Non-Violent Resistance in Palestine
The search for the kind of Palestinian non-violent resistance movement that would almost certainly be more effective than all the rockets in the world at forcing Israel to seriously contemplate a just resolution of the Palestinian issue is a bit of a staple of left-wing Jewish thought. But Gershom Gorenberg executes the genre with uncommon verve and affecting power. And perhaps most notably of all, he does it in The Weekly Standard where one isn’t accustomed to reading such things:
But even if patronizing, the question remains valid: Sainthood can work. Britain abandoned India; Montgomery’s buses were desegregated.
As an Israeli, to imagine Nasser a-Din al-Masri is disturbing for another reason: This is a fantasy of a political savior who comes from the adversary’s side because one’s own has no answers. Israeli politics has become a junkyard of broken ideologies. The outgoing government of Ehud Olmert succeeded neither in negotiating peace nor in bringing quiet to the Gazan border with military force. Meanwhile, settlement construction continued, deepening Israel’s entanglement in the West Bank. In February’s election, a majority of Israelis voted for parties that offered no expectation of an end to the conflict. We have failed to manufacture hope. Let the Palestinians do it.
I would emphasize that it’s not just that sainthood can work. Given the right circumstances, non-violent resistance is harder to commit oneself too—it requires enormous self-discipline—but it’s likely to be more effective. It’s not as if the civil rights leaders of the 1950s and 60s were just doing white America a favor by eschewing violence; they were taking a harder road to stick to precisely because it worked better. If southern blacks had launched a campaign of terrorist violence against their white neighbors, presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy would have wound up mobilizing the national guard to protect Jim Crow’s perpetrators rather than its victims.
Which isn’t to say there’s no non-violent protest in Palestine—there’s quite a lot. But the leading faces of Palestinian resistance in the eyes of Israelis and the West are Hamas and Hezbollah and their indiscriminate violence. That, in turn, does wonders to help maintain the political and diplomatic viability of unjust Israeli policies.
92 Responses to “Non-Violent Resistance in Palestine”
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March 28th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
How is non-violent resistance working out for Rachel Corrie?
With non-violent resistance it takes 2 to tango, the other side has to have a conscience, and at this point in time it appears they do not have one. The Israeli’s have even moved further to the no-conscience side with the most recent elections, and non-violence will do nothing to change their views.
There is probably only 1 thing the Israeli’s will understand http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Two_F-22_Raptor_in_flying.jpg/763px-Two_F-22_Raptor_in_flying.jpg If the USA used that for good and orchestrated a strike on the terrorist’s base (the Knesset) it would make the Israeli population wakeup and treat the Palestinians with respect.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
This is all very well but, unfortunately, the Fakestinians are are only interested in a solution in which the Government of Israel agrees to go out of business. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi weren’t demanding that the Government of the United States or the Government of Great Britain go out of business.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Mahatma Gandhi was demanding that the Government of Great Britain go out of business in Indian. He was telling the occupying power to get out, same thing the Palestinians are doing.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Funny how it’s always the people with tanks and fighter jets that say the other guy should try non-violence.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
“indiscriminate violence” — This violence is very discriminate. The IDF wants to kill or terrorize every Palestinian and has very good aim. The Palestinian Resistance wants to kill every Illegal Settler and terrorize every Israeli, but has poor aim. the targets have been picked and are easy to find. There is nothing “indiscriminate” about it. There are just a lot of targets.
Non-violence only works against a people with a semblance of decency. Gandhi eventually worked it against an enlightened British ruling class (with help from Subash Chandra Bose). It took a little longer for the African colonies. Diego Garcia is still waiting.
Almost no one in the Israeli ruling class has any decency. Non-violence will not work. Yet.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
The Israeli Government should go out of business. It is a den of lying, irresponsible thieves.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Encounter Point is a fine documentary detailing the still-small movement for non-violent resistance to Isreali expansion. I found it unexpectedly moving and would recommend it.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Can the Palestinians get decolonisation or a one-state solution which deprivileges the jewish colonials through non-violent action?
March 28th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
The people who introduced the world to airplane hijackings and suicide bombers are going to go with non-violence.
How droll.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Should I bother? No, but I will anyway.
1- In King’s case, the Jim Crow system went out of business.
2- In Gandhi’s case, the British government of India went out of business.
3- (Bonus) In Mandela’s case, the Apartheid government of South Africa went out of business.
But this is the third time I remember recently that the idea of non-violent protest for Palestinians has come up. The comment section consensus seems to be that non-violence works in the same situations violence would have worked. Violence fails in the same situations for the same reasons non-violence fails.
Essentially protest of all forms fails unless and until the target develops a conscience.
In the three cases I mentioned earlier, the conscience was developed externally and imposed, meaning South Africans would have continued Apartheid, claiming it was necessary, forever except its outside supporters became unwilling to continue. Northern Whites, or at least Northerners ended Jim Crow. Metropolitan Brits ordered the dismantling of the colony.
The Palestinians it would follow are not protesting enough in the United States – also Jewish Americans are vocal counterprotesters that have no analogue in the other cases.
But 9/11 can be thought of as an anti-Zionist violent protest, which led to Iraq which led so far to Obama, and may well lead to Americans deciding there is a limit to the amount of Arabs it’s willing to kill (or pay, in blood and treasure to kill) ultimately in order to defend Zionism.
In which case violent protest will work the same way non-violent protest would have eventually worked.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Yes, but Matt, the crucial question is, will the Israeli and western medias characterize such a nonviolent resistance movement or nonviolent leader as in fact being righteous? Or will they denounce them as neo-terrorists or the like? I imagine the latter, which would doom this sort of thing. The question isn’t just what they do, the question is how they’re reported. And the deck is stacked so strongly against them that I doubt we’d ever know there was an actual moral and nonviolent Palestinian movement while it would make a difference.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
The people who introduced the world to airplane hijackings and suicide bombers are going to go with non-violence.
Ah, the old “all Arabs are the same” line. But that’s not racist! Cause you can’t be racist against Arabs; they deserve it. Or something.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Re Jimboslice
The Fakestinians are demanding that the Government of israel go out of business in Israel.
Re otto
Mr. otto is absolutely correct and accurate. Non-violent actions will not induce the Government of Israel to go out of business. Of course, violent actions don’t seem to be doing the job either. Maybe the Fakestinians should consider dropping the demand.
Re Seedee Vee
Almost no one in the Israeli ruling class has any decency. Non-violence will not work. Yet.
They have far more decency then the late and unlamented Hafaz Assad. If he were in charge of the Government of Israel, the number of Fakestinians killed in Gaza would have been a hundred times as great.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Quite frankly, violence is what got Britain out of India. But not by Indians, by the Japanese. Nonviolence is great, but iwt won’t work.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
There’s one problem with non-violent resistance compared to violent one: It doesn’t work without outside support or extreme internal problems for the occupier. Non-violent resistance in South Africa didn’t work as long as Western countries didn’t bother to do anything to oppose the whiter Aparheid government. Similarly non-violent resistance can’t work in Palestine as long as Western countries continue to give just carrots and no sticks to Israel AND Western media doesn’t bother to report about non-violent resistance, which is pretty much meaningless without international publicity.
