If memory serves, Rosa Parks did nothing more than sit where she wanted on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Correct me if I am wrong, but never did she blow up a bus with mostly white people inside.
Which brings us to my favorite types in the whole Israeli mess, these pro-Palestinian advocates who make life worse for the Palestinians each time they open their big mouths. Yes, the Palestinians have somewhat of a cause, but if I depended solely on the word of their supporters in the United States, I must pose this question: What cause?
Perhaps the most insulting stunt is to compare the current conflict in Israel to the civil rights movement. Clear comparisons can be made, but not what they want us to think.
My most favorite organization among my favorite types ? the International Solidarity Movement ? is reportedly planning a new campaign beginning July 1 called ?Freedom Summer?, in which they hope to draw 1,000 people to focus on checkpoints, roadblocks and the separation fence now under construction between Israel and the West Bank, according to the Jerusalem Report magazine; ISM is the organization that recruits foreign activists to disrupt Israeli military activities.
?Freedom summer? was the name of a project for civil rights activists in the Sixties. Clever?
Two floors above where I work in downtown Philadelphia, someone posted a sign last year that questioned if ?Palestine? resembled the Alabama of 30 years ago. This incident provoked a spate of civil rights complaints from Jewish employees, but that?s another story. The culprit who posted the sign was off by almost a decade. The most significant events of the Civil Rights era occurred between 1955 and 1965, not in 1972.
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict bears any resemblance to the Civil Rights movement, it is not the Jews who compare to the Ku Klux Klan, but Arab extremists. It was white racists who bombed a church in Birmingham, Alabama, with four little black girls inside. It was white racists who stalked and shot to death a young black man and two Jewish men. None of it is unlike the tactics of today?s Arab terrorists.
In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks sought to be able to exercise her rights as a United States citizen and otherwise live in peace as a normal human being in her city. Her simple act of staying put in her seat on a bus touched off the Montgomery bus boycott and the rest of the Civil Rights movement.
In 1948, Jewish refugees from Europe and even Arab countries flocked to Israel to live in peace as normal human beings, but that wasn?t good enough for the surrounding Arab countries, who initiated a 55-year-old war which sees no realistic signs of abating.
Yes, the Palestinians live in poverty just as many African-Americans do, but their aggression is fueled far more by religion and ideology. Southern slave owners justified slavery with the Bible and during the Civil Rights movement, some whites professed hatred for Jewish activists because they would not accept Jesus as their savior. And, both Jews and African-Americans have in the past employed diplomatic means to exercise their basic rights to live as human beings. Before Rosa Parks did nothing but remain in her seat, the NAACP sought a compromise over seating on city buses with Montgomery officials, just as the Jews sought a partition plan with the Arab countries in 1948.
Neither the white racists nor the Jew-hating Arabs could accept either. The rest is history.
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Bruce Ticker is a freelance writer and former journalist living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He can be reached at brucetic@aol.com.
Which brings us to my favorite types in the whole Israeli mess, these pro-Palestinian advocates who make life worse for the Palestinians each time they open their big mouths. Yes, the Palestinians have somewhat of a cause, but if I depended solely on the word of their supporters in the United States, I must pose this question: What cause?
Perhaps the most insulting stunt is to compare the current conflict in Israel to the civil rights movement. Clear comparisons can be made, but not what they want us to think.
My most favorite organization among my favorite types ? the International Solidarity Movement ? is reportedly planning a new campaign beginning July 1 called ?Freedom Summer?, in which they hope to draw 1,000 people to focus on checkpoints, roadblocks and the separation fence now under construction between Israel and the West Bank, according to the Jerusalem Report magazine; ISM is the organization that recruits foreign activists to disrupt Israeli military activities.
?Freedom summer? was the name of a project for civil rights activists in the Sixties. Clever?
Two floors above where I work in downtown Philadelphia, someone posted a sign last year that questioned if ?Palestine? resembled the Alabama of 30 years ago. This incident provoked a spate of civil rights complaints from Jewish employees, but that?s another story. The culprit who posted the sign was off by almost a decade. The most significant events of the Civil Rights era occurred between 1955 and 1965, not in 1972.
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict bears any resemblance to the Civil Rights movement, it is not the Jews who compare to the Ku Klux Klan, but Arab extremists. It was white racists who bombed a church in Birmingham, Alabama, with four little black girls inside. It was white racists who stalked and shot to death a young black man and two Jewish men. None of it is unlike the tactics of today?s Arab terrorists.
In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks sought to be able to exercise her rights as a United States citizen and otherwise live in peace as a normal human being in her city. Her simple act of staying put in her seat on a bus touched off the Montgomery bus boycott and the rest of the Civil Rights movement.
In 1948, Jewish refugees from Europe and even Arab countries flocked to Israel to live in peace as normal human beings, but that wasn?t good enough for the surrounding Arab countries, who initiated a 55-year-old war which sees no realistic signs of abating.
Yes, the Palestinians live in poverty just as many African-Americans do, but their aggression is fueled far more by religion and ideology. Southern slave owners justified slavery with the Bible and during the Civil Rights movement, some whites professed hatred for Jewish activists because they would not accept Jesus as their savior. And, both Jews and African-Americans have in the past employed diplomatic means to exercise their basic rights to live as human beings. Before Rosa Parks did nothing but remain in her seat, the NAACP sought a compromise over seating on city buses with Montgomery officials, just as the Jews sought a partition plan with the Arab countries in 1948.
Neither the white racists nor the Jew-hating Arabs could accept either. The rest is history.
--------------------------------------------------------
Bruce Ticker is a freelance writer and former journalist living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He can be reached at brucetic@aol.com.