Yesterday NPR’s All Things Considered aired a devastating story on the 50th anniversary of then-Alabama Governor George Wallace’s speech, “I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.” The heart of the story was the effect Wallace had on John Lewis, the civil rights leader who was born in Alabama and later became a Georgia congressman– when Wallace gave the speech, and when he regretted it in years to come.
Lewis on the speech:
I took it very personal. My governor, this elected official, was saying in effect, you are not welcome, you are not welcome… Words can be very powerful. Words can be dangerous. Governor Wallace never pulled a trigger. He never fired a gun. But in his speech, he created the environment for others to pull the trigger in the days, the weeks and months to come.
And Lewis on Wallace’s redemption:
A few short years later, after I got to Congress, Governor Wallace heard that I was going to be in Alabama. He said, John Lewis, will you come by, talk with me? And I remember the occasion so well. It was like someone confessing to their priest or to a minister. He wanted people to forgive him. He said, I never hated anybody. I never hated any black people. He said, Mr. Lewis, I’m sorry. And I said, well, Governor, I accept your apology.
Does it hurt me? No. In the end, I think George Wallace was one of the signs on this long journey towards the creation of a better America, toward the creation of a more perfect union. It was just one of the stumbling blocks along the way.
NPR host Audie Cornish delivered the last lines of the story:
In his later years, George Wallace reached out to civil rights activists and appeared in black churches to ask forgiveness. In his last election as governor of Alabama in 1982, he won with more than 90 percent of the black vote.
This story had one takeaway for me: The racists in Israeli politics must also be humbled– they will be humbled.
No they won’t because Zionist Jews in America and in mass media like NPR continue to provide them with cover.
Zionist American Jews like to pretend that they are hardcore liberals,
Why look at our track record on civil-rights, on women’s rights. We know what freedom and equality look like. The fact that we are not criticizing Israel should be an indication that it’s the Palestinians who are at fault here because we KNOW what justice looks like. And our track record on US domestic issues proves it.
Incidentally, a couple of years ago I attended a lecture/discussion about the ramifications of the Arab Spring and developments in Israel. In the row in front of me sat a Jewish woman from NPR with a notepad and a pen in hand.
The Israeli occupation of the West Bank was discussed, she didn’t write anything.
The siege on Gaza was discussed, she didn’t write anything.
The rise of religious fanatics in Israel was discussed, she didn’t write anything.
The rise of the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt was discussed, she took a few notes.
The relationship between Christian Copts and Moslems was discussed, she was writing every word. I bet her headline screamed: “Moslems are persecuting Christians”.
Israel is going to fall apart. Burston has good one today.
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/will-2013-be-the-year-american-jews-secede-from-israel.premium-1.491286
“But many American Jews are already distancing themselves in word and deed from a government it sees as arrogant and short-sighted, enslaved to a runaway train of settlement, dismissive of the rights of Palestinians and other non-Jews, cold to the concerns of a sinking middle class and the drowning disadvantaged, contemptuous of the concerns of the larger Jewish world.
The catalysts: settlement expansion – especially as it strikes at Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects and mocks Washington – and backhanded insensitivity to the rights and ritual of non-Orthodox Jews.
Now, as Israel’s election campaign nears its home stretch, the heavily favored Likud-Beiteinu party, which encompasses the principal authors of nearly all of the anti-democratic legislation of the last four years, offers fresh voices and perilous new avenues for alienating American Jews from Israel.
There is, for example, Moshe Feiglin, who will enter the Knesset following the January 22 election. Something of his political philosophy can be gleaned from a 2004 article on radical settlers, in which Feiglin spoke to Goldberg, then writing in the New Yorker:
“Why should non-Jews have a say in the policy of a Jewish state?” Feiglin said to me. “For two thousand years, Jews dreamed of a Jewish state, not a democratic state. Democracy should serve the values of the state, not destroy them.” In any case, Feiglin said, “You can’t teach a monkey to speak and you can’t teach an Arab to be democratic. You’re dealing with a culture of thieves and robbers. Muhammad, their prophet, was a robber and a killer and a liar. The Arab destroys everything he touches.”
American Jews want to know what is being done in their name. In the name of Judaism. And if they think that it is self-destructive, oppressive, blockheaded and wrong, it stands to reason they would want it to stop.
American Jews are tiring of being told that opposing Israel’s policies puts Israelis in danger. Blackmail is not persuasion. If the hard right is so certain that it can get along without American Jewish support, it may all too soon get the chance to find out.
“
There’s way worse. John Lewis, the guy who “took personal” being excluded from the racist system in Alabama, later became an apologist for the Zionist entity.
He must have cost a lot to buy.
For those who want to google this former Freedom Fighter turned white Racial Supremacism supporter, do not confuse him with the John Lewis stores in the UK, that commendably stopped stocking Ahava after a boycott demo.
I’ve read some accounts that say Wallace wasn’t personally a hardened racist, that he liked Africans at first, and then started grandstanding on desegregation to gain political advantage in the South. In that respect I don’t see anything different from him and Hillary Clinton, who played the white card against Obama in 2008 saying “hard working Americans” etc. A lot of pro-Israel figures really hate Muslims, like Bloomberg. But pro-Israel figures can pose with both African-Americans and Muslims who aren’t outraged against the I-P conflict etc.
Avi_G, you write that “Zionist American Jews like to pretend that they are hardcore liberals…”. They do? I don’t know many card-carrying Zionists, but the few I do know I would hardly think would so pretend, even those who drop a few charity bucks here and there in the right places. I suspect most of them, at least the ones I know, would be alarmed if tarred with the word “liberal”, which they likely associate with lefty Antisemitism either of the self-hating kind or the more traditional sort.