This thread focuses on one incident in the global struggle for the civil rights of all humans, be they living in Burma or the Palestinians in this case. Civil rights like the freedom of personnel movement, the right to education, health services, the right to work and improve your lot, to freely export and import goods of peaceful commerce, the right to peacefully assemble, yes even to peacefully protest against the government, etc. – all of which Israel denies to the Palestinians in greater or lesser extent. Before becoming more general, I will clearly state that Israel has the right to interdict weapons that may be used against it, by whatever means are necessary. Now I want to tell of one incident from the US civil rights movement as it illustrates that there are malicious people abusing this grand historic movement:
Cambridge MD, is on the south side of the wide, tidally flooded, Choptank river, not far from the Chesapeake Bay and about 100 miles closer to the Atlantic Ocean than Baltimore. Thus, 200 years before the US civil rights movement, with its fine harbor for sailing ships and surrounding level fertile fields, it was larger and more important economically than Baltimore; but during the civil rights movement many stores on the long, straight main street were boarded up. That street was where horse races were held 200 years ago, and hence still is called “Race Street” One of the main industries during the civil rights movement was the Eastern Shore {Mental} State Hospital. (Largest in Maryland, but now thanks to modern drugs, is converted into a resort hotel on the bank of the Choptank River - great crabbing, fishing, sailing with clean rural air etc.) My father was the chief of medical services there so I took a break from my graduate studies at JHU in Baltimore to visit with him once a month or so and drove the length of Race Street to do so.
One Saturday AM, Race Street was blocked because as the cop told me: “Some trouble making niggers are in town demonstrating.” As I was active in Baltimore’s civil rights movement, I parked my VW Beatle and walked to see. Yes, there were about 50 blacks parading up and down on Race Street. I was very surprise as Cambridge was a very “red neck,” economically depressed, town with thoroughly intimidated blacks. There were no whites marching with them, so despite some fear for my personal safety and some concern that one of my father’s friends might recognize me, I decided to make a token appearance in the march – only of a couple of blocks duration, before returning to my car.
I asked the leader, if I could join and was very welcomed. From him the mystery of how 50 blacks could be persuaded to march down Race Street was solved – they were bused in from Baltimore. I only understood why this bus trip was organized by that leader some years later. I am now sure he was hoping some red neck would kill someone –Me would be the best possible result from his point of view. (A murdered protesting "nigger" might make the back pages of the Baltimore Sun, if it was a "slow news day" but me, Ph.D. student at JHU, killed by a Cambridge red neck, would merit a brief summary inch on the front page and a longer story inside that section.) At the time I knew nothing about the leader, who was “H. Rap Brown.”**
I tell this story to acknowledge that, IMHO, it is highly likely that there were similar trouble makers on the ship, hoping for someone to be killed by the Israelis. However, the fundamental reason nine are dead, is Israel’s policy (now recognized by me to be common to all oppressors – See my just made post 1477) of making the Palestinians totally dependent upon Israel, just to live.
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** "H. Rap Brown, came to prominence in the 1960s as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later the Justice Minister of the Black Panther Party. He is perhaps most famous for his proclamation during that period that "violence is as American as cherry pie", as well as once stating that "If America don't come around, we're gonna burn it down". He is currently serving a life sentence for homicide. ..."
Quote from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H_Rap_Brown
