This week, Israeli Knesset passed the anti-boycott bill, which outlaws the non-violent action of economic, academic and cultural boycott. Last week, it attacked another non-violent action, the fly-in campaign, and week before that, it was the flotilla. Every Friday, it oppresses non-violent demonstration in Bil’in, Nabi Saleh and other Palestinian villages.
Let’s look at the fly-in campaign: To the simple question, why Israel behaved so hysterically towards the arrival of international and Palestinian activists through Ben Gurion airport, there is a simple answer: Israel can’t cope with non-violent Palestinian activism.
Israel is a state which has adopted the language of force throughout its existence, and does not know another language. That is why it seems unready whenever it encounters a creative non-violent activity. As a state that exploited the terms "security threat" and "terrorism" to the maximum, Israel is panicked every time she can’t put these labels on acts that oppose her policy. Lately, it looks like the world is not buying this anymore.
That’s why Israel has invested so many diplomatic efforts, used her common interests with Greece, most probably through blackmail to stop the flotilla to Gaza. Israel was so afraid of the flotilla, a non-violent activity, because if the flotilla arrives, Israel will not be able to stop it without using force, which damages its reputation in the world. That's why Israel was terrified of the activists’ arrival by air. These activists did not come with weapons but with a foreign passport, and asked to enter Israel like any other tourist; the only difference is that they wanted to make a political statement which frightened Israel.
The Palestinian struggle adapted in recent years strategies of nonviolent struggle. This struggle includes a variety of non-violent actions, demonstrations; marches of return to the border, boycott and sailing or flying-in flotillas.
The weekly demonstrations in Bil'in, Ni’lin, Nabi Saleh and other villages in West Bank are part of this non-violent struggle. Israel failed in coping with them; it suppresses them with great violence, which led to many Palestinians killed, and Israelis and internationals injured. Israel prosecutes activists, executes arbitrary arrests and puts them on trial before military courts. Force was the Israeli way to cope with the marches of return on Nakba and Naksa days, shooting live ammunition and killing unarmed protesters.
Similarly, the hysteria of Israel in response of the PLO’s possible bid to the UN shows the same reaction. Every legitimate non-violent action, which Israel is not able to deal with, generates hysteria and panic.
Not only has Israel stuck in the conception of power, but she also sticks its citizens within the same concept. She runs a production machine of constant fear: once by a spin that flotilla ships were loaded with chemical weapons, or by spreading news that violence in the Palestinian territories has risen, or by various military maneuvers in cases of war or a popular uprising, or by stating that September will bring wave of violence by Palestinians.
Even if Israel managed to stop the flotilla, and prevented the entry of activists through its airport, even if it can damage UN resolution in September, It can’t block the influence these activities have on international awareness and moral support to the Palestinian people, and also the possibilities they create for more and more actions. There's nothing that Israel can do to thwart Palestinian popular non-violent struggle.
The main conclusion is that Israel is banging its head against the wall, and refuses to understand the fact that in this battle, it will lose.
Israel refuses to recognize the fact that there is no occupation that lasts forever, memory does not erase, generations do not forget. Israel refuses to accept that during 63 years of oppression, a new generation arises, who has learned from its parents and grandparents, and inherited their determination to want a free future for their children. The difference is that the new generation is creative, not traditional. Israel, which is used to speak only the language of force, can’t handle the style of activism of this generation.
Abir Kopty is a Palestinian political activist and media analyst. She is a former city council member in Nazareth and former spokeswoman for Mossawa, the Advocacy Center for Palestinian-Arab Citizens in Israel. You can follow her work on her website and on Twitter at @abirkopty.
It is far worse than Israel being overwhelmed by this new wave of non violent activism. Israel is being destroyed from within by the settlers. the democratic institutions (ok, they were for Jews only, but still..) built over 63 mean nothing to them. YESHA is the political equivalent of Cordioceps.
link to guardian.co.uk
” The oldest evidence of a fungus that turns ants into zombies and makes them stagger to their death has been uncovered by scientists. The finding shows that parasitic fungi evolved the ability to control the creatures they infect in the distant past, even before the rise of the Himalayas. The fungus, which is alive and well in forests today, latches on to carpenter ants as they cross the forest floor before returning to their nests high in the canopy. The fungus grows inside the ants and releases chemicals that affect their behaviour. Some ants leave the colony and wander off to find fresh leaves on their own, while others fall from their tree-top havens on to leaves nearer the ground. The final stage of the parasitic death sentence is the most macabre. In their last hours, infected ants move towards the underside of the leaf they are on and lock their mandibles in a “death grip” around the central vein, immobilising themselves and locking the fungus in position.”
“…Israel has invested so many diplomatic efforts, used her common interests with Greece….”.
Israel expands its borders into Europe:
link to english.aljazeera.net
But the Apartheid cat is out of the hasbara bag – israel outsourcing its security details to cover it’s criminal arse isn’t gonna work in the long run – thanks be to the internet that now informs the discerning global citizenry, and thanks especially to all the committed independent bloggers out there for disseminating truths and facts of history to counteract the hasbara bacteria that infects many world governments.
The real damage for Israel is losing the confidence of the ordinary schmucks in the West who believe in things like justice and especially democracy. Lieberman doesn’t understand that democracy trumps hasbara every time.
Israel is lost.
look at this for disjointed hasbara. They even bring in the gay community . FFS .
link to irishtimes.com
Sir, – Agreements should be respected. Yet in September, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is expected to violate its agreements with Israel and the entire framework for Mideast peace by seeking premature recognition of a Palestinian state in the UN (“Palestinians seek Irish support for UN vote”, Mary FitzGerald, World News, July 12th).
