Israel to World: "Suck It."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/magazine/is-this-where-the-third-intifada-will-start.html?ref=magazine&_r=0

“We see our stones as our message,” Bassem explained. The message they carried, he said, was “We don’t accept you.” While Bassem spoke admiringly of Mahatma Gandhi, he didn’t worry over whether stone-throwing counted as violence. The question annoyed him: Israel uses far greater and more lethal force on a regular basis, he pointed out, without being asked to clarify its attitude toward violence. If the loincloth functioned as the sign of Gandhi’s resistance, of India’s nakedness in front of British colonial might, Bassem said, “Our sign is the stone.” The weekly clashes with the I.D.F. were hence in part symbolic. The stones were not just flinty yellow rocks, but symbols of defiance, of a refusal to submit to occupation, regardless of the odds.

cf Stones thrown at vehicles near Ariel caused a serious crash that left a toddler fighting for her life.

just a little symbolic toddler killing. no biggie:
http://bbcwatch.org/2013/03/16/bbc-fails-to-report-on-route-5-terror-attack/

yeah the twitter chatter seems to be very much focused on the rock-throwing

seems like a bit of a stretch to compare throwing stones at the military to throwing stones at civilian cars on the highway tho

i think the point is that the article author is living in a fantasy world where intifadas are romantic resistances against military oppressions when the last two intifadas (and a third if it happened - god forbid) mostly involve the murder of civilians.

hes pretty clear about the human cost of the intifadas, i think

The losses of the second intifada were enormous. Nearly 5,000 Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis died. Israeli assassination campaigns and the I.D.F.’s siege of West Bank cities left the Palestinian leadership decimated and discouraged. By the end of 2005, Yasir Arafat was dead, Israel had pulled its troops and settlers out of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, had reached a truce with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The uprising sputtered out. The economy was ruined, Gaza and the West Bank were more isolated from each other than ever, and Palestinians were divided, defeated and exhausted.

doesnt sound too romantic. the headline is 'grabby' and not really very representative of the article content

IDF also doesnt do itself any favors

They drove us to the old British police station in the I.D.F. base in Halamish. While I was sitting on a bench, an I.D.F. spokesman called my cellphone to inform me that no journalists with press cards had been detained in Nabi Saleh. I disagreed. (The next day, according to Agence France-Presse, the I.D.F. denied I had been arrested.) A half-hour later, an officer escorted me to the gate.

tbh I only scanned the piece. I'm pretty exhausted by the recent spate of Third Intifada articles (mostly coming from UK media but also Haaretz) that seem like their breathlessly anticipating the resumption of all out warfare in the West Bank. if this article doesn't encourage it that's promising bc it seems supremely irresponsible to me to cheerlead a third intifada, even if you are hoping to get good copy out of it.

they're* breathlessly

like this: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/why-hasn-t-a-third-intifada-broken-out-yet-among-the-palestinians.premium-1.506112

I always forget why these two groups of people are fighting in the first place.

this is the real Israel to World: "Suck It." NYT article of the week btw: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/world/middleeast/in-jerusalem-jewish-apartments-in-arab-neighborhoods-complicate-issue.html

which i think is a good idea - dividing jerusalem was always a terrible concept (and as the article itself admits, largely impossible after '68)

After Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier kidnapped in the Gaza Strip, was released in late 2011 in exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, Mr. Zaghal said, some Jews threw stones and water at people celebrating in the street, and made a big sign declaring, “One Jew is Worth 1,000 Arabs.”

“Everyone knows they don’t love us and we don’t love them,” Mr. Zaghal, 32, said. “They think that this is their place and this is their land, but this is not the case. We are here and we are staying here, but they won’t. There are people here who won’t let them.”

crazy

http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.il/2013/03/17-mar-13-little-village-in-hills-and.html

that rings kinda hollow to me

the complaints are what, that

1) bassem tamimi doesnt sufficiently make a commitment to nonviolence because he says palestinians still have the right to armed resistance
2) article doesn't spend enough time condemning terrorism, and the nytimes doesnt cover israeli victims often enough, "the arab world" treats a terrorist from the village as a celebrity
3) the rock throwing

seems unlikely that there is a article that coulve been written about nabi saleh that wouldve been satisfactory to the roths unless it focused entirely on the apparent adoration of its residents for ahlam tamimi. not that i blame them! but its not the strongest rebuttal

doesn't sufficiently make a commitment to nonviolence bc they have a long history of violence, still glorify bombers, and continue to engage in violent resistance. the non-violence canard is just a smokescreen.

who is "they" here, the residents of nabi saleh? not having "a long history of violence" as a condition of commitment means that there will never be palestinians with a sufficient commitment to nonviolence

& anyway the non-violence "canard" is a "smokescreen" for... what, exactly? what is it hiding?

yes, the residents of nabi saleh. and you can't commit violent acts and glorify previous violent acts and then claim that you're committed to nonviolence.

there's a phenomenon of palestinian activists claiming one thing (like a commitment to nonviolence) during interviews w/ western media and then saying something different in arabic. isn't this entire third intifada thing pegged to demands to release palestinian prisoners - many of whom are in jail for violent acts against civilians? even if nabi saleh were engaging in non-violent protests, they're doing so for the purpose of getting violent terrorists released from prison.

what 'third intifada thing'? that's more or less a frame forced on the article by the author and the editors.