When the international court in Hague condemned the landgrab wall in West Bank Western countries could have gone behind that decision and supporting it show to the Palestinians that political and judicial way can work. But instead major Western governments declared their opposition and indifference to the decision, thus showing that a violent resistance is the only way forward – which the current situation just underlines: Abbas’ current violentless policy has not been rewarded in any other way than with promises of money (much of which never materializes) and the settlements just keep expanding and whenever the Israeli army kills Palestinians, a chorus of Western politicians declares their support for Israel’s belligerence and the occupation with those sentences that are their declaration of faith: “Israel has the right to defense itself”, “Israel is just defending itself.”
When have you heard a major Western politician saying that the Palestinians have the right to defend themselves?
March 28th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I’m not sure that non-violence is actually quite as effective as Matthew Yglesias thinks. For one there are very few examples of effective non-violent opposition.
In India, Mahatma Ghandi faced a colonial power based thousands of miles away that had no real commitmment to colonization. Britain certainly did not commitment after WW2.
In America, Martin Luther King faced an opposition which advocated policies which the rest of the nation had no real committment to.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, face an opposition that appears fully committed to its policies and which has faced no significant international pushback to its policies. Does anyone really doubt that the World would have tolerated the treatment meted out in the occupied territories were Arabs the occupier and Jews the occupied.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
This is an interesting panel — with Chomsky and Walt — on the topic, btw:
http://blip.tv/file/1839726
International pressure I think would be most successful if anything.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
The last sentence in my post should have read:
– Does anyone really doubt that the World would not have tolerated the treatment meted out in the occupied territories were Arabs the occupier and Jews the occupied.
But then, I guess I should have rewritten it for clarity.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
If liberals like Matt Yglesias want a nonviolent Palestinian resistance movement, why is it that so few of them vocally support the ISM or the many currently-existing nonviolent organizations that fight for Palestinians? Sometimes the call for nonviolence is an excuse for dodging the issue.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
But where’s the North (or Mother England, come to that) in this model, Yglesias? If the civil rights leaders had tried their non-violent strategy in the Confederate States of America, it might have gone very poorly. To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a section of the Israeli population that doesn’t have to directly deal with the Palestinian questions.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Re Arnold Evans
Well, Mr. Evans repeats the big lie, namely that Osama bin Ladens’ minions attacked the US on 9/11 as an anti-Zionist protest. Well, let me cite none other then Charles Freeman who has stated that 9/11 was not caused by the support of Israel by the United States. I would like Mr. Evans and his pal, Mr. Don Williams to inform the readership here why bin Ladens’ minions haven’t attacked Israel if he is so bent out of shape about the evils of Zionism? The answer is that he doesn’t give a flying fuck about the Palestinians, something that both Hamas and Fatah are well aware of, which is why they have had no truck with Al Qaeda.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Is it possible for Palestinians to resort to non-violence en-masse? Not to be a religious bigot or anything, but the conditions that lead to the birth of such a movement cannot exist among the people who follow a religion whose holy book can be credibly interpreted to imply that anyone who does not follow the religion – the kafir- is ipso facto guilty, and therefore killing that human being does not amount to killing an innocent person.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Non-violence? Where? What do the Israelis care if Palestinians march in Gaza or the West Bank? Why would they care if they started boycotting buses or taxis in the occupied territories, how will that hurt or pressure the Israelis? I guess they could lie down in front of Israeli tractors and tanks, but if the Israelis could mow down a North American like Rachel COrie I don’t think there is any question of what they would do to an average Palestinian who gets in the way. I definitely agree with Adrian’s line: “Sometimes the call for nonviolence is an excuse for dodging the issue” this sounds like a definite dodge. International and economic pressure, dis-investment campaigns and the U.S. making contingent any further economic/military aid with a halt and dismantlement of the settlements and serious steps by the Israelis toward a two-state solution (including negotiations with Hamas). Everything else is simply more of the same which for decades has simply led to more settlements and the tightening of Palestinian bantustans.
-Will
p.s. Can we really compare the freedom of movement and action that blacks experienced in the Jim Crow South with life for Palestinians under the military control utilized by the Israelis? I don’t recall the KKK operating tanks clearing black neighborhoods of their inhabitants.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Here goes SLC again. Quit confusing the facts of bin-Laden’s motivation and the motivation of al-qaeda soldiers. bin-Laden is a big picture guy. Most soldiers are not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1bm2GPoFfg
Your willingness to use misdirection (and Tourette phraseology)to support your flimsy arguments is tiresome.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
OK. Let’s look at this more closely.
Bin Laden’s stated reasons for attacking the United States were: 1- The US military presence in Saudi Arabia 2- US support for corrupt dictators such as in Egypt – the country that tortured his second in a reaction to the violent response of Egyptians to Sadat’s signing of a peace treaty with Israel and 3- Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, where according to Bin Laden seeing the destruction of buildings in Lebanon made him want to see the same happen to Israel’s patron, the United States.
Bin Laden’s third reason is directly Israel. That’s what Bin Laden said with in a tape in his own name.
Reason number 2, US support for unpopular dictatorships such as Egypt, also resolves to Israel. The United States supports and trains the dictatorship in Egypt because Egypt (like Jordan and Saudi Arabia, countries with similar arrangements) is relatively cooperative with Israel.
Reason number 1, US military presence in Saudi Arabia is similar to number 2, the purpose of the US military presence, from Bin Laden’s viewpoint, is to prop up an unpopular regime and in exchange this regime cooperates with US efforts to maintain Israeli regional dominance.
It is an uncomfortable truth (for supporters of Israel) that there is one dispute between the West and the Muslim world, which is over whether or not Israel is legitimate as a Jewish state. Every other dispute is either unimportant or a specific subinstance of that larger dispute.
Just as protests in Washington DC had a huge impact on the viability of Apartheid in South Africa, 9/11 was designed to impact the viability of Zionism in Palestine.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
re: Ron
The first airline hijacker was Spanish, the first suicide bomber was Japanese, the first people to use car bombing in Palestine were Jewish. I don’t think that says anything about Spanish, Japanese or Jewish people. But, if you’re going to throw racist stereotypes around you can at least get your history right.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
What some other people have said – non-violence works when the people with decision-making power live far away and don’t particularly care about the fate of the people the non-violent protesters are protesting – it was northerners who ended Jim Crow, British people in Britain who closed down the Raj.
