Ex-Hostage Preaches Peace Message to All Who’ll Listen

Jerry Levin, a former Middle East hostage, worked the crowd in his usual intense, rambling and passionate style, his coattails flying and his glasses slipping down his nose as he paced the stage.

Words like “frightening stereotypes,” “unlawful and unacceptable extremes,” and “coldblooded objects of ridicule and scorn” peppered his speech about how Arabs had been portrayed in the media.

But it was a tough audience.

More than 200 restless and indifferent continuation high school students in Cerritos--some of whom would not know Beirut from Burbank, and could care less to boot--slouched in their seats, looking bored by the tale of tangled Middle East politics and the lessons of peace so fervently pushed by Levin.

Yet, later, a handful of students clustered eagerly to have their pictures taken with the ex-hostage. Others stared open-mouthed, fascinated as Levin kept up his political drumbeat through what was supposed to be a 15-minute break.

“That was the most atypical talk I gave,” a chagrined Levin said later. “I’m not the best extemporaneous speaker.”

Yet such speeches have become a way of life for him.

While the last five U.S. hostages to return from the Middle East were facing celebrations after their recent freedom, musing about whether revenge should be contemplated, Levin, 58, was continuing to pursue his new life, quietly and doggedly working for international peace.

The 11 months he spent in a darkened room--blindfolded and cramped by a two-foot-long bicycle chain that bound him--changed him forever, he says. It led an atheist Jew to Christianity and to peace advocacy.

Levin, a former Cable News Network bureau chief in Beirut, abandoned his globe-hopping journalism career and, in February, joined World Vision, an international relief organization based in Monrovia.

With his wife, Sis, he is also part of a husband-and-wife team that lectures three or four times a month--to anyone who will listen.

Whether the audience is high school students, sophisticated political science majors, business owners or church groups, the subject is always the same: truth in government, acceptance of ethnic and cultural differences, politics and, of course, world peace.

“Neither of us have ever accepted an invitation to talk about our ‘adventure,’ ” Levin said of himself and his wife. “What we are interested in doing, what he have, is a driving need to talk about the context, the government role, what this means to the United States.”

But their “adventure” is the stuff of books and television movies, both of which exist.

“Beirut Diary” is Sis Levin’s account of her attempts to free her husband after he was kidnaped March 7, 1984, just 11 weeks after he went to Beirut. And “Held Hostage” is the television movie that aired last January.

Both tell how Levin’s wife broke a U.S. government-imposed silence, demanded government action to free her husband, and met with Syrian diplomats and others in the Middle East, arranging for his captors to let him “escape” on Feb. 13, 1985.

After that experience, Levin said he could not return to his former role as an objective newsman. Given an administrative desk job at CNN, he left after three years to become a free-lance journalist--and to work toward peace in the Middle East.

He and his wife--who live in Pasadena--have since traveled extensively to the strife-torn region, working with groups such as the Palestinian Human Rights Campaign, World Peacemakers, Pax World Foundation and Mercy Corps International, a Portland, Ore., relief organization.

“What propelled me to speak out was . . . I found the government was lying,” Levin said. “That was the journalist in me that was angered.”

He now criticizes the U.S. government, which he says unnecessarily meddled in Lebanon’s civil war, prompting the taking of hostages. Yet government officials professed ignorance and still do, he insists, over the causes of anti-American hostility in the Middle East.

Also fueling his life change has been his newfound religion.

Before his captivity, Levin said he was a vindictive, ambitious newsman who believed in revenge and thought Jesus’ idea of forgiveness was folly.

Twice divorced before he married Sis, Levin characterized himself as a selfish and self-centered husband who believed in getting even with his wives over disagreements. He admired Sis’ strong belief in God and even attended the Episcopal church with her, but he read magazines during the Sunday services.

“In captivity, I had a spiritual awakening,” he explained.

Alone in his cell, Levin said he began to talk to himself but grew afraid that he would end up insane--muttering incessantly like the homeless men he had seen in New York’s Times Square. So, Levin decided to talk to God. But he realized that he needed to believe it 100% or he would be merely talking to himself. His new faith included Jesus Christ and the concepts of forgiveness. It was a conversion born of desperation that now guides his life, he said.

“This is, I feel convinced, where I was headed, whether I knew it or not,” Levin said. “Now, I’m in circles I’d never dreamed about or thought I’d give a hoot about seven years ago.”