PEACE FRAUD! Foundation for Middle East Peace in Washington

Wilcox is very bad and very unimpressive. It (the Foundation) should be brought to an end. I told that to the Board years ago. We should give away the remaining money and close it down. It has become worthless. I should have resigned long ago!”  Landrum Bolling, long-time Board Member

WASHINGTON SCENE: Actually it’s worse than worthless, it’s a fraud.Wilcox is retired Ambassador Phil Wilcox, a traditional double-dipping simple-minded type who specializes year after year in repeating trite “peace” slogans while stuffing Foundation money in his and friends pockets as he runs FMEP into the ground and collects his State Dept retirement.FMEP was set up years ago by a wealthy well-meaning attorney friend of Senator William Fulbright after they traveled together to the Middle East. In his day Merle Thorpe took some bold steps including running the Foundation from the prestigious offices of Hogan and Hartson in downtown Washington. Then after his death the millions he endowed FMEP with have been squandered by Wilcox and an aging naive Board of Directors too timid and grossly uninformed to do its job.A typical FMEP “event” took place a few days ago in Washington. After contacting everyone they know, and that includes getting four other co-sponsor organizations, after paying for a room at the Carnegie Endowment and giving everyone a little free lunch, about 60 stragglers came to hear an Israeli “Two-State Solution” Professor. Half of the audience looked like retired folk with nothing else to do, a few organizational types showed up to be called on by name by Wilcox to ask the usual repetitive soft-ball questions, and add to the mix a few student interns who have no way of knowing what’s going on.Why fraud? The serious think-tanks and organizations in Washington have influence and power; what they do is of interest to the political establishment in Washington, to students, and to the media. Not so FMEP and its associated organizations which include groups called Churches for Middle East Peace and Americans for Peace Now. Get that consistent seductive “Peace” Theme do you?This latest event was typical. Wilcox doesn’t even ask himself why nobody other than his same old crony friends even bother to come. Not a single Palestinian, not a single Arab in fact, and nobody from the media either…mainstream or anything else for that matter. Furthermore, in the entire lengthy discussion of the “Peace Process”, not a single mention of Congress, AIPAC, Neocons, Israeli/Jewish/Zionist Lobby, the Wall, or even Refugees. Even the Arab Spring, Egypt, and the tumolt in the region were only mentioned in the last minute!Fraud, Scam…there are worse words for such self-serving hypocritical incestuousness fostered by Wilcox and his buddies. How tragic all the money and time have been so squandered by such bumbling and blathering which in the process has so diminished the very word “Peace” in Washington.