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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/on-the-ethics-of-non-palestinians-promoting-nonviolence/">https://www.palestinechronicle.com/on-the-ethics-of-non-palestinians-promoting-nonviolence/</a></font>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">On the Ethics of Non-Palestinians Promoting Nonviolence</h1>
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<strong>By <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/benay-blend" title="Display all articles for Benay Blend">Benay Blend</a></strong> - May 24, 2021<br></div>
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<img src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Dabke-678x455.jpg" alt="" title="Dabke" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="482" height="323">
Dabke represents a form of solidarity and cultural resistance. (Photo: via ActiveStills.org)
<p><strong>By <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/benay-blend" title="Display all articles for Benay Blend">Benay Blend</a></strong></p><p>In “The Violence Debate: Teaching the Oppressed how to Fight Oppression” (2010), Ramzy Baroud <a href="https://countercurrents.org/baroud231010.htm">explains</a>
that for “progressive and Leftist media and audiences, stories praising
non-violence” are preferred, for they invoke a strategy acceptable to
liberals in the West. At no other time, perhaps, than the present has
there been so much condemnation of the victims for their resistance.</p>
<p>“Whether in subtle or overt ways,” Baroud <a href="https://countercurrents.org/baroud231010.htm">continues</a>,
“armed resistance in Palestine is always condemned.” It is analogous to
informing Africans (Blacks) that if they would just do what the police
are asking in a polite manner, then they won’t get shot.</p>
<p>“The problem with the non-violence bandwagon,” Baroud <a href="https://countercurrents.org/baroud231010.htm">concludes</a>,
“is that it is grossly misrepresentative of the reality on the ground.”
As he points out, Palestinians have employed non-violence for decades
going back to the prolonged strike of 1936.</p>
<p>More recently, Gazans participated in the <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/great-return-march-new-defiance-campaign/">Great March of Return</a>, weekly events that would span a good two years. In return for the nonviolent protests, the United Nations <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/two-years-on-people-injured-and-traumatized-during-the-great-march-of-return-are-still-struggling/">documented</a>
that Israeli soldiers murdered 214 Palestinians, including 46 children
and injured 36,100 more, including 8,800 children. One in 5 of those
injured were by live bullets. Among Israelis, one soldier was killed
while 7 more were injured.</p>
<p>More recently, Palestinians staged a <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/palestinians-stage-general-strike-as-israel-bombards-gaza-videos/">General Strike</a>
on May 18, 2021, to protest Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip. For the
first time in over 20 years, Palestinians united to close all economic,
commercial and educational establishments in the occupied West Bank,
including East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Palestinian villages and towns in
Israel. The strike also called attention to settler mob violence,
forcible evictions of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood,
and several days of attacks against the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.</p>
<p>Not only is this strategy considered a nonviolent means of protest,
but in this instance, it was unified, supported by the several
Palestinian political parties, unions, syndicates, and popular
movements, all of which published supportive statements and encouraged
the various factions to take part.</p>
<p>In return, the Israelis have murdered approximately 29 Palestinians
on the West Bank, including Islam Burnat, 16 years old, who was taking
part in the village of Bil’in, a long-time site of weekly protests
organized by his uncle Iyad Burnat.</p>
<p>Islam’s paternal grandmother, Intisar Burnat, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-children-mourn-friend-killed-israel-forces">told</a>
Middle East News that the family has long participated in nonviolent
protests against Israeli settlement building and land confiscation in
their village. His uncle, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/iyad.burnat">Iyad Burnat</a>, is the subject of <a href="http://www.pbs.org/pov/watch/5brokencameras/">5 Broken Cameras</a>, a documentary shot by his brother Emad during the course of the protests.</p>
<p>The lesson is that no matter what Palestinians do they are murdered,
sometimes incrementally, sometimes spectacularly, but, in fact, it’s
been 73 years of genocide starting back way before Hamas. Significantly,
as Ramzy Baroud <a href="https://countercurrents.org/baroud231010.htm">contends</a>,
the privileging of nonviolence takes the focus away from the violence
imparted by the Israeli occupation on all kinds of protest in the West
Bank and Gaza—”and places it solely on the shoulders of Palestinians.”</p>
<p>In “The Hamas are Coming: A View of the Violence from Inside Israel,” Israeli activist Miko Peled <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-hamas-are-coming-view-violence-inside-israel/277210/">contends</a> that,</p>
<blockquote><p>“there are never Palestinians, never people, only ‘The
Hamas’ — and ‘The Hamas’ is, by the way, male and singular (in Hebrew).
