Calling Claire and Judith
Peter Robinson ·
Jun 3, 2011 at 9:02am
Last month, on "Nakba Day," thousands of Arabs, mostly, as best I can tell, Palestinians, marched unarmed on Israeli borders on four fronts, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. The IDF turned them back, but not before killing several--as best I can tell from looking over conflicting reports, the death count was four.
Here's Hendrik Hertzberg in the current issue of The New Yorker:
Palestinians are beginning to discover the possibilities of nonviolence, which Israel, with its ethical and political traditions, would find far harder to resist than rocks and rockets.
Is Hertzberg on to something?
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Comments :
Dec '10
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
Is Hendrik Hertzberg new? The First Intifada (1987-1993) was all non-violence -- except for the rock-throwing, which provoked sometimes deadly response from IDF forces. That approach advanced the internal Israeli political idea that the occupation violates Jewish values: here we are, many Israelis said, opposing teenagers and pre-teens throwing stones with rubber bullets and sometimes even live ammunition. The internal and external political pressure of the First Intifada led to the Oslo Accords.
Unfortunately, the Oslo Accords were followed by Arafat's corruption and double-dealing, not with any serious Palestinian moves towards peace and statehood. Arafat simply waited for the excuse to launch the Second Intifada, this time with rockets, suicide bombs and guns. He used the thinnest of pretexts, Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, to set off that wave of murderous "resistance."
Anyone who believes the Palestinians are choosing the path of non-violence on principle rather than as a tactic to set up Israel for the next wave of terror is ignorant of history and extremely gullible. (How do they reconcile Itamar with non-violent resistance?) Unfortunately, far too many people around the world are just that ignorant and gullible.
May '10
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
I agree with Stuart Creque. The Arabs who call themselves "Palestinians" need first to demonstrate their ability to run their statelet before they can be trusted with anything bigger. They also need to demonstrate peaceful intent before they can make any claim that any large group of them marching on any site in Israel represents anything but a threat.
Unfortunately, as SC says, "far too many people around the world are...ignorant and gullible," and they will rush only too quickly to condemn Israel for not trusting the "peaceful" intent of their bloodthirsty neighbors.
Edited on Jun 3, 2011 at 9:48amAug '10
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
Peter Robinson:
Is Hertzberg on to something? ·
Or is he on something?
Sep '10
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
Sounds like he reads Thomas Friedman.
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
Stuart Crecque is right about the first intifada -- which had a huge impact on the Israeli morale. It began with a more or less spontaneous incident. Then, some Palestinian notables -- such as my friend Sari Nusseibeh -- intervened in a more or less successful attempt to keep it nonviolent. Had the PLO been willing to follow through in the aftermath, there might have been a settlement of the conflict. But, if course, that is not what Yassir Arafat wanted.
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
As Stuart suggests, this would mark the second time (if it comes to pass) that the Palestinians try a strategy of "non-violence" against us, although the definition of "non-violent" is rather different for Palestinians than it would be for, say, Belgians. The first intifada, which was a genuine intifada - i.e., uprising - insofar as it was a spontaneous popular movement rather than one directed from above [at least at first], was certainly violent; anyone whose person or vehicle has been hit by a shower of rocks thrown with intent to harm would hardly call the rocks non-violent. The events of Naqba Day have been similarly proclaimed non-violent, a little bizarrely considering the actual events on the ground, because there's such a great desire abroad to believe that the Palestinians are next in line behind the Tunisians and the Egyptians and the Libyans and the Syrians for an outbreak of "spring." (As if anything in their story is remotely analagous, and as if anyone is certain what that spring portends anywhere.) (1/2)
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
If the Palestinians ever really do attempt mass acts of non-violent civil disobedience, we're in big trouble. But to be blunt, violence and Jew-hatred are so deeply ingrained in their culture that they're highly unlikely to maintain non-violence for long. Extreme Palestinian Muslims consider destruction of the Jew a matter of honor, and the so-called "moderates" among them are usually hard-pressed to condemn their actions with language that is either convincing or directed at their own constituency. (Would that there were more Sari Nusseibehs.)
In short: it might occur to them to try non-violence for a while, and it might move them a step or two forward, but sooner or later Hamas or Islamic Jihad will blow up an Israeli school bus or ice cream parlor and we'll be back to square one. (2/2)
Dec '10
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
As a follow up to Naqba ("Catastrophe") Day, which commemorates the founding of Israel from the Palestinian propaganda perspective, this weekend marks Naqsa ("Reversal") Day, which commemorates the Six Day War. There will again be coordinated attempts to storm the Israeli borders with Syria, Gaza and the West Bank - but not Lebanon this time because the Lebanese Army has declared the border area a closed military zone for that day (sorry, Nasrallah).
