Palestine: Resistance or Terrorism?

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Text in the picture states:

"Ahmad of Palestine yearns to be Mahatma Gandhi. Dare we say that his yearning is in vain?

Gandhi wanted peace & freedom above all things Ahmad wants exactly the same thing.

The path to peace begins by understanding why Palestinians are not even free to yearn. Ahmad is dying to believe that such a path exists "

(Source: wwww.dyingtolive.com)
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In Gaza, Palestinians have once again been blamed for their own deaths.

The British made a similar argument 151 years ago when they killed thousands of Indian civilians -- 1,200 in a single village -- in response to the largest anti-colonial uprising of the 19th century.

If Israel truly desires peace with the Palestinians and safety for its citizens, it should look back to one of the greatest, and misunderstood, independence movements in history.

Most people believe India won its independence from the British exclusively through Gandhi's famous strategy of nonviolence.

They're wrong; armed resistance has deep roots in India. During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, also known as the First War of Independence, Hindus and Muslims serving in the infantry for the British East Indian Company revolted against the British Empire, killing British officers and civilians alike.

While the majority of these cavalrymen were Hindu, Muslims also partook in the rebellion. These Muslim fighters called themselves "jihadis" and even "suicide ghazis."

The British quashed the revolt, but for the next 90 years Indian violence, even terrorism, in response continued.

In the early 20th century, Indian militants, frustrated with the Congress party -- the party of Gandhi and Nehru -- regularly resorted to acts of violence to overthrow the British. Official government reports note 210 "revolutionary outrages" and at least 1,000 "terrorists" involved in more than 101 attempted attacks between 1906 and 1917 in the state of Bengal alone (see Peter Heehs, "Terrorism in India During the Freedom Struggle," The Historian, 22 March 1993).

One young revolutionary, Bhagat Singh, later referred to as "Shaheed" Bhagat Singh, bombed the Legislative Assembly in 1929.

On the other hand, Palestinians are usually portrayed in Israel and the West as exclusively militants or terrorists.

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Yet Palestinians have a vibrant, albeit unsuccessful, history of nonviolent resistance.

In 1936, the Palestinians maintained a six-month general strike, the beginning of what became known as the Great Arab Revolt.

The British retaliated by declaring martial law, jailing and killing large numbers of Palestinians, and destroying numerous Palestinian homes. The revolt lasted for three years and was the largest and longest anti-colonial uprising in the British Empire.

Fifty years later, the first Palestinian intifada was largely nonviolent and included acts of mass civil disobedience like flying the Palestinian flag, organizing strikes and boycotting Israeli products.

In 1985, Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian-American psychologist from Jerusalem established a center for nonviolent resistance on the teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He was deported by Israel in 1988 (see Mubarak Awad, "Non-Violent Resistance: A Strategy for the Occupied Territories." Journal of Palestine Studies. Summer 1984).

A year later, Beit Sahour, a town near Bethlehem, engaged in a tax revolt against Israel, under the famous American slogan "No taxation without representation." The Israeli army responded by arresting over 80 Palestinians, cutting telephone lines, blocking food shipments into the town and confiscating millions of dollars in Palestinian goods.

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What about the current conflict?

All the public hears about are the small, makeshift rockets Palestinians fire into southern Israel. But farmers, fisherman and children had been nonviolently resisting the Israeli occupation for years.

Up until the Israeli invasion, Gaza fishermen had been d*isobeying Israeli orders by fishing in their waters* -- not unlike Gandhi when he urged Indians to march to the sea to collect their own salt against British orders.

In response, the British beat and imprisoned Gandhi's marchers. Likewise, the Israeli navy repeatedly forced Palestinian fisherman to strip to their underwear and swim to Israeli navy ships, where they are detained and their boats confiscated.

Since 2002, Palestinian men, women and children have been sitting in front of Israeli bulldozers flattening their olive groves to construct a wall deep into the West Bank.

The Israeli army has responded to these peaceful protestors with tear gas, beatings, arrests and even death.

The pattern occurred time and again: nonviolent Palestinian resistance would be crushed by Israeli force and ignored by the West.

With nothing to show for their efforts, is it any surprise that the Palestinian peaceful protest movement founders?

Violence has always been a historical response to colonialism and repression, in conflicts from India to Algeria to South Africa.

That doesn't make attacks on civilians right -- or strategically effective, for that matter.

In fact, as we all know, the Indian revolt against the British Empire only finally succeeded when Gandhi convinced his countrymen to resist peacefully.

Extremist factions, like those during the Indian independence movement, only gain strength and popularity when Israel flattens even the most harmless dissent.

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Radhika Sainath is a civil rights attorney and an editor of Peace Under Fire: Israel/Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement. She lived in the West Bank from October 2002-December 2003.

