New York Times reporter Ethan Bronner has a piece today (4/7/10) headlined “Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance,” which attempts to show that there is a new move away from armed resistance to Israeli occupation. You get that message pretty clearly from Bronner’s language: He calls it a “new approach” and argues, “Nonviolence has never caught on here.”
That’s not so; if anything, Palestinian nonviolence just hasn’t caught on at the New York Times. As Patrick O’Connor wrote in 2005:
Over the last three years the New York Times has published only three feature articles on Palestinian nonviolent resistance. This despite the fact that Palestinians have conducted hundreds of nonviolent protests over the last three years throughout the West Bank against Israel’s construction of the Wall on Palestinian land, and despite the fact that the Israeli army killed nine Palestinian protesters, wounded several thousand protesters, harassed and collectively punished villages that protested, and arrested hundreds of protesters, including nonviolent protest leaders.
More recently (1/28/10), Edith Garwood at Amnesty International criticized Barack Obama, musician Bono and Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for saying that Palestinians need to find their MLK/Gandhi—ignoring the fact that Palestinians nonviolently resist every single day, and such actions have roots that go back to the 1900s:
Complicit too is the media’s noncoverage of nonviolent direct actions and damaging comments by someone of Bono’s stature that completely ignores the vital nonviolent struggle and committed activists.
Palestinian leaders like Ghassan Andoni, Mustapha Barghouti, Jamal Juma’, Abdallah Abu Rahme, Mohammed Othman and Jean Zaru , among others, continue to speak publicly and organize direct actions to nonviolently protest injustices.
This sounds like the kind of anti-Palestinian bias activists recently sounded the alarm over with Bronner.
I don’t know about Bono’s ignorance ratio, but when Bronner says Palestinians have no history of nonviolent resistance it’s definitely a flat out lie.
Palestinian resistance takes a number of forms, and violence is one of them, and legitimately so.
Having said that, it should be a last resort, and it should be waged against those engaged in violence against you – in this case, members of the Israeli military.
Israel is waging a war against the Palestinians. Non-violence is one component in the fight against occupation. The use of force to defend yourself and others, as distinct from “acts of terror”, is another.
I don’t say any of the above lightly, and I understand that “clear bright lines” don’t always exist as to what is and isn’t morally acceptable, but don’t you have to ask yourself what you would do under the same circumstances?
Another aspect of the situation – last month I went to Stanford to hear from two leaders of the non-violent Palestinian protest movement speak. One of them had to speak from the West Bank via Skype. Why? Because the U.S. government wouldn’t give him a visa.
Related piece from DN!:
The Dangers and Difficulties of Reporting from Gaza: Two Journalists Recount Their Experiences
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/8/the_dangers_and_difficulties_of_reporting
All movements begin with non-violent protest. People petition. They march. They sing and do street theater. They write books and articles. They try education and organize peacefully on campus. This list of non-violent efforts are many and over long periods of time. It is only when passivism seems to have gone as far as it can go that violent means are used. And it is always in the face of self-defense against brutal and repressive assaults by whatever power structure is in control. It is the height of ignorance to not look for the non-violent efforts of an oppressed people; it clearly shows the lack of understanding of people’s movements for freedom and history. But then again, this country seems to feel that history is a dangerous topic and avoids it at all costs. Look at the recent efforts of the State Dept of Educ in Texas to rewrite history and eliminate people like Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King in favor of people like Phyllis Shafley. Now here is a real learning lesson about how history is ‘taught.’
I sent this letter to the editor of the NY Times, and, (you guessed it) it was not published
Ethan Bronner April 6th article “Palestinians try a less violent path to resistance” twice quotes Israelis that the hundreds of popular demonstrations in Palestine are not really nonviolent but never once does he interview the leaders of the nonviolent movement. Instead he talks to politicians and cabinet ministers. In fact he refers to the Palm Sunday protests that were demanding the right of Palestinians to travel freely to Jerusalem yet he doesn’t indicate that this was a totally and uniquivically nonviolent protest that ended in the arrest of 15 protesters including an American and an israeli supporter (who were immediately released while the remaining including a member of the Fatah Central Committee were held for four days in an Israeli detention center.
The author is a Palestinian journalist and former Ferris Journalism Professor
I’ve been following non-violent protest in Palestine for years via email. Can’t the famous Times find an editor who is at least aware of this?
Did The NYT cover Rachel Corrie’s nonviolent protest against Israeli occupation? and her subsequent murder by the Israeli operating an American built IDF Caterpillar D9 bulldozer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie
Here’s my small contribution to the cause of Peace in the Middle East:
http://daisybrain.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/how-to-solve-the-palestinian-isreali-conflict/