Jerry Slater, the scholar (and also "a lifelong Zionist" who once volunteered to serve in the Israeli navy), had more to say about Jim Sleeper's piece about the efficacy of Palestinian nonviolence at TPM yesterday:
What Sleeper evidently doesn't understand is that the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
its very essence, is that the Israelis have used massive violence
against the Palestinians and their political organizations since 1947,
and not only against Hamas and other extremists.
Moreover, this violence has repeatedly been directed not only against resistance movements,
but also against civilians--for that matter, not only Palestinian
civilians but also Egyptian, Jordanian, and (repeatedly) Lebanese
civilians. To be sure, earlier Israeli violence against the
Palestinians was on behalf of an historically just cause: the creation
of a Jewish state, following centuries of murderous persecution of the
Jews, particularly but not only the Holocaust.
When unjust methods are used on behalf of a just cause, it can reasonably be argued that a moral dilemma
exists. However, when unjust methods are used on behalf of an unjust
cause--the maintenance of the occupation and repression of the
Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza--there is no moral dilemma at all.
In a sense, then, Phil Weiss's comment that lecturing the Palestinians on
how they "ought to behave to compel us to get our boot off their neck"
is an appropriately acerbic comment on the moral blindness of many
Israelis--as illustrated, for example, by Golda Meir's infamous
comment: "We will never forgive the Palestinians for forcing us to kill
their children.”
The history of Israeli violence against
the Palestinians is not a matter of opinion, but of plain, repeatedly
demonstrated fact. Anyone who fails to grasp, willfully denies, or
simply forgets those facts is not qualified to lecture the Palestinians
on the virtues of nonviolence--even more so, because these lectures
also ignore the long history of Israeli repression of Palestinian
nonviolence, which in fact many Palestinians have tried, only to see
the occupation consolidated and expanded.
To be
sure, it is clear that Palestinian violence has also failed, and my own
view is that for both moral and practical reasons they should eschew
violence and employ only nonviolent resistance.
Nonetheless, anyone advocating this should also honestly admit that
Palestinian nonviolence in the past and present has repeatedly failed,
and that the likelihood is that it would continue to fail, given
Israeli ruthlessness, brutality, and blindness to their own history.
The great tragedy for the Palestinians, then, is that nothing has worked for them, and given the state of affairs in Israel
today there is little prospect that anything will work in the
foreseeable future. Nonetheless, it is not the Palestinians but the
Israelis that are largely responsible for their catastrophe--and anyone
giving advice to them on how to proceed has little credibility if they
fail to acknowledge that.
"The great tragedy for the Palestinians, then, is that nothing has worked for them, and given the state of affairs in Israel today there is little prospect that anything will work in the foreseeable future."
The one thing that will work for them is changing the interest-group capture of US and UK policy-making towards jewish colonialism. That's the key to the whole thing.
Witty will fight this all the way, all the while claiming he is only for a practical solution to help the Palestinians and stop endless war. He has demonstrated his Hasbara 102 talking points time after time, hardly aided by all the Hasbara 101 graduate wannabees who've clustered here since the attack on all Gaza residents early this year.
Because Zionists treat Palestinians as vermin to be eradicated and not as valuable property, it is at least as ethical for a Palestinian to kill a Zionist as it was for a slave in the Pre-Emancipation USA to kill a slaver: Last Word on Anti-Semitism.
Note that the majority of pre-Emancipation white Southerners had little or no involvement in slavery while practically all Israeli Jews as well as approximately 80% of American Jews are involved in maintaining Zionism.
I think that when they adopted education of Israeli and American and European Jews to their experience (not their rage), that that did work.
And, that brutality in the form of attacks on civilians ARE crimes, Whether Phil wants to say that the motivation of a person that harmed his niece because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, is understandable, if that's where he ended, I would be surprised.
The point about education (that is not polemic) is that it truly does change hearts and minds. And, it does NOT happen in a day. One film, one lecture, is not going to change hearts and minds.
That's bollocks, is all I can say to that, Witty, that's just plain old bollocks.
