American Friends of the Middle East

The American Friends of the Middle East (AFME) was a pro-Arabist organization often critical of U.S. support for Israel that was formed in 1951 by columnist Dorothy Thompson, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., and 24 further American educators, theologians, and writers (including Harry Emerson Fosdick).[1][2] Virginia Gildersleeve, Roosevelt, Fosdick and others had founded a similarly oriented Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land in 1948, which was subsumed into the new organization.[3]

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a Jewish news agency, noted that the organization "does not include a single Jew among its charter members, but has among them numerous outspoken Anti-Zionists,"[4] and reported on a full page ad taken by the new organization in "the New York press" on June 27, 1951, reiterating its advertised purposes as follows:[4]

1. “To break through the curtain of obscurity and distortion by writing and publicizing material designed to broaden understanding in the United States of Middle Eastern peoples, their problems, and progress.

2. “To send representatives to the different countries; to pay particular attention to the various religious; to enable them to state their problems, and to assist them in having their voice heard in America.

3. “To bring spokesmen of Eastern religious and cultural groups to this country to meet American audiences in person.

4. “To send representatives of the Committee to the Middle East to stress the fact that a substantial body of American public opinion shares our concern and interest in the area; and to report on the various ways in which this Committee might be most helpful.

5. “To arrange public exhibits, in connection with our churches, universities; and other cultural centers, of the arts and creative industries of the Middle East.

6. “To invite the participation of the many Americans of Near Eastern origin in our work.

7. “To aid, whenever possible, in the preservation and rebuilding of shrines, libraries, and cultural centers in the Middle East.

8. “To work toward the calling of a spiritual and cultural conference, in the Middle East, for the purpose of counteracting the old isolation with a plan for permanent cooperation between American and Middle Eastern peoples.”

While at the time of the JTA's reporting it was accurate in that no one identifying as Jewish was part of the AFME, the (eventually-controversial) Reform rabbi Elmer Berger joined its national council in 1952; before this, the AFME was associated, via some of its charter members' associations, with other Arabist/anti-Zionist organizations with notable Jewish membership such as the American Council for Judaism and the Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land.[5]

Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. served as executive secretary of the AFME group of intellectuals and spokespersons for a time.[1][3] In appealing for funds form American supporters “free from political pressure and racial and religious discrimination,” the AFME is reported to have stated that “most Americans… never had an accurate picture of Middle East.”[4]

Historians R.M. Miller, Hugh Wilford, and others have argued that from its early years, AFME was a part of an Arabist propaganda effort within the US "secretly funded and to some extent managed" by the CIA,[1][2] with further funding from the oil consortium Aramco.[2] Anecdotal and first-hand accounts referenced by historians, in the absence of declassified intelligence documentation, have suggested that the American intelligence community used the AFME partially as a vehicle for establishing its intelligence network in the Middle East after World War II. [5]