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How a Middle Eastern Experience Helped Lead to the Formation of MERIP

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2022

Michael R. Fischbach
Michael R. Fischbach*
Affiliation:
Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, VA, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

During the late 1960s, left-wing American activists faced challenges when trying to find out about what was happening in the Middle East and what their government was doing there. Yet overall, some activists still felt that by 1970 the American Left suffered from an overall dearth of solid information and regular, independent, critical analysis of the Middle East. As a result, the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) and its publication, MERIP Reports, were established in 1971 to fill that void. However, in many ways a major impetus for MERIP's formation was not just its founders’ hunger for better analysis of the region, but also the deep impressions made on them by a dramatic and influential trip several of them took to Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan in August and early September 1970. Thus, while it is true that, since its inception, MERIP has shaped the study of the Middle East, it is also true that it was the Middle East that first shaped those who formed MERIP.

Keywords

MERIPPeace CorpsCommittee of Returned VolunteersSecond World Conference on Palestine1970Black SeptemberAmerican Left
Type
Special Focus: MERIP and the Politics of Knowledge Production in MENA Studies
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , December 2021 , pp. 230 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc.

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References

1 This is explored in depth in the author's The Movement and the Middle East: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Divided the American Left (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019).

2 Hoffman, Elizabeth Cobbs, All You Need is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 218CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Gene Guerrero and Susie Teller, “Palestinian Report”; Susan Teller, “One Week in Lebanon Can Blow Your Mind”; Gene Guerrero, “How it Came About.” All contained in The Great Speckled Bird, October 4, 1970.

4 Susan Teller Goodman, telephone interview with the author, June 3, 2011; Guerrero, “How it Came About.”

5 Teller, “One Week in Lebanon Can Blow Your Mind.”

6 Jean Whilden Townes, telephone interview with the author, January 16, 2015.

7 Middle East Research and Information Project, From Refugees to Palestinians: The Birth of a Revolution (Washington, n.d.) [reprinted from Liberated Guardian, September 17, 1970]; Charles Simmons, personal communication with the author, September 11, 2013; “Al-Mu'tamarun fi Nadwat Filastin Yastankiruna Jara'im al-Salt” [Conferees at the Palestine Seminar Denounce the Crimes in al-Salt], Fateh, September 4, 1970.

8 Georgia Mattison, telephone interview with the author, November 22, 2013.

9 Marilyn N. Lowen, telephone interview with the author, July 2, 2015.

10 “Revolutionary American Jews: Support the Palestinian Resistance,” Free Palestine 2.8 (December 1970): 3; “Al-Yahud al-Ahrar ma` al-Thawra al-Filastiniyya” [Liberal Jews with the Palestinian Revolution], Fateh, September 9, 1970.

11 Joe Stork, telephone interview with the author, December 6, 2013.

12 Gene Guerrero, telephone interview with the author, May 27, 2011; Guerrero, “How it Came About.”

13 Temple University, Liberation News Service Library Records, series 14: International, Mo.-Pa., box 4, folder 1, Palestine; Chris Robinson and Roger Tauss, “Palestine: They Say There is No Resistance,” September 4, 1970.

14 Mattison, November 22, 2013.

15 Sharon Rose (writing anonymously), “A Nice Jewish Girl,” The Great Speckled Bird, October 26, 1970. The article was also published in Arthur Waskow, The Bush is Burning! Radical Judaism Faces the Pharaohs of the Modern Superstate (New York: Macmillan Co., 1970). A slightly different version was published under the title “Zionism in the Mid-East” in the June 15, 1970 issue of Win.

16 Sharon Rose, telephone interview with the author, February 3, 2011.

17 Teller Goodman, June 3, 2011.

18 CIA Operation MH/CHAOS document of January 18, 1971. The document was obtained by Nick Medvecky, who kindly provided the author with a copy. There was in fact some internal suspicions and dissension within the group.

19 Teller Goodman, June 3, 2011.

20 Townes, January 16, 2015.

21 Nick Medvecky, personal communication, April 9, 2011 and April 17, 2011.

22 Simmons, September 11, 2013.

23 Guerrero, May 27, 2011.

24 Townes, January 16, 2015.

25 Ibid.

26 Mattison, November 22, 2013.

27 Ibid.; University of Virginia, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, Social Movements Collection, Collection of Miscellaneous Printed Materials, HN1.Z993, No. 15, “Palestine”; “Israel Report,” MERIP 1.4 (November 1971): 1, 12.

28 Mattison, November 22, 2013.

29 Stork, December 6, 2013.

30 Two…Three…Many 1.1 (Winter 1970): 7.

31 Mattison, November 22, 2013.

32 Stork, December 6, 2013.

33 For more on the SNCC article, see the author's Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018), 17–26.

34 Peter Johnson and Joe Stork, “MERIP: The First Decade,” MERIP 100-101 (October-December 1981): 50–55.

35 “Israel Report,” 12.

36 “Amman ’71: Long Hot Summer,” MERIP 1.2 (August 1971): 1–2.

37 Johnson and Stork, “MERIP: The First Decade,” 53.

38 Mattison, November 22, 2013.

39 Stork, December 6, 2013.