The Nation has distinguished itself by insisting on running the voices of Jews and Palestinians on the conflict. Here is a great piece by Huwaida Arraf on the blocked passage of the "Spirit of Humanity" boat to Gaza last month. She talks about her husband, Adam Shapiro, and the issue of non-violence:
Adam did not fight
back. He was a multi-sport athlete in high school, threw out Manny
Ramirez stealing second and is one of those rare individuals who bring a
football player's intensity to peace work. But like the rest of us, Adam
insists on using nonviolent means to resist Israel's military
occupation. And though in his widely hailed Cairo speech President Obama
made an implicit call for nonviolence as the means to challenge the
Israeli occupation, the Obama administration made no public statement on
our behalf — nor did it do so three months ago, when my dear friend
Bassem Abu Rahme was killed while nonviolently protesting Israeli
expansionism in the West Bank that threatens to destroy his village of
Bil'in.
Perhaps we were politically inept. Had we sailed toward Iran to offer
assistance to civilian protesters there, we would have been a cause
celebre if the Iranian government had arrested us. Iran, however, for
all its troubles, is not now under foreign occupation as Palestine is.
Yet as I watched the demonstrations in Iran, I could not miss the
similarities to Palestine's nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation.
I cannot count the times I have marched peacefully, waving a flag and
demanding freedom for my people — with only my voice and my presence as
my weapons. And sadly, the number of friends I have lost — killed by
Israeli forces as, like Neda Agha-Soltan in Iran, they nonviolently
demonstrated for freedom — is becoming too great a pain in my heart.
My colleagues and I invested time and energy in this difficult journey
and put our lives at risk because for too long the international
community has been complicit in Israel's crimes against the Palestinian
people.
If you look at the smuggled video of the boat's harassment at night, you see a score of brave people calmly awaiting their fate. Would you be there? Would I? I don't know. To go on the Spirit of Humanity was to risk your life, as Arraf says.
This touches on something that Norman Finkelstein said on Monday night at the Brecht Forum re non-violence. I know that Finkelstein is getting criticized in the pro-Palestinian community for prescribing non-violence for others when he lives in Brooklyn (as Finkelstein himself points out, in his Gandhi lecture of last year). But Finkelstein himself intends to take part in a nonviolent march inside Gaza later this year, at some risk; and it must be said that some westerners have been willing to die in order to advance this cause. When we were in Gaza, we met the ISM volunteers, including the great Eva Bartlett, who chronicled the slaughter earlier this year as a citizen-journalist; and a Greek volunteer spoke proudly of ISM's "martyrs," including Tom Hurndall and Rachel Corrie.
On Monday night Finkelstein said that non-violence was effective when popular sympathy is on your side. So while there are people who are willing to die to block an abortion clinic, or to keep one open, he said, that willingness won't bring others to the cause. Others might think it's sad you died, but they're not going to change their minds on that basis.
"You can only move public opinion to act if they agree on the legitimacy of your goal… And enlightened public opinion is on the side of the Palestinians. It is not any longer on the side of Israel."
It was the most optimistic Finkelstein has been about this struggle; and resonates with the images of those brave friends of Palestine facing guns to sail to Gaza.
Sadly, that binary "on Israel's side" OR "on the Palestinians side" conflicts the with THINKING and basis of non-violent civil disobedience. That is the spiritual roots of the movement (NOT the tactical), informing a spirit of "love thy enemy as thyself" (as the radical speculative test of the Jewish maxim "Love thy neighbor as thyself". If you really love thy neighbor as thyself, then you love those that are difficult to love, not just the easy ones). Finkelstein does not express that "love of thy neighbor" in his presentation. He chooses the either/or partisan approach. Non-violence is a tactic for him, a skillful one. Maybe he loves the Israeli generals of the IDF, and the neo-orthodox settlers, without condoning their action in any way. If Obama keeps his backbone in this issue, then the "which side are you on" approach will DETER progress for Palestinian self-governance, and Palestinian civil rights, and Palestinian community improvement. Thats HOW they got to where they are, in spite of the unwillingness to criticize a resistence movement. (Over a 30 year period, unwillingness to criticize IS an enabling of the movement, a BETRAYAL to civil liberalism.) That is one of the plausible severe criticisms of your current response to your observations, that you have betrayed your parents' and your society's LIBERALISM (not their Zionism). And, at a time, with a skillful liberal champion, qualitative change is actually possible.
What gobbledygook.
But true.
