If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
Oh, for heaven's sake.
The Economist is the latest stalwart of the quality press to swoon over the events of Naqba Day. The protesters were downright Gandhi-esque, apparently, in their commitment to peaceful, non-violent, civil disobedience. The paper issues the challenge:
Will we even bother to acknowledge that the Palestinians are protesting non-violently? Or will we soldier on with the same empty decades-old rhetoric, now drained of any truth or meaning, because it protects established relationships of power? What will it take to make Americans recognise that the real Martin Luther King-style non-violent Palestinian protestors have arrived, and that Israeli soldiers are shooting them with real bullets?
Here are some photographs from daisy-tossing, non-violent Naqba Day.
1. The aftermath of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in which an Israeli Arab plowed his truck into vehicles and pedestrians, killing one and injuring 17, while shouting "Allahu Akbar" and "Death to the Jews":
2. A Palestinian throws a fire bomb towards Israeli soldiers following Friday prayer in Arab East Jerusalem:
3. Protesters surge over the Syrian-Israeli border fence near Majd al-Shams in a mass infiltration attempt:
4. A Palestinian throws a firecracker towards Israeli border police in the Shufat refugee camp outside Jerusalem:
[All images via The Atlantic.]
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Comments :
Oct '10
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
Non-violent? Why are Western elites so gullible? Why do they accept and spread framings like this so easily?
Feb '11
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
Refuting, responding, even talking among the like-minded is a thankless and exhausting task.
Oct '10
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
I have subscribed to The Economist for over 30 years, and while I agree it is one of the few remaining examples of the “quality press”, I have become increasingly upset with their editorials and news coverage in the last few years. It seems they hire only brilliant “toffs” who write well, have graduated from Oxford or Cambridge and subscribe to the UK multicultural statism philosophy described so brilliantly by Melanie Phillips in her books. It’s very unfortunate.
Judith, does anyone in the Israeli government worry that Israel may be losing the PR battle to the Palestinians, and are they trying to do something about it? Here in Japan, the English language press is sourced primarily from AP, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. Their articles universally describe the Palestinians as impoverished victims of an intolerant Israel and an imperial American foreign policy regardless of the facts or what actually happened. In many cases, it’s totally devoid of reality. I have to go to The Jerusalem Post or to some other source to understand what really happened.
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
They do worry, and they're trying halfheartedly to do something about it, but the Israelis have always been inept at this kind of thing. For all their toughness, they suffer from an inexplicable, fatally naive ingenuousness. Just as they're chronically, almost childishly honest in their personal discourse, so too do they tend to assume public discourse to be a straightforward exercise, even when the other side is playing by completely different rules. Israelis are still blindsided when the other side uses wild distortions to make them look bad, and even more surprised when the distortions are believed. This is a dangerous weakness, and one they have yet to overcome.
Oct '10
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
Judith Levy
They do worry, and they're trying halfheartedly to do something about it, but the Israelis have always been inept at this kind of thing. For all their toughness, they suffer from an inexplicable, fatally naive ingenuousness. Just as they're chronically, almost childishly honest in their personal discourse, so too do they tend to assume public discourse to be a straightforward exercise, even when the other side is playing by completely different rules. Israelis are still blindsided when the other side uses wild distortions to make them look bad, and even more surprised when the distortions are believed. This is a dangerous weakness, and one they have yet to overcome. · May 19 at 3:19am
Thanks very much Judith. I sincerely hope they start working on it. Unfortunately, I think it is a big part of the existential problem for Israel.
Aug '10
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
I hope Israelis are prepared for another war, because it looks to me like they're being set up for it. Anti-semitism is rising and rampant, and blindness to the true motives of Israel's enemies.
It wasn't that long ago that the West said, "Never again will we allow a holocaust!" Now it's, "Maybe there was no holocaust."
It's a sick, sick world.
May '10
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
River: I hope Israelis are prepared for another war, because it looks to me like they're being set up for it. Anti-semitism is rising and rampant, and blindness to the true motives of Israel's enemies.
It wasn't that long ago that the West said, "Never again will we allow a holocaust!" Now it's, "Maybe there was no holocaust."
It's a sick, sick world. · May 19 at 3:45am
I fear that, too, River. Also, why is there no recognition of the fact that Israel was invaded by these "peaceful protestors"? Even if we completely pretended they were non-violent they were brazenly violating international borders. Add to that their history of vicious violence and hatred toward the Jews and they posed a true threat to Israel's national security. If any country had their hostile enemies simultaneously pouring over almost all of their borders someone have the nerve to tell me they wouldn't shoot.