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
Peter, I don't mean to be glib, but my quick answer is: Sure, Israel would find it impossible to resist non-violence. But if non-violence were the strategy, there would be nothing to resist. If "non-violence" had characterized the Arab posture toward Israel all along, it's entirely possible there would be no state of Israel now: This is kind of a parallel universe, but imagine there had been peace from the start, free trade, open borders. Then you get your EU-type transnational organization--the United States of the Middle East--to regulate weights and measures or whatever, intermarriage (look how much intermarriage there is in the US: as soon as people stop trying to kill us, we marry them), and then at some point Israel becomes sort of an artifact, with sovereignty ceded to the bureaucrats in Cairo. It only seems unthinkable because there's been so much violence.
Dec '10
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
Judith, what if the IDF set up picnic tables with hummus and pita and felafel for, say, 5,000 just within Israel's border with Syria - and then offered those attempting a border incursion from Syria a chance to sit down, share stories of repression under Assad, maybe apply for family-unification immigration to the Golan? I bet the next time the idea of a border incursion came up, the Syrian government would declare its border with Israel a closed military zone.
Mar '11
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
Judith is right. Non-violence in the hands of Palestinians is asymmetric warfare. It’s a tactic that’s most, and perhaps only, effective against post-Enlightenment western states. So it’s not surprising Palestinians will flirt with it for some time. But it is unlikely to get them what they want simply because what they want is everything.
Unlike Gandhi, who wanted the British out and the Raj over, what passes for Palestinian leadership wants Israel dead, not merely gone, from territory to which it laid claim only after it fell into Israeli hands.
Palestinian absolutism will doom its efforts and, in very little time, it’s “leadership” will once again resort to the terrorism it knows so well.
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
So, Judith, the chances of the emergence of a Palestinian Ghandi--not, I hasten to add, that the situation of Palestinians bears comparison with the colonization of India, because it most certainly does not--the chances of a Palestinian Ghandi are zero?
I take Claire's point, by the way, but only, well, up to a point. If a Ghandi-like figure were to lead a gigantic column of Palestinians, peacefully and unarmed, across the border, simply daring the IDF to shoot them--that, I think, would be a very serious problem, wouldn't it? Pacifist--aggression, to coin a term.
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
Peter Robinson: So, Judith, the chances of the emergence of a Palestinian Ghandi...are zero?
...If a Ghandi-like figure were to lead a gigantic column of Palestinians, peacefully and unarmed, across the border, simply daring the IDF to shoot them--that would be a very serious problem, wouldn't it?
Peter, there may well be Palestinian Ghandis out there shouting into the wilderness. The problem is that the population has to be of a mindset that is willing to follow a Ghandi, to really go the distance. The Palestinians have spent generations now nursing their resentments, throwing away options for coexistence and indoctrinating their children into jihad. None of that is consistent with either the desire or the ability to stick with Gandhi-esque civil disobedience for the long haul.
What worries me a lot more is someone outside Gaza or the territories -- some charismatic figure from elsewhere in the Arab world -- taking up their cause and leading huge numbers of Muslims to our borders. That would be hugely threatening. That's why those "Let's Rally the Third Intifada!" pages on Facebook -- and their hundreds of thousands of "likes" -- scare me so much.
May '10
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
Judith Levy: ..
In short: it might occur to them to try non-violence for a while, and it might move them a step or two forward, but sooner or later Hamas or Islamic Jihad will blow up an Israeli school bus or ice cream parlor and we'll be back to square one. (2/2) · Jun 3 at 11:45am
Reading your last paragraph Ms Levy, it made me ponder what a bleak world we sometimes live in.
But then, growing up I never thought the Berlin Wall would come down in my own lifetime, there would be a peace in Northern Ireland, or Chinese Communists give up their centralist economic control if not their political control.
Wouldn't have been great if Palestinian territories had been colonial outposts like the Raj in India (current India, not Pakistan nor Bangladesh per se), with a parliamentary democracy and respect for law, British created infrastructure, etc, as their legacy . Yes, I know that is a rose coloured view of colonialism and the partition; but it could have turned out so differently to the current misery for so many Palestinians.
Edited on Jun 4, 2011 at 12:01amFeb '11
Re: Calling Claire and Judith
"...indoctrinating their children into jihad..."
Judith's point is important, I think.
Young Arabs also deserve our pity. They're victims, too. Their elders have forcibly fed them a diet of vile anti-semitism, so that they can no longer distinguish truth and falsity. They now live in an alternative reality: Israel is agressor. Arabs are victims. Jews conquer the Muslim world. Jews commit genocide. And most dangerously, Hezbollah was victorious in 2006 and Israel is ripe for quick defeat -- if Arab youth will only sacrifice.
In my experience, young Arab men are like young men anywhere else. They're not monsters. They fantasize about women and think that they'll be won through acts of honor, bravery, and noble sacrifice. They love movies like Braveheart and The Patriot. They don't dream about being the English. They want to be Mel Gibson.
It's probably too late, and another generation of young Arabs is fated to die on Israel's borders. I'll reserve most of my anger, though, for cynical and impotent old men who prefer the deaths of Jews to the lives of their own sons.