17, April 2012 Freedom Riders of Israel
A
Stanford ‘alum’ delivered a stirring speech at a recent
conference
held at Stanford University. Fadi Quran, and fellow Palestinian activists drew
inspiration for their new protests from the historic Freedom Riders of the
1960s in the US Deep South in which black Americans boarded
all white buses triggering mass arrests accelerating an end to racial
segregation. U.S. Civil Rights lawyer Clarence Jones was present and thanked
Quran for validating the Freedom Riders efforts and modeling his peaceful
protests on their successful legacy. He acknowledged that it would take
enormous courage and an unshakable commitment to non-violence to bring about a
change of attitude to end the occupation and oppression of the
Palestinians whose land is being forcibly annexed at an alarming pace. Quran
was arrested for his non-violent activism which fueled an outcry for his
release.
Brute
force,
aided and abetted with billions of US military
and economic aid, may
make any hope of a two-state solution a fading dream
but Jones warned that such an outcome would result in Israel losing its very
soul. Enlightened Jewish organizations, such as J Street, are extremely concerned of
Israel’s current trajectory and are appealing for an end to the occupation and
a return to the universal policies of justice on which Quran has founded his
nonviolent movement.
Time
magazine hailed Quran as the “the face of the new Middle East.”
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