One would add that non-violence certainly doesn’t always work – we can note Ireland, where there was non-violent nationalist protest for years leading up to World War I, with no real effect except a deal for a very limited home rule for part of the island (as I understand it, the home rule envisioned in the 1914 bill was more limited than Scottish home rule as it exists now), which was immediately suspended indefinitely due to the war. It took actual fighting to end British rule in most of Ireland.
It also took violent resistance to get us to the Good Friday agreements .
Violent resistance was heavily involved in the end of French rule in Algeria; it also featured in a number of other colonial situations.
But all these situations have something in common which is, again, that the people making the decisions don’t actually care that much. French people didn’t care much about pied-noirs; the British didn’t like Irish Unionists very much; Northerners disdained the white south; people in Britain gradually got very sick of the Raj; and so forth.
This doesn’t apply to Israel, where all Israelis are implicated in the Occupation in a way that all Brits were not implicated in the oppression of Ireland or India; that all Frenchmen were not implicated in French rule in Algeria. This is why neither non-violence nor violence has had any particular effect in this conflict.
The only comparable example is, I guess, South African apartheid. Resistance to apartheid was kind of a mix of non-violence and violence. It’s also worth noting that the first steps in the fall of apartheid were taken due to military defeat abroad, in Angola. But White South Africans were really in a much weaker position than Israelis are. Israelis are more than half the population of the old British mandate; White South Africans were, what, a little more than 10% of the population? South Africa obviously also faced a lot more outside pressure than Israel has so far faced.
Final point – Gorenberg is writing this in the Weekly Standard? Weird.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Oh, and moralizing about victims not being passive enough is pretty disgusting.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Gregor,
Don’t Christians believe in this idea of a rapture in which all non-believers will be killed, damned for eternity to hell? How many people did God massacre and/or have his agents massacre who dared not believe in him? Isn’t the Noah’s Ark story an example of worldwide genocide? Oh here is a snippet from the book of Acts: 3:23 “And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.”
Thank goodness that Christianity is the peaceful religion!
Will
March 28th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Gregor,
Precisely.
As for nonviolence, it’s worth remembering that it was military defeats by the Cuban Army and the Namibian guerrillas in Angola and Southwest Africa that eventually broke the back of South African apartheid, not ‘nonviolent resistance’. And Gandhi would have gotten nowhere if the British Empire had not been terminally weakened by the Second World War. Both those so-called nonviolent movements ’succeeded’ only because there was great violence going on in the background, and to take either of them as some sort of proof of how successful nonviolence can be, is absurd. Liberal cosmopolites like Yglesias, on the other hand, tend to think ‘Can’t We All Get Along’, hippy-dippy peaceful protest is the way to go. Can’t blame them….coups and revolutions tend to interrupt the Pot, Porn and Playstations lifestyle quite a bit more than feel-good ‘nonviolence’. It’s not their problem if nonviolence virtually never works.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Both sides have a lot to answer for. If a peaceful Palestinian state covering essentially all of the West Bank and all of Gaza were the aim of the Palestian political class–or at least the controling faction of the political class–were the aim, it could have been accomplished via peaceful means 30 years ago. Indeed, it’s hard to think of a political setting in which sustained, disciplined nonviolent resistance would be more effective. (People who think otherwise are too emotionally invested in the notion of Israeli/Jewish malevolence to think straight.) The Palestinians, and the Islamic world generally speaking, have never accepted the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the Middle East. On the other side, the Palestinians were dispossed of their land back in 1948, have suffered increasing encroachments on land to which they have a legitimate claim since then, and have suffered often brutal repression. Moreover, various Israeli governments have undermined the Palestanian political factions that might be disposed to less than maximalist aims. (Hamas, after all, was seen as a useful counterweight to the PLO.) Real and grave injustices have been done to the Palestinians. But not all historical injustices can be undone. This one can be undone only by dissolving the Jewish state. Some of you here advocate that. To you, the Middle East is not big enough for one, small specially Jewish state. But somehow, it sure enough has room for many specifically Islamic states.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Non-violence usually doesn’t work, but it’s really the only option for the Palestinians. They are so ridiculously outgunned that violence cannot work. You cannot fight the Israeli army with suicide bombers and win. And the Israelis have a very clear policy: if an Israeli dies, a hundred Palestinians must die in response. The only hope for the Palestinians is to gain the sympathy of an army that’s much more powerful than the Israeli army. And only non-violence can do that. But there are few armies that can go against Israel, and the United States army will always stand with Israel. If the Palestinians could somehow gain the sympathy of Russia, China, India, and Turkey, they could win their battle against the US and Israel. But that will never happen. Only one possibility really exists for the Palestinians: extermination. Given that, they might as well go down fighting. If there ever was a definition of hopeless, it’s the situation the Palestinians face. They have two choices: die quickly or die slowly.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Israel’s foreign decision-makers – the Northerners if Zionism is Jim Crow, the Brits if Zionism is India’s raj, the Western governments on which it depends if Zionism is Apartheid is again the Western governments on which it depends.
It takes a lot of western cooperation to prop up Israel. Without active and expensive intervention, especially by the US, Israel would face industrialized adversaries in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran that would have superiority in conventional arms, far more manpower and at least nuclear weapons capability if not arms to neutralize Israel’s nuclear threat.
In the face of this, Israel really would not have much choice other than to, in SLC’s words, go out of business. Accept the refugees, be a multi-ethnic state in a way that the populations of Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran consider just, and if there must be a Jewish majority state somewhere, get one established maybe somewhere in North America.
Israel is far more dependent on Western support for its continued existence as a Jewish state than South Africa was in maintaining Apartheid. The difference is that Afrikaaners, people who identified with White South Africans sometimes strongly, sometimes psychotically, were not well integrated and politically powerful in the US and other Western countries.
But the US is not a majority Jewish country or anything close to it. Sustained protests, violent or non-violent, directed against the United States does have the capacity to end US support for Zionism which would be enough to end Zionism more quickly than Apartheid ended when its US support dried out.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Re: and if there must be a Jewish majority state somewhere, get one established maybe somewhere in North America.
Preferably one with no Yglesian liberal cosmopolitans allowed, ever, and where liberal-cosmopolite writings are confiscated and burned by the public hangman. Ultimately, Judaism will not be destroyed from without, but it could be destroyed by within.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
If a peaceful Palestinian state covering essentially all of the West Bank and all of Gaza were the aim of the Palestian political class–or at least the controling faction of the political class–were the aim, it could have been accomplished via peaceful means 30 years ago.
You mean while Begin was expanding settlements for the express purpose of making territorial concessions impossible? I’d like to see some evidence of that.
But somehow, it sure enough has room for many specifically Islamic states.
The US should stop propping them up too.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
As for nonviolent resistance against Israel, ask the residents of Beit Sahour how effective it can be.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Thing is, Abbas was someone who the Israelis could have negotiated peace with. Then Abbas/PLO would have had to prevail over Hamas as the legitimate Palestinian leadership, something they might have been able to do if the Israelis had offered a serious deal. Which the Israelis might have done if Barak/Labor was in power. But Sharon succeeded in stripping Abbas of any legitimacy among the Palestinian people with his extreme policies, one factor (not the only factor) in the rise of Hamas.