As usual Witty's remarks ignore totally who has had the power for decades, scores of years–He's like a late 18th Century US colonial loyalists who speaks as if the colonials had the same power as the host Britain ruling the waves. IF there was a close balance of power his humane and superficially rational rhetoric would be persuasive to moral and reasonable people. Love thy neighbor as thyself? Witty would love Hitler if he thought it would maintain "Jewish continuity." He's a hard core Zionist. Nothing American about Witty at all.
Yes. True gobbledygook.
They both have power in the response->response->response cycle. To ignore that is to fundamentally distort. And, the remedy for the injustices is peace. Agitation agitates, NOT settles.
You don't practice what you preach. Someone interested in peaceful reconciliation would fully acknowledge the criticisms of Israel as valid and do so in a way that was obviously sincere, and then gently point out whatever flaws exist in the pro-Palestinian position taken by people here. What you do is jump into every post about Israel's crimes and try to change the subject, because this is really about your own prejudices, not about justice. That's why you are happy to talk about Palestinian terrorism. If you had any sense you'd see this yourself–that your approach to the issue actually makes "love thy neighbor" seem like the self-serving rhetoric of a dishonest partisan. And your writing style is abominable. In your case I think it's for the reasons Orwell outlined when he condemned most political speech–your actual position is biased, so you avoid straightforward speech, you dodge issues, and you talk as though you are Gandhi amidst a bunch of people who just aren't up to your spiritual level. "Agitation agitates, NOT settles." Witty is always writing these Jack Handy-like comments, complete with CAPITAL letters to emphasize his PROFOUND THOUGHTS, for the STUPID people who might OTHERWISE miss his insights.
Actually, if you've read my posts consistently, you'd note that I consider many of the underlying theses of dissent as valid, and articulate them clearly and publicly. I regard the response of angry and propagandistic radical dissent though as an invalid and amateurish distortion. Borne of prejudice and failure to understand and respect the reasoning of Israeli and Israeis, even as you differ.
"And your writing style is abominable. In your case I think it's for the reasons Orwell outlined when he condemned most political speech–your actual position is biased, so you avoid straightforward speech, you dodge issues, and you talk as though you are Gandhi amidst a bunch of people who just aren't up to your spiritual level. "Agitation agitates, NOT settles." Witty is always writing these Jack Handy-like comments, complete with CAPITAL letters to emphasize his PROFOUND THOUGHTS, for the STUPID people who might OTHERWISE miss his insights." One more post like that, Donald, and I'll have to retire. Funny, perceptive, accurate. Witty can't say things in s straightforward way because in any straightforward, honest recounting of basic facts, the Israelis come off as murderous thugs. Witty is a kind of bipedal smoke bomb. (At least i think he's bipedal.)
'and resonates with the images of those brave friends of Palestine facing guns to sail to Gaza.' It's not the first time Ms Arraf has faced Israeli guns to protect Palestinians: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2... The fact that no-one has ever heard of this heroic woman is telling on it's own – bravery like hers in a Jew would have had her name embedded in our consciousness. I see people are still grappling with Richard Witty's careful casuistry. Another few years Richard and they'll give you a gold watch. A thousand Richard Wittys are not worth Huwaida Arraf's fingernail. Sorry, channelling rabbis again.
Glen I absolutely agree. What a national treasure and inspiration Huwaida Araff is to all people of conscience. And how truly shameful it is that no mainstream source has shown the little bit of courage and integrity required to present a profile of this remarkable woman. NY Times Magazine, that means YOU.
Although "love thy neighbor" has its origins in the Torah, we know that the Talmud explicitly states that for a Jew, his neighbor is another Jew. We also know that religious Jews look to the Talmud, not the Torah, for guidance in their day-to-day lives. So your statement is misleading in that it infers that Judaism, especially of the Orthodox flavor, is a universal religion. Of the 3 great religions, the first to espouse the universal brotherhood of man was the one founded by Jesus, but it was the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:21) who forced the issue. If you look to the teachings of Jesus for guidance, then you have to acknowledge that although he advocated non-violence and love, Jesus did not wish for his followers to be sitting on the fence in the midst of injustice.
You ignore that Public Opinion has been indoctrinated by the hasbara side for decades. You treat the slow trend towards looking at both sides as if has not been for way too long a case of the Israeli Goliath fighting the tiny Palestinian David. Everything you say assumes the arena has been between two equal forces, as if Phil's POV has been the media standard and not the reverse. The White Rose didn't start by calling for equal time on Goebbels's radio station. Now, why was that?