Many Palestinian Protestors Already Use Nonviolent Tactics

[Larkspur]

Many Palestinian Protestors Already Use Nonviolent Tactics

Israel is escalating its quiet campaign to round up and detain nonviolent Palestinian protesters, from leaders to children, in nighttime raids. And although these protesters remain committed to nonviolence, the world continues to believe the Palestinian struggle is mainly based on violence.

Israeli authorities have been detaining nonviolent protesters for years under the media’s radar, so it’s not commonly known that nonviolent actions happen every day or that Palestinian nonviolent resistance has a long history dating back to the early 1900s.

Recent remarks made by Bono, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, and President Barack Obama, stating they hoped Palestinians would find their Martin Luther King, Jr. or Gandhi, highlights the presumption that the Palestinian struggle is mainly violent.

This presumption is inaccurate and the dismissal of the people who have sacrificed time, money, and even their lives to fight injustice with nonviolence is callous.

SNIP

To find the Palestinian Gandhi or MLK, the first step is to look in Israeli detention centers. The next step is to let them out. A sustainable peace is only possible when it is based on respect for each other’s humanity. Nonviolent protesters recognize this fact and may be the catalyst to a long term solution.

Can J Street can connect with these Palestinian Gandhis and MLKs and highlight them to our media? I don't expect AIPAC to do it, but J Street was formed to oppose AIPAC's obsessive bias towards Israel.

[aquart]

1. Go for it.

Perhaps you can talk the Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese into speaking up for these innocent martyrs, too.

And maybe ask Jordan for a good reason to revoke citizenship of Palestinian Arabs born in Jordan?

[Larkspur]

3. A typical b.s. response from the "Israel never does anything Wrong" zealots

You guys rake Palestinians over the coals because they use suicide bombers, but when the truth comes out that Palestinians have been practicing non-violence for a long time and the world turned a blind eye to it because Israel saw all Palestinians, regardless of what protest method they used, as obstructions to their Zionist delusions of reclaiming all the lands of ancient Israel, you blame someone else.

You know, that is what the fascists -- radical right wing -- of this country do too. America's fascists proclaim that the USA is exceptional and could never do wrong, except when FDR practiced regulated capitalism, which the fascists call socialism.

[Christa]

2. I wish I could rec'd this post. nt