The more insoluble a conflict, it seems, the more durable the axioms that help keep a solution at bay.
All too often, the problem is not that the axiom is unhelpful or untrue, but that over time it has come, ploughshare into sword, to be adopted by one side or the other as a weapon.
So it is, that dyed-in-the-wool anti-Palestinians have long delighted in denouncing the Palestinian movement for having failed to produce a home-grown Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King.
Of course, the criticism is as disingenuous as it is self-serving, since over the years the pro-settlement right has been the primary, perhaps the sole, political beneficiary of Palestinian attacks against Israelis.
But the denunciation also tends to obscure a revolution gaining traction among Palestinians. The growing openness to the power of non-violence was the subject of Nicholas Kristof's thoughtful recent dispatch from the West Bank village of Bil'in, "Waiting for Gandhi."
The column follows an eyebrow-raiser from the Wall Street Journal. In pages largely unaccustomed to portraying Hamas and Hezbollah in terms other than that of armed groups locked in a to-the-death struggle with Israel, a recent report from Jerusalem opened by saying that the flotilla incident had moved the organizations to begin to "embrace civil disobedience, protest marches, lawsuits and boycotts--tactics they once dismissed."
"When we use violence, we help Israel win international support," prominent Hamas West Bank lawmaker Aziz Dweik told the Journal.
"The Gaza flotilla has done more for Gaza than 10,000 rockets."
Through it all, the robust internal Palestinian debate over non-violence, underway abroad as well as within the territories, has gone largely unnoticed in Israel. Hereabouts, the problem goes beyond Seeing is Believing. All too often, the problem is the opposite: What you do not believe, you will refuse to see.
It may well be more difficult for Israelis to comprehend the idea of Palestinian non-violence than for Palestinians to do so. For many Israelis, the very thought of non-violent Palestinian protest goes so far against the grain as to be incomprehensible, lethally suspicious, a violation of a bedrock narrative.
In many cases, Israeli media have actively ignored or obscured non-violent Palestinian protest. Last month, hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians marched together through the streets of Silwan, East Jerusalem, protesting a plan by Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat to evict Arab residents and raze 22 houses for a settler-oriented tourism project.
Noting the demonstration in an evening newscast, Israel Channel 2 Television chose to show its viewers old footage of Muslims praying at the site, followed by youths throwing rocks at Israeli troops. The message was clear: Nothing new here. Nothing to see here, folks -- move along now.
But there is very definitely something new here. The protest was not, as the brief news item hinted, one more example of radical Islamists inciting hotheads to violence against Israelis. Far from it. What actually happened was a march in which settlers stared in wonderment and a certain anxiety at a large and unified force of Jews and Arabs taking a powerful stand against occupation.
When one Palestinian youth picked up a rock to throw at the settlers, Arabs and Jews alike stopped him and distanced him from the march.
The fact is that Israel may need a Gandhi more than the Palestinians do. As the Jewish state begins to examine its own actions and decision-making in the flotilla disaster, it is becoming that much clearer that Israelis need, for their own sake, to begin to study non-violence.
Over the past decade, Israel has been moving farther and farther away from non-violent solutions to difficult problems. In wars in Lebanon and Gaza, the nation's leaders came down on the side of blunt military force over intensive, creative, confident diplomacy. In domestic politics, as well, the implied violence of racist discourse, the verbal Dahiya Doctrines of Avigdor Lieberman and Eli Yishai, have paid off handsomely in the ballot box.
Israelis suffer at least as much as Palestinians from the machismo ethic that fuels the resort to violence. Twenty years ago, it was that macho ethos which made it so constitutionally painful for the IDF to develop, train for, and employ non-lethal methods in the face of civilian unrest. Twenty years later, it was that same macho ethos which turned tear gas into a lethal weapon in countering demonstrators in the West Bank.
Today it is that same macho ethos which drives Benjamin Netanyahu and, especially, Ehud Barak, which gave rise to the colossally tragic -- and entirely unnecessary -- consequences of the flotilla raid.
