Bruce Wolman writes:
What if Palestinians turned to non-violent protest and none of the media showed up to cover their actions?
President Obama in his Cairo speech insisted the "Palestinians must abandon violence." He exhorted them to imitate the methods of the Civil Rights movement in the United States:
"Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding."
Obama went further and stated, "This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia, to Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: violence is a dead end."
But would the freedom rides and marches, lunch counter sit-ins and bus boycotts have succeeded if the media had not been on the story? Had the New York Times and other papers not sent reporters to witness the protests, or had the television networks not sent crews to film the events, had Americans heard only the explanations of the George Wallaces and the Bull Connors juxtaposed with the testimony of the protesters, would the non-violent approach of Martin Luther King Jr. had succeeded?
In case President Obama is unaware, Palestinians have been non-violently protesting the occupation for some time. Tomorrow is Friday, and most likely Palestinians, left-wing Israelis and international peace activists will meet up in Niilin (also transliterated to Naalin and Nil'in) to protest the Israeli security wall running through the village, as they already have for many weekends.
On the previous Friday's demonstration, the IDF wounded Akal Sarur and four others. Sarur later died in the hospital. Although the IDF would not confirm it, media reports stated that border police fired on Sarur using a "low-velocity gun specially designed to disperse riots."
According to the IDF, the protest "turned into a violent riot shortly after it began." Protesters hurled rocks at the troops and tried to damage the fence. Moreover, the IDF claims that several soldiers were attacked by a group of men, some of them masked. The soldiers then used "established crowd control measures," which contributed to Sarur's death.
Later, the IDF added that the victim Sarur had been throwing rocks at the soldiers, and was a known member of Hamas .
According to Jonathan Pollak, of Anarchists Against the Wall,
"clashes between the IDF, residents of Nil'in and activists began earlier in the day when the IDF tried to occupy a home in the village...." The IDF used "sniper fire against the demonstrators who headed to the "wall" after praying at the mosque. Sarur was killed by sniper fire as he tried to evacuate one of the wounded demonstrators. He was not throwing stones at the time he was shot. It was possible he had thrown stones earlier."
Pollack went on to ask, "Even if he was throwing stones, since when do people who throw stones get the death penalty? We are talking about a sniper who was 40 meters away barricaded behind a wall and standing there very coolly, and aiming and taking a shot."
Earlier this year in mid-March, Tristan Anderson, an American activist from Oakland, California, was severely injured when hit by a tear-gas cannister during one of the protests in Niilin. The IDF claimed there was 400 violent demonstrators throwing rock at the soldiers that day. A Swedish school teacher, Ulrike Anderson, said that the crowd had mostly disappeared at the time Tristan Anderson was hit. Whose version is accurate?
Will Isabel Kershner or Ethan Bronner of the New York Times, or any of their stringers be at Niilin tomorrow? Will Howard Schneider of the Washington Post be there? Will Reuters, the BBC, CNN or NBC send someone out? It's not as if there have been no previous signs something newsworthy might happen. Five people have already died this year in Niilin, besides the injured American, Tristan Anderson.
If another protester is injured or killed tomorrow, will we once again have to read that the IDF claims this, while the activists claim that? What did the Mississippi police claim after Freedom Riders were harassed and killed in the old south? Did anyone care?
Tomorrow brings another potential clash in the Holy Land. Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem plan to protest for a second weekend "against the opening of a municipal parking lot at city hall - free of charge and staffed by a non-Jew - on Shabbat."
"Last Saturday, thousands of ultra-Orthodox men clashed with police, first near the Kikar Safra parking lot, and then at the entrance to the Mea She'arim neighborhood, throwing bottles, rocks and dirty diapers, and lightly wounding six officers."
Despite the fact that rocks were thrown and police were injured, none of the crowd control techniques regularly used by the Police and IDF in Niilin were applied to the Haredim Jews. And it's not because these Ultra-Orthodox are Zionists, they are not. They are simply Jewish.
Will any of the Western media be on hand to compare what happens during the day at Niilin with what occurs at night in Jerusalem?
If Obama wants the Palestinians to engage in non-violent protest, and in fact they already are doing just that, then he needs to urge the "free Western media" to be brave and cover the protests as if it was Birmingham and Mississippi in the Fifties and Sixties. There may even be a Pulitzer Prize to be won.
Bronner spent a week in Gaza, two months before Phil.
America always has had trouble reconciling ancient and institutionalized bigotries with its Christian humanist and deist-inspired Constitutional doctrine. Over time, the Founding doctrine of “all men are created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” has always ruled out. Unfortunately for the Palestinians, Israel’s founders were and are neither libertarian, nor constitutionally-minded. And neither is American policy anymore. This has not bode well for the Palestinians and any would-be appeal to the rule of law via a civil rights movement.
