13

          CHALK  UP  ONE  FOR  THE  PEACEMAKERS     

            If  I had dreamed as a kid that someday I would go to Jerusalem to attend a family reunion between a famous son of Isaac and a famous son of  Ishmael, I might have paid more attention in Sunday school.

            It would have been tough, because in church I was usually squirming in my pew.  My legs itched,  and I was hot and bored.  For one thing, as a fifth grader I couldn’t understand the connection between the things we did in our little Texas farm town and the Old Testament lessons Mr. Bowers was trying to teach us.  Our Sunday school lessons had drawings of  strange-looking foreign people with beards.  They rode donkeys and lived in desert towns with peculiar names.  They dressed in long robes that looked as baggy as the cotton sacks those poor Mexican wetbacks dragged along the furrows in the sweltering farm fields outside Bishop. 

            Even so, their robes looked more comfortable than those miserable white linen Palm Beach pants my mother always wanted me to wear to church.  I argued that I  could listen to the preacher just as well and be far more comfortable in my everyday khakis.  But she thought those starchy linen pants made me look nice.  My mother was the kindest, gentlest person I ever knew, and I loved her very much.  Rather than hurt her feelings I usually wore those linen pants, even though they were as stiff and scratchy as sandpaper.  Sometimes I wore my pajama bottoms underneath and I doubt if  the devil ever knew the difference. 

            Even worse, air conditioning had not yet made it to Bishop.  Our little Southern Baptist Church had an imposing colonnaded entrance and tasteful brick trim, but for relief on sweltering Sunday mornings we had nothing but a few big overhead fans.  These served only to make sure the hot air kept moving.  There were, of course, the hand-held paper fans found in the pews.  These were donated, I am sure, by the Kingsville funeral home whose advertising they featured.  Despite the congregation’s energetic use of these fans, on some August days our church sanctuary seemed nearly as hot as another location about which the preacher frequently warned in his sermon.

            Actually I’m not sure Mr. Bowers ever told our Sunday school class about Isaac and Ishmael and their father, the Jewish patriarch Abraham.  In our sheltered lives as kids in the 1930’s, we probably were not worldly enough to understand, even if he had.  If we had been tutored in cultural values by Beavis and Butthead and Roseanne and Howard Stern, as kids are today, we probably would have snickered about Abraham’s liaison with his wife’s maid.

            But then as now, Baptists were leery of promoting temptation.  One day in the schoolyard, for example, I confided to a chum, James Edgar Whitten, that I didn’t understand why Baptists thought dancing was sinful. 

            “It’s not the dancing,” he said.  “It’s the things that go with it.”

            That observation stuck with me.  Years later, first in the Army and then in college, I kept visiting places where there was dancing, hoping I could run across some of the things that were supposed to go with it.  Only rarely did I succeed.  But I digress.

            Anyhow, even if Mr. Bowers did tell us about Abraham, I doubt that he dwelt overlong on the fact that Abraham’s wife Sarah, thinking she was too old to bear a child, arranged for her Egyptian maid Hagar to sleep with Abraham so he could have a son. 

            The son, of course, turned out to be Ishmael.  And then later, when God made it possible for Sarah herself to bear Abraham another son, Isaac, the family became somewhat more than borderline dysfunctional.  When Abraham ordered Hagar to take Ishmael and go away, Ishmael was ordained by God to father all the world’s Arabic nations.  His half-brother Isaac, meanwhile, received a covenant from God to become progenitor of the Jews.  Today, four thousand years later, for reasons we probably are not supposed to understand, we are still seeing the results of this family upheaval.       

            If we kids were to have trouble in later life trying to understand the hostility which exists even today between Arab and Jew, there was a good reason.  Just about everybody in Bishop had a name like Nelson  or Pierce or Davis, with maybe a Spieglehauer and a Schultz here and there.  This was long before the United States became hopelessly addicted to foreign oil,  and even if I had heard of fellows called Arabs, I certainly had never seen any.  As for Jews, I remember only two small families.  Both ran dry goods stores on Bishop’s one-block Main Street.  One of the men was very unusual.

