StanleySheinbaum

Liberal political activist who urged Yasser Arafat to renounce terrorism and recognise Israel

STANLEY SHEINBAUM, who dedicated his life to the promotion and defence of liberal causes in the United States and the world, has died aged 96 at his Los Angeles home. The described him in 2004 as “a modernday Forrest Gump — who has “witnessed history up close and personal.

“Whether acting as the Los Angeles police commissioner who led the successful fight to oust former police chief Daryl Gates in the early 1990s [over the police beating of African-American taxi driver Rodney King], or heading a delegation of American Jews to the Middle East in the late 1980s to convince the [Palestinian leader] Yasser Arafat to publicly renounce terrorism and recognise Israel’s right to exist — Sheinbaum has made a difference.”

The salons hosted by Stanley and his wife Betty Warner Sheinbaum in their spacious West Side home were meeting places for politicians, civil rights leaders and Hollywood stars.

It was a long way from his birth in New York City. The son of a leathergoods manufacturer, who went bankrupt during the Depression, young Stanley had no interest in high school and received deplorable grades, as he recalled in his 2012 memoir, Stanley K Sheinbaum: a 20th Century Knight’s Quest for Peace, Civil Liberties and Economic Justice. After six years in the army during the Second World War, making aviation maps, he applied for admission to 33 colleges but was turned down by all of them, due to his poor marks.

At 26, Sheinbaum returned to high Stanley Sheinbaum: excoriated by the community for meeting Arafat school before graduating from Stanford University with highest honours as an economist. As an economics lecturer he became the administrator of Michigan State University’s Vietnam Advisory Group, but resigned on discovering this was a cover for a CIA operation. He won a Fulbright fellowship to study international monetary affairs in Paris.

His 1988 visit to meet Arafat in Tunis was condemned by many Jews and he was excoriated as a traitor. A dead pig was found on his driveway. The Jewish

reported Sheinbaum’s conviction that it was his duty as a Jew to fight for peace in the Middle East.

Stanley Sheinbaum is survived by Betty, his wife of 52 years, stepchildren Karen Sperling, Cass Warner, Matthew Sperling, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. Stanley Sheinbaum: born June 12, 1920; died September 12, 2016