Marion Fitch, 1921-1998

By Andrew I. Killgore

Less than two weeks before Marion Fitch’s death from cancer in Washington, DC, she was standing among massed demonstrators outside the White House holding a placard protesting the 50th anniversary of Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinians. By then, after several sessions in and out of hospitals, she knew that she had only a few days to live. But when I told her reprovingly that she should be resting at home, she answered simply, “No, I have to be here.”

In fact, also fresh out of a hospital, she had been right there in Lafayette Square two months earlier to join hundreds of peace activists a third her age protesting against U.S. preparations to bomb Iraq—again. A day or two later she expressed enormous satisfaction upon learning that during their noisy protest, with a band and drums, no less, President Bill Clinton had been meeting inside with his National Security Council—presumably reviewing their options. Marion and the others made it clear that a popularly supported military strike was not one of them.

Born in England to an American father and an English mother, and educated in schools with girls from all over the still-existing British Empire, as her accompanying article from the book Seeing the Light explains, Marion became a passionate anti-colonialist.

After World War II she went to Warsaw with UNICEF. There she developed a life-long interest in and deep sympathy for the Poles with their up-and-down history, mostly down.

Next Marion spent some time in Athens during the civil war there as part of the buildup of American government personnel that accompanied the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to keep Greece and Turkey on the Western side of what Winston Churchill described that year as the “Iron Curtain” that was rapidly dividing Europe.

Marion then spent a long period at the U.S. Embassy in Rome. It was during this time that she became deeply involved in the plight of the Palestinians. One of her last acts before retiring from U.S. government service was taking up a collection among American Embassy employees for the new wave of Palestinians refugees created by Israel’s so-called “pre-emptive attack” on its Arab neighbors in 1967.

She later returned to Rome to work with the Pontifical Mission for Palestine. This position took her to Beirut, Jerusalem and Amman where she saw the misery of Palestinian refugee camps. She also saw the touching warmth and generosity characteristic of even the poorest Palestinians.

In a note to this office after Marion’s death, a fellow peace activist, Patricia Perkins, has written movingly of Marion’s participation in efforts in front of the White House after returning to the U.S. for good on behalf of the Palestinians and to head off what became the Gulf war.

We were among mostly Americans of all heritages to whom the peace of the Middle East had become a moving force in our lives...Many religious groups joined in. One was the Dorothy Day Catholic Workers, who at noon every Saturday prayed for an hour outside the White House gate. Marion, a Roman Catholic herself, joined the prayer vigil...

All of us in front of the White House were passionate in our devotion. None more than Marion. By the end of the Gulf war the Dorothy Day Catholic Workers came no more to pray at the gate. Then there was a threesome—Marion, David Hitchcock and I—often joined by others, most often by our friend Ken Kahn, who carried the Palestinian flag.

After our hour of prayer, Ken and David both would march the Palestinian flag back and forth in front of the White House while we handed out leaflets. Those were the times I got to know Marion. We became friends and continued our vigils at the White House until the time of Madrid.

Marion, in her 70s, had been an office worker and used her letter-writing skills firing off her opinion regularly to the White House. She was always the best among us at calling the White House line. Every official who uttered insensitive words about “terrorism” received a call from Marion, pointing out that Israel had taken the Palestinians’ homes through terrorism, that planes flew from Israel regularly into Lebanon inflicting terrorism, that the policy of Israel was to make the Palestinians’ lives so miserable they would want to leave voluntarily. Even while we others were giving our devotion too, once you heard from Marion what she did daily, writing letters, making phone calls, you had a sense you weren’t doing enough...

Marion struggled with cancer—she was a fighter. But, toward the end, she was obviously becoming weary. Her oft-repeated declaration that she wouldn’t have to endure the Israelis’ intractability much longer was a sign her life was getting too burdensome. I miss her and know she will be there in every effort I make to play a part in Middle East peace.

As Marion’s condition worsened, calls or notes came from Iowa, Ohio and elsewhere from friends of Marion dating back to the Rome, Amman and other days, mostly asking when might be the best time to visit her in Washington. Clearly she would not be alone at the end.

Nor was Marion too weary to stop in at the Washington Report in early May with an Easter cake she had baked according to a traditional Italian recipe. She looked as pretty and composed as I’d ever seen her, but we all knew this was a farewell visit. When I mentioned an upcoming event in June she said matter-of-factly, “Well, June will be too late for me.” She died, among friends, in a Washington, DC hospice at 11:10 p.m. on May 25.

Since then we have been notified by a friend in Maine that “before she died, Marion requested that memorial contributions be made to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Andrew I. Killgore is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

A Lonely Battle for the Palestinians

By Marion Fitch

Looking back, it doesn’t seem that there was ever a time when I did not hear about Palestine and Palestinians. Probably it was because, although I was a U.S. citizen with an American father and British mother, I grew up in England, a colonialist country when Lawrence of Arabia was still a national hero. There were always students at my school who jingled lovely foreign bracelets and spoke wistfully of Arab souqs and Indian hill towns or—magic name!—the Khyber Pass with its fierce watchers, guns at the ready, not at all averse to firing on unwary travelers below them.

