Carson to teach MLK’s non-violence to Palestinians

By Rabbi Ben Kamin

SAN DIEGO–One is torn and in anguish between rage and passion:  The cold-blooded, brutish slaying with knives of the Fogel family, including parents, small children and an infant, in the Jewish community of Itamar on the West Bank boils up torrid feelings of antipathy and regret—why did I ever feel compassion for the Palestinians when enough of them are indoctrinated with the culture of murder and death that such a thing could happen?   Who kills a 3-month old baby by slashing its throat?

Many of us in the Jewish community are appalled at the immediate equation, on the part of many international media outlets, of this incomprehensible act with “the problem of the Israeli settlements.”  Problem is a relative term and allows for debate.  Murder is definitive and nonnegotiable; the politics of the West Bank and the gushing blood of the Fogel family are two different realms and it is most cynical to begin discussing the two things at the same time unless you are an apologist or just simply hateful.

Indeed, I am equally concerned from this perspective that the Israeli government has used this tragedy as a platform to announce a further extension of settlement building.  Just find the killers and let’s talk policy later.  Justice for this doomed family, especially the surviving children, is morally and politically inviolate.

Ironically, and we pray fortuitously, my teacher and friend, Professor Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute (housed at Stanford University) is just now entering Israel and Palestine with a remarkable and worthy project.  Dr. Carson was personally selected by Coretta Scott King in 1985 to take charge of Dr. King’s personal papers and he has devoted a lifetime of scholarship, research, publishing, and poetry to this venture.  He is arguably the leading advocate in America of Gandhian outreach; he is the founder of “the Gandhi-King Community.”

Professor Carson is collaborating with the Palestinian National Theater, Al Hakawati, to produce the first play about Martin Luther King, Jr., to be performed in Arabic.  Passages of Martin Luther King, written by Carson, will open on March 22 for four performances in East Jerusalem before moving to various West Bank venues through April 5.   It is the first such effort of creative partnership between the Palestinian community and a genuine disciple of Martin Luther King’s historic, though too brief, clarion call for nonviolent civil disobedience in favor of social change.

We have a long way to go, especially this day, before Israelis and Palestinians finally and ultimately trust one another.  Settlements are one thing; education is the only thing.  As I weep for the blood taken and the grief of my people on our ancient land, I also am lifted by the reality that people like Clayborne Carson are there to attract the many, many Palestinians who are artists, writers, dancers, singers, and peacemakers.