This is why it has always seemed ridiculous to me that Sharon/Kadima get credit for their “moderation”. Sharon came to power determined to destroy the Rabin/Barak legacy, and he succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. It’s just been one horrible downward spiral ever since Arafat pissed away peace at Camp David, ever since Sharon pranced around the Temple Mount, provoking rock-throwing, provoking IDF killing, provoking a long cycle of violence, which has been great for Likud and Hamas, bad for everyone else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada
March 28th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Actually-existing Zionism is a disgrace.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Re Arnold Evans
3- Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, where according to Bin Laden seeing the destruction of buildings in Lebanon made him want to see the same happen to Israel’s patron, the United States.
So Mr. Evans now admits that the situation of the Palestinians has nothing to do with bin Ladens’ attacks on the United States. In that case, even if a peace agreement had been reached in 2000 between the PA and Israel, bin Laden would have ordered the attack on the US. By the way, Mr. Evans neglects to mention that bin Laden and his followers were also bent out of shape by the US actions in Iraq during and after the Gulf war of 1991, which had nothing to do with Israel. Or is Mr. Evans going to claim that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait because of the existence of Israel.
Just as protests in Washington DC had a huge impact on the viability of Apartheid in South Africa, 9/11 was designed to impact the viability of Zionism in Palestine.
Seems to have had the opposite effect, n’est pas?
Re roublen
So according to Mr. roublen, neither Mr. Sharon or any other Jew had any right to go to the temple mount. Well, that’s the Muslim mentality, the temple mount belongs to us, everybody else can go to hell.
re abb1
Mr. abb1 is a disgrace.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
“But … Palestinian resistance in the eyes of Israelis and the West are Hamas and Hezbollah and their indiscriminate violence. That, in turn, does wonders to help maintain the political and diplomatic viability of unjust Israeli policies.”
A factual quibble, first, Hezbollah is not a Palestinian organization. They talk a lot about the Palestinian cause, of course, so I grant that people in the West may be confused about this.
Second, Yglesias doesn’t mention which particular Israeli policies, unjust in his view, are rendered politically and diplomatically viable by Hamas’s indiscriminate violence. A lot of policies that are harsh and deeply unhappy from a Palestinian perspective (or even an Israeli perspective) may nevertheless not be unjust, on the contraray may actually be justified and necessary as a result of Hamas’s indiscriminate violence.
Regarding the larger theme of the post: At some point the Palestinians have to take responsibility for their political leadership. I suppose one could blame Netanyahu and especially Lieberman on Hamas and its rhetoric and actions, and there’s certainly some sense in which that’s the case. But still the Israelis voted for these guys and ultimately they’re responsible. Similarly the Palestinians voted for Hamas, and are ultimately responsible for them.
So the reality is that a significant constituency among the Palestinians aren’t looking for a non-violent solution to the conflict — which is why they aren’t pursuing non-violent means. Achieving a genuine consensus among the Palestinians that a peaceful resolution should actually be the goal, and getting the constituency that thinks otherwise under control, would be a great achievement. Here’s hoping.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?
March 28th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I forgot to add Iraq to the list of bigger, richer, more militarily powerful countries Israel would face if not for the US. How could I have forgotten? Also I really hope violent opposition to the US by Arabs and Muslims does not escalate. Hopefully the United States is already in the process of weaning itself out of its role as Israel’s guardian without further violent or non-violent opposition.
Iraq, well before the invasion of Kuwait was a potential strategic adversary of Israel. The starvation of Iraqis, the total destruction of the country after Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait, in other words the elements of US post-Kuwait Iraq policy that enraged Bin Laden and his followers were followed to reduce the strategic threat Iraq posed to Israel, not to Kuwait.
Keeping a tiny country like Israel militarily dominant in a region of rich countries and countries with multiples of Israel’s population imposes requirements on the United States that would not be present in Israel’s absence, or if the US was not committed to ensuring that Israel has a permanent Jewish majority.
The dismantlement of Iraq, at least from the refusal to negotiate a withdrawal from Kuwait by Hussein, through the sanctions that killed thousands of Iraqi children of cholera, through the invasion up to and including the current occupation of Iraq and the leverage the occupation gives the US over Iraqi policy were all motivated more by a desire to remove a strategic threat to Israel than by any loyalty to Kuwait, a country most Americans had never heard of.
The dismantlement of Iraq was not necessary to protect Kuwait. It was necessary as one part of an enormously expensive program in keeping Israel, a tiny country, viable in face of the opposition of its larger neighbors.
There really is only one dispute between the West and the Muslim world. It is over the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state. Without that dispute, the US would intervene in the Middle East no more than it intervenes in the Nigeria area, or the Venezuela area. Which is not none at all, but is not enough to turn the people of those regions into Bin Ladens.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Well, it is fun listening to people who have no understanding of it pontificate about nonviolence.
Against a violent oppressor, to prevail the nonviolent side has to accept a priori a quantity of killings and atrocities without engaging in retaliation. The oppressor side will also capture and try to break the leaders and many followers of such a movement, generally via torture, to achieve its disruption and schism. To endure that successfully takes an enormous discipline, deliberate community, and a deep, learned, intentional, persistence.
The cost will always be greater than any initial estimate. In I/P I could imagine that the number of Palestinians killed in the attempt to put down a nonviolent uprising could well be 5,000 or 10,000. Maybe 20,000. Perhaps 50,000. We don’t know the depths of IDF or settler depravity that would be unleished.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
I was in Israel dozens of time during the 70’s and 80’s and lived there in 1982 and 1983. I witnessed probably 100 or more non-violent Palestinian protests for a state or at least autonomy. Israel basically ignored their issues and gave them a giant middle finger, along with bumps and bruises from nightsticks. Israelis laughed at these feeble protests and it led directly to the first inifitada in 1987.
Do any of you old enough to remember recall reading anything in the US or European press about Palestinian protests? Probably not – I never did. The Israeli press back then was also not sympathetic. I am not optomistic that Israel will pay any more attention to non-violence now than they did back then.
My grandfather was Irgun and he always said Begin’s philosophy was power counts and nothing else is in second place. That is still Israel’s governing philosophy. Remember, Israel was born out of violence and the Brits finally got tired of it and left. Someone above said there is a major difference between an occupying power from far away vesus one next door. The former can be chased, the latter not so much.
The Palestinians face an almost impossible task. If they fight, the Israelis superior firepower will make violence ineffective and cause the Israelis to not believe peace is possible. If the Palestinians don’t use violence, then there is no need for a peace agreement and Israel is free to do as they wish with roads, settlements and fences. Syria has been non violent with Israel for 42 years and how much of the Golan have they won back?
