Controversial Books | Page 475

472 Appendix General Morgan had also told Hart that "Bandak had been sent by some 130,000 Christians of Bethlehem and vicinity [a wholly preposterous figure] to appeal to the British and the Americans for aid." Making a great point of the fact that Bandek was born a Christian, Hart planned to launch Bandek into ArabAmerican liaison work by introducing him to a number of his friends and supporters at a secretly arranged meeting. The projected gathering, however, was exposed by Walter Winchell and was never held. We next find Bandek's name linked with Hart's friend, Vice-Admiral Freeman, chairman of the Holy Land Christian Committee in New York, of which Bandek became general secretary. A group of prominent Americans were sold on the merits of the committee and on Mr. Bandek as a worthy representative. The list included His Grace, Archbishop Michael of the Greek Orthodox Church, Miss Virginia Gildersleeve, already on the board of the Institute of Arab American Affairs; Dorothy Thompson, the columnist, who told a Town Hall audience that she "had the honor of a visit from Mr. Yusif el Bandak"; and the Reverend Charles T. Bridgeman, former residentiary canon of St. George's Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem, and, at the time of this writing, a rector of the Wall Street Trinity Church, New York. Bandek became the traveling emissary of the Holy Land Christian Committee, ostensibly to speak and collect funds for Arab refugees. Actually, rather than devoting himself to helping Arab refugees, he gave a series of inflammatory lectures, tending to arouse latent anti-Semitic sympathies. With growing concern, the