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The questions raised by Radhika in this fascinating comparison are very valid. So let's consider:

(a) Do you think that Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation should continue to be labeled terrorism or freedom fighting?

(b) Do you think that Israel's continued disproportional response will breed more violence?

(c) Do you think that the collective punishment inflicted upon Gaza - (inc. 18 months of seige culminating in the recent war) - is justified when Hamas was their democratically elected choice?

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Hasbara: Facts or Fiction?

Miri Eisin / Is only the Israeli narrative 'the truth' and all the others wrong? ~ Ha'aretz

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Israel has a national obsession with everything concerning hasbara (a Hebrew word for "explanation" and referring to information, spin, propaganda or a strategic public relations policy).

Every time a warlike event takes place, the Israeli broadcasting networks turn to hasbara experts with the recurring question - what must we do to improve Israel's international image?

They really mean "how can we prove to everyone that we're right, they're wrong and everybody hates us and they're anti-Semites?"

In the 22 days of fighting in the Gaza Strip, as in the 33 days of fighting in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the war was presented in very different ways - informed by three parallel narratives.

The Israeli narrative focuses on us, our war, our suffering, the families and reserve soldiers, the home front and decision making.

The other side is shown only on the margins as part of the spin.

The three Israeli broadcasting networks turn into news channels, zooming in on every local aspect and become part of the national effort during the fighting.

The Western media's narrative concentrates on showing both sides - Israel's dilemma and its right to self defense, but also the Palestinian tragedy, with an emphasis on the proportionalism of Israel's actions.

In both wars of the last few years the gap between the two narratives - Israeli and Western - was very pronounced.

Most Israelis would be profoundly shocked by the way the foreign networks present the wars.

In Israel it was clear that it was a war of self defense and many people can't understand how the world doesn't see that.

But is the narrative presented by the foreign networks false? Isn't there more than one way to present a war?

The narrative shown in the Western media, especially in Europe, is based on a different world of cultural references than Israel's.

It says the era of wars is over, that military force is not the way to solve disputes and that there is a direct link between occupation and violence.

The challenge facing Israeli hasbara is not simple - certainly as long as the Palestinians' tragedy is shown to the world. The Western media scrupulously present the Israeli side, but does not accept its narrative.

The third narrative is the Arab media's, especially since Arab broadcasting networks like Al Jazeera and Al-Arabiya have started operating. They focus on the Palestinians' tragedy (or the Lebanese tragedy of 2006), see the Israel Defense Forces as an occupation army and stress its conduct during the fighting.

The Arab media, unlike the Western, show extensive horror footage of dead bodies and wounded people. Israel is described as an occupying force, belligerent, expanding, lacking moral values, in contrast to the Palestinian, who has nothing.

However even here the Israeli voice is heard. T+he Arab networks are ready to interview Israeli spokespeople and confront them on the air.+ It's not that they accept the Israeli point of view, but their very readiness to hear it is a new approach.

Israelis are exposed mainly to the domestic networks and are shocked to hear how we appear to others. But is only the Israeli narrative "the truth" and all the others wrong?

The challenge facing Israeli hasbara is to understand the cultural world and conceptual approach of other target audiences and talk to them in their language.

Israel's national fortitude would not be impaired if we learned to look at reality in a more complex way. If we know, without renouncing our truth, how to open up to the existence of another narrative.

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Source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1059104.html

The writer was formerly the prime minister's foreign media adviser.

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Fascinating article. So the question is:

(a) Is only the Israeli narrative "the truth" and all the others wrong?

(b) Do you think that if Israelis were presented with both sides it would reduce the violence in this region?

(c) Would a less biased media - in the West & in Israel - help to bring about a peaceful solution sooner?

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Is CNN really allowing free speech on ireport?

The ireport I posted on bias in the media was pulled three times.
Below is the discussion I tried to initiate in good faith.

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Quoting: http://inthefield.blogs.cnn.com/tag/paula-hancocks/

"Wars today are fought on the battlefield, or in this case in the crowded streets of Gaza, the rest is won or lost on television screens and through public perception.

The vast majority of Israelis see this as a military success, but approval of Israel's operation around the world - even among its strongest allies - could be undermined by a disturbingly high Palestinian civilian death toll and misery inflicted on a far wider target than Hamas."

Which would be true in Europe but not in the US where the Jewish Lobby ensures that the pictures of the suffering and devastation wrought on an incarcerated population of 1.5m people in the open air prison that is Gaza is kept well hidden. This obstruction of the truth goes against the very essence of journalism and only serves to increase misunderstanding, prejudice and hatred.

So how do you propose that Arabs in general & Palestinians in particular can get a fair hearing in the US media?

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My Question to you now is:
Have you had your ireport pulled?
If so then how is ireport actually promoting free speech?
Where else can we go to be heard?

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You can vote here: