She Has a Dream

"[I]f we are to honor [Martin Luther] King's message* and not merely the man, we must condemn Israel's actions: unrelenting violations of international law, continued occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, home demolitions and land confiscations. We must cry out at the treatment at checkpoints, the routine searches of their homes and restrictions on their movements, and the severely limited access to decent housing, schools, food, hospitals and water that many of them face.

"We must not tolerate Israel's refusal even to discuss the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, as prescribed by United Nations resolutions, and we ought to question the US government funds that have supported multiple hostilities and thousands of civilian casualties in Gaza, as well as the $38 billion the US government has pledged in military support to Israel.

"And finally, we must, with as much courage and conviction as we can muster, speak out against the system of legal discrimination that exists inside Israel, a system complete with... more than 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinians - such as the new nation-state law that says explicitly that only Jewish Israelis have the right of self-determination in Israel, ignoring the rights of the Arab minority that makes up 21% of the population." (From Time to break the silence on Palestine, Michelle Alexander**, nytimes.com, 19/1/19)

[*"I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight [4/4/67] because my conscience leaves me no other choice... A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam";**Michelle Alexander became a New York Times columnist in 2018. She is a civil rights lawyer and advocate, legal scholar and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.]