Whats bollocks?
That non-violence has been slowly effective, or that terror are not crimes, or that education does not change hearts and minds.
Richard Witty is right, I think, at least in this thread. I think there's a tendency to react to him in a kneejerk fashion. My problem with Richard is that I think he puts too much of the blame for the continuation of the conflict on Palestinian violence and not nearly enough on Israeli violence, and I'm more than willing to jump on him when he does this, but his point here is correct–the only way the conflict is going to end is to change hearts and minds. And you don't do this with rockets or terrorist attacks on the one hand, or blockades, arrests, torture, and war crimes on the other. Though (and here Witty may disagree with me), maybe we on the outside can do it with nonviolent actions against Israel, the way white South Africa was brought under pressure in the late 80's.
Interesting poll of attitudes of young Palestinians:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1075465.html
Note how they realize they are losing the war with Israel. Note how only 28% of them consider themselves “Palestinians” whereas 47% consider themselves “Muslims”. It is this confusion of identities that is a prime cause of the disunity that has plagued them for generations.
This is a fine confirmation of what we have been saying for
years……there is no such thing as a “Palestinian nation”.
If you say there is no Palestinian nation, than what do you say to the centuries of jews who always claimed they were a nation before 1948?
bar_kochba132
You do know that 'Palestinian' is a nationality and 'Islam' is a religion. I'm British AND I'm Muslim and the fact that the UN can't tell the difference between the two is quite worrying.
It's also funny how you didn't point out that only 10% consider themselves 'Arabs' and that the majority of them oppose violence. Will we find similar findings in a poll of Israeli youth? Hah!
So Witty, what happens when hearts and minds are changed?
Then what? The citizens of Israel speak up? They demand something better of their gov't? They stop electing fascists?
All that it would take to derail that would be one bomb. Then back to square one.
If the massacre of Gaza wasn't enough to educate Israel, what could be?
@Judy
There was no massacre of Gaza. A massacre (onelook.com definition) is "the savage and excessive killing of many people".
The killing of Gazans by the Israelis was neither savage nor excessive. The number killed was about 1200. About 60% (709) of those killed have been identified as members of various terrorist organizations. The number identified as uninvolved (innocent bystanders) is 295 (89 of whom were under the age of 16) and the number of men between 16 and 64 who have not been identified or ruled out as belonging to a terrorist organization is 162.
89 children killed is tragic, but given the total disregard for human life that Hamas not only demonstrates, but actually brags about, the number of civilians killed is extraordinarily low for urban warfare.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the Palestinians decided to elect terrorists whose unwavering goal is not the betterment of the Palestinian people, but the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews. When a militarily weak people elect a government that says they are going to attack the third or fourth most militarily powerful nation on Earth, the ensuing military stomping is on the idiots who voted for the terrorist party.
Hamas is a cancer, do you really think you can cut out a tumor without harming the healthy tissues around it?
I would like to respond to Slater:
The results of Palestinian violence as resistance as opposed to non-violence is not balanced at all. The Palestinians have suffered major setbacks with the use of terrorism and the reprisal by Israeli, Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian troops has really severed the effectiveness of any Palestinian resistance group. While in the decades of post-colonialism, armed resistance proved so effective as the indigenous was so overwhelming a majority against their oppressor. You look down the long line of infamous victories of the weak against the strong, it has been a string of guerrilla warfare of decentralised armed groups willing to take arms against their enemy. The divide was never there so long as the occupier remained in possession of the land (well not the divide that we see here with the Palestinian case.). But to say that violence has never worked for the Palestinians is not accurate and only accurate when you apply the end-goal for total freedom for Palestinians. Even though that is ultimately the final goal for all resistance groups, I feel that in short-term gains, violence and armed resistance has forced Israel to do measures that they weren't willing to before the emergence of the PLO. Despite the fact that Israel's leaders in years past and present have tried to consolidate their control over the territories they captured in '67, they have attempted it with the rudimentary rights applied for Palestinians, something they weren't even willing to recognise pre and post-48. It's crude but without Arafat and Habash doing horrendous acts, we could still be stuck at Mier's thinking that "there's no such thing as a Palestinian". From the hijackings and kidnappings of the late 60s and early 70s, to the planned attacks in neighbouring states of Jordan and Lebanon, to the expulsion of '82 and through the first intifada, ultimately with the rage came the realisation that Israel cannot continue ignoring that they have a Palestinian problem. Oslo may have been a trap but that was an implicit agreement by Israel for a Palestine (but let's not get into the details of what is really wrong with it, we all know what was wrong with it but Israel did a major withdrawal from the territories in the initial phase). This seems like a pyrrhic victory with the way things are now but violence has always been a double-edged sword.