March 28th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Yes, sainthood can work in a place like India, thousands of miles from a colonial master that is retrenching from its empire as fast as it can, or Montgomery, when there is a powerful federal government run by northern liberals enforcing desegregation. Sainthood works just fine when circumstance allows.
March 28th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Several here have referenced this already, but the efficacy of nonviolence is largely a function of the nature of the other side. India in the end wasn’t important to Britain, and while segregation was important to the social reproduction of many white southerners, it wasn’t a defining aspect of American nationhood, and to the extent that it defined southern subnationhood it wasn’t entirely positive. (For instance, the idea of a southern president would have been a non-starter without desegregation.) Israel is a harder nut to crack, and in nonviolence ever worked I suspect it would be because it occurred in such a tightly regimented way that it came to constitute a de facto threat of apocalyptic violence: “today it’s 500 thousand Palestinians with white hankies, but if they’re carrying Molotov cocktails tomorrow, we’re toast.”
March 28th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
If it weren’t for Violence, the Israeli’s wouldn’t even be willing to talk.
The British didn’t actually live in India. A more apt comparison is between the Irish and the English, and violence had a whole shitload to do with the resolution (mostly) of that conflict.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Christianity only succeeded in taking over Europe because Constantine decided that it would be motivational for his troops to carry the Chi Ro into battle and tell them they’d go to heaven if they died.
Before him, the Emperors were quite content to let the Christians meet their pacifist death wish in every arena of the Roman Empire.
And Julian was quite capable of reversing Christianity’s spread, until his untimely death.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Frankly, what Martin van Creveld’s said for years is probably going to occur – some form or another of ethnic cleansing.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Several here have referenced this already, but the efficacy of nonviolence is largely a function of the nature of the other side. India in the end wasn’t important to Britain, and while segregation was important to the social reproduction of many white southerners, it wasn’t a defining aspect of American nationhood, and to the extent that it defined southern subnationhood it wasn’t entirely positive.
One might make the identical argument with respect to violence. Over the past several centuries, the successful violent movements against a superior force have been few and far between as well. And every one I can think of was successful largely due to the disinterest of the superior force. The American Revolutionary war is certainly a case in point.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
One might make the identical argument with respect to violence. Over the past several centuries, the successful violent movements against a superior force have been few and far between as well. And every one I can think of was successful largely due to the disinterest of the superior force.
I agree, but I don’t know where this leaves us. Waiting for Israeli minds to change? If they’re not won with nonviolence nor violence, what agency do Palestinians have? Might makes right, I guess.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
There is competent violence and incompetent violence.
Firing little rockets at random at some Israel towns is incompetent. All it does is cause a small amount of attention in the Western press to the Palestinian cause – and large amount of counter-violence from their oppressors.
The answer is effective, competent violence.
You win a conflict by killing your enemies to the point where they agree to talk – or they’re all dead. You don’t bother killing civilians, because civilians aren’t in charge. You kill the people who are in charge until the civilians get tired of it and look for better leaders who will talk.
If Hamas hires some competent people to start killing the Zionist leaders of Israel, eventually Israel will talk, or somebody in the West will pressure Israel to talk.
If every single Zionist leader in Israel ends up getting killed, eventually no one will want to be a Zionist.
It’s really that simple – in concept if not in execution (pardon the pun.)
And there’s no such thing as “security” for the leader of a government. If someone wants them dead badly enough, they will be killed.
And this has nothing to do with whether the superior force is “disinterested” or not. If the superior force is willing to nuke an entire culture, then maybe so. The bottom line for insurgencies is that it is a more efficient form of warfare that conventional armies are ill equipped to deal with, which inevitably leads to the supporting population to pressure the political leadership to stop trying to suppress it.
This occurred in the Lebanese assault in 2006. The Israeli government thought it would get a quick victory. Instead, they got their asses handed to them by Hizballah, and the constant rockets landing in northern Israel and the endless stream of Israeli body bags put pressure on the Israeli government to stop.
It’s not a question of “disinterest”, it’s a question of economics and political reality. Counterinsurgency does NOT work unless the government involved is of the same ethnic background as the insurgents and the insurgents do not have the support of the majority of the population, who must also be of the same ethnicity as the insurgents.
Israel cannot defeat Hamas and the Palestinians IF the Palestinians adopted EFFECTIVE terrorism strategies, unless Israel wants to commit a full scale genocide on the Palestinians. While Israel might be willing to do so, the Western world would not allow it.
Non-violence cannot work for the Palestinians. Effective terrorism can.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:05 am
In India, Britain up and left; Gandhi and his followers maintained a maximalist objective, and it was rational the entire time. On the other hand, King and his followers explicitly recognized the legitimacy of the U.S gov’t, and extolled the values it held up for itself; their goal was to force it to live up to those professed values.
Neither of these analogies hold up here. The groups using violence do not accept the legitimacy of the would-be state exercising power over the people they claim to represent (with some justification due to Israel’s playing into their hands). But then looking ahead, they see no reason whatsoever (obviously) to believe the hegemon is going anywhere (because it’s not). I’m not justifying violence anywhere, ever. But if Matt thinks “forcing Israel to seriously contemplate a just resolution of the Palestinian issue” is either a realistic or even a sufficient reward to rejecting their current rational strategy of making life uncomfortable for their oppressors (and does Matt reject that term?), then he is fundamentally unserious about this issue.
When violence is rational for its perpetrators, as it is here given the political aims involved (unlike in India or the United States in mid-last century), non-violent resistance becomes a secondary matter. No amount of passive protest will sanctify the road taken by Hamas, and they have no desire for it anyway. This is war, and in war there are no innocent parties.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:12 am
Re: When violence is rational for its perpetrators, as it is here given the political aims involved (unlike in India or the United States in mid-last century), non-violent resistance becomes a secondary matter.
Yes, Mike. But that isn’t the problem here. The problem here is that the political aims that Hamas seeks, are explicitly bad aims. To wit, that the Jewish State should go out of business. Only two ideologies allow you to draw that conclusion: Late-Capitalist Hipster Liberalism, and Islamic Jihadism. And both of those ideologies are fundamentally immoral, as should be evident to any decent person.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:13 am
I’m just a wannabe-Hipster (not the real thing), so I could be wrong, but the way it looks to me, the Jewish State is well on its way to going out of business, or at least out of legitimacy (which is a prerequisite for statehood) without my intellectual contribution.
But yes, I believe the Jewish state should go out of business, as should the Islamic state, the Christian state — all identity-limiting political exclusions. We have been practicing the only viable incarnation of statehood here in the United States imperfectly (but with a clear trend toward the expansion of full rights) for a couple of centuries: pluralistic multiculturalism. It works. The world should get on board. (And no, I don’t believe we are right to use violence to force other countires to do so. That test is the test of a fanatic, not of whether one is committed to his ideas.)