            His name was Louis Goltzman.  I used to deliver the Corpus Christi Times every afternoon to his store on the corner.  Even though he seldom spoke to anybody except the poor farmhands buying work clothes in his store, he was always nice to me and paid his newspaper bill on time.  But I never recall seeing  any of  the other merchants along Main Street stop by, even to pass the time of day, with Mr. Goltzman.  Perhaps he appeared too shy or withdrawn.  And almost certainly they were uncomfortable with his unusual appearance.  

            Stoop-shouldered, thin and frail, he could be seen most afternoons sitting on a stool or trash can outside his store, poring over a Yiddish newspaper he must have received by mail.  It was here that passersby occasionally would steal a closer look at his face.

            Even though Mr. Goltzman surely was not really old, his face was gaunt and had an unusual pallor.  On his cheeks was a little fuzz but he obviously did not shave.  

            For a while, I believe he and his wife lived in rooms above their store, although later I think they moved to a nearby second-story apartment.   Naturally they did not come to our church, and Bishop had no synagogue.  I never remember any of our Christian townspeople visiting them, or even offering a perfunctory good afternoon.  On the Main Street of our town of about a thousand people, Mr. Goltzman and his wife seemed doomed to live in virtual isolation.  

            Exactly where they came from, or how they got to Bishop, I never knew.  Some said they were refugees who had been driven out of  Europe or Russia or somewhere. They said they believed Mr. Goltzman had no beard because some people back wherever he came from had taken a knife and robbed him of his manhood.  

            Some men in town privately joked about Mr. Goltzman.  Over coffee in the drug store they would talk about his odd appearance and privately call him by a nickname so cruel that I cannot bring myself even now, more than half a century later, to repeat it.  On my paper route I used to think about how isolated and lonely Mr. and Mrs. Goltzman must have felt in our town.  I was ashamed of the way people seemed to avoid and ignore them. 

            Only two doors from Goltzman’s was another little dry goods store.  This one was owned by a small, energetic fellow named Bill Sanders.  He too eked out a living by selling khakis and overalls and work shoes to farm workers who didn’t have a car to get to the department stores in Kingsville, six miles away.  He lived in a small curtained-off  area in the rear of  the store with his sister, a Mrs. Friedlander, and her son--a big, good-looking kid named Harry.  He was about my age, and as well as I can remember, Harry Friedlander was the only Jew I ever went to school with.

            Even as a kid it struck me as unusual that both the Goltzmans and the Bill Sanders family were the only people who lived in their stores on Main Street.  Not until many years later did it occur to me that people in our town might have been reluctant to have them as neighbors.  But at this point I don’t guess it makes any difference--to them, at least.  Mr. and Mrs. Goltzman and Bill Sanders and Mrs. Friedlander are surely dead by now.  And my schoolmate, young Harry Friedlander, doesn’t need a place to live, either.  As a GI in the infantry, he was killed fighting the Nazis in World War II. 

            After the war, with the whole world feeling guilty about having allowed the Holocaust to occur, I was delighted when the United Nations laid the groundwork for the nation of Israel.  How great, I thought, that the Goltzmans and Friedlanders of the earth would no longer be forced to live in communities that tolerated their presence but didn’t really like them.  In the new nation of  Israel they could, if  they chose, live among their own people in a homeland secure and at peace with neighboring nations of the Middle East.  This, anyhow, was my childishly naive thought. 

            The creation of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948.  The next day it was attacked by five Arab countries.  The Israelis defeated the invaders, but this did not shake the Arab belief  that the newborn nation had no right to exist, and they pledged to destroy it.  Again in 1956, 1967 and 1973, wars raged between Israelis and Arabs.

            If we Americans find such consuming hatred hard to understand, maybe it’s because we, with our melting-pot heritage, do not long savor such nationalistic animosities.  Indeed, we probably have the shortest collective national memory of any country on earth.  A little more than fifty years ago we fought the biggest, bloodiest war in history against Germany and Japan.  Today they are among our closest international allies.  Yet between Arabs and Jews, hatreds intertwined with deep-rooted religious beliefs have been smoldering nearly four thousand years. 

