Peter Hart, Activism Director for FAIR, writes in the Huffington Post:
For years prominent corporate media pundits have told us that the world -- and the media -- would embrace a dramatic, non-violent Palestinian resistance movement. If only such a movement -- perhaps led by a Gandhi-like figure -- were to finally emerge, we are told, the media coverage will come, and sympathy from across the world will strengthen support for the Palestinian cause.
This is nonsense -- there has been non-violent Palestinian resistance for years. But that fact hasn't stopped pundits like Time's Joe Klein, as recently as last year, from wondering why Palestinians haven't found their Gandhi. Or New York Times columnist Tom Friedman from writing a column (5/24/11) arguing that if Palestinians would simply adopt peaceful resistance, "it would become a global news event. Every network in the world would be there."
Or consider New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, writing (7/10/10) under the headline "Waiting for Gandhi," that if Palestinians would finally pursue nonviolent resistance, "Those images would be on televisions around the world."
"So far there is no Palestinian version of Martin Luther King Jr.," Kristof wrote -- though he singled out one possible candidate, activist Ayed Morrar, who "spent six years in Israeli prisons but seems devoid of bitterness."
Perhaps that is the standard -- jailed by the Israelis, but not bitter.
But what about someone, right now, resisting Israeli detention practices? Someone whose hunger strike is attracting attention around the world? That is Khader Adnan.
Hart's piece ends, "[Adnan's] plight is sparsely covered in the U.S. corporate media, and would seem to go unmentioned by these pundits who seem eager to tell stories like his. It might lead one to believe that Friedman and his ilk don't really mean what they write."
Khader Adnan has popped up in my local rag, and it’s an original piece, not something authored by the Guardian, AP or NYT as regularly happens in Oz newspapers:
Riots feared as hunger striker’s health worsens
The Jenga State doesn’t have the capacity to deal with the situation (again).
If you need the other side to produce a Gandhi, you are on the wrong side.
Good point.
Short and poignant. Bravo!
Of course we know that the comments a la “if only there were a Palestinian Ghandi” are bullshit propaganda. But it’s helpful pointing it out again and again, so good job.
The NYT has, for it, an unusually close look at one Palestinian child’s treatment at the hands of the IOF. In it, near the top, is a passing reference to Khader Adnan. Weirdly, it doesn’t name him.
link to nytimes.com
Those media people (who are “waiting for PG”) are liars. They all know how the USA’s media works, and the mere presence of facts (such as the large number of non-violent Palestinians) cannot “force” coverage in USA’s MSM. Furthermore, by now, it is safe to say that either they KNOW about the Palestinian non-violent protests or SHOULD KNOW.
They mistake waiting for a Palestinian Gandhi with waiting for messiah. One is a question of fact (and the facts are with non-violence); the other is theological or party-line. For example, until recently (may change be on the way!) NYT will speak of PGs but not “see” them in their swarms. That has been the NYT’s “party line”.
The point of a Gandhi is not that he practices non-violent resistance, but that he convince others not to practice violent resistance. One rocket into Israel outweighs a thousand peaceful demonstrations. The idea of non-violent resistance isn’t to produce propaganda, it’s to leave the enemy with no real justification for attack. If you strike with your right hand, but not with your left, the person you are striking is justified in defending himself from you.
What a stupid whitewash of India during the era of British rule.
There was Gandhi and then there was the violence of factions who didn’t prescribe to his ideology.
What you are saying is that Palestinian non-violence does not exist unless every single Palestinian is non-violent.
Apply such absolutist standards to Israel, you hypocritical racist.
One rocket into Israel outweighs a thousand peaceful demonstrations.
so, they are just supposed to get slaughtered and not respond? that would be your recommendation?
link to mondoweiss.net
I forgot to add another comment.
Fredblogs says that one rocket undermines 1000 peaceful protests.
Is there any example in history of this happening? Where the oppressed were absolutely pure of heart?
Those crude, shitty rockets have killed how many Israelis since the 2nd Intifada?
In the same timespan, how much ordinance has Israeli fired at Palestinians in Gaza? How many people did Israel kill in Gaza.
Zionist propagandists will stress the sheer number of crude Hamas rockets because there aren’t enough actual casualties to justify Israeli hysteria.
Flipping the tables on this absurd standard, the Palestinians have been fired at with more ordinance and have suffered far more casualties – most of which were civilians.
And this violence is not between two countries. It is between a defeated, colonized people and one of the strongest militarize on the planet.
Fredblogs has already blamed all of Palestinian society for the Fogel murders by citing a poll that said Palestinians supported the killings.
Well, Israeli Jewish society supported the Gaza massacre in which 300 children alone were murdered.
“Those crude, shitty rockets have killed how many Israelis since the 2nd Intifada?…
“Zionist propagandists will stress the sheer number of crude Hamas rockets because there aren’t enough actual casualties to justify Israeli hysteria.”
More people die in auto accidents in the US, on average, every 5 hours than have been killed by these rockets in a decade. That’s about the same number of people who die in the average 8-week period in the US from bee stings. These are not very lethal weapons, to say the least.
Given that fact and the Israeli rejection of the Arab Peace Plan, still on the table unanswered for a decade, which would give the Israelis everything that they publicly claim to want (peace, security, normalized relations with the Arab world), the only conclusion one can rightly reach is that the Israelis will use anything done or not done by the Palestinians as an excuse to further their oppression.
The Israelis don’t want peace; they want Palestinians under the Israeli jackboot. The fact that they protest at being called monsters and barbarians but continue monstrous and barbaric practices, can only lead one to concluce that the Israelis do not mind having the blood of men, women and children dripping from their hands, just so long as no one points it out.