Some Palestinian activists have complained that resorting to non-violence has traditionally been seen as unmanly. That what was taken by force not only can be but must be returned by force. Palestinians are beginning to rethink this view.
At a time when use of overwhelming force has cost Israel dearly in its world standing, what will it take for Israelis to rethink the idea that what they have can only be maintained by force? A new kind of leader. A Gandhi, a Dr. King.
Cynics will note that the Israeli whom Israelis called Gandhi, was a man of war, a general, and the Israeli politician most closely identified with advocating "transfer" of Palestinians to facilitate holding on to the territories forever.
Rehavam Ze'evi was also the man who said shortly after the 1967 Six Day War "I am afraid of peace. I think that from the standpoint of the Israeli people and the Jewish people, peace in the coming decade poses many dangers."
Can there any better proof that we need a different Gandhi? A real one this time.
While we wait, the macho in us keeps us crippled. The macho in us keeps us incapable of response to reason. The macho in us makes it necessary to see boycotts as terrorism, peaceful protest as terrorism.
Yes, there is something counter-intuitive in the idea of non-violence as a threat.
There is nothing more threatening to the occupation than the specter of Palestinian non-violence. And there is nothing more hopeful for Israel's future, than the prospect, distant as it still may be, that Israelis and Palestinians can work peaceably together to bring that occupation to an end.
_______________________
Written for Haaretz.com
Follow Bradley Burston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bradleyburston
There is no way I am studying non-violence when my people are being blown up in schools, at home, in the hospital, at mosque, in church, in their fields, and standing in line to get their share of U.N. rations. Few critics remember that this is exactly the reason why we declared an intifada to try and have our homes back and lives again. To prevent THEM for taking everything we have and keeping it from themselves and KILLING us when try and protect our lives and property.
Wow. That was easy. Do another one.
"A majority of British Jews believe Israel should swap territory for peace, and negotiate with Hamas, a survey suggests.
Some 72% agreed Israel's action in Gaza in 2008 and 2009 was "a legitimate act of self-defence".
But 77% favoured a "two-state solution", creating a Palestinian state, as the "only way" to make peace.
The study of 4,000 people was carried by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR).
Just over half, 52%, said they would support Israeli government negotiations with Hamas."
Before you speak for the Palestinians, however (see St.Cuthbert's question), let me ask you a question: do YOU support the two state solution? Or are you one of those "peace activists" whose idea of "peace" is using demography as the ultimate "non-violent" weapon to try and deny the Jewish people a state of their own?
"When we use violence, we help Israel win international support. The Gaza flotilla has done more for Gaza than 10,000 rockets."
In other words, it's not that the use of violence (which Hamas deliberately practiced mostly against Israeli civilians) is fundamentally wrong. No. It's just that it is MORE EFFECTIVE to use "non-violent" means to achieve the goal. This is a far, far cry from Gandhi's teachings, surely you understand that?
And what is "the goal"? Well, we know what Hamas's declared goal is: the destruction of the Jewish state and its replacement with an Islamic country. That goal, clearly stated in the organization's covenant, has not changed one iota.
So now you should understand why Israelis don't "buy" Palestinian non-violence:
- It often isn't. Throwing stones at people and hitting soldiers with metal bars is NOT "non-violent";
- For some Palestinians, "non-violence" is nothing but a more effective means to achieve the same VIOLENT GOAL.
Gandhi, the man who felt Jews should go quietly to the gas chambers in order to set the world an example and not fight, the man who disapproved of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - his attitudes towards non-violence are to be the sole arbiter of what is right and wrong for you in this post? There is no indication that Gandhi would approve of the Israeli "land for peace" lie even were it true nor that he would hold with Israeli actions and ideology one drop more than with Palestinian rocket attacks. So what exactly is the point of your post? To say that because Palestinian kids are refraining are from throwing rocks at heavily armed soldiers because they hope to one day gain a decent life if they practice non-violence it is somehow less meaningful? If you honesty believe that black people living under Jin Crow refrained from violence against white men who kept them under by use of physical, sexual, emotional, and economic assault for hundreds of years solely because it would be wrong to hit back and not because they hoped to gain a better life out of it then you are privileged and naive beyond belief.
