When Bernard Lafayette, an original Freedom Riders, visited the Palestinian territories, he brought the message of Martin Luther King, his former mentor, that great gains could be made through peaceful resistance.
The violent reception that greeted American civil rights activists when their interstate buses crossed into the Deep South shocked a nation and ultimately ended the disenfranchisement of blacks and gave them equal rights.
That was what the Freedom Rides of 1961 were about: votes and equal rights. This is not the aim of the Freedom Rides of 2011 — as their Palestinian organisers have made clear. But in adopting the