I haven’t gotten into the debate over non-violence on this site for a few reasons, mainly because other articulate voices are engaged, though I tend to be on the non-violent side, because this moment is just too important in reaching out to Americans who are finally opening their eyes but are turned off by the cycle of violence. And when people say, But look, you’re a privileged American, I say, You’re right, and we want privileged Americans engaged.
That said, I’ve been reading I.F. Stone from the ’50s and it interests me that when it came to the Jim Crow South–a situation somewhat similar in the American experience to what the West Bank represents today (let alone Gaza)– he was for the use of force to bring about integration. His writings leave me no doubt that he would have called for state force to evict the settlers from the West Bank, long ago, to save Israeli society. And now?
Let’s go to the videotape.
I’m reading Stone’s book The Haunted Fifties. Two columns are of interest. Back in ’56, white mobs for a time prevented the integration of schools in Alabama and Kentucky. In both cases, Stone called for the state to crush the mob.
In the University of Alabama case, Stone even likened blacks to Arabs. He viewed the white mob as similar to French hoodlums in then-colonial Algeria, who in 1956 kept a liberal French minister from assuming power and granting more freedom to the Arab elite.
That French mob cut the ground from under the French-educated Arabs… That Tuscaloosa mob, and the cowardly way the University and Governor Folsom gave in to it, is doing the same to the moderate elements in our Negro community. The longer that responsible white leadership delays the unpopular step of enforcing educational integration which is now law, the harder it will become, the stronger the mob will grow. This lawlessness is a monster best killed in its cradle.
Later on in September 1956, in the case of an elementary school in Clay, Kentucky, Stone went even further in his denunciation of racism and its effects (and pushed for Adlai Stevenson over Eisenhower):
There will be no orderly determination without some show of force. A false dichotomy has been set up about force and persuasion. Both are needed… mobs can never be merely persuaded. They will overwhelm the good people of the community unless dealt with firmly. What progress has been made in Kentucky and Tennessee was made because Governors Chandler and Clement to their credit called out the militia to show that they meant business…
Unless some firm moves toward enforcing compliance are soon made from Washington, the lines may harden for a long, long fight in which the South, its destiny and its good people, will more and more come under the control of the worst elements and poison the political life of the whole country. Behind the school struggle is the shadow of a conflict as grave as slavery created. The South must become either truly democratic or the base of a new racist and Fascist movement which could threaten the whole country and its institutions. On this, more than any other issue, fresh leadership in the White House is urgent.
Wow, what a scenario Stone foresaw! Some may call it paranoid, but I call it wisdom when applied to Israel. The thrust of Stone’s thoughts must be clear even to liberal Zionists. A racist movement representing the worst of Israel (the settlers) has been allowed to grow. Their mob rule of an entire region should have been prevented by force. It has not, and it has poisoned the whole society and truly threatened all Israeli institutions.
Stone clearly would have supported the use of force against the settlers by the state. Would he condone the murder of settlers? I am sure he would not. But as he indicates in the southern situation, the problem has so degenerated in the Jim Crow West Bank– lack of freedom for millions of Palestinians for decades now, as the advanced world is moving toward multicultural democracy– that we have a political problem as bad as slavery in the U.S. I am not even talking about Gaza; and again leading U.S. institutions are corrupted by it.
I pray for a bloodless transition to democracy. But reading Stone, it’s hard to imagine such a transition without a strong militia making its appearance.
P.S. I’m stuck on Stone in the ’50. In Prophets Outcast, a fine collection of Jewish non-Zionist thought, edited by Adam Shatz of the LRB, Stone in the 60s urges his beloved Israel to climb the "steep and arid mountains of prejudice" against Arabs. I’ll get to that later….
