Why is it so important we do not forget the determination and sacrifice of non-violent Palestinian protesters? Take a moment to watch Israel's soldiers take over a property in Nabi Saleh (3:05) and proceed to pick out young men amongst the protesters and lead them off for arrest. How long will they be imprisoned? Interrogated? Separated from their families for this nonviolent action?
See all those people in the video documenting the protest and arrests? And here is Ma'an News's photo of photographer Moheeb Al-Barghouthi after the protest.
Ma'an News reports:
Palestinian photojournalist Moheeb Al-Barghouthi was beaten by Israeli soldiers on Friday while covering an anti-wall protest in Nabi Saleh near Ramallah.
Al-Barghouthi, who works for the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, suffered head injuries and sustained bruises across his body in the attack.
He said soldiers destroyed his camera and confiscated some of his equipment.
The journalist said the soldiers accused him of "misrepresenting" the image of Israeli forces. They left him bleeding and handcuffed on the ground in intense heat for several hours, he added.
From Joseph Dana: Israel’s Reaction to Palestinian Nonviolence Threatens Israeli Democracy
Israeli reactions to Palestinian nonviolent resistance have been swift and explicit. Underlying the Israeli response is the desire to maintain control of the carefully crafted narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The narrative of a human rights struggle overshadowing the current peace process is one that Israel has long feared. In fact, the mainstream understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been framed as both sides striving for peace, sometimes in good faith and sometimes not. However, Israel's recent reactions to Palestinian nonviolence, both locally and on an international scale, reflect the existence of Israel's internal problem of maintaining an ethnic democratic state battling increasingly visible expressions of nonviolent resistance to its colonial management of the territories.
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Israel has successfully deflected criticism of its actions by stressing its exceptional position in the Middle East as the only democracy. In a region of authoritarian dictatorships, the logic goes, Israel's maintenance of a liberal democracy has provided the rationale for giving the country wiggle room in its dealing with difficult security decisions, including the maintenance of a 44-year-old occupation of land secured in a pre-emptive war. Palestinian nonviolent resistance is cracking away at Israel's exceptional position in the Middle East by demonstrating the power which nonviolence has in situations of oppression. In the build up to the September vote on Palestinian statehood, Palestinians will continue to use nonviolence while the looming question hangs in the air - will Palestinians be able to sustain their nonviolence in the face of violent Israeli provocations?
An inexplicable dynamic to the official Israeli narrative….
When engaged in so called “debate” with the defenders of Israeli policies, it seems as if they have purged their minds of an important fact…….
People like myself are not debating whether or not the abuses occur, but, instead, are debating the legality and morality of the abuses. To read the comments of people like “eee”, ‘Hophni”, or especially this self proffessed former IDF soldier, “dimadok”, it is as if they do not understand that it is NOT that we BELIEVE abuses occur with frequency, but rather that we KNOW abuses occur with frequency. There is no gray area here. These crimes, abuses, and attrocities occur, with frequency. And these abuses have NOTHING TO DO WITH the actual defense or security of Israel. Their denials, justifications, rationales, and scripted talking points cannot and will not rob us of this knowledge. When they act as if we do not possess this ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE, they rob their entire narrative of any credibility it might otherwise enjoy.
But most of their effort goes into denial, obfuscation, whataboutery, diversion and faux innocence/shock. It is all a massive smokescreen to avoid the truth, and clog up boards like these with longwinded point-scoring, fake history and myth and endless tedious manufactured ‘debates’ which obscure the simple, undeniable abuses which are regularly documented. It is all part of the campaign to replace news and the truth about Palestine with a false narrative and the ridiculous substitution of Palestinian suffering with Israeli exceptionalism and victimhood. If they can’t do it this way, they start implementing laws against eyewitness reporting and peaceful protests and campaigns. They are complicit in their own misrepresentation.
there is something so stark about this video, and at the same time so surreal. the soldiers shooting most of the time, the boom boom boom. for what?
last night around midnight i was following joseph dana’s twotter feed as he was reporting from the village of walaje. his report is up now Breaking: Harsh Israeli response to protest in Palestinian village
I highly recommend people follow the work of Mazin Qumsiyeh. He is a former professor at Yale, Duke, and the University of Tennessee, and he currently works out of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem. He manages a listserv at link to lists.qumsiyeh.org.