With relatives in Spain and Alexandria, Egypt, I was drawn inevitably to the Mediterranean, although I was not to meet a Palestinian for many years and, in fact, when I started on my travels I went first to Poland. But the Palestinians were struggling for their rights, twice proposed and twice betrayed (as the Poles were betrayed at Yalta), and they were very much in my mind when I was working in New York in 1948. I had been incredulous when, the year before, it was settled by one power, the United States, acting for another people, the Israelis-to-be, that Palestine was to be divided, the larger and more productive half going to Jews who were mainly European.

The third people, the Palestinians, who were the most concerned, were to be dealt with as envisaged by Britain’s Lord Arthur James Balfour when he said in 1919: “In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American Commission has been going through the form of asking what they are…Whatever deference should be paid to the views of those living there, the Powers in their selection of a mandatory do not propose, as I understand the matter, to consult them.”

Later, working at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, I had to learn to keep my mouth shut although the news from Palestine was worse all the time. In 1967 I was allowed to appeal, through the embassy news sheet, for medical aid and blankets for Palestinian refugees, but only one other person answered my call. The rest of the embassy staff sent their aid to Israel.

Luckily, English traveler Freya Stark put me in touch with an English couple stationed at the British Embassy in Amman who were the founders of Medical Aid to Palestinians. Jordanian Airlines helped me get supplies through to the refugees. But I felt this was far from enough.

When I left government service under early retirement, therefore, I went back to Rome and found a job with a new office being opened at the Vatican whose purpose was to help the Palestinians and others in the Middle East. They had already set up offices in Beirut, Amman and Jerusalem and I was sent off to visit them and their dedicated staff members who were operating them against all odds. It was an enlightening experience and, fortunately, for every horror tale there was a good one of projects continued, food and medicine brought in, or children protected.

Those also were the days when Romans (and citizens throughout Italy) demonstrated long and hard for Palestinian independence, easily getting 10,000 people to fill the great piazzas. Amongst those demonstrators were large numbers of Palestinian students. Political leaders and PLO representatives (Italy had recognized the PLO) gave grand speeches and we chanted Siamo tanti, siamo qui, siamo tutti OLP (“We’re many, we’re here, we’re all PLO”).

During the same period, Israel was making Europe its battleground for the hunting of Palestinian intellectuals, shooting them down as terrorists whether or not they even knew how to use a gun. We lost several in Rome and out came the crowds. Meanwhile, of course, we organized fund-raising events and sent help however we could.

Archbishop Hilarion Cappucci, ex-prisoner of the Israelis, held a big meeting at his titular church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, down by the Tiber, and I was mortified to find that all the Palestinians and Italians could sing “We Shall Overcome” but I, an American citizen since birth and now one of the few Americans present for the archbishop’s meeting, didn’t know the song except as a name.

It was this feeling of being out of touch that helped motivate me to return to the States. There I found an astonishing change from all the previous brief sojourns on leave when I had found no one who would listen to me describe the plight of the Palestinians. I first found my way to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), whose staff showed me all that they were doing. Then ex-Congressman Paul Findley, to whom I had written from Rome, introduced me to the grand duo who had turned the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs into something unique on the American scene. From then on, it seemed that everyone I met had something to do with Palestinians, their rights and needs, and justice and peace for them, and I didn’t need to feel out-of-step with my countrymen anymore.

Of course, I was hardly back before I went off to the Peace March in Jerusalem in 1989. Our plane was delayed, perhaps deliberately, and we weren’t even allowed to go into the city, where we were told the Israelis had been savagely beating the marchers for three hours. Next day I discovered what had happened to the 800-strong Italian delegation and to all of the other brave ones who had started out to serve peace among peoples and had found one side that had no intention of being peaceful. I found many friends, dejected or hurt, but did not know until later that the couple who had helped me from the British Embassy in Amman had been among the marchers.

It was a sickening beginning for our visit, which showed me how much worse things had become in the Holy Land itself. We stayed with Palestinians in Gaza and, to our eternal shame, ran from Israeli soldiers throwing gas bombs while Palestinian women came to their doors and waited calmly to give help where they could.

In the night we were awakened by Israeli soldiers stomping into the room to demand our passports. Alas, mine was in the pocket of a friend in another house. I had some qualms but must have frightened off the soldiers with a “stony British stare” because, after waiting interminably to see my friend’s passport, which she offered slowly, with her head turned from them, they “forgot” to ask again for mine. You can imagine the chagrin of our colleagues in the next house who had no such adventure, but I was secretly glad it had not ended in an Israeli jail cell.

There is no space left to tell of the kindness of all we met on that journey among the Palestinians. Since this was a “wake up” trip for the others, they were especially determined to “tell all,” including the hostile treatment at Tel Aviv airport where the men were strip-searched, had their film taken away, etc.

It merely confirmed me in my own effort to keep on working until our government recognizes that Palestinians, too, are human beings who also have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in their own country. There still is a long way to go, but I believe that if we hold together and keep speaking out by every means to our fellow citizens and those in government, we shall yet see a Palestinian state in being.

Someone once wrote that the Poles, in their spiritual endurance, stand alone. I have seen, however, that the Palestinians share that capacity, and it is up to those of us in the United States who know the truth about the Israeli theft of the Palestinian land to help make sure that all the deaths and sacrifices have not been in vain. No matter how long it takes, we can do no less.