Israel is still alive. Here's a wonderful piece by David Shulman of Ta'ayush in Haaretz, imploring a judge not to sentence old activist/plumber/immigrant Ezra Nawi to jail for attempting to prevent Bedouin house demolitions–actually shanty demolitions– in the occupied West Bank.
Jewish Voice for Peace is coordinating a campaign for Nawi here, led by Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Neve Gordon. There is a video of the incident for which Nawi was convicted of raising his hand to a soldier.
"All that will be left here is hatred," Nawi prophetically warns the soldiers. Shulman has a related warning:
There is something ludicrous, even shameful, about
sending bulldozers to tear down these Bedouin shanties, especially with
the settlers [colonists] of Carmel building modern villas right next door, on the
historical grazing grounds of Umm al-Kheir.
So when the bulldozers showed up, Ezra tried to stop them, in the
classic mode of non-violent resistance associated with Mahatma Gandhi
and Martin Luther King, Jr. He lay down in front of the bulldozers, and
the soldiers removed him. And when the bulldozers headed for one of the
houses, home to a large family, he rushed inside. Two policemen went in
after him. All this is documented on film and can be viewed at the Web
site www.supportezra.net. The policemen dragged him out. What is not
recorded in the video is what happened in the 20 seconds or so inside
the hut. The policemen claimed Nawi raised his hand against one of
them; Ezra denies this, and anyone who knows him believes him. He is a
man committed, in every fiber of his being, to non-violent protest
against the inequities of the occupation.Of course Ezra was arrested, and on the video you can see the
soldiers laughing at him, mocking him for his sympathy with the
victims…
You have here the whole misery and cruelty of the
occupation in a nutshell. Israel, inside the Green Line, is a modern,
more or less (less and less?) democratic state, with a functioning
legal system, freedom of the press, and all the other elements we
regard as minimal requirements for civilized existence. But inside the
occupied Palestinian territories is a shadow state where the only real
law is the law of the gun, where land is being taken away from its
rightful owners every day, and where the very few who stand up to
protest, without violence, like Ezra Nawi, are sent to prison.