RE: "Will Isabel Kershner or Ethan Bronner of the New York Times, or any of their stringers be at Niilin tomorrow? Will Howard Schneider of the Washington Post be there? Will Reuters, the BBC, CNN or NBC send someone out?" MY COMMENT: "Forget it Jake. It's Chinatown." PS. Pardon Roman Polanski!
Great point, Bruce!
America fought a bloody Civil War, S African militants used violence, both preconditions to the M L King era, and the unraveling of the apartheid regime in S Africa. Blood was shed. This takes nothing away from the fact if the MSM was not involved, the status quo in both cases would have continued. So far, post Cairo speech, I don't see the MSM TV news shows, where most Americans get their news, going into any adversarial detail regarding the I-P situation's history or the trajectory of the facts on the ground.
Nice article, Bruce and point well taken. I see that the Mayor of Jerusalem has folded according to the a report in Ha'aretz. The parking lot will not open as had been planned. Ira
Video it, wide angle, and show the unedited video. I'm sure there must be videos of the other events. Where are they?
Palestinians have turned to non violence several times. One of the more important non violent Palestinian leaders was taken out by the Israeli government 15 or so years ago. Will get the name from my friends Art and Peggy Gish Who have been to Israel many times…living with the Palestinians The Israeli government has done everything they can to undermine a non violent Palestinian movement
Bruce, Your headline is much too kind to the Mainstream Media. They don't just fail to cover the civil disobedience of the Palestinians; they lie about it, spin it, package it, distort it, bend it, and mutate it, until it becomes something that resembles the terrorism that they would like to smear onto every Palestinian, every Arab, every Muslim. PM
Mubarak Awad, he now lives in Maryland. He was deported during the First Intifada, wasn't allowed to go back until Oslo, and even then just for visits on a tourist visa.
Pres. Obama's words are simplistic. I assume that his words were chosen to speak to multiple audiences, and not strictly for veracity. African slaves in America were freed at bayonet point during the Civil War. Between 618,000 and 700,000 Americans died, more than have died in all other American wars from the Revolution to Iraq. The civil rights movement succeeded in moving towards equality with non-violence because the old legal and social framework of slavery had been destroyed and replaced by a much weaker edifice of legal artifice (poll taxes, etc) , social discrimination, and extra-judicial murder. There was already in place a framework of law and social perception conducive to peaceful struggle and a 'silent majority' who could be influenced by nobility, honor, and courage after they were made aware of the struggle. How important was the press in reaching these people? I suspect that it was critical. The Palestinian struggle for freedom, which is now a vital security interest of the Unites States, faces a hostile environment somewhere between the extremes of civil war and civil rights movement. However, we are lying to ourselves if we think that the path to equal rights will be bloodless. The question is how to minimize the bloodshed, not how to prolong fantasies of simple solutions like 'the Palestinians just need to quit throwing rocks' that allow us to pretend that we won't have to get our own hands dirty. I think adequate coverage by the international media is a fundamental prerequisite to the success of a non-violent strategy, but it won't magically make the struggle bloodless. Not all of the colonists will go without a fight, and their bitterenders won't care how many cameras are watching. If we lose sight of that ugly reality we will only ensure that the funeral pyres will burn even higher 'ere the work is done. Israelis have a blessing in having Pres. Obama involved in the process. It is staggeringly unlikely that they will have another mediator as deft as he, before it is too late to salvage a Jewish and democratic Israeli state from the occupation.
Bruce, good article, but an important caveat: the MSM, by and large, did NOT cover the civil rights movement or the anti-apartheid movement until it had ALREADY gained a lot of momentum, support, and press. I'm in the midst of reading Taylor Branch's excellent history of the U.S. in the Civil Rights era. One trend in his books that is really fascinating to me is the discussion of the Civil Rights movement's struggle to get any sort of "crossover," mainstream media coverage. Even events and campaigns that we've come to think of, in hindsight, as central to the victory of the movement, were either ignored or only episodically covered by the mainstream white media–things like the Montgomery bus boycott, the Birmingham campaign, etc. All of which is to say that the need for sustained, nonviolent direct action in all of its forms–marches, boycotts, divestment, "freedom rides" [I'm thinking of the Free Gaza movement here] is stronger now than ever. The MSM is starting to pick this stuff up–it takes decades, but it always has.
I meant to say "momentum, support, and sympathetic press"–i.e. local papers, African American news sources, etc.