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<div class="ViewDetails_Title"><b><big><big>On heroes and preachers:
A new Gaza resistance paradigm</big></big></b></div>
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<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=718732">http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=718732</a></small></small></b><br>
Published Thursday 07/08/2014 (updated) 10/08/2014 11:59</div>
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<div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 10px"><b>By <a
href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/Search.aspx?AUTHOR=Ramzy%20Baroud">Ramzy
Baroud</a></b></div>
<br>
<i> Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the
editor of PalestineChronicle.com. <br>
<br>
His latest book is "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold
Story." </i><br>
<br>
"Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? In Israeli prison, of course!" was
the title of an article by Jo Ehrlich published in <b><a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2009/12/where-is-the-palestinian-gandhi-in-israeli-prison-of-course.html"
target="blank">Mondoweiss.net</a></b> on Dec. 21, 2009. That was
almost exactly one year after Israel's concluded a major war against
Gaza. The so-called Operation Cast Lead (Dec. 27, 2008 -- Jan. 18,
2009) was, till then, the deadliest Israeli attack against the
impoverished strip for many years.<br>
<br>
Ehrlich was not in the least being belittling by raising the
question about the ‘Palestinian Gandhi’ but responding to the
patronization of others. Right from the onset, he remarked: "Not
that I'm in any way playing into the Palestinian Gandhi dialogue, I
think it's actually pretty diversionary/racist. But sometimes you
have to laugh in order not to cry."<br>
<br>
Indeed, the question was and remains condescending, ignorant,
patronizing and utterly racist. But the question was also pervasive,
including among people who classify themselves as "pro-Palestinian
activists."<br>
<br>
Now that Israel's latest war -- so-called Operation Protective Edge
-- has surpassed Cast Lead, in terms of duration, causalities, level
of destruction, but also the sheer horrors of its targeting of
civilians, as dozens of families were entirely wiped out -- the
Gandhi question seems more muted than usual. To understand why, one
needs to first examine the reason of why Palestinians were demanded
to produce a non-violent Gandhi alternative in their struggle for
freedom in the first place.<br>
<br>
The Second Palestinian Intifada or uprising in 2000-2005 was
inaugurated with an extremely violent Israeli response. Israeli
leaders at the time meant to send a message to late Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat that they had no patience for any act of
collective defiance, as they were convinced that Arafat engineered
the Intifada to strengthen his political possession in the "peace
talks," which, ultimately proved a farce.<br>
<br>
Caught in an impossible situation -- massive US-fed Israeli war
machine that harvested hundreds of lives every month -- and having
no faith in their leadership, Palestinians resorted to arms, using
suicide bombings as well as other violent methods. The tactic raised
much controversy -- due to the death toll among Israeli civilians --
and was quickly used in Israel-western propaganda to, retroactively
explain Israel's military occupation, and justify its harsh military
tactics.<br>
<br>
Those who dared explain Palestinian violence within its proper and
larger context, or underscore that many more Palestinian civilians
were still being killed by the Israeli army were shunned by the
media, and, at times, were seen as a liability by those who insisted
to classify Palestinians within a narrative of victimization.<br>
<br>
Many westerners (from presidents, to philosophers, to journalists,
to activists, etc) deliberated the matter with much enthusiasm. The
fact that few western countries have truly experienced anti-colonial
national liberation struggle in their modern history, thus lacking
real understanding of the humiliation and anger experienced by
colonized nations, seemed to matter little. Some were simply
concerned about Israel, and no one else; others, wanted to preserve
the image of the Palestinian as an occupied, hapless, eternal
victim.<br>
<br>
The most obscene presentation of this language was made by
then-newly elected US President Barack Obama, who stood at a Cairo
university podium on June 4, 2009, to convey to Palestinians a most
denigrating, insensitive and highly inaccurate <b><a
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09"
target="blank">message:</a></b><br>
<br>
"Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and
killing is wrong and it does not succeed. For centuries, black
people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the
humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full
and equal rights. This same story can be told by people from South
Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story
with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end."<br>
<br>
Obama's message painted the Palestinian struggle as an abnormality
in an otherwise a perfectly peaceful national liberation struggles
around the world. The message is of course untrue. Moreover, he
either didn't know or wished to ignore Palestinian history where
popular, nonviolent resistance that goes back to the 1920s and 30s,
and arguably, earlier than that. <br>
<br>
Obama, like many others, failed to appreciate the level of extreme
Israeli violence, which employ weapons that Obama had himself
supplied Tel Aviv, to subdue Palestinian resistance and maintain a
relatively easy military occupation and thriving Jewish settlements
built illegally on stolen Palestinian land.<br>
<br>
But the decisive point in the discussion was the Second Intifada,
which wrought much Israeli violence resulting in the death of
thousands. The political implications of the uprising were also
quite significant as it divided Palestinians between those who were
intimidating by the Israeli tactics into submissions (the so-called
moderates), and others who seemed unrepentant (the so-called
radicals).<br>
<br>
For nearly ten years now, the debate raged. Some out rightly
condemned Palestinian armed resistance, others offered mutual
criticism of Israeli and Hamas violence, while another group simply
preached about the <b><a
href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/171515/abbas-un-and-futility-armed-resistance"
target="blank">futility</a></b> of armed struggle in the face of
a country with nuclear weapons capable of blowing up much of the
globe at the push of a button.<br>
<br>
That debate, although made for an exquisite discussion on online
newspapers and social media, hardly registered amongst ordinary
Palestinians, especially those in Gaza. While Gaza intellectuals did
contend with new ideas of how to build international solidarity to
end the Israeli siege, get their message out to the world, and even
question the timing of firing rockets into Israel, few probed the
principle of armed resistance.<br>
<br>
Of course, Palestinians know best, much better than Obama and other
preachers elsewhere. They know that collective resistance is not
always a tactic determined through social media discussions; that
when one’s children are pulverized by US-supplied killing
technology, there is no time to lay flat and sing "we shall
overcome," but to prevent the rest of the tanks from entering into
the neighborhood -- be it Shujaiyya, Jabaliya or Maghazi. <br>
<br>
They also know that Israeli violence is a result of a decided
political agenda, and is not tailored around the nature of
Palestinian resistance. But more importantly, history has taught
them, that when Israelis come to Gaza as invaders, few will stand in
Gaza's defense before the western-financed death machine but Gaza's
own sons and daughters. If Gazans don't defend their cities, no one
else will.<br>
<br>
Although the disparity of the fight between Israel and Palestinian
resistance is as highlighted today as ever before, Palestinian
resistance has matured. The fact that they killed <b><a
href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/israeli-mood-turns-dark-mounting-casualties-24652707"
target="blank">dozens of soldiers</a></b> and only three
civilians should be noted, as is Israel's disgraceful targeting of
hospitals, <b><a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/us-little-doubt-israel-bombed-gaza-school-2014731172852773778.html"
target="blank">schools</a></b>, UN shelters and even graveyards.
Maintaining that level of discipline in the most unequal fight one
can imagine is as close to the very battlefield ethics that the US
and Israel often breach, but never, ever respect.<br>
<br>
As great as Gandhi was in the context of his country's struggle
against colonialism, which remains a source of inspiration for many
Palestinians, Palestine has its own heroes, resisters, women and men
who are engraving a legend of their own in Gaza and the rest of
Palestine.<br>
<br>
As for those who have busily asked the question of where is the
Palestinian Gandhi, it is much more affective for them to use their
energies to block their governments' shipments of weapons to Israel,
which, as of August 6, killed nearly 1,900 and wounded over 9,500,
the vast majority of them <b><a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/gaza-civilian-death-toll-military-training-experts"
target="blank">civilians.</a></b>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
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San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
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