I would like to add that another great tragedy and paradoxically a great triumph is that the Palestinian cause has happened so recent in modern history. With all the media tools available, we have the news at our fingertips BUT this scrutiny can also be their downfall. If we had all of this coverage available when the Algerians were in an uprising you can guess what they would have been profiled as. If we had all of this coverage in Mandate Palestine who knows how many other terrorist actions we could have witnessed before our eyes before it was too late. It has been critical for the Palestinian case but it also has been catastrophic at the same time. History is filled with violent resistance against strong regimes; even the Zionists weren't immune to the allure of armed struggle for their nationalism, but now this is the Palestinian handicap. Living in the 21st Century in a time where people are filled with morals and a preset notion of how resistance is meant to work (ie non-violence always works and the stronger party will have to yield to pressure against people with no firepower), the Palestinians are faced with the dilemma of being condemned for fighting back with great force and rage against those who stole their land and kill their children or the possibility of being crushed when no one will speak up for them when they get bulldozed and fired at with tear gas canisters.
To finish, non-violent protest is in need of a strong backer from the outside. In the case of South Africa, the anti-Apartheid movement had major sympathies with so many in the West, and a group that was influential were American Jews in their opposition to Pretoria. The Palestinians are not only bereft of their support, they are not the obstacle but moreso the enemy as plenty of organisations either fund the IDF or send many donations to keep settlements running smoothly. Looking at other tensions in this world (Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Trasnitria, Cyprus, Basque), just like the Palestinians, none seem to have the sympathies of higher-ups in any Western government, and some even oppose them. It circles back to the second paragraph of mine that accented the media and its power to shape causes. It's up to the rest of us to decide how the Palestinians have been treated by the media. (We all should know the answer to that.) Additionally, while many Arab states and other Muslim states are sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, NONE have really had any interest in helping their cause seriously. (Rhetoric does not count.) Israel plays up the "encircled by Arabs" card but the Palestinians have had to rely upon themselves as it has been evident over and over again that the other Arab states are willing to dump their solidarity to achieve their own goals, effectively negating the numbers game that scared colonial Britain, France and the U.S. in decades gone by.
Israeli, Palestinian, American, European hearts and minds would change if non-violent approaches were adopted with violent approaches marginalized.
While the West Bank poll suggested that the majority of Palestinians regard violent approaches as fruitless, there is still a large minority that doesn't hold that view, and the reality in Gaza is that the militant/political wing of Hamas (Syria and very young Gazans), still dominates the greater numbers of social service/community wing.
The continued expansion and privileges granted to the settlements and settlers are the largest problem. The mutual animosity is great. So, in places like Hebron, the settlers are hot-headed and harrass AND the Palestinians are hot-headed and harrass.
It is both the settlements and the response to the settlements that are problematic, to the point of creating a great deal of doubt whether democratic institutions are possible in Palestine. (Last year Haaretz reported the hanging of an individual for selling land to a Jew, enforced by the Palestinian courts.)
In contrast, Israel does not have capital punishment even for murder.
Get it through your brainwashed heads, Jews kill Arabs for sport, at random, daily, like vermin. Then they lecture them on virtue and vice.
@Rowan
Nah, if they did, there would be a hell of a lot more dead Arabs. About 10,000 Israeli soldiers in Gaza for three weeks. With (even going by Hamas's inflated figures) fewer than 1 Palestinian killed per hundred Israeli soldiers per day.