            With both sides tracing their ancestry back to Abraham--the Jews through Isaac, the Arabs through Ishmael--the descendants of these two half-brothers are bloody rivals, even today, for the holy land God promised to Abraham.  Abraham was told, the Bible says, that God’s covenant would be with Isaac, but that Ishmael would father a great nation.  In their claim to the disputed lands, the Arabs point to their conquest of  this territory about 600 years after the birth of Christ and the fact that Palestinians have lived there ever since.

            On the other side of the Atlantic in 1976, three years after the latest Arab-Israeli war, a significant event occurred.  The people of the United States elected as their President a fellow who, unlike myself, did pay attention in Sunday school.  His name was Jimmy Carter and he, also, was raised in small town and attended a Baptist church which undoubtedly lacked air conditioning.  Yet even as a youngster, he was a devout student of the Scriptures.  The only thing I can figure is, he probably didn’t have to wear itchy Palm Beach pants, thus allowing him to follow the lessons more closely.

            As a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter held somewhat shaky credentials for a man destined to become a renowned international peacemaker.  Any such idea would have prompted patronizing smiles in the rarefied heights of the State Department. 

            Also in 1976, there was another election--this one in the U.S. House of Representatives. Jim Wright, an eleven-term Democratic Congressman from Fort Worth, was elected Majority Leader, succeeding Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill, a big, gregarious Boston pol who was then moved up to become Speaker.

            Like the toothy Georgia farmer who was preparing to move with his family to an 18-acre plot with government housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Jim Wright as a boy had steeped himself in Bible lore and in the broad sweep of world history.  Now, like Carter, he was an outlander in the eyes of Washington’s elite foreign policy establishment and an untested novice in international affairs.  Yet he, too, was destined to have a role in an international drama then beginning to unfold in the Middle East.

            Under Tip O’Neill, it had become customary each fall for the Majority Leader to lead a group of Congressional colleagues to a spot on the globe where vital U.S. interests were in play.  Even though newspapers habitually disparaged these trips as thinly-disguised pleasure junkets, they were far from that.  Besides providing high-ranking colleagues with first-hand insights into international issues on which the House often was obligated to legislate, the trip helped the Majority Leader solidify his working relationship with key House movers and shakers of both political parties.  The delegations were carefully selected to be bipartisan.

            So it was that one afternoon in early October, 1977, I asked two close friends to join me for a meeting in Jim Wright’s office.  One was Eugene L. (Gene) Krizek, a former Capitol Hill staffer who was now director of Congressional liaison for the State Department.  The other was General William H. (Moon) Mullins, a veteran fighter pilot who had become deputy chief of legislative liaison for the Air Force. 

            “Jim Wright wants to take a high-level delegation to the Middle East after adjournment,” I said.  “Can you guys help make the arrangements and then come along to see that things don’t get screwed up?”

            “Of course,” said Moon.

            “You bet,” said Gene.  “Glad he’s going to the Middle East.  Lot of significant things happening over there these days.” In retrospect, this was a considerable understatement.       

            For one thing, Gene said, our State Department experts had been fretting nervously over the unexpected election in May of Menachem Begin as Israel’s new Premier.  A militant superhawk and ultra-Zionist, Begin had been arrested years before for “unacceptable” activity in the Lithuanian sector of the Soviet Union.  Imprisoned in Siberia for a year--some of it in solitary--he arrived in Palestine in 1942 and promptly became a leader in an underground terrorist group fighting the British, who ruled Palestine then under a League of Nations mandate.  After the creation of Israel, Begin had led the right-wing Likud coalition in the Knesset, or parliament.

            “Our people at State don’t really know what to expect of him as Premier,” Gene reported.                                

            Thanks to the help of  experienced pro’s like Gene Krizek and Moon Mullins, travel plans were quickly put into place.  But then, only two days before Jim Wright and his delegation were  scheduled to depart Washington, a totally unexpected diplomatic thunderbolt came from Egypt. 

            In a speech that stunned the world, President Anwar Sadat abruptly announced to the Egyptian People’s Assembly in Cairo on November 9 that he was willing to go to Jerusalem in a personal quest for peace with Israel.