He was the conceptual architect for the fly-in’s to Tel Aviv, and he has been targeted for arrest as he takes action at the al Walaja protests weekly. In short, he is a moral giant who needs our support.
thanks graber. here’s an interview of Qumsiyeh from last year featured on MW.
Poor Israel! Good thing the noble IDF is there to defend her from ruthless antisemitic journalists who ‘misrepresent’ Israel!
i recommend everyone read dana’s full article, i just clipped one segment as it resonated for me as i was working on this entry. but the focus of the article, how Israel’s Reaction to Palestinian Nonviolence Threatens Israeli Democracy, talks about the bds movement and israel’s economy.
There have been a few poster childs for non-violent protest that have gone un-used by the advocates for peace, both here, and in Israel. I have always lamented the almost non-existent press that Tristan Anderson recieved.
And Emily Henochowizc was a “marketing” opportunity of unprecedented utility. I have always felt that Emily’s story shouild have been exploited to its fullest potential.
Sound callous? Too bad.
Emily and her adventure must be seen as a squandered opportunity that could have busted the Israeli narrative wide open. An attractive young American Jew, an extremely talented art student, standing on the periphery of a peaceful protest, targeted and maimed by the IDF, costing her an eye. Has there ever been a more usable circumstance and human drama with which to increase the scope of knowledge of the American public? Much like the Israel’s have done with their hasbara and megaphone efforts, we MUST pull at the heartstrings of John Q Public, and Emily Henochowizc was made in heaven for this task. Who do YOU know that realizes that three american citizens, Tristan Anderson, Emily Henochowizc, and Christopher Whitman have been egregiously injured by the IDF while engaged in peaceful and legal activities? Isn’t it amazing that millions of people in the United States would recognize the name “Neda”, yet the number that would recognize the name Emily Henochowizc probably numbers in the low thousands?
One thing is for sure, the Palestinians, and the various Israeli peace organizations, have nothing that even comes close to the Israeli propaganda machine. They cannot afford to squander opportunites such as Emily presented. They are losing the battle for the loudest narrative. As long as this is true, our politicians will continue to prostitute themselves to the Israeli agenda, because the American public only recognizes, because it only hears, one side of the story.
Of course, the Zionists will do what they do and face little in the way of consequences from the international community and especially their lapdogs in the US Congress and the White House.
However, the real scandal — seldom commented on — is that the Palestinian Authority gives only lip-service to the protests while doing all it can to discourage mass participation and allowing the villagers to battle on in isolation. Along with this is the failure of the Palestinian political factions to do anything to mobilize their bases (to the extent they still exist) in support. It is not uncommon to observe larger participation of Israelis and international activist than by non-local Palestinians, though most of these villages are no more than half-an-hour from major Palestinian population centers. Really shameful.
this reminds me of a new wikileaks i read yesterday. i was very tempted to copy it which i should have, instead i just bookmarked it. and looky looky, today it’s scrubbed. link to wikileaks.org
anyway it was a complaint filed by the palestinian security forces that they had done everything the goi wanted after and before cast to stamp down the protestors and arrested a bunch of hamas guys at their request and all this other stuff on area b and c and now why oh why were the idf making their own (uninvited of course) arrests and barging into homes in area A and how demoralizing this was for the palestinians forces who had been following all their instructions from their masters. ok, they didn’t d]say masters. damn, i should have copied it.
Again, at the risk of Toivo accusing me of being “obsessed”, I’d like to comment further about Clemons, and his “turning”.
When the Emily Henochowizc travesty occurred, (simultaneously with the breaking story about what REALLY occurred to the flotilla and the young turkish American that was MURDERED by IDF storm troopers), Steve and I still had an amiable online friendship, although I was getting quite vocal on his blog about the tremendous ommissions he was exhibiting in his presentation of middle eastern events. He had, since the beginning of the Obama Administration, completely left Hillary Clinton out of his criticisms. Even when criticizing Washington’s policies regarding Isr/Pal, he completely avoided mention of Clinton’s role as SOS. Further, nary a peep while Israel was incinerating women and children in white phosphorous, and he kept the subsequent Goldstone flap at arm’s length, with not a mention.
