opinion

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous writing was his letter from the Birmingham Jail. In it he responded an open letter from a group of white clergymen, who urged blacks not to support King and the other protesters. One of the realities of that time, largely forgotten now, is that the white preachers’ appeal was not entirely fruitless. In those days there were “responsible negro spokesmen” in the churches and elsewhere who opposed Reverend King and the civil rights movement.

Can you name one of those responsible negro spokesmen?

Decades earlier in Lakota country, when the white authorities decided to violate their treaty commitments and confiscate the Black Hills, they chose as their “responsible Indian spokesman” a man with an until then honorable record of defending his people and their land, Red Cloud. Nearly a century later, the US Post office put Red Cloud on a stamp. But when he urged his people to accept the loss of their land, the abolition of their way of life and humiliating dependence on their conquerors, the Lakota didn’t follow him. They listened to Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull instead. These men never got on any postage stamps. They led their people to some stunning victories, but were ultimately overwhelmed and forced to surrender, and were then assassinated.

Why is it that in South Dakota today, the monumental sculpture that has been decades in the making honors Crazy Horse rather than Red Cloud?

Keep these two vignettes from American history in mind when you listen to George W. Bush talking about how, if the Palestinian people choose acceptable leaders, and they institute the “reforms” he wants, he’ll “spend the capital” of the United States to see that the Palestinians get their state.

Yeah, right. The good buddy of Ariel Sharon, who was the intellectual author of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in which more innocent civilians were killed than in al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks, will take care of the Palestinians. IF they come up with someone like Birmingham’s responsible negro spokesmen, or like Red Cloud.

Yasser Arafat was vilified because he wasn’t one of those.

Like the legendary Moses, Arafat led his dispossessed people away from bondage. Like Moses, he got blood on his hands during the course of his struggle. Like Moses, he would never live to see his people get a country of their own.

Those who learned everything they “know” about Arafat from those who dispossessed the Palestinians, either directly or indirectly through media which got the story from such people, will not understand. They will misunderstand the spontaneous outpouring of grief that took place at Arafat’s burial. They will misunderstand the willingness of so many young Palestinians to die for their country. They will misunderstand the support that Arafat enjoyed from most world leaders.

Yasser Arafat was the father of his country. He did the best he could given the unfavorable situations in which he and the Palestinian people found themselves.

Now he is dead, and the Palestinians must choose a new leader.

They will elect a new leader, in a process that’s bound to compare favorably with the show that the Americans will put on in Iraq a few weeks later.

The current Israeli leaders won’t like the people whom the Palestinians elect to lead them after Arafat, and on the other hand most world leaders won’t have high regard for those whom Bush allows to speak for the Iraqis.

You see, some people don’t know how to distinguish a Reverend King from a responsible negro spokesman, or a Crazy Horse from a Red Cloud. But around the world, most people can tell the difference.




Also in this section:
Keller, The loss of a partner
Lerner, Why Arafat failed
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Repugnant anti-Palestinian slurs
Jackson, Arafat and his successor
Committee to Protect Journalists, Totalitarian Iraqi press decree
Golinger, NED vs Venezuelan democracy
Leight, Brutal Haitian regime shows its true colors
Silié, The Rio Group and hemispheric integration
Leis, Youth and employment in Panama
Bernal, En route to darkness
Fishlow, Panamanian scapegoats for US company's malpractice

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