            In foreign ministries around the world, diplomats dropped their leather-covered pipes and blinked in disbelief.  Could this be true?  Could such a pledge really have come from the iron-willed Islamic leader who had thrown his armies into four bloody wars against the Israelis?   From the fierce military commander who had vowed only months before never even to speak with Israel as long as a single one of its soldiers stood on captured Egyptian soil?  

            Left speechless for once, many foreign policy experts thought maybe the news dispatches from Cairo were wrong--that it was some kind of  mistake, perhaps a slip of  the tongue.  Yet, of  Sadat’s exact words to his parliament,  there could be no doubt:

            “There is no time to lose.  I am ready to go to the ends of the earth if that will save one of my soldiers, one of my officers, from being scratched.  I am ready to go to their house, to the Knesset, to discuss peace with the Israeli leaders.”

            In these three  sentences, Anwar Sadat had thrown out the rule book.  There was a new day in the quest for peace between the world’s most powerful Arab nation and its arch enemy, Israel.

            In light of Sadat’s momentous announcement, Jim Wright was even more eager to pursue the conferences he had scheduled in the Middle East, and he left Washington with his delegation as scheduled on November 11.  All across the Atlantic and during our scheduled three-day stopover in Madrid, the Congressmen seized hungrily upon every scrap of news available from Cairo and Jerusalem.  Between visits with President Adolfo Saurez and other Spanish leaders, the American lawmakers pored over news stories and State Department dispatches on the developing international drama in the Middle East.

            Then, on November 14, our last day in Madrid, Sadat wiped away any lingering doubts about his electrifying speech to parliament.  In an interview with Walter Cronkite, the Egyptian President reaffirmed that he had meant exactly what he said.  If  Israeli Premier Menachem Begin would extend a formal invitation, he would go to Jerusalem and speak before the Israeli parliament in a personal search for peace.

            That afternoon, as our plane climbed over the Mediterranean and turned on course toward Cairo, Jim Wright and members of  the delegation gathered in little clusters, speculating on where all this might lead.  These men all were accomplished political pro’s, and they talked shop.

            “It’s ironic for an old Zionist warhorse like Begin to have this kind of an opportunity for peace fall right into his lap,” observed one Congressman.

            “Yeah, but it’ll take a tough right-winger like him to make it work.  It took Richard Nixon, remember, to recognize Red China.  No Democrat on earth could have got away with that,” remarked a colleague.

            “It’s not Begin who’ll get into trouble about this--it’s Sadat.  How do you think it’s going to set with the PLO and other Arabs to see Sadat go trotting off  all  by himself  to Jerusalem?” ventured a third member.

            As darkness gathered and our big jet whirred on toward Cairo, the passenger cabin crackled with a sense of excitement and expectancy unlike any I had felt in 15 years on Capitol Hill.  Tomorrow we would meet President Anwar Sadat. 

            Accompanying the Majority Leader on this trip were 13 members of the House.  Five were prominent Republicans.  As Administrative Assistant to the Majority Leader, I was aboard, along with Kathy Mitchell, Jim Wright’s longtime personal secretary.  With us also were Gene Krizek, Moon Mullins, nine other Congressional staff members and five Air Force escort officers. 

            On official trips like this,  protocol encouraged spouses to accompany the delegation, provided there was space available on the plane and the government incurred no expense for their food or lodging.  Jim Wright’s wife Betty and daughter Ginger went along, as did the wives of most other members.  And I was lucky enough to find a seat for my wife Eddie.

            Like most Special Air Mission transport planes based at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, our VC-137 was a virtual flying command post.  Behind the flight deck and crew quarters was a compartment jammed with high-tech electronic gear.  We could talk with the White House, with the Pentagon and I suppose, if need be, with a Buddhist monk at a pay phone in Tibet.

            A reconfigured version of the Boeing 707 in elegant military dress, our plane was a thing of beauty.  Painted proudly on its rudder was an American flag, and on its gleaming white fuselage the words THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.   An Air Force officer told me this particular plane was used as Air Force One by President Lyndon B. Johnson.  In its forward lounge were easy chairs, a television  and a comfortable sofa.  Adjoining it was a coffee table that would have enthralled the editors of  Popular Mechanics. At the punch of a button, the coffee table rose to become a desk--perfect for the times Jim Wright called Kathy up from the passenger compartment to dictate memos.          

