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Washington Report, May/June 2006, page 62 Waging Peace Jerry Levin Kicks Off Book Tour
FORMER CNN Beirut bureau chief Jerry Levin, now with the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) in Hebron, spoke at the University Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, LA on March 24. Levin, who was held hostage in Beirut from March 8, 1984 until Valentine’s Day 1985, compared his own release to the previous day’s rescue by coalition forces of three CPT captives held in Baghdad for four months, who were discovered bound but unguarded. The body of the fourth CPT captive, American Tom Fox, 54, was found in western Baghdad on March 9. (Lucille “Sis” Levin, Ed.D., creator of the Children of Abraham Peace Teaching Project in Bethlehem, and a full-time consultant to Palestinian nonviolent peace-building organizations, was unable to join her husband at the Baton Rouge event. Sis is the author of Beirut Diary: A Husband Held Hostage and a Wife Determined to Set Him Free, which was made into an ABC-TV docudrama, “Held Hostage.”) Levin’s talk was the first stop on a seven-week tour to promote his book, West Bank Diary: Middle East Violence as Reported by a Former American Hostage, based on e-mails he sent from the Middle East since the second Palestinian intifada began in September 2000. [Both books are available from the AET Book Club.] After speaking on “The ‘Piece’ Process Continues! The Struggle Against Myths, Propaganda, Violence and Annexation in Palestine and Israel,” he fielded questions from about 55 in attendance. While the audience was mostly Presbyterian, it was ecumenical nonetheless: Methodists, American and Arab Christians and Muslims came to the potluck dinner and event, sponsored by a University Presbyterian Church committee, the Bienville House Center for Peace and Justice and the Arab Christian Foundation, incorporated by this author in 2000. Levin distributed copies of his article, “Pro-Israeli McCarthyism: When Character Assassination Replaces Political Dialogue,” (see January 1990 Washington Report, p. 47), because those methods are still in use today. After the formal presentation, Jerry discussed the mainstream American media’s coverage of the war in Iraq and the Israel-Palestine conflict, noting that “if it bleeds, it leads.” He also showed the incredible shrinking map of Palestine, beginning in 1878, when Jewish Europeans first established a colony in Ottoman-ruled Palestine and ending with today’s disputed borders. —S.B.A. Zaitoon |
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