“We could easily take a half-million Palestinians and Jews and relocate them in Atlanta,” Young told about 400 people at Reform Congregation Emanu-El May 30. “I guarantee you that they’d get along a lot better than they would in the Middle East.”
After the laughter subsided, the ordained minister told the audience that he didn’t understand what was so “holy” about a small swath of land that has been battled over for centuries, saying that “God’s presence makes every bit of land holy.”
Young, who also served for nearly a decade as the mayor of Atlanta, was speaking on behalf of Back on Track, a collaborative effort between Emanu-El and San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church, which provides educational programs for at-risk students. The program, which was formed in 1988, recently laid off several staff members and trimmed its budget.
Although much of Young’s talk focused on the contributions of Back on Track, he did answer a few questions about the conflict in the Middle East. The former mayor, who resigned from his United Nations post in 1980 after sparking controversy by meeting with representatives from the Palestine Liberation Organization, said that ineffectual leaders have hampered the peace process and that the media has underreported many salient issues surrounding the conflict.
“For peace to occur in the Middle East, both Arafat and Sharon have to leave the scene, because I don’t believe either one is really interested in peace,” Young said. He added that he was prescient in talking with the PLO two decades ago, because “if there is one lesson that should be learned out of all this, it is that we should never again, for any reason, allow our diplomatic initiatives to be limited by a no-talk policy with anybody. It’s absolutely necessary for the United States of America to be able to talk with anybody, on any occasion, anywhere.”
Young also lamented what he called the loss of potential for economic development in the Palestinian territories, saying that Palestinians were among “the brightest, most educated, and most entrepreneurial people in the Middle East.” He also lambasted the media for its failure to report on a crisis that he feels underpins the current conflict — the paucity of natural resources.
“The simple truth is that there just isn’t enough water for all the people in that region,” Young said. “As we speak, even Georgia and Alabama are fighting over water resources. The difference is that we will settle our differences in court, and in the Middle East, they’ll settle their differences with guns.”
Young also struck a pessimistic note when talking about the lack of progress in certain areas of the Muslim world.
“I worry about the Muslim world’s ability to modernize itself when they deny basic human rights to half of their population — and by that I mean Muslim women. Women have played huge, and often appreciated roles, in many great events. Believe me, the civil rights movement never would have occurred without women, because they shamed us into doing what we did,” said Young, who served as the chief aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“If the Muslim world doesn’t acknowledge the tremendous power and potential of its women, it will be left behind — which also means trouble for the rest of the world.”