March 29th, 2009 at 1:14 am
Non-violence in Israel just gets you killed. Look at the what Jews in Israel did to the original non-violent resistor – Jesus. You show 1 iota of weakness around those people and they will kill you. Read the Torah, Judaism is a barbaric religion, and non-violence resistance will not work to change their ways.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:37 am
Subtle, Jimbo.
March 29th, 2009 at 7:54 am
Re Jimboslice
Goatfucker Jimboslice channels Hitler.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Re Richard Steven Hack
Mr. Hacks’ strategy of convincing the Government of Israel to go out of business has about as much chance of succeeding as his efforts at bank robbery. In fact, it could boomerang. Consider the following scenario. Suppose Hitler had been assassinated in 1938. If he had been replaced by Heydrich, Germany might well have won WW 2 as he was far more competent and intelligent then was Hitler and was at least as ruthless. In fact, a good part of the British incentive in the assassination of Heydrich was to prevent just such a scenario from unfolding.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:26 am
This is all very well but, unfortunately, the Fakestinians are are only interested in a solution in which the Government of Israel agrees to go out of business. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi weren’t demanding that the Government of the United States or the Government of Great Britain go out of business. – SLC
That is the perception at least. The problem with the Palestinian resistance, as opposed to the other resistance movements mentioned is not the violence but how it is targeted: even Seedee Vee admits that the Palestinian resistance seeks to terrorize every Israeli. Is it any wonder than that Israelis think that the Palestinian resistance wants Israel out of business? And what will happen to Jewish Israelis if that happens?
Actually, terrorism did a lot to help the Indians kick out the British colonialists (heck, terrorism helped Palestinian Jews kick out the British colonialists who “gave” the land to the Jews — without really consulting the Palestinian non-Jewish Arabs — and then renegged on their word), help the ANC get rid of apartheid, etc. But what made the difference is that said terrorism did not seek to target all British, all whites, etc.
Moreover, the important aspect of what Gandhi and Nehru were doing was not so much that it was non-violent but that it was constructive (ditto, to a lesser extent maybe, the ANC). The Congress movement basically said “we want to be independent … so let’s pretend we are an independent state and develop the infrastructure to govern ourselves, etc”. What were Gandhi’s big acts of non-violent resistance? Wearing homespun and making frickin’ salt! Perhaps if the Palestinians could set up a functional government for themselves (rather than the PA), it wouldn’t matter that they didn’t have a sovereign state as they would be de facto independent that would lead to a real state! But where is the evidence that this is what the so-called leadership of the Palestinians want?
If Israelis could perceive that the Palestinians would be happy with a two state solution, then they would start making sincere gestures toward that solution. But so long as Israelis have good reason to perceive that every gesture of theirs is met with merely more rocket fire at everyday Israelis, why should they do anything to benefit Palestinians? Why shouldn’t they try to survive?
Of course, some people respond with “I don’t care if the Jewish colonialists survive” … and then people wonder why even liberal, non-Zionist Jews like myself start to feel that a lot of opposition to Israel/Zionism is inherently and fundamentally anti-Semitic?
March 29th, 2009 at 8:34 am
But yes, I believe the Jewish state should go out of business, as should the Islamic state, the Christian state — all identity-limiting political exclusions – Mike
Fair enough. But why should the Jewish state go out of business first? And that to be replaced by what would be, de facto, a Muslim state?
Let me see a beautiful, big Chabad center in Mecca. And then we can talk about the Jewish state going out of business.
*
I’ve long talked about (e.g. on my blog) the Puritanism that infests the left, but I never thought I would see open, reactionary Christian anti-Semitism on the left as in JimboSlice’s comments. Again — people wonder why we Jews tend to view left-wing anti-Zionism as fundamentally anti-Semitic?
March 29th, 2009 at 8:38 am
violence had a whole shitload to do with the resolution (mostly) of that conflict. – soulite
Could somebody please tell me how exactly that conflict was resolved? I’ve had my own theories shot down, but that was by people who think that the British were not — no siree — in any way anti-Catholic.
So what really did allow the Northern Irish conflict to end?
March 29th, 2009 at 8:43 am
BTW — how many of you who want to drive Israeli Jews “back to where they came from” are living comfortably on land stolen from American Indians? How many are living in Europe which stood idly by while Jews were getting killed and then decided to “solve the German problem” (which solution seems to have worked given the absence of WWIII) by mass deportations and force assimilation of ethnic Germans lest they serve as an excuse for another war — the resulting peace thus being a cornerstone of modern, European prosperity (another being the Marshall Plan from those Americans who got their wealth from stolen land).
As that hippy Jesus said — he that is without sin cast the first stone. I guess JimboSlice is happy to blame us Jews for killing Jesus but figures since it is Palestinians, not he, throwing stones, he can happily benefit from land stealing whilst his political allies can say Jewish colonialists can FOAD even as they continue to benefit from those actions which they condemn when Jews do them.
Sounds like anti-Semitism pure and simple to me.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Re DAS
BTW — how many of you who want to drive Israeli Jews “back to where they came from” are living comfortably on land stolen from American Indians?
I have raised this on numerous occasions on this blog and the response is always the same. Effectively, the Israel bashers argue that the statute of limitations on the crime of expulsion of native Americans from their lands has run out but the statute of limitations on the alleged expulsion of Palestinians has not run out (in fact, to the Arnold Evans, the ottos and their ilk, it will never run out).
March 29th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Re: Das There you go again hiding behind the logical fallacy of “but someone else does it.” And when that doesn’t work break out the Nazi card and deal it from the bottom of the deck. No one here is advocating for the Jews in Israel to be killed, what we are advocating for is that the Israeli state should cease to exist.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Re JimboSlice
work break out the Nazi card and deal it from the bottom of the deck. No one here is advocating for the Jews in Israel to be killed, what we are advocating for is that the Israeli state should cease to exist.
Of course, that’s exactly what would happen if the Government of Israel went out of business and for Mr. JimboSlice to deny it makes him either ignorant, stupid, insane, or wicked (but I don’t want to consider that).
March 29th, 2009 at 10:02 am
I think the better question is, can a nonviolent movement exist in the postmodern world?
All media from the region is filtered through the IDF; all American media is effectively press releases from authority. The American and Israeli governments are both aware of the power of nonviolent protest to shame an aggressor. That’s why nonviolent protests are called “riots” now.
If nobody hears about your nonviolent movement, then it’s not a movement; it’s just a firing line.
March 29th, 2009 at 10:23 am
No one here is advocating for the Jews in Israel to be killed, what we are advocating for is that the Israeli state should cease to exist. – JimboSlice
And what do you think would happen if the State of Israel ceased to exist?
March 29th, 2009 at 10:41 am
I think the reasonable Israelis would probably flee the country to Western Europe or North America. There would of course be unreasonable Israelis who would stay and fight, they would learn from their grandfathers and become terrorists again. These extremists would be imprisoned or killed.