The main point of my post (which you entirely missed) is that changing the means is not changing the goals. Some of the means (these for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphinarium_discotheque_suicide_bombing) are despicable.
But the crucial issue is the goals. If (as in the case of Hamas) the goal is to destroy the Jewish state, any discussion of "non-violence" is simply hypocrisy.
Also, I think that what makes the current time so critical is that the Palestinians (in the West Bank) actually got their Gandhi now. Prime Minister Salam Fayaad has for a long time been objecting to any violent resistance and focusing on building a state and an economy.
Do you think Fayad fits the description of a Gandhi type leader?
And do you know any Israeli leader - maybe someone not yet in politics like Yair Lapid? - that might be more Gandhi like?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yermi-brenner
I honestly don't think there are many Israeli leaders right now who will step up and be visionary. I think it will be when the next generation steps up, or even my generation (I'm 25 and have many friends who made aliyah who could do great things for Israel). The younger generations are less burdened by the memories of the Holocaust and have grown up in a much more culturally integrated world.
But what is true is that there has to be some sort of equivalence on each side of the table, people that know where they are going and can bring their side with them when the inevitable compromises are effected.
This reporter met Ayed Morrar, in 2005 when he and Israeli activist Jonathon Pollak, spoke throughout America about nonviolence against Israel’s occupation and route of The Wall.
Ayed explained how The Wall was moved off of Palestinian property in his village of Budrus.
Women, children, farmers, "regular people" stood up to the US made Caterpillar bulldozers and Israeli Forces who assaulted them with Billy-clubs and caustic tear gas that can cause spasticity for weeks and has also lead to death.
Unarmed women, children and farmers stood up to the Israeli forces that shot rubber coated bullets and live ammo at them; and proved non-violent activism worked to force the Israeli government to get off of their land, back off from their trees, and quit denying food to their children.
In Budrus, The WALL is now on the GREEN LINE because...
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1776&Itemid=235
On July 16, 1945, the nuclear age began, when the first nuclear bomb was exploded by the American federal government at the Trinity Test Site.
Plutonium and other toxic and radioactive chemicals were dispersed for hundreds of miles and some areas are still contaminated.
In the moment that followed the atomic inferno, the father of the atomic bomb, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer heard within this sentence from the Bhagvad Gita:
“Now I have become death, the destroyer of the worlds.”
When Oppenheimer was asked for his thoughts regarding Sen. Robert Kennedy's efforts to urge President Lyndon Johnson to initiate talks to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, he responded: "It's 20 years too late. It should have been done the day after Trinity."
In October 2009, President Obama agreed to persist in America’s four-decade-old ‘secret’ understanding that allows Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections.
In July 2010, Obama pledged to sell Israel nuclear technology and other supplies, despite the fact that Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
US and Israeli Nuclear Deceptions @
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bslmk5jipGA
I think perhaps Israel needs a Gorbachev rather than a Ghandi - similarly to the old Soviet Union - Israel is now facing an existential and transcendent strategic disaster - that's why we all see the paralysis and dysfunction Israel now exhibits. She needs a new kind of leader that realizes the jig is up on her ethnic cleansing Ponzi sheme on Palestine
Israel can no longer withdraw her settlers without civil war - it’s politically impossible for her - but she also cannot stay in occupied Palestine without inexorably morphing from the current unsustainable Apartheid to ‘One State’ and demographic annihilation as a ‘jewish democracy’
Israel cannot stay and she cannot go - and now with FreeGaza her paralysis is being transcended and the whole matter is more and more being taken out of her hands by the citizens of the world
Israel only needs a Gorbachev who tears down her fascist wall and negiotiates in good faith with the Palestinians for One State - One Man/One Vote and actully learn to live as a democracy for the first time rather than a theocratic Apartheid racist state
You can't deny basic rights, confiscate lands, subjugate people, discriminate based primarily on race, religion, etc. and expect the world to stand behind you.
You can't expect peace without justice, most people in the the world undersatnd that.
