Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 5 (since 2009-12-01 16:32:16)

musamusa

Palestinian-American Archaeology major from Haverford College.

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  • Question for Israel: Where are the Palestinian Gandhis . . . and what have you done with them?
    • musamusa April 18, 2012 at 11:58 pm

      Non-Violence is a tactic. Even Ghandi and MLK never adhered strictly to non-violence as a doctrine. To demand the renunciation of violence as a whole robs Palestinians a right guaranteed to them under international law to resist an inhumane and brutal occupation. Attacks on civilians are reprehensible, to be sure, and are not legitimate as a tactic of resistance, but Palestinians have as much right to violently resist the occupation of their lands as any other people on the planet. For some reason, I doubt you would expect Israel to completely "renounce" or "reject" violence.

  • More from Lupe Fiasco, 'Words I Never Said'
  • Why didn't Dershowitz give up his American citizenship?
    • musamusa October 17, 2010 at 10:26 pm with 4 replies

      To be fair, one of the major points in Walt and Mearshimer's The Israel Lobby is that often the United States would act contrary to its interest due to the pressures of lobby. So I would argue that at many points in recent history have The United States and Israel's interests not been congruent, yet America would act on behalf of Israel.

      That aside, Dershowitz, along with other mainstream establishment Jews (for example ADL) are only further exposing their hypocrisy and moral incoherence regarding Israel. The ADL's recent award to Rupert Murdoch is another example of this.

  • The settler killings-- morality and effectiveness
    • musamusa September 4, 2010 at 11:16 am with 8 replies

      David,

      I am inclined to agree with your assessment. Although the presence of settlers reflect a systemic violence perpetrated against the Palestinians on a daily basis, I don't feel their murder to be strategically or morally justified. They are a symptom of this systemic violence, rather than a direct cause of it. I will still assert that explicitly military targets are legitimate targets of violent resistance. For example, the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit.

      I have often thought that for non-violent resistance to be effective, however, it requires a) media that propagates images of oppression and b) an audience that wields political power to consume these images (i.e Americans, American Jews). Palestinians are afforded neither of these things, if you look at Bil'in as a case study. I understand that the Mavi Marmara was an incident that did gain international attention, but the people involved were not Palestinian, which to me explains why it got as much media play as it did.

      I would be curious to hear your thoughts on non-lethal violent resistance similar in strategy to the MK's bombing of buildings that symbolized apartheid in South Africa. I have often entertained thoughts that if a Palestinian paramilitary group used similar methods to draw attention to and disrupt the mechanisms of the occupation, such as the Civil Administration, they would retain a moral high ground AND gain the media attention necessary to change public opinion in the United States. But these are perhaps fantasies that gestated during my time growing up in the West Bank during the second Intifada.

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