            Landing about 8 o’clock that night at Cairo Airport, we were met by formal delegation headed by U.S. Ambassador Hermann Eilts.  A respected, no-nonsense authority on the Middle East, Eilts also had a penchant for wanting to take charge. 

            As the ranking Congressional staffer on the trip, I received a message relayed to the plane from Eilts while we were taxiing up to the ramp.  Eilts, whom I had never met, directed me to have the members of Congress and their wives exit the plane by the front door.  Staff people, he specified, were to leave through the rear door.

            Instead of acquiescing to the order and then making  a fool of myself by publicly bellyaching about it, as another Congressional person would do in a later year, I ignored it.  I stood back, as I customarily did, until the Congressmen and their wives had finished deplaning.  Then I led the staff people in marching out the same damn door.

            On our way to meet President Sadat the next day, our bus drew enthusiastic welcomes from street crowds,  even though it was obvious that Cairo and its citizens faced colossal problems.  In a city expected to accommodate two and a half million people, it then had nine million, with another two million commuting to the city to work each day.  Over the preceding 20 years, 34 per cent of Egypt’s wealth had gone for war and defense.             Egypt’s economy and budget, like the streets of Cairo, were a mess.

            Yet the Barrages was only one of ten homes the Egyptian government maintained for President Sadat.  On a tree-shaded plot beside the Nile north of Cairo, this was his favorite.  Our delegation with its police escort arrived shortly after noon on Tuesday, November 15, and we were welcomed inside to a large, airy room.  Because he caught cold easily, the President refused air conditioning.

            Lean and handsome in a dark pin-striped suit, Sadat was exuberant as he greeted our delegation.  Obviously delighted that his 50-word utterance to parliament had captured the imagination of  the world, he agreed to news media requests to allow coverage of our meeting.  From behind a thicket of microphones, bathed in television lights, he opened the session with a personal tribute to President Jimmy Carter as a man of peace and a man of his word.  He urged continued U.S. efforts to push peace talks. 

            Still eager to have the word from Sadat’s own lips, Jim Wright said he understood U.S. envoys soon would relay to Sadat a personal invitation from Premier Begin to visit Jerusalem.  Would Sadat go?

            “Whenever the invitation arrives, I will be ready to go,” he declared.        

            Then, in an hour-long give-and-take session, Sadat gave our group what seemed to be his frank assessment of  the seemingly endless list of  knotty and convoluted problems that for centuries had frustrated would-be peacemakers in the Middle East.

            The next day, Wednesday November 16, we left Egypt for our flight to Tel Aviv, where special buses were to take us on to Jerusalem.  Aboard the airplane, the atmosphere of  expectancy seemed to grow with the passing miles. But there still had been no official word on the invitation Begin was reportedly preparing.

            At a table in the main passenger compartment, Jim Wright was hunched over a portable typewriter, pecking out his account of our meeting with Sadat.  It was another of  the daily dispatches he always tried to send to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  The paper usually published them intact under his by-line.  On any international trip, Jim Wright routinely did this--for two good reasons.  For one, these personalized accounts let people back home know exactly what he was doing on foreign trips.  Secondly, the day-by-day stories, crammed with details of official activities, virtually guaranteed that no future political opponent could ever accuse him of  wasting taxpayers’ money on a pleasure junket. 

            “What do you think of this?” he said, handing me the story. 

            I read it over.  It was pretty good, but my 15 years as a newspaperman compelled me to pick a few nits.  “Might want to take a look at a couple of  little things--here and here,” I said.       

            He did a little editing and gave the story back to me.  “Can you see that this gets out right away?” he asked.

            “Sure,” I said, immediately taking the copy forward to the VC-137’s communications room.  After talking with the two specialists there, I returned to our compartment.  Knowing Jim Wright enjoyed feigning distrust of modern technology, I felt certain what his first question would be. 

            “Did you get that story sent?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “What did you do--telephone somebody in Washington and dictate it to them?”

            “No, sir.  The communications guys up front sent it out by radio teletype.”