Nabi Saleh, Bassem hoped, could model a form of resistance for the rest of the West Bank. The goal was to demonstrate that it was still possible to struggle and to do so without taking up arms, so that when the spark came, if it came, resistance might spread as it had during the first intifada. “If there is a third intifada,” he said, “we want to be the ones who started it.”

Bassem saw three options. “To be silent is to accept the situation,” he said, “and we don’t accept the situation.” Fighting with guns and bombs could only bring catastrophe. Israel was vastly more powerful, he said. “But by popular resistance, we can push its power aside.”

this is the only mention of it in the piece

& anyway im open to the idea that bassem tamimi is endorsing violence in arabic while condemning it in english--but i havent seen that anyway, and it would be a *much* stronger refutation of the nyt mag article than stuff about stone-throwing, at least to me and imo

ok that's fair. i can't tell to what extent the third intifada meme is being pushed by the media and to what extent it's being pushed by actual palestinian activists. i've certainly heard it a lot over the last month.

but certainly if bassem tamimi is speaking for the community (and that's the role I believe the NYT is placing him in) it's legitimate to question exactly how committed to nonviolence nabi saleh is. even if he is himself committed to nonviolence - spotlighting one particular voice when there's a mess of contradictory evidence is the problem i think.

Show me any nonviolent resistance group in history and I'll find you members who had previously advocated or even continued to advocate violence. Nonviolence is always in part a calculated decision by a group with less capacity for force. Accusing Palestinians of having a strategy isn't in itself all that damning.

ok, but this is the spokesman for nonviolent protest who has been arrested for promoting rock throwing, whose village continues to throw rocks at israeli cars + vehicles, and whose village has a long history of committing terrorist acts (including the Sbarro bombing) and continues to glorify those terrorists. the standard for being praised for nonviolence should be a little higher than putting up a billboard and conducting an interview.

The luster of non-violence for most ppl stems specifically from the fact of its success. If India were still under the British, it would be a historical footnote.

Obviously the Palestinians say a lot of things specifically for foreign consumption. I think the supposed renunication of violence because of its lack of effectiveness, is an adoption of a certain Western critiques of the intifadah. I am in no position to judge whether it's earnest or merely tactical propaganda.

Not sure what to make of this - but at the very least Bassam is still glorifying murderers (maybe despite his own personal beliefs about violence + nonviolence):

http://www.israellycool.com/2013/02/17/haaretz-ignores-inconvenient-truths/

there's something great about the epithet "unrepentant released Sbarro terrorist"

but at the very least Bassam is still glorifying murderers

And the Roths, by the use of 'murderer', are negating any political aspect to the Tamini's actions. Was Begin a 'glorified murderer'?

I'm not even picking any side here, I just think that both of them tend to argue in bad faith.

I don't know if I'd say "bad faith" given that the person at issue was responsible for their daughter's death.

and I don't really have any problem with calling someone who plans an attack aiming to kill civilians a murderer. I just don't agree with this tactic of delegitimizing the Palestinian resistance and cause by imposing purity tests on an entire village.

ok, but this is the spokesman for nonviolent protest who has been arrested for promoting rock throwing, whose village continues to throw rocks at israeli cars + vehicles, and whose village has a long history of committing terrorist acts (including the Sbarro bombing) and continues to glorify those terrorists. the standard for being praised for nonviolence should be a little higher than putting up a billboard and conducting an interview.

― Mordy, Tuesday, March 19, 2013 11:39 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i dunno, im happy to weigh rock throwing + and the onetime presence and current 'glorification/ of terrorists against three years of weekly nonviolent protest and figure that the tamimis and nabi saleh have met the standard

Has anybody offered to help move these groups of people to other, noncontiguous lands? I feel like the land here is at least part of the problem. It feels like a poisonous place.

awful big piece of land to make a UN protectorate or whatever

...

the land itself is...part of the problem, yes

a UN protectorate or whatever

Had to google that. I was thinking more along the lines of a nature preserve. You know, give a little something to the hyraxes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/19/obama-urged-israel-two-state-solution

I was thinking more along the lines of a nature preserve.

in my more nihilistic moments I have thought someone should just nuke the place and render it totally uninhabitable for anybody. problem solved.

there could be some advance warning even - everyone who wants to die in the holy land, your wish is about to come true! Everyone else gets a free pass to the country of their choice.

plus if ever two groups of ppl had experience w/ being kicked out of their homes it's a the jews + palestinians amirite?

god the guardian is really such a shitty newspaper