalize new endeavors, along with the others, in the name of Mideast peace. If all religious communities come to understand and appreciate each other and work toward common goals, I am convinced that a just peace will emerge. If they keep demonizing each other, violence is inevitable.

When did I get hooked? It came in mid-life. When appointed to the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives in 1969, I would have been hard put to name more than three or four states in the Middle East. I represented a mixed agricultural-small industry constituency and spent most of my time on farm-related issues.

The involvement would never have occurred I believe, if I had not been a member of Congress. Nor did it happen overnight or from a single personal experience.

In my earlier role as a country newspaper editor, I had met and admired Lyle Hayden, who headed the Near East Foundation. Hayden’s earlier private-sector work to improve the life of people in Iran and Iraq had earned him the unofficial title of “America’s Shirtsleeve Ambassador.” It was the title of a Reader’s Digest article about his work.

In my innocence, I assumed I could question U.S. policy anywhere without getting into trouble.

After my election to Congress, he and his Lebanon-born wife urged me to keep an open mind about Mideast policy and cautioned against responding only to Israel’s demands and interests. We continued our discussions when he retired to a farm in my congressional district. His calm, unemotional arguments were persuasive.

So were the observations of Jacksonville, Illinois, businessman George Ziegler, and his wife Elizabeth, a college professor who annually invited me to lecture to her classes. World War II had taken both of them to assignments in the Mideast. Like the Haydens, they warned against the rising influence of Israel’s U.S. lobby. These constituents triggered my concern about America’s pro-lsrael bias. For the most part, I kept these doubts to myself, but not in fear of consequences. In fact, in my innocence, unaware of how deeply Israeli interests had penetrated U.S. institutions, I assumed I could question policy anywhere without getting into trouble. I had worked hard to keep political fences mended back home.

When first assigned to the Committee on Europe and the Mideast, I had never heard of Israel’s principal U.S. lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). My public involvement with Mideast politics deepened as the result of a constituent problem, called casework in the bureaucratic lingo of members of Congress. It had only an indirect connection with the Arab-lsraeli conflict.

It began in 1973 when a letter arrived from a woman who wrote neighborhood news for a weekly newspaper I once edited. She pleaded for help in securing the release of her son, who had been charged with espionage and sentenced to five years’ solitary imprisonment in Aden, then the capital of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, a country since united with the Yemen Arab Republic. My quest for his release was severely handicapped, because the U.S. government had no diplomatic representation in Aden.

First Trip to the Middle East

A year later, despite my efforts, her son was still locked up, and I concluded that if I did not go personally to plead for his release, he would probably die in prison. I headed for Aden in March 1974—my first trip to the Middle East—a journey that thrust me into the middle of the Arab-lsraeli conflict.

En route, I stopped at Beirut and visited Palestinian refugee camps that would soon be the site of dreadful massacres at the hands of “Christian” militia. Then, before continuing my rescue mission, I rode overland to Damascus where, to my surprise, I was welcomed to an hour-long discussion with Syria’s president, Hafez Al-Assad. At Aden, I had a series of interviews with officials.

This agenda provided my first glimpse of the Arab world. I found Arabs warm and likeable even when they bristled with indignation over U.S. policies. For the first time they emerged as human beings from false stereotypes, and I found their grievances against my government fully justified.

Clearly eager for friendly relations with the U.S. government, the president of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen granted my request and let me take my constituent to a joyous homecoming in America’s Midwest.

Back in Washington, word of my experiences got around, and soon my congressional office became a stopping place for people going to and from the Middle East. It was unusual, almost without precedent, for a member of Congress to visit Arab countries and express publicly an interest in their problems.

I began to speak out, arguing that failure to talk directly to Arab government officials and the political leadership of the Palestinians handicapped our national interests, especially our search for a just peace there. One step led to others—personal meetings with PLO leader Yasser Arafat, debates with leading congressional spokesmen for Israel, initiatives at State Department request for release of other U.S. citizens imprisoned in the Mideast, then election-day showdowns with opponents heavily financed by Israel’s supporters. The last election campaign took me out of public office but into private endeavors for Mideast justice—books, lectures, articles, travel etc.

The Middle East is an incurable personal addiction and, to my knowledge, there is no therapy that will loosen this obsession. I may bear it until the Grim Reaper arrives.