Name Game

This is King Hussein of Jordan. Because of my age and lifelong love of history and world events, he was the first Hussein I ever heard of. Thus his face is the image that pops into my head when I hear the name.

Although his career was as nuanced as any Middle-Eastern leader, it was by no means as violent or despotic as others in the region and especially as those who shared his name.

An example of the nuance would be that in the first gulf war he sided with Iraq. But the reason he did so was because he was unpopular with some factions in his country. The reason for this was because he had worked so hard to make peace with Israel. Any other decision at the time would have destroyed his country. Besides this, I believe James Baker, who was the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, would agree that the king’s decision was invaluable. He served as a rational negotiator between Iraq and the U.S. during that time.

This was all diplomacy. I believe his true heart was revealed in the two actions for which I will remember him:

After the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in November, 1995, King Hussein attended and spoke at his funeral. He did not have to but he did and said the following:

"…my friends, I had never thought that the moment would come like this when I would grieve the loss of a brother, a colleague and a friend - a man, a soldier who met us on the opposite side of a divide whom we respected as he respected us. A man I came to know because I realized, as he did, that we have to cross over the divide, establish a dialogue, get to know each other and strive to leave for those who follow us a legacy that is worthy of them. And so we did. And so we became brethren and friends."


Three years later, in the fall of 1998, when he was fighting a losing battle against Non Hodgkins Lymphoma, he got up out of his hospital bed and made a trip from the Mayo clinic, where he was receiving bone marrow transfusions. His destination was the Wye Plantation in Maryland. His goal was to restart the Mid-East peace talks that had deadlocked there. Among other things he said the following:

''Even if I were on my deathbed, I would have come here to try to help the peace process.''


King Hussein died on February 7, 1999. He was and always will be remembered as a man of peace, and his name was Hussein.


J.A.L.