Speaking up for Palestinians is not popular. But at age 81, veteran civil-rights leader Vincent Harding minces no words. “Lots of things are not popular,” he said, “but if they are true, they have to be said.”
Harding, a friend of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., recently returned from a peace-building mission to Israel and the West Bank with a delegation of civil-rights leaders from across the nation.
The group included young activists, educators and clergy, with 12 African-Americans and eight Jews, including an Ithaca, N.Y., rabbi who grew up under apartheid in South Africa, and
They met with Palestinians and Israelis who want to end the conflict through nonviolent resistance.
“There are places where Palestinians are not allowed to go in this country, where their ancestors have lived for generations,” said Harding, a professor emeritus of religion and social transformation at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver.
“There are great difficulties in their simply being able to have homes in the area where the Israeli government decided they want Jewish Israeli settlers to be,” Harding said. “So there is essentially a system of apartheid.”
The trip was the first major international initiative of to promote civil and human rights around the world. It is named for the only woman on King’s executive staff. Cotton also was part of the delegation.
Harding, whose at Iliff promotes nonviolence, will speak Jan. 15 at Regis University about the nonviolent-resistance movement among Palestinians.
All this comes at a cost, however, as Harding struggles to balance his concerns over Palestinian civil rights with his love for the Jewish people.
“There is a long history of anti-Semitism in the Western world,” he said. “I know what my Jewish brothers and sisters had to go through for centuries, and to have it focus in such a horrific way in the Holocaust. Then to see what is now developing in a land where they settled to escape from the Holocaust is painful.”
In the West Bank, the delegation met when they visited his village of Nabi Saleh, north of Ramallah.
The delegation attended the weekly nonviolent protest organized by Tamimi and slept in the Tamimi family home on floors and mattresses. After the group returned to the U.S., Tamimi was arrested for a boycott at a market, and
“That brought back memories of the nonviolent activists of my time,” said a member of the delegation. “They’re not perfect people. They’re flawed like the rest of us. But they are definitely dedicated and courageous.
“People who want to see a nonviolent resolution of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians owe it to themselves to find out more about what’s going on there, and not just accept the American government view: that Israelis, who are good, are on one side, and Palestinians, who are bad, are on the other.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or twitter.com/coconnordp
If you want to learn more
“life in occupied palestine” by jewish-american anna baltzer is a dvd that describes her experiences supporting the palestinian-led nonviolent resistence movement and documenting human rights abuses in the west bank. it is available at the denver public library.
Jimmy carter’s bestseller, “palestine: peace not apartheid” is highly readable, also available at the denver public library.