            “Radio teletype?  What do you mean?”

            “Well, it’s a little machine like a typewriter.  The communications guys punch out the story on the keyboard and it’s received in the Pentagon.  From there it will go to our office and the Star-Telegram.”

            “You mean it goes by radio from this airplane to the Pentagon?”

            “Yes, sir, but not directly.”

            “What do you mean, ‘not directly’?”

            “Well, they bounce it off the Telstar satellite.”

            Jim Wright frowned.  “Marshall, they can’t do that,”  he said gravely.

            “All right, you caught me,” I said, laughing.  “The truth is,  I took your story and stuck it in an empty wine bottle I got from the steward.  Then I threw it out the window.  With any luck, in a day or two a passing ship will pick it up in the Mediterranean.”

            “At least I understand that,” he said, chuckling.

            As we arrived that evening in Jerusalem, there was a new development.  In a nighttime briefing in the historic King David Hotel, Samuel Lewis, the American Ambassador, told us the Knesset had voted 83-3 to extend a formal invitation to Sadat.  The three nay votes came from Communist members who opposed the government anyway.  Begin’s invitation had been sent, but no response had come from Cairo. 

            Still uncertain what part, in any, our delegation would play if Sadat did come to Jerusalem, we proceeded on Thursday, November 17, with our original schedule.  First there was a deeply moving visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national memorial to their  six million kinspeople who died in Hitler’s death camps.  From there Jim Wright led his colleagues into meetings with Knesset leaders, including Speaker Itzhak Shamir and other top-level officials.  Dominating each of these conversations was the heightening prospect of Anwar Sadat’s visit.  

             “That will be a very great day,” said Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan.

            Our final visit was to the office of  Premier Begin, and it was there that I shared with my wife and two treasured friends probably the most historically significant  moment of  my life.

            While Jim Wright and the delegation waited in a nearby meeting room, Gene Krizek, Moon Mullins, Eddie and I were huddled in a small adjoining room, checking over events on our schedule.

            Without warning, a door popped open and Menachem Begin himself  dashed in, aflame with excitement. 

            “He’s coming!  He’s coming!” he cried.  “We just received word!  President Sadat is coming to Jerusalem!”

            Thunderstruck, we four Americans were speechless.  Realizing we were probably the first persons on earth to hear this momentous news, we began trying to congratulate the ecstatic Premier.  I don’t even remember what I said, but I remember exactly what he said.

            “You can’t tell where this will end,” he bubbled.  “Maybe even I will go to Cairo.  I’ve always wanted to see the Pyramids.”

            I grinned.

            “We built them, you know,” he laughed, eyes sparkling behind his owlish,  black-rimmed glasses.   

            Then, hurrying into the next room, the Premier made his triumphant announcement to Jim Wright and the delegation.  As a wave of  cheers, applause and congratulations engulfed the room, I got the idea that the visiting Americans thought maybe the diminutive Israeli statesman stood a bit taller than he had a few minutes

before. 

            The schedule called for President Sadat to arrive in Jerusalem about 7:30 p.m. Saturday, November 19.  His speech to the Knesset was set for Sunday evening.  Under our present schedule, we were supposed to leave Sunday morning.  While I felt sure we would be invited to stay, there was another question. 

            It was posed by Michael Levenson, a brainy young officer with the Israeli Foreign Ministry.  Since our arrival, Michael and I had worked closely together on the schedule and arrangements.  Only the night before, we had shared a few drinks in the Air Force hospitality room on the sixth floor of  the King David Hotel, where our delegation’s rooms were located.

            Like many younger Israelis, Michael had seen fierce combat as an Israeli soldier.  As we talked of his country’s seemingly endless wars with Arab nations, Michael mentioned, hesitantly at first, a few personal recollections of combat.  Then, with deepening emotion, he described the terror, tumult and carnage of  desert battle.  It was as if  the implicit promise of Sadat’s visit, together with our hospitality room bourbon, had enabled this upcoming young Foreign Ministry officer to share some of his innermost feelings with this balding older fellow who seemed interested and sympathetic.          

