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January 18, 2002/5 Shevat 5762, Vol. 54, No.18
Dream onEditorialThe legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which we recall Jan. 21 on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, resonates with special force this year.While King is revered for his role in the American civil rights movement, memorialized as an exceptional orator and courageous leader, his work and words are suffused with new meaning with America at war and Israel under attack. From Washington to Kabul, from Phoenix to Jerusalem, King's unremitting stance against injustice and inequality, coupled with his courageous message of nonviolence and peaceful protest, provides a heartening counterpoint to a world where the specter of evil hovers and the prospects for peace grow dim. Would Osama bin Laden or Israel's sorry negotiating partner, Yasser Arafat, take a page from King's book, things might be different. When Americans in the late 1950s and 1960s were wrestling with glaring inequalities and growing unrest, King was able to harness those forces of discontent into a non-violent struggle against the ills of racism and discrimination. From lunch counters to public buses, from classrooms to courtrooms, King propelled the civil rights movement ever forward. This is not to say that violence did not erupt; King himself lost his life to an assassin's bullet. Yet, his message of the supremacy of the "weapon of protest" endured. King's fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner, Arafat, who, like King, would say that he is leading a national resistance movement, has taken the opposite tack. The latest evidence of his predilection for violence, the interception of a shipment of illegal weapons bound for his Palestinian cohorts, makes clear that under the familiar black-and- white-checkered keffiyeh lurks the same noisome Arafat. While the United States continues to pursue its attackers and Israel maintains its struggle against terrorism, King's vision, his dream, inspires us to find new ways for breaking what he called the "the chain of evil," through peaceful means. |
