{"id":4222,"date":"2008-03-03T10:18:52","date_gmt":"2008-03-03T17:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/03\/in-defense-of-non-violence\/"},"modified":"2008-03-03T10:28:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-03T17:28:00","slug":"in-defense-of-non-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/03\/in-defense-of-non-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Non-Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m writing this in response to an article in last week&#8217;s Haaretz entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/hasen\/spages\/957786.html\">&#8216;Palestinians&#8217; doomsday weapon, non-violence, fails test&#8217;<\/a>. It&#8217;s a better article than the title might lead one to believe and accepts an important underlying premise: that non-violence from the Gaza Strip would be a serious blow to the Israeli government. However, the article does make a couple of significant errors which I hope to correct now:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The article wrongly suggests that the increased rocket fire out of Gaza last week was in response to the non-violent protest at the border. In fact Israel&#8217;s General Yadlin has pointed out that rather it was a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ynetnews.com\/Ext\/Comp\/ArticleLayout\/CdaArticlePrintPreview\/1,2506,L-3513864,00.html\">direct result of assassinations of several key Hamas military experts<\/a><\/li>\n<li>The theme of the article is that we have no clue what the Israeli military strategy to counter non-violence is, and that they probably don&#8217;t even have one<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It is this later claim that I wish to discuss, because it is this later claim which misinterprets the entire strategy of non-violence and leads to the article&#8217;s false conclusion that non-violence has simply failed of its own accord.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, we know precisely what strategy the Israeli military employs in response to non-violence, because it is the only strategy available to it. Indeed it is the only strategy militaries ever employ in response to non-violence, and <a href=\"http:\/\/wiredispatch.com\/news\/?id=68204\">we saw it clearly this weekend<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Escalation. <\/p>\n<p>Seeing the path of non-violence to its necessary conclusion is not easy for precisely this reason: that every act of non-violence defiance is met with an act of increasingly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ejpress.org\/article\/24795\">disproportionate<\/a> violence in the hopes of realizing a violent response and vindicating the claim that the posture of non-violence is an insincere one. <\/p>\n<p>Today, Israeli ground forces begin their pullout from the Gaza Strip. The mainstream press treats this as a response to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&#038;sid=as7vFYMXDFXg&#038;refer=home\">international condemnation<\/a> for the large civilian death toll. Hamas sees it as vindication of their violent resistance and <a href=\"http:\/\/wiredispatch.com\/news\/?id=69155\">claims &#8216;victory&#8217;<\/a>. But both of these are mistaken. Israeli troops are leaving the Gaza strip because they achieved their goal: they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/hasen\/spages\/960262.html\">provoked a response<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It takes a very special brand of determination to see non-violence through in the face of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gulf-daily-news.com\/Story.asp?Article=210169&#038;Sn=WORL&#038;IssueID=30346\">attacks on soccer-playing children<\/a> and troops <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml?xml=\/news\/2008\/03\/03\/wgaza203.xml\">marching through suburbs killing civilians<\/a>. Yet it is precisely this determination which must follow, if those deaths are not to be in vain. <\/p>\n<p>The people of the Gaza Strip must hold firm in their resolve for non-violence. They must make it clear to the Israeli military that they will not be swayed, nor will they respond violently. They must leave the Israeli government with only two choices: acquiescence or committing genocide. And despite what Israel&#8217;s Deputy Defense Minister or anyone else may say, they must remain confident that Israel cannot choose the latter.<\/p>\n<p>This weekend may have been a setback for non-violence, but it is nothing resembling failure. Non-violence remains not just an option for the Palestinians in the face of occupation, but at the end of the day, the only one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m writing this in response to an article in last week&#8217;s Haaretz entitled &#8216;Palestinians&#8217; doomsday weapon, non-violence, fails test&#8217;. It&#8217;s a better article than the title might lead one to believe and accepts an important underlying premise: that non-violence from the Gaza Strip would be a serious blow to the Israeli government. However, the article [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_social_image_id":0,"_social_image_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-violence","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","_social_image_id":false,"subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4222"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}