March 29th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Re: But yes, I believe the Jewish state should go out of business, as should the Islamic state, the Christian state — all identity-limiting political exclusions.
Okay, Mike. That’s a logically consistent position. It’s also wrong, pernicious and deeply unnatural.
Most normal people, by which I mean ones who haven’t allowed Western liberalism to corrode their minds, hearts and souls, want to live in a community where they share something in common with people around them. More importantly, they also want the freedom to establish a set of values and ideals as the dominant ones in their community, to which all people should strive. These values might be Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Socialist, Communist, Feudalist or Anarchist. What’s important is that they do embody a moral ideal to which all people should strive. Living a good life is not something that can be done purely individually, it can only be done in community. That is why God has always necessarily been a Trinity- i.e. a community. You want to deny people one of the most fundamental freedom, the freedom to design their society to embody a set of values. How free are we if we are not free to give our lives meaning? And how, for thoughtful and sensitive people, can our earthly lives have meaning if we are not free to devote them to the great task of being the salt of the earth, and building the new Jerusalem? For Jews, that new Jerusalem is a Jewish State, but you want to deny them the right to have that. You want to deny us one of the most basic freedoms, sovereignal freedom, the freedom to try to change the world to embody one’s values.
It’s no accident that the two great forces currently tearing apart this world, in a duel to the death, are both gravely deficient ideologies, and for precisely the same reason. They were founded by men- Muhammed and Jefferson- who both denied the Trinity, and in so doing denied the principle that God, and by extension Man, is inherently a social and communal being. The desire of Liberal Capitalism to submit all men to the rule of the dollar and the ballot box is akin to the desire of Muhammed’s heirs to submit all men to the rule of the Quran. Indeed, Washington and Mecca have more in common than either would like to believe.
I wish for a future that is the exact opposite of yours. I would like to see the world divided up into lots of small, self-contained states that interact relatively little politically or economically. Jewish States, Christian States, Hindu States, communist states, anarchist states, capitalist states, and whatever else. Man thrives best under such conditions, and so-called multiculturalist cosmopolitan empires will inevitably go the way of pagan Rome.
March 29th, 2009 at 10:54 am
So JimboSlice is in favor of a de facto mass deportation of Jews? I thought the left-wing anti-Zionist position was that it was 100% wrong to even create conditions where one ethnic group would want to flee.
If what JimboSlice proposes is 100% (if you’ll pardon the pun) kosher, then what was so bad about the formation of Israel in the first place? So some Palestinians were driven from their lands. According to JimboSlice this is just hunky-dory. And the Palestinians had from 1948-1967 to establish a state that protected their rights without any interference from Israel. This of course didn’t happen … but it’s Israel’s fault how?
Oh yes … I forget: Israel is Jewish and we Jews are inherently evil — after all, we killed Jesus.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Das: Stop with your logical fallicies and straw men argument.
If you cannot understand the difference between returning Palestine to the Palestinian refugees and the Irgun terrorists driving the Palestinians off their land then I cannot make you.
And your constant harping back to victim hood is just sad. Israel is evil. Israel is a Jewish state. That does not mean that Jews are inherently evil – the last 6,000 years have shown us that. But we should treat evil people with the same respect we treat everyone else. Evil people have every right to exist and live – but evil people tend to pick fights and go to war all the time, and thus they wind up getting killed.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:22 am
DAS,
What do you think the long term consequences are assuming most anti-zionist sentiment is anti-Semitism (especially given the vague and incorrect ways the term zionist/zionism are thrown around. Or more crudely put, do you think there is a danger that by calling people who do not see themselves as anti-Semitic at all anti-Semites, you may convince them you’re right.
Frankly I find the term anti-Semite grossly over-used, and to the great benefit of the many anti-Semites out there.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Preferably one with no Yglesian liberal cosmopolitans allowed, ever, and where liberal-cosmopolite writings are confiscated and burned by the public hangman.
Oops. Is someone’s Swastika showing?
March 29th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I agree with bellsmith, the term anti-Semite is grossly over-used. On the other hand I do consider myself and anti-Semite, but not in the way that DAS wants to interpret anti-semitism. I am also anti-Mormon, anti-evangelical, and anti-Islam. I wish none of these people ill, only their institutions that promote violence and disenfranchisement. I would be more than happy to give the Jews an area of land here in America to setup a homeland on – there are plenty of possibilities maybe Adirondack Park or Arcadia or even a 10,000-20,000 sq. mile plot in the west ( http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aib710/cfed-1.gif lots of federal land out there!)
March 29th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I can’t emphasize enough that if Palestine had a Gandhi, the occupation would be over tomorrow. Israelis are decent, moral, ethical people and want to live in peace, but like all humans, use their fears to override their ethics and do brutal things. If faced with their own salt walk, their own Selma, ethics would reassert themselves, just as they did for Americans and Britons.
March 29th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Why isn’t anyone wondering about an Israeli Ghandi?
I think that it is really revealing that supporters of Israel would criticize the other side for not adopting pacifism, but not all the while assume that Israeli violence is unquestionably justified. Really, if only the Palestinians were civilized enough we wouldn’t have to kill so many of them…
March 29th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
“Preferably one with no Yglesian liberal cosmopolitans allowed, ever, and where liberal-cosmopolite writings are confiscated and burned by the public hangman.”
I wonder if Hector ever figured out that in The Brothers Karamazov, it was actually Alyosha who was meant to represent Dostoyevsky’s personification of Christian ideals, and not the Grand Inquisitor from Ivan’s story.
March 29th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I wish for a future that is the exact opposite of yours. I would like to see the world divided up into lots of small, self-contained states that interact relatively little politically or economically. Jewish States, Christian States, Hindu States, communist states, anarchist states, capitalist states, and whatever else. Man thrives best under such conditions, and so-called multiculturalist cosmopolitan empires will inevitably go the way of pagan Rome.
Fair enough. At least we’re both clear where we stand.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
JimboSlice,
The Irgun terrorists were also fighting for the ability of refugees to live on their land (as well as defending Palestinian Jews from non-Jewish Palestinian Arab violence): remember “Palestine” was Jewish long before it was Arab.
As to
I would be more than happy to give the Jews an area of land here in America to setup a homeland on – there are plenty of possibilities maybe Adirondack Park or Arcadia or even a 10,000-20,000 sq. mile plot in the west
There were many schemes like this before the establishment of Israel. How much do ya wanna bet that as soon as we can observe alternate universes, in the universe in which this scheme was tried, JimboSlice is complaining about those evil Jews who drove Native Americans and Acadians off of their lands?
