Trust the Palestinians to tell it like it is:
More than 2,000 Palestinians denounced moderate Arab leaders in a march through Ramallah in support of Hizbullah on Tuesday.
“Mubarak is a pig,” protesters chanted, a reference to the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who criticized Hizbullah in the first days of battles between the group and the Israeli army.
The protesters also accused Jordan’s King Abdullah of being a “collaborator of the Zionists and the Americans.”
While it won’t reach the magic three-letter word in Egypt, what I’ve seen in the press since I got back is scathing. People are very pissed off indeed.
Frankly speaking, I am an Egyptian and I say Mubarak deserves it.
But if our Arab leaders won’t do anything, is it possible that a movement such as Martin Luther King’s with the slogan of “no violence” would work? Can we learn anything from Dr. King and Gandhi? I find this a tough question. Of course, right now, it is too late because Hizballah are already fighting and there is no pulling back now. But would something like this work in one of our Arab countries in the face of our own leaders to demand change?
I think King and Gandhi would have lasted all of 3 months against the Israelis.
They’d have been accused of secretly bankrolling terrorist organizations, and then a large bomb would have been dropped on their homes, with their families written off as collateral damage.
But, hey, I’m a cynic.
I dunno about that. There was a lot of debate at the start of the second intifada about whether the Palestinians should have turned violent, and what could have been accomplished if they hadn’t started shooting at the Israelis, allowing them to retaliate disproportionately. So much of this war is PR and tv images, how much could the Israelis bomb lebanon if Hezbollah and Hamas weren’t firing rockets? Remember the stone throwing from the 87 intifada? There was only so much the Israelis could respond to that. Mowing down innocent civlians is harder when you can’t bring out grainy images of rockets being fired in roughly the same area.
I don’t buy the whole non vilent thing, this works when the occupation needs the occupied, not when the occupation is trying to dislocate or erase the occupied.
so arabs living in Israel are probably better off not using violence, but the ones on the front line are better off fighting back.
how come I don’t get to call mubarak a pig? those lucky palestinians, they even got to see the world cup without paying the saudis >-(
I dunno, I never bought the whole “They should try the non-violence things.” The Israeli robots really don’t seem to give a crap, and act with almost total impunity. If you can shoot an 8-year old repeatedly for entering the kill-zone, you probably wouldn’t have any qualms about offing most anyone else.
I’m just saying there’s some wars and some countries where the non-violence thing doesn’t seem to have any potential. Fancy the Chechens trying non-violence with Putin?
I dunno, I never bought the whole “They should try the non-violence things.” The Israelis really don’t seem to give a crap, and act with almost total impunity. If you can shoot an 8-year old repeatedly for entering the kill-zone, you probably wouldn’t have any qualms about offing most anyone else.
I’m just saying there’s some wars and some countries where the non-violence thing doesn’t seem to have any potential. Fancy the Chechens trying non-violence with Putin?
Non-violence works when you stand a real chance of shaming someone. The Israelis seem quite capable of shrugging off blame when they kill or imprison civilians, they know they have a moral carte blanche from the only “international community” that matters. Having said that, the Palestinians have done their cause a disservice with suicide bombs in civilian areas.
A propos of Gandhi, it’s a bit of a myth that his nonviolent tactics were sufficient to get the Brits to leave. There were more radical and violent groups who worked alongside and used boycotts, burnings, bombs and strikes to send the message that the movement meant business. Radical flanks are always useful to the nonviolent crowd.
Ironic observation on the JPost website that the article linked to – there was an ad wooing people to buy “your second home in Israel!”
Second homes for some, sorry-no-room-for-you for others. Pretty brazen.
I agree with SP & Alaa above — non-violence just doesn’t work by itself. What you need is a violence accompanied by a symbol of non-violence to come, just as Ghandi was in India (the nationalist movement was rightly violent at times, esp. against ruthless British repression.) But even the symbolic leadership can only work when there is receptive media/public opinion/political leadership in the countries that are carrying out the repression or have the power to stop it but are not. The fact that Nelson Mandela, someone who came from a violent milieu at the ANC, gained so much prestige was that there was a vast constituency of people who believed in his symbol in Britain especially (where virtually every other public housing scheme is called “Mandela House”.) This forced the hand, eventually, of those Britons and Americans who backed the Apartheid regime (Thatcher, Bush I.) Similarly Gandhi made quite an impression in Britain. In both cases he also served as a political weapon in domestic politics for Labour.
Why the hell should the Egyptians go to war?!?!?! Syria has occupied land. They’re the ones who should go to war not us! We got our land back. This will only leed to Sinai getting occupied again!
I hate Mubarak and this regime but, Arabs won’t fight with our blood! eh el araf da!