‘The Hamas thinks;’ ‘The Hamas believes;’ ‘The Hamas should know;’ ‘When
the Hamas understands, he will stop;’ and finally, ‘When The Hamas is
hit hard he will never dare to attack Israel again.”</p></blockquote>
<p>“Violence, racism, neo-fascist attitudes, and a toxic mix of religion
and nationality,” Peled concludes, “make Zionism very dangerous,” but
it is an element that does not stand out when only Palestinians are
blamed for the violence inflicted on them. In addition, as activist
Na’eem Jeenah <a href="https://www.facebook.com/naeem.jeenah">explains</a>, “the armed resistance in Gaza is not just Hamas. It includes the PFLP, PIJ as well as elements of Fatah.”</p>
<p>Moreover, it’s misleading to reduce the resistance to “The Hamas.” Instead, <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/unity-at-last-the-palestinian-people-have-risen/">explains</a>
Baroud, “it is a Palestinian uprising, an Intifada unprecedented in the
history of the Palestinian struggle, both in its nature and outreach.”
For the first time in many years, he continues, Palestinians are
“challenging factionalism, along with any attempt at making Israeli
occupation and apartheid normal.”</p>
<p>Led by Palestinian youth, who Baroud <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/unity-at-last-the-palestinian-people-have-risen/">describes</a> as constantly marginalized and oppressed by their own leadership and by the relentless Israeli <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/">military occupation</a>,
this new movement “eclipses Fatah and Hamas and all the rest, because
without a united people there can be no meaningful resistance, no vision
for liberation, no struggle for justice to be won.”</p>
<p>On the 96th anniversary of the birthday of Malcolm X, May 19, 2021, its fitting to remember his words. Spoken at the second <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/organization-afro-american-unity-oaau-1965/">Organization of Afro-American Unity</a> (<a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/organization-afro-american-unity-oaau-1965/">OAAU</a>) rally on July 5, 1954, he <a href="http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-second-oaau-rally-july-5-1964.html">remarked</a> the following:</p>
<blockquote><p>“So if we need white allies in this country, we don’t
need those kind who compromise. We don’t need those kind who encourage
us to be polite, responsible, you know. We don’t need those kind who
give us that kind of advice. We don’t need those kind who tell us how to
be patient. No, if we want some white allies, we need the kind that
John Brown was, or we don’t need you. And the only way to get those kind
is to turn in a new direction.”</p></blockquote>
<p>His remarks are still relevant today as Palestinians, among others,
reflect on what they need. Accordingly, activist Na’eem Jeenah<a href="https://www.facebook.com/naeem.jeenah"> suggests</a>
that “perhaps we should ask Palestinians what they think, before we
tell them what they should do.” Echoing the words of theorist Frantz
Fanon, he warns against “prescribing and pontificating to oppressed
people about how they should respond to that oppression.”</p>
<p>“Winning and losing wars cannot be measured by gruesome comparisons
between the number of dead on both sides,” Baroud concludes, “but only
through the examination of the objectives.</p>
<p>The Palestinian people’s objective is to rise in unity, resist and
inspire global solidarity around their cause; they have done so with
flying colors.” Looking to the future, Micha K. Ben-David, co-founder at
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/grassrootsalquds/">Grassroots Al-Quds</a> and former Public relations at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BreakingTheSilenceIsrael/">Breaking the Silence</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/micha.kurz">warns</a>
that “focusing on either prejudice, racism, hatred… or just ending this
particular wave of violence- is simply distracting from the political
and economic realities of settler colonialism that have created and
perpetuate the hatred and the violence.” Instead, he asks that his
fellow Jewish community—and all those concerned with global
struggles—look beyond returning to the status quo in a country, that he
claims, is “neither a Jewish nor a democratic state.”</p>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=ramzy%20baroud">words</a>, again, of Ramzy Baroud,</p>
<blockquote><p>“we said it a million times before, and now, we say it
again but with greater confidence than ever before, only steadfastness,
only sumud, only muqawama, only RESISTANCE will deliver justice and
freedom in Palestine. Nothing else matters. Nothing else counts.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Now is the time for the international community to rally in support of this resistance.</p>
<p><em>– Benay Blend earned her doctorate in American Studies from the
University of New Mexico. Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and
Sam Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile are Words’:
‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of Palestinian and Native American
Writers”. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.</em></p>
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