I agree that Israel has taken a big step to the right following the second Intifada and the Gaza withdrawl and Hamastan, but you're still ignoring a key issue:
That Hamas is still very different from the PA. While there is a real non-violence movement in the west-bank (we have yet to see if it will prosper), no such thing exists in Gaza. The saying you attribute to several Hamas people are tactical, in that maybe theres another way to beat Israel except Kassams. But the rhetoric is still a violent one: beating Israel. Not achieving peace, but beating, destroying etc.
Its not enough to choose non-violent protests because they are tactically more successful, Ghandi preached for non-violence as an outlook of co-existence and justice. I'm not sure if Palestinians are there yet, Hamas certainly isn't.
Beautifully said.
If he was what passes for an Israeli Gandhi, we should just forget the whole idea.
I'm going to be cynical, but realistic, here: Rabin's whole reputation as a tragic peace angel is thanks to his early, terrible death. If he hadn't been assassinated, he would just be one of many unsuccessful Israeli leaders.
A Ghandi or a Mandela is someone who can take a group of people who squabble among themselves and pursue ultimately self-destructive behaviors, unite them, and bring them to their goals through peace.
Israel is more or less united in it's desire for peace (on their terms, of course), while the Palestinians are more divided then ever before. The non-violent protesters you speak of would be shot like dogs if they tried to protest *anything* the PA or Hamas does.
Nor does it really make a difference in the end. Israel's military answers to the government (left-wing or otherwise) but Hamas, Al Asqa Martyrs, Islamic Jihad, will *always* be there biding their time for Israel to let it's guard down. And we saw in the Second Intifada how easily the PA can push their people to violence when they want to.
Don't get me wrong, neither Netanyahu nor Abbas are the larger-than-life figures they need. But then again neither was Begin.
If only the Palestinians were united, you seem to say, peace will drop from heaven!
The fact is both nations are divided, and in some sense, Israeli divisions are more rooted, dangerous and difficult to overcome on the road to peace. Palestinians don't have 400,000 settlers, many of them outright fascists, who are already dictating the politics of the country and will raise hell for their government in case of any serious territorial compromise.
"People were asked whether they agreed to a solution based on the following principles: a two-state solution (Israeli - Jewish State + Palestinian State); return of refugees to Palestine only; a demilitarised Palestinian state, the 1967 lines with an exchange of territory; Jerusalem with- Jewish neighbourhoods to be in Israel, Arab Neighbourhoods to be in Palestine; and finally the Old City under a joint management-sovereignty for both sides and the US."
http://www.speroforum.com/a/30804/67-per-cent-of-Israelis-want-peace-with-the-Palestinians
There can never be peace as long as this is what the Palestinians teach their children:
Host: You described Shahada as something beautiful. Do you think it is beautiful?
Walla, age 11: Shahada (Martyrdom) is a very, very beautiful thing. Everyone yearns for Shahada. What could be sweeter than going to paradise?
Host: What is better, peace and full rights for the Palestinian people, or Shahada?
Walla: Shahada. I will achieve my rights after becoming a Shahid (Martyr).
Shown on official Palestinian TV
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=111&fld_id=111&doc_id=446
and as long as the Palestinians teach their children geography with maps of the Middle East that don't include Israel.
See also: The Hamas Charter:
http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm
based on what they teach their children, it is not rhetoric.
So which is it, you never read the Hamas Charter, or you think they're just kidding?
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "
"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
"The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times. It is characterised by its deep understanding, accurate comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgement, the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam."
http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm
Tonight on some pbs channels there is Global Voices, this one about
Jews and Arab kids living in Jerusalem.
Let's hope it brings some reason and hope to this mess.
The problem is trust. When Israel bulldozes homes and builds Jewish neighborhoods, it can't expect the Palestinians to trust it. When the Palestinians honor as a hero and name a street after an individual who boasted of killing Israeli women and childre, they can't expect the Israelis to trust them. Both sides need to avoid demonizing the other.
But unless each side is willing to compromise on what it views as its rightful claim, there will not be peace.
Let's be fair here. Everything Israel has accused the Palestinians of Israel did to form their state. So who taught the Arabs terrorism works?