I still haven't seen any of the anti-Semites on this site (including Adam and Phil) address this point.
In your twisted minds, what do you think was the reason for the low casualty count? Do you honestly think that less than 1 dead person in a city per hundred soldiers represents an attempt to kill as many people as possible?
@Phil
Non-violence has never worked for the Palestinians for the same reason that celibacy has never worked for Hugh Hefner. They've never tried it.
Non-violence means "stop using violence" it doesn't mean "take a break from violence once in a while".
Holding a few non-violent marches in between violent attacks doesn't mean you are practicing non-violence. Even O.J. Simpson doesn't kill people every day.
The problem is that the Palestinians in the non-violent marches are asking Israel to change policies that are in place because of continuing terrorism by the Palestinians.
Tell them to try coupling their non-violent protests with an actual cessation of attacks on Israelis. And no, "only" two terrorist attacks in a month isn't good enough.
@Thom
I understand your point. It's clear to me that Israel wasn't setting out to kill civilians, but rather punish them for their support of Hamas, crush Hamas, and force them to understand "that they are a defeated people."
One problem is that this sort of mission is unavoidably going to be ugly and lend itself to atrocities, much like our operations in Vietnam and Iraq.
Israel is not a great power and can't insulate itself from the effects of international anger at civilian death and abuse in the same way that China or the US can. In that sense, the Gaza operation was not a wise move.
What other imaginary things are clear to you? Hamas was firing rockets into Israel. The Israelis went in to attack Hamas. Hamas mostly hid. The ones that didn't hide mostly dressed as civilians. This served three purposes for them. 1) It made many Israelis hesitate before firing on the Hamas members in civilian clothing. 2) It meant nice propaganda when they got killed and counted among the "civilians" killed by Israel. 3) It increased the chances that an Israeli soldier who had been fired on by a Hamas "civilian" would take no chances and would shoot an actual Palestinian civilian. Hamas would rather have a dead propaganda piece/martyr than a live Palestinian civilian any day.
How to speak Palestinian: Hamas terrorist who puts on civilian clothes to fight in: civilian.
Thom, the ground operation was only a two week duration as the first week was a pounding by the air force. Last I checked (which was a while back) the majority of the dead in the quickest amount of time was during the first week when there were no ground forces, meaning that since there were no IDF soldier to have their own life harmed by a bomb it was open season.
Your reasoning is specious; there were even soldiers who were killed by their own men. They surely hesitated there. You speak of the double-purpose of guerrilla warfare (as if you were fighting another state with an army, what are you an idiot?) but Israel also has the conundrum of fighting a guerrilla battle with the eyes of the world looking at them. They did their best to keep reporters out but unluckily enough for them Al-Jazeera had footage. Both sides have their propaganda which proves so useful; Hamas with the slain that Israel does so easily, Israel has the southern towns which they leave unprotected and poorly financed. Believe me Israel has every purpose to magnify the conditions in Sderot and Ashkelon to keep their military machine so stuffed with money. You also missed the point that Israel did not want to get sucked in wholly in this Operation as they did not commit their troops deep into the dense cities such as Gaza City, they preferred to let the IAF do the job from the air. While it may seem to you that Israel did use "restraint" I see that this Operation was cut short and was only meant to be a quick tag in this constant tit-for-tat hustle and if this were to be a total escapade where Israel was serious in taking out its enemy, it would have been Lebanon '82 all over again.
It was a massacre. They wanted to send the message that the "boss went mad"; a bloodbath ensued. Why wasn't it worse? Because they were stopped short.
You might not want to dwell on it Thom, but you omit totally the numbers that were maimed and lost limbs and were burned and subjugated to horrific living for the rest of their lives. What to make of those who survived to tell their story, all 10,000 of them?
Is a soldier 100 % accurate in their mission to kill? Do they always hit the mark? Do they always see a target on a ground and pound mission like this or do civilians hide to try to not be seen?
Once again, specious reasoning.