BY VERENA DOBNIK | It was as if the Beatles had arrived, said comedian Janeane Garofalo. Instead, she was describing the arrival of Bill Clinton on Tuesday night at Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom, famed for its rock concerts. The former president was the guest of honor for a Garofalo-hosted fund-raiser benefiting Seeds of Peace, a New York-based organization that has brought thousands of youths from 22 warring lands to a Maine camp to learn peace-brokering.
“Let me tell you something about Bill Clinton: It was like the Beatles deplaning. It was hysteria,” said Garofalo, describing a private VIP reception for Clinton.
About 1,300 fund-raiser guests paid $175-$500 each to also hear the Barenaked Ladies, a Canadian five-man pop band who received MTV’s first Seeds of Peace Award. As part of the evening’s celebrity auction, Clinton offered to have lunch and an 18-hole golf game to the highest bidder—who paid $22,000 for the honor.
The shenanigans masked the serious purpose of the evening, which Clinton addressed. “We can never find redemption in another person’s destruction,” said the former president, noting that there have been 120 Middle East suicide bombings in the past two years. “No one ever gets even,” Clinton said, quoting from the Koran, the Bible and Buddhist teachings, and noting that “people in power will have to embrace the common wisdom of Seeds of Peace. This is not useless idealism.”
Garofalo returned to the stage with humor, asking the audience: “Wasn’t it great to hear an articulate president? … If the other guy were talking, we’d be like, ‘Huh?”‘
Tamer Nagy Mahmoud, a 22-year-old Egyptian, quoted the words of the late John Wallach, a journalist and author who founded Seeds a decade ago: “Make a friend on the other side and that should make a difference.” Mahmoud was a member of the original Seeds group, which Clinton invited to the 1993 signing of a Middle East peace accord on the White House lawn.
Also among the speakers Tuesday was the new Seeds president, Aaron David Miller, until earlier this month the U.S. State Department’s senior adviser for Arab-Israeli negotiations.