*
I forgot to add Iraq to the list of bigger, richer, more militarily powerful countries Israel would face if not for the US. How could I have forgotten? – Arnold Evans
Something struck me as familiar about these arguments from Arnold Evans … and now it hits me — I’m used to hearing them from supporters of Israel! If the Arab world is so powerful, rich, etc. — why does it care about Israel? Why doesn’t it just let what’s done be done, use its wealth and resources to assimilate Palestinians into the rest of the Arab world and leave Israel alone? As the Zionists say, there are so many Arab countries with so much land, but Israel is a tiny sliver … so why should the Arab world not just say to Israel, “ok, you can have your sliver of land”?
March 29th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Re JimboSlice
Perhaps Mr. JimboSlice might want to consider the Hitler/Eichmann proposal of 1935 to establish the Jewish State in Madagascar.
March 29th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Re SLC: If that proposal had been followed it probably would have been a lot better for the Jews, but since I am not a citizen of Madagascar I cannot propose giving up their land. I am a citizen of the USA so I can propose giving up federal land here.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
“remember “Palestine” was Jewish long before it was Arab.”
And it became Arab because the stupid Jews pissed everybody around them off, including the Romans who were really GOOD at knocking heads together.
Tell us again how the Irgun and the rest of the Zionist terrorists were just “defensive” in nature. I’m sure bin Laden would like to adopt that argument. And i’m sure the British civilians killed in the King David Hotel would be appeased.
March 30th, 2009 at 2:16 am
it’s likely to be more effective
See “The Missing Mandela”, which says it all.
http://warincontext.org/2009/03/29/editorial-the-missing-mandela/
March 30th, 2009 at 6:23 am
Indeed so, ptw.
I’m constantly amazed at how people have so soon forgotten how Mandela and the ANC perceived in the 1980s, for example. The ANC was a terrorist organization. But, to use a trite and almost J. Goldbergia phrase, Mandela is the exception that proves the rule.
Mandela and the ANC went out of their way in choosing their targets. There was nothing in Mandela’s terror campaign to make Joe White South-African feel that, if the ANC got into power, he and his ilk would be “driven into the sea”.
Palestinian terrorism would be more effective at getting Israeli Jews to say “enough already … let’s try to reach a compromise” rather than having them say “we gotta be strong and fight those people who want to drive them into the sea” if the obvious goals of said terrorists were something Israelis could (literally) live with (even if they wouldn’t like it).
*
Re: the King David Hotel bombing — nu? according to the Hacks and Slices of the world, we shouldn’t care what happens to Israeli “colonialist” Jews, especially the administrative leaders, but we should weep for British colonialist administrators who happen not be actual members of the military?
Should I take a low blow and ask whether Hack is a fan of a certain symbol of Roman authority given his praise of Rome? So it’s ok to kick Jews out of the Levant, and following that the Jews have no right to return, but kicking Palestinians out of the Levant means that Jews are doubly, bubbly evil?
I wonder what the more “moderate” anti-Zionists have to say about their double standard showing?
March 30th, 2009 at 6:27 am
I am a citizen of the USA so I can propose giving up federal land here.
And British citizens gave up what was British land (admittedly stolen from the Ottomans who stole it from the Arabs who stole it from … we have a song at Passover about a little goat who gets eaten, you might look into it). How is that different from your proposal of giving us stolen land?
At least in Israel, Jews are on land which we, at one point, had before (and which we had continuously lived on since long before the Arabs came).
March 30th, 2009 at 6:37 am
We can equate bin Ladin with the Irgun if bin Ladin were to have limitted himself to attacking a US military administrative installation in Saudi Arabia and issued a warning telling the people inside to evacuate first.
We can equate Hamas to the Irgun if Hamas were to restrict itself to attacking buildings directly involved in administering occupied territories, warning the inhabitants afterward and having their methods thoroughly renounced by the Palestinian people. Look at how long it took for the former Irgun-people to be rehabilitated in Israeli politics vs. how long it has taken Hamas (remember those recent elections)? Again — you attract more flies with honey than vinegar. Palestinian terrorism is only hardening Israeli attitudes because nothing it in creates any reassurance that Jews won’t be driven into the sea if the terrorists get their way.
And, as we see from the examples of Hack and Slice, there is a callousness toward Jewish life and hatred of Jews amongst even American supporters of the Palestinian cause without even the desultory noises about innocent children being themselves victimized (not by the Israeli army but by the Palestinian terrorists who hide amongst civilian populations) that you hear from the anti-Palestinian folks in this country.
March 30th, 2009 at 6:38 am
justaguy,
please investigate the various peace movements and left wing parties in Israel.
March 30th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Last time I checked members of the IDF were not “Palestinian terrorists” http://jta.org/news/article/2009/03/23/1003922/report-israeli-soldiers-used-human-shields
A group of nine U.N. human rights experts said Monday that the troops ordered an 11-year-old boy to walk in front of them on Jan. 15 in a Gaza residential neighborhood where they were being fired on.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Matt’s post ignores the extent to which the first Intifada was fundamentally a massive campaign of nonviolent resistance. The only real violence directed against Israelis was the stone-throwing so beloved by western media.
The main physical violence on the part of Palestinians in the first Intifada was in the form of reprisals against Palestinans who collaborated with Israel.
It was a general strike. It involved tax resistance, boycotts of Israeli products, rent striking, etc.
And it brought the Israelis to the table, though not by itself or in a vacuum.
March 30th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
the low quality of posting here suggests to me that none of you people actually have a job — or a clue about what goes on in the Real World.
just commentin’
March 31st, 2009 at 3:36 pm
There’s a large and growing body of knowledge on nonviolent struggle, based on historical case studies. Many of the comments above show an ingorance of some basic facts:
While nonviolent strategies do not always succeed, they have a far better success rate than armed struggle. In the last 33 years, 67 of the world’s countries made the transition from dictatorship or some form of authoritarian regime to some form of democratic rule. Nonviolent civic resistance was the key driving factor in 50 Of those 67 countries. (See “How Freedom Is Won,” Karatnycky & Ackerman, Freedom House, 2005)
Nonviolent movements do not require charismatic or saintly leadership (Gandhi, King). Most successful nonviolent struggles have not had such leadership.
Nonviolent success does not depend on the “conscience of the adversary.” The success of a nonviolent strategy is chiefly determined by the skill with which it is devised and pursued, whether the adversary is “civilized” or not. To prove the point – a few examples of nonviolent suceesses in which the adversary was ruthless or brutal: Chilean dictator Pinochet, defeated by a nonviolent pro-democracy coalition; Milosevic, the Serbian dictator; the Polish communist government defeated by the Solidarity trade union movement; Ferdinand Marcos, ousted by Philippine “people power.” And there are others: the Baltics, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Nepal, Peru, Georgia, Ukraine.
Nonviolent methods have been adopted by many Palestinian groups, but not with sufficient discipline to be effective, or at least, not so far. But the potential for nonviolent strategies against Israel is perhaps most evident in the fact that Israel works so hard to suppress them, sometimes very brutally. There’s a message here.