Up to the Emily affair, Steve and I were extremely conscientious about responding to each other’s emails. When I became aware of Emily’s website, and was struck by its sheer artistry, and the humility and graciousness of this young woman, I emailed Steve with a short missive, asking if he might be able to help her with her attempt to market her artwork by giving her some exposure on his blog. That is the first email of mine that Steve chose to ignore, not offering a response. Pressing him on his blog, I attempted to get him to commit to a comment about Tristan or Emily, to no avail. It is then that I realized that other than the occassional tepid criticism of Obama’s policies towards the Isr/Pal issue, that he was completely ignoring the undermining actions and influences of the key players in the Democratic Party. Clinton, Reid, Pelosi, Harmon, etc, ALL exempt from his criticism, as if Obama could influence Israeli policy on his own, without the support of his own party.
It was downhill from there. When the Israeli family was murdered, supposedly by a Palestinian, Steve posted the Israeli narrative by rote. Yet, a week before the story broke in the media that it might have been a disgruntled domestic hiree that murdered the family, one of Steve’s regular commenters, a jew who had relatives in the same community of the murdered family commented that his family was claiming it was a domestic hiree, NOT a palestinian, that had committed the murders. The story actually “broke” on Steve’s website. Steve made no attempt to change his “palestinians did it for sure” narrative, and the poster, a regular, never appeared on the blog again. I have no idea if he got frustrated and left, or if he was blocked from posting further. I sincerely hope it was the former, but have come to believe it may have been the latter, considering the laughable excuses and rationales that Steve later offered for his closing down of the comment section at TWN. Soon after, once again, Steve presented a by-rote Israeli account of another alleged Palestinian attrocity. Not one time did I ever see him, in this time period, mention or chronicle any of the daily instances of Israeli attrocities and abuses committed against the Palestinian people.
The Atlantic is an apropos placement for Steve Clemons And I strongly disagree with Toivo that Steve would be an asset in an active role in United States’ foreign policy.
Steve has migrated towards the staus quo since I’ve followed his career and blog postings. And he has finally arrived. From a promising political activist/insider to the editor of an establishment rag, he climbed the ladder to mainstream mediocrity.
Too bad, I kinda liked the guy. He coulda made positive contributions.
POA
I agree with you that mainstream media should have reported the plight of Emily Henchowitz, Tristan Anderson etc etc
I will note one positive thing Steve Clemon has done of late is his criticism of the Knesset’s anti-boycott law:
link to thewashingtonnote.com
wow, a whole culture descending into simple, brutish thuggery … you’d think israel was composed solely of soccer hooligans … i guess when your “state” was founded by mafias and terrorists and you had to ethnically-cleanse over 700,000 people off their land and out of their homes and then impose a racist, apartheid state that regularly tortures and murders children that’s what happens
FROM MA’AN: “…Israel’s military responded in a statement that ‘the Palestinian in question was detained for violating a closed military area order. The man was questioned and released an hour later’.”
MY SNARK: Sounds kosher to me!
Watch the video at 1:42
What an amazing throw!
I watched all 9:46 of the Nabi Saleh video clip and am left wondering, what exactly is that video supposed to illustrate? It shows a contingent of soldiers arresting a couple of people — why is certainly not clear to me, but I can therefore neither “approve” or “disapprove”, except that I don;t like occupations but that doesn’t get me very far. We have a sort of “occupation” here in the UK (in Northern Ireland) but on that basis alone i cannot draw a conclusion about what any group of soldiers is doing on any particular day. Why are we shown this video? I didn’t see any particular cruelty or brutality……no-one likes to see soldiers on the streets but apart from that, and the over-arching context of a long bitter conflict??
maybe it’s because i have seen a lot of soldiers on the streets in a lot of places…..but there wasn;t anything i saw in this particular clip which outraged me. Does that make me a supporter of continuing the occupation ? of course not. But…….what’s the point??!!
my point zhaomafan, was there was no point to the soldiers presences. scores of palestinians languish in israeli jails for years over incidence like you’ve witnessed here. over the years, thousands. i recommend you read the excellent A representation of Israeli soldiers.