In the 1970s Chayefsky worked for the cause of Soviet Jews, and in 1971 went to Brussels as part of an American delegation to the International Conference on Soviet Jewry. Believing that the conference was insufficiently aggressive, he founded a new activist group in New York, Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East. Co-founders included Colleen Dewhurst, Frank Gervasi, Leon Uris, Gerold Frank and Elie Wiesel. Chayefsky believed that "Zionists" was a code word for "Jews" by Marxist anti-Semites.