            Sitting in a quiet corner of  the room, eyes glistening,  Michael  spoke in a raspy whisper that sounded almost as fervent as a prayer.  “Maybe this visit will lead to a day,” he said, “when my sons will not have to fight four wars just to protect their homes.”

            Now, on Thursday evening, Michael had returned to the King David.  Pulling me aside, he said the Israeli government was preparing to impose the most stringent security measures in history to protect Anwar Sadat during his stay in Jerusalem.  It would be disastrous, he emphasized, for even the slightest harm to befall the Egyptian President while here.  Any such happening would enrage every Arab nation in the world and possibly trigger another war.  So security teams would be on high alert every moment.  Soldiers armed with Uzi submachine guns would be deployed every few feet around the King David, he said.  Moreover, the hotel would be emptied of  all guests except the Anwar Sadat and Jim Wright delegations.  Then, reluctantly, Michael came to the point.

            Security experts believed the hotel’s the sixth floor offered the safest location available, so the Israeli government was reluctantly requesting our delegation to move down to the fourth floor, leaving the sixth to handle Sadat and his staff.   Michael apologized for the inconvenience, but said the security people considered it essential.

            As Michael talked, it occurred to me that of all people, Premier Begin certainly ought to know the vulnerabilities of  the King David Hotel.  In his days as an anti-British terrorist in the 1940’s, he tried to blow up the place.  I didn’t mention this, of course. However amusing it was to me, I didn’t figure Michael would find it so.   

            Apologetic about having to ask us to move, Michael said we would given almost identical rooms on the fourth floor “for the remainder of  your stay.”  While I was certain Jim Wright would cooperate with Israeli security,  Michael’s words gave me an opening to check on our own schedule.    

            “And what day do you think we will be leaving?” I asked.

            “Your schedule calls for your departure on Sunday morning,” Michael  replied.

            “I know.  I had just thought that in view of the close relationship between Israel and the United States, the Foreign Ministry might think it would be useful for us to stay.”         

            Michael looked me squarely in the eye.  “Would the Majority Leader want to stay?”

            The truth is that I had never asked Jim Wright.  But to me it would have been incomprehensible to consider departing on the eve of  such an historic event. 

            “Of course,” I said.

            “Let me do some checking,” he said.

            Even though Eddie recognized at once how essential it was to protect Sadat, she did a little good-natured grousing as she began packing our bags.

            “Just think of  it this way--we are giving up our bed in the cause of peace in the Middle East,” I said.  She threw a pillow at me.

            But then, to my astonishment, a few members of the delegation said we should pick up and leave Jerusalem.  It was difficult for me to believe, but they resented being asked to move down to the fourth floor.

            “If they make us to change floors, let’s just change countries,” one member huffed.

            “How do we know we are even welcome?” another demanded.

            Privately surprised at these complaints on the eve of a happening of  such worldwide significance, Jim Wright called his colleagues together for a hurried caucus. As the State Department’s ranking official on our trip, Gene Krizek asked and received  the Majority Leader’s permission to address the members.  By all means, he told them, they should remain.

            “If we don’t stay to represent the United States at this historic event, President Carter will need to send another delegation, and I’m not sure there is time for him to do that,” Gene declared. 

            Then, in the midst of the meeting, Jim Wright was summoned to the telephone.  Premier Begin was calling to invite the delegation to stay for President Sadat’s speech.  He said special seats were being reserved in the Knesset for the visiting American lawmakers.  Jim Wright tried to demur.

            “Mr. Prime Minister, we appreciate that more than you can possibly realize,” he said.  “This is a moment like none other in history.  But it would be very selfish of us to deny your own citizens the privilege of those precious seats.  I have seen the Knesset gallery, and I know its limited space.  You have at least a hundred valid claims among Israelis, I am sure, for each available seat.  Therefore, I really think we should decline with grateful thanks and arrange an early departure so as to relieve you of any additional security worries or--”

            “You don’t understand, Mr. Leader,” Begin interrupted.  “We very much want you and your group from the American Congress to be present with us for this event.  If you look outside you will see that three flags are being raised in front of the King David Hotel--ours, Egypt’s, and that of the United States.  We want you as parties to this historic moment.”

            We stayed.