Yeah, Egyptian, I guess some Brits had similar thoughts about standing up to Hitler.
Can we not bring Hitler into the debate, it’s a cheap rhetorical tool.
Okay, I think non-violence would work in the case of Israel because there is a “receptive media/public opinion/political leadership in the countries that are carrying out the repression or have the power to stop it.”
The entire perception of Israel changed in 1988 when suddenly there were pictures of IDF beating Palestinian kids. Everyone looked at the county differently after that — in the similar way the 1982 bombing of Beirut started the change of perceptions.
Why do you think the Israelis work so hard to paint Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorists? They are always justifying their actions, this is one of the most media saturated countries in the world. And they have an articulate, vocal peace movement that will make noise if they think it’s a matter of national shame rather than national survival.
Non-violence does not mean non-action. Palestinian boycotts of Israeli goods in 1988 were very threatening to the Israeli state, at least according to the media material put out by the Palestinians themselves back then.
By resorting to violence, the Palestinians are confronting the Israelis on a playing field on which they cannot win, and losing the moral high ground.
That is the case for Palestine. I’m not sure my argument holds up for Lebanon since I don’ t think Israel would have withdrawn from Lebanon if they hadn’t been taking substantial casualties.
Bringing Hitler in would be a “cheap rhetorical tool” if I were using it to call someone Hitler or describe someone as an anti-Semite. It is not a cheap rhetorical tool when we’re talking about the question of whether or not an expansionist, militaristic, apartheid state should be collectively confronted, I think. Thanks anyway.
Moral high ground. I believe some people are of the opinion that in some cases deterence and self-defense take priority to the desire to feel morally superior to a brutal and savage enemy.
Paul, did the beating of kids in the first intifada really make such a difference to Israel’s image? Among which group, Americans? Because I’ve almost never heard Americans (except for the more radical Left) talk about Israel’s transgressions, everything gets treated as a security issue.
I vaguely remember reading that in the 80s, Cynthia Ozick of the New Yorker refused to speak with Ed Said and accused him of wanting to kill her babies – i.e. the Palestinian national movement gets framed as an existential threat no matter what. I agree completely with your point about this being a media-saturated conflict, and Israelis have to keep on calling Palestinians terrorists in order to justify their actions, but I don’t think anyone looks too closely at the accuracy of this description.
I stand by my cheap rhetorical tool comment 🙂
I think moral superiority makes a difference in a conflict like this, the Israelis are very sensitive to world opinion as is the United States. If they don’t have the fig leaf of combatting “terrorism” it becomes much harder to kill civilians.
As far as the effectiveness of the first intifada, I think it made a massive difference. Look at the media coverage and perception of the Palestinians in the US in 1985 and then say in 1990. It made a big difference with Americans, and I assume Europeans.
Up until that point, Israel could promote the myth of a “gentle” occupation that was accepted by most people. It took them years to effectively recast the Palestinians as terrorists again.
If world opinion and especially the US is sufficiently horrified by Israeli actions, it restricts their freedom of action. really.
I don’t know, Paul. Despite the suicide bombings, the Palestinians already have moral superiority on their side since their land was taken away or occupied and they are being constantly agressed by a vastly stronger enemy. It doesn’t seem to be making much difference, and I think what they need more is effective and charismatic leadership. They also can’t wait for the international community to give them what they want, they have to fight for it.
They don’t have moral superiority (in world circles) when they resort to suicide bombings — to easy to paint them as mad people. I do agree that they have to fight, but they can’t fight with the usual weapons of violence — they can’t bear the escalation. When they threw stones, the Israelis fired bullets. When the Palestinians fired bullets, the Israelis fired tank shells. When the Palestinians fired rockets, the Israelis fired hellfire missiles. It’s an arms race they can’t win.
And yes, the leadership issue is huge. Being run by a kleptocracy didn’t help them very much at all. I think a wise and strong leadership wouldn’t not have resorted to bullets. They are facing an incredibly saavy enemy and their leaders were crap.
The cynical piece you posted by the israelis, the truth commission thing in the future about suicide bombers, I think was very instructive in this regard.
What I know is that violence brings about violence ina never-ending vicious circle. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.
True, though, a non-violent movement needs an incredibly loved leader and very strong people who would be able to watch some of their loved ones die and not take revenge for them.
The civil rights movement led by King was made up of very strong believers. People watched their parents and friends being beaten up and killed, and they couldn’t, they wouldn’t, do anything other than stand in the way of the cops who were beating them up (without raising a hand). They did that because they knew that revenge only means that the police would have more justification for killing more and more people – and in the end, no one gets their rights.
