On the outskirts of Ben Gurion International Airport there is a jail where those who are denied entry into Israel are taken to wait. It’s not a horrible place, as jails go—the windows open, albeit with bars on the other side, admitting the dawn chorus of birdsong and a breeze that hints of rain. The food is as bad as only institutional Israeli food can be—but no one is starving, or screaming. Much worse places exist, especially for Palestinians, who can be held for months in ‘Administrative Detention’ without formal charge or trial. Yet this is a sad place, full of disappointment and shattered hopes.

That's where I was put a few weeks ago when I was denied entry into Israel.

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Martin Luther King has had a huge impact on my life. I was still a child during the height of the civil rights movement, and I remember watching the Freedom Rides on TV and begging my mother to let me go to the South. She assured me that there would still be injustices to fight when I got older, and sadly enough, she was certainly right about that.

I was seventeen when King was murdured, and already an antiwar activist in my high school. But it was in the early eighties, when I took part in nonviolent direct actions against nuclear power and nuclear weapons, that I began to read his writings and study his ideas. I became a nonviolence trainer and have had the great privilege of introducing new activists to this form of struggle for nearly three decades.

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