Oct '10
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
River and Andrea, sadly I agree with both of you. Absent from the reports that I read is the fact that Syria and Israel are still officially at war. Also absent from most reports is the fact that the Jordanian army prevented the "protestors" from storming the Jordan-Israel border, and the question as why Lebanon and Syria did not act the same as Jordan.
I'm afraid that our foreign policy centered on the assumption that the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians is the cause of unrest in the Middle East instead of focusing on Iran and the Islamisists will make another war against Israel inevitable.
Apr '11
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
I had to quit reading The Economist about five years ago. A new editor seems to have unleashed the worst in anti-American bias the British can muster. I was seeing the same applied to Israel. It made me wonder about the rest of their reporting Now I get the periodic calls asking for me to resubscribe and I have been interested to see if their treatment of President Obama will be as disdainful as it was of President Bush. Discussions such as this do not make me optimistic.
Dec '10
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
Andrea, just a day or so ago, about 100 Sudanese infiltrated into Israel over its southern border. They invaded an Israeli neighborhood, asking for water and medical assistance. The Israeli police eventually showed up to round them up and get them aid. So the IDF are not bloodthirsty monsters eager to shoot anyone crossing the border, despite what The Economist believes. But of course, Syrians and Lebanese crossing en masse during a protest against Israel's very existence are quite different from Sudanese refugees fleeing oppression and starvation. (Though Israel might score a PR coup by publicly offering Syrian families of residents of the Golan a chance to immigrate to Israel, be reunited with their families and become Israeli citizens - you might then see the Syrian Army shooting people scrambling to the border to take the Israeli offer.)
Mar '11
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
The article reflects attitudes prevalent in Europe and certainly present if not as prevalent in the US: The West's problems wit the Arab and Muslim worlds will either go away or seriously diminish if, somehow, the Palestinians and Israelis would find some way to accommodate each other. Hence the desire to push Israel into some deal, in the process downplaying Arab lethal actions and hostile words and emphasizing Israeli missteps, attempting to present both sides equivalent. Friends of Israel are often tempted to counter those pushing the Israelis towards capitulation by taking an opposite approach, hawkish and uncompromising. My view is that if the Israelis decide that there is a legitimate segment of the Palestinians who are willing to have meaningful talks, or some Arab country that is willing to deal with them, they are competent to make that decision on their own as they are competent to decide how to deal with violence and threats. Their friends should lend their support, but with the understanding that the people dealing with threats on a daily basis are the ones to decide how to respond to them. The greatest help we can offer is, I think, in the propaganda war.
Dec '10
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
"...quality press..."? Wow, I must be missing out. I let my Economist subscription lapse a decade ago and consider myself better off exchanging that money for a latte per month subscription here.
Oct '10
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
Andrea Ryan
River: I hope Israelis are prepared for another war, because it looks to me like they're being set up for it. Anti-semitism is rising and rampant, and blindness to the true motives of Israel's enemies.
It wasn't that long ago that the West said, "Never again will we allow a holocaust!" Now it's, "Maybe there was no holocaust."
It's a sick, sick world. · May 19 at 3:45am
I fear that, too, River. Also, why is there no recognition of the fact that Israel was invaded by these "peaceful protestors"? Even if we completely pretended they were non-violent they were brazenly violating international borders. Add to that their history of vicious violence and hatred toward the Jews and they posed a true threat to Israel's national security. If any country had their hostile enemies simultaneously pouring over almost all of their borders someone have the nerve to tell me they wouldn't shoot. · May 19 at 4:47am
It's not unlike how the problem on our own southern border is portrayed by Barack Obama and certain opportunists on the Republican side.
Aug '10
Re: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter
Andrea Ryan
River: I hope Israelis are prepared for another war,
I fear that, too, River. Also, why is there no recognition of the fact that Israel was invaded by these "peaceful protestors"? ... If any country had their hostile enemies simultaneously pouring over almost all of their borders someone have the nerve to tell me they wouldn't shoot. · May 19 at 4:47am
Always ready to shoot ,thank goodness. Palestinians ( or whoever is being shown to us as representative) are the mutant motherless children of the UN's imagination.
A perfect,amorphous, fatal foil to American concerns.
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