God morning to all,
And good luck for fighting for a better Near East. As long as Cairo is in the hands of the Quislings of the USA (and Amman and Riad either), Jerusalem will remain in the hands of the Zionists. The best thing for Egyptians to do in order to support the Palestinians is to get rid of Mubarak and the other pupets of the USA.
I would like to see the fighting stopped so everyone can look at what has occurred since the UN supported the Israeli state. We can argue the “right” for Jews to have a homeland in an area with a population of 500 million Muslims. Or, the merits of the Palestinians case that Israel is in THEIR homeland.
The complexity and the history of this conflict make it impossible to reach any agreement in which all parties would agree. And thoughtfully
discussing is the last thing on the mind of those who openly what to
destroy the Jewish state.
So, let’s look at the result of what the carnage has brought.
As an American, living in a country widely viewed as an “enemy” of the Muslim world, I have many questions. And in no particular order.
First, why do so many Muslims want to come to United States? Is it because our country offers them the opportunity to live their lives in
peace, raise their children, and prosper?
Secondly, why are the young Muslime children “educated” to hate
another people? What value does this provide? Does this “education” provide any benefit?
Third, why are these same young people encouraged to kill themselves as long as they kill others, people they do not know, who have done them no harm. Also, why have we not seen any Mullahs also kill themselves? Why, is it OK to slaughter your youth, having them ‘give’ their lives, rather than have a future?
And, why, throughout the the Arab world, have we seen so much discontent? Surely, Israel cannot be blamed for the poor economies,
and bleak future for their inhabitants. The ‘political class’, those in power enjoy deflecting their own failure on others, something most American are well familiar with.
With the enormous wealth of oil-rich nations, there is little reason so many people should be in dispair.
And, in so many pockets of despair, where the people have so little,
why do we see so many arms, guns, rockets, etc? Surely, the money used to purchase, could better serve the people.
I could so go, put I hope I offered enough to generate a change in thinking, one that will offer a brighter future for the next generation Muslims and Jews.
One of the hardest things to do is to recognize our own personal failures, And this is something some despotic Arab nations refuse to do. These are the politicial class, those who rule. It is so much easier to blame Jews for the woes of their citizens than provide good governance.
I hope “tomorrow” will be a better day for all Arab nations, where the people will decide how they are governed, not a dictate by political or religous leaders. Yes, practicing are faith IS important, but does anyone really believe GOD want us to destroy one another.
In the United States we hear the term “Moderate Muslim”, those
who seek peaceful resolutions. But, even these people have little influence. Often they themselves are killed! So, what is to be done?
I know one thing, unless terrorism is replaced with diplomacy, the carnage of innocent Muslims and Jews will continue. And the hatred
will grow deeper, which is probably the primary goal of Mullahs preach it.
Neither Israel or any Arab nation will go away, only more people will die
unless a different approach is taken.
For without changing from terrorism and a military rsponse, millions of Arab children will remain impovished, filled with hate, and with little hope of a futute. Is this what the Arab world wants?
I hope
“I could so go, put I hope I offered enough to generate a change in thinking, one that will offer a brighter future for the next generation Muslims and Jews.”
Yeah. because no one has ever said any of these things before.
I will try to answer Anthony Bruno’s questions (some of them at least).
Arabs go to America for a number of simple reasons, some of which you Bruno are already aware of. First, the corruption of people in power in our countries makes us unable to live prosperously and enjoy inner peace and a clean conscience at the same time. Second, we have no power to replace these people in power. Third, we don’t have a problem with most of the American public; living in America means that we will be comfortable and happy, living in the company of nice people in a nice clean place where everybody does their job proudly and well (things that are in fact are in the teachings of Islam but are not followed by the ignorant majority). However, we would still hate the government’s guts!
Next: our children are not educated to hate anybody. I have gone through all the steps of an Arab education until highschool. No one ever taught me to hate anybody. It could be that we learn history, and (through the facts of history) some people grow up hating one group or another, but I haven’t seen any examples of what you say. It could be an extreme minority of poor unsupervised schools.
Only a few suicide bombers are crazy extremists. Most of them are extremely desperate people with no hope for a future. Someone who lost their entire family and watched them killed, someone who lives in a country that offers no hope for the future (because it’s too badly war-torn) and which he cannot leave. That’s when he starts to welcome death. The only thing he could do is kill himself and someone with him. He goes for the only ones he could reach. I’m not saying that blowing oneself up in a bus stop is a good form of jihad, but you have to look at the big picture. You also have to be careful who you call terrorists. Honestly, if someone holds you in a corner, stripped naked and tries to choke you and you hit below the belt – are you a terrorist? Or is it the man who has you in the corner?
Our countries’ money goes into the pockets of the big people, and we can’t do anything about it. If we talk, we are jailed or killed or have our futures destroyed with a few phonecalls… God help us!