Israel remains dedicated to direct negotiations as the only method of resolving the conflict. The Palestinian leadership has embarked on the path of unilateral action that harms true peace, challenging the basic principles of Mideast peacemaking. It undermines all internationally accepted frameworks for peace, including UN SC Resolutions 242, 338, 1850 and the Peace Roadmap, that call for an agreed resolution of the conflict and reject unilateral actions.
The interim agreement from 1995, expressly prohibiting unilateral action by either side, would be breached. This agreement makes no reference directly to the issue of settlements, stipulating final status issues should be discussed directly. So it is accepted that Israel is not in breach of this agreement.
Premature recognition would ignore Israel’s legitimate concerns, especially regarding security issues. It would also allow the Palestinians to continue to avoid the important mutual recognition of Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people, side by side with a Palestinian state.
Moreover, the Palestinian Authority currently fails to meet the established legal tests for statehood by not having effective control over the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, which is still run by a dark regime which opposes gay and women’s rights. Recognition at this time would constitute recognition of a terrorist entity that seeks Israel’s destruction.
On the other hand, Israel has a long proven track record of making concessions for peace. It had abandoned Sinai for peace with Egypt and left South Lebanon.
Only through direct negotiations can a lasting peace agreement be reached. – Yours, etc,
RUTH ZAKH,
Israeli Deputy Ambassador,
Embassy of Israel,
Pembroke Road,
Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.
Israel is a state which has adopted the language of force throughout its existence, and does not know another language.
Yes, we do know another language quite well actually. We know the language of passivity for centuries, where we just wanted to live and let live and we were butchered regardless. We know very well the intentions for us from the people that surround us and those that use the Palestinian issue for their own purposes. We know very well what the obsessive focus on Israel is about and it has NOTHING to do with the Palestinians. It took us 2000 years to figure out that if you are not ready to use force, you will be decimated. Yes, I know that in your world here in Mondoweiss, if we Jews just behaved the way had in the past, all would be wonderful in the world. Bitter experience states otherwise.
It is fine if you want to live in a militarized shtetl run on fear and paranoia but do you need to sell
goods and lots of them to to the people outside your shtetl if you want that GDP per head you all like.
So you had better listen up
Everytime I hear that kind of talk, I think of how Palestine would have been invaded during WWII if the British didn’t halt the advance at El Alamein. It is yet to be proven that a Jewish army will rescue Jews from persecution; right now all it does is enforce segregation.
It is sad. The brainwashed culture of victimology, that is.
It took us 2000 years to figure out that if you are not ready to use force, you will be decimated.
Who is “us?” As a religion, Judaism is the only one that has survived so long. Jews are many people from all over the globe. And over the millennia, a very successful region of many peoples. (There is no such nonsense as a “Jewish race.” ) And in the arch of time, have had as much suffering and persecution as many, less than some, and more success than most. It is a successful religion uniting many.
So what are you talking about?
Playing a victim is weak; and the bully is also weak, the games of losers.
The Zionist version of Jewish history is so wrong. Projecting the experience of 12 years in Germany onto 2 millennia everywhere.
anyone who follows this site knows more about Jewish history than the average Israeli high schooler.
What is most striking is the Masada complex- they did it before and they are on the way to doing it again.
They really should have developed the taqiyya, you know.
“We know the language of passivity for centuries, where we just wanted to live and let live and we were butchered regardless. ”
Now why would people who just wanted to live and let live be butchered?
“It took us 2000 years to figure out that if you are not ready to use force, you will be decimated.”
Slow learners. How long will it take to learn how to get along with the neighbours?
You are demented LLI.
All Israel’s problems stem from greed, malice, bitterness and revenge.
You can wallow all you like in your muddy pig-pen of adolescent victimhood and pretend that the 1948 ethnic cleansing of 80% of Palestinians, massacres of hundreds, demolition of 500 villages, stealing of the majority of Palestinian’s land and looting of their property, 44 years of brutal military occupation and a second major round of ethnic cleansing in 1967, hundreds of checkpoints, apartheid roads, extra-judicial assassinations by the hundreds, torture and imprisonment without charge or trial, killing of Palestinian civilians by the thousands, thieving of Palestine’s water resources, uprooting of more than a million olive trees, half a million illegal Israeli settlers, deliberate strangling of the economy in both the West Bank and Gaza, the siege of Gaza, wanton destruction of 25,000 Palestinian homes and so on – you can pretend that all of that never occurred and the international campaign to secure fundamental human rights for Palestinians is really secretly about hating jews, but NOBODY, not even you, really believes it.
Grow up.
“if we Jews”
Oh, stuff it, clown. Do you own the Jews?
“Bitter experience states otherwise.”
Things are tough all over, pal.
Israel copes with non-violent Palestinian activists the same as it copes with those willing to use violence, by shooting them. To Israel, a Palestinian is a Palestinian is a Palestinian.
We are all Palestinians now.
RE: “Not only has Israel stuck in the conception of power, but she also sticks its citizens within the same concept. She runs a production machine of constant fear…” ~ Abir Kopty
AND THIS IS WHAT YOU GET AS AN INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCE:
Abir, wonderful to see your analysis here. MondoWeiss could use some more voices from Hadash/al-Jabha activists. Will be interesting to see if you get accused of Zionism on that account….
i second that, great to see you here abir. i’m now following you on twitter.
Gee, the “Newclench” couldn’t be the same old “Clenchner”, could it?