            When Anwar Sadat arrived on Saturday, he was greeted at the entrance to the King David by the impressive display of flags that Begin had ordered.  To those in our party, the flags stirred a glow of national pride.  On another level, I suppose these three flags standing together could have been seen as two combative brothers, warily coming together under the gaze of a caring but muscular friend.

            At almost precisely 8 o’clock Saturday night, Sadat’s presidential Boeing 707 taxied up to a red carpet on the ramp of  Ben-Gurion Airport.  Security people and dignitaries stood everywhere.  From an Israeli army band burst a fanfare.  Hundreds of reporters, television crews and photographers scrambled for better views.  President Anwar Sadat of Egypt strode down the ramp.

            Greeted warmly by Premier Begin and President Ephraim Katzir, Sadat was taken in tow and introduced to other high-level Israeli leaders lined up along the red carpet.  Then Sadat saw the man he was looking for.

            Ariel Sharon was the Israeli army commander who, during a counter-attack in the Yom Kippur War, led his troops across the Suez Canal into Egypt.

            “I wanted to catch you there,” Sadat said, smiling.

            “I’m glad to have you here,” his old adversary replied.

            As the Egyptian President stepped, confident and smiling, into the lobby of the King David Hotel amid the glare of  television lights and swarming newspeople, he drew cheers and applause.  Looking down from the mezzanine, I remember thinking this scene was about as close to the millennium as I was ever likely to see.

            The next day, in an act of hospitality unthinkable only weeks before, Sadat was accorded and accepted an invitation to pray in Jerusalem’s Al Aksa Mosque and to visit the neighboring Dome of the Rock.  This is a site revered by both Muslims and Jews.  In Islamic belief, it was from here that Mohammed rose to heaven to talk with God and then, with God’s blessing, returned to earth to spread Islam.  To Jews, it is the holy  ground where Abraham prepared to follow God’s command to sacrifice his son Isaac, as well as the location  of Solomon’s Temple.

            The home of Israel’s unicameral legislature, the Knesset, is an impressive chamber whose seating is laid out in the pattern of a menorah, Judaism’s symbolic seven-branch candlestick.  On entering the chamber on the evening of Sunday, November 20,  Sadat was greeted by more applause.  He smiled, looking almost at home.

            As he spoke in Arabic to the hushed chamber, Sadat’s words were simultaneously translated into Hebrew and English and telecast around the world.  From their special seats in the gallery, the American Congressmen listened raptly--far more attentively than a few of them were accustomed to doing in the House chamber in Washington.                     

            In an eloquent call for peace, Sadat emphatically recognized Israel’s right to exist.  “If you want to live with us in this part of  the world, in sincerity I tell you that we welcome you among us with all security and safety,” he declared.

            But he warned that Israel must abandon its dreams of conquest and its belief that force was the best method of dealing with the Arabs.  He said a lasting peace in the Middle East would depend on Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Arab land, including East Jerusalem, which he had visited earlier in the day.

            In his response, Begin praised Sadat’s courage and joined his call for peace.  But referring to land occupied by Israel, he vowed that Jews “will not be put in range of fire for annihilation.”

            While largely symbolic, Sadat’s speech and Begin’s response were at least a beginning.  It would be ten months later, after repeated crises and disappointments, before President Jimmy Carter was able to bring Begin and Sadat together.  In the seclusion of Camp David, the presidential retreat in the mountains of  Maryland, Carter shuttled tirelessly for 13 days between the cabins of his two guests, seeking to allay suspicions, build trust and fashion compromises.   Finally, on September 17, 1978, Carter stood with Begin and Sadat for the signing of agreements which, six agonizing months later, established a peace which endures today between Egypt and Israel.

            But ancient antagonisms do not die easily.  Hatred and bloodshed still haunt many parts of  the Middle East,  and perhaps they always will.  But before we write off the whole thing as hopeless, we should remember that for a few shining moments in the late 1970’s, three courageous and devoutly religious men--a Christian, a Jew and a Muslim--chalked up at least one modest score for the peacemakers.  Even for this tiny, tortuous step, I believe Mr. Goltzman and Harry Friedlander would have been grateful.