The Palestinian
confederation for the right of return.
The Palestinian confederation for the right of return in Europe expresses its
deep concern over the German Chancellor unlimited support to the apartheid state
of Israel which its policy is based upon oppressing the Palestinian nation. Mirs
merkel statement has come when Palestinians are about to commemorate 60 years of
the Nakhba when Zionists terrorist organizations uprooted Palestinian from
more than 418 cities and villages in one of the largest ethnic cleansing in post
ww2 period. We must remind Mirs Merkel of the European historical responsibility
towards more than 60 years of Palestinian uprooting, occupation, exile and
suffering. And we must remind too the European powers which use the policy of
appeasement towards the state of Israel that the Palestinian refugees are the
victims of the Zionist ethnic cleansing policy. Therefore it is time that Europe
takes a firm stand towards the daily Israel violation of human rights in the
occupied Palestine.
The confederation think that mirs merkel approach towards the Palestinian
Israeli conflict has moved Germany from a rather balanced position to a biased
position something which has been already met by negative reactions in the
Arabic and the Islamic worlds.
The confederation implores German activists particularly the human right
supporters and the peace loving persons to oppose the new German policy which in
declaring “an eternal partnership with Israel “is in reality supporting the
Israeli policy of oppressing Palestinians which goes in conflict with the basic
values of human rights and the international standard including the standards of
the German state.
The confederation calls upon Palestinian European and Arab civil society
organizations and human rights activist to arrange a campaign of protest against
the new German policy which encourages state terror and occupation.
The general coordination committee
Oslo.20.03.2008
The Palestinian confederation is a coalition which represents Palestinian right
of return committees in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Holland,
Sweden, Norway, Italy, and Greece. The confederation is part of Badil coalition
for the right of return.Badil.org
________________________________
To:
palestinian-eforum@yahoogroups.com;
palglobal@lists.riseup.net;
peace-with-justice@yahoogroups.com
From: qumsi001@hotmail.com
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:21:32 -0400
Subject: On violent and nonviolent struggle: what about our personal
responsibility?
(Written and distributed on the fifth anniversary of the last leg of the War on
Iraq: BTW the US/British-led war on Iraq started on 15 Jan 1991 and has killed
nearly 3 million people since then including nearly 1 million children by
sanctions alone )
On violent and nonviolent struggle: what about our personal responsibility?
http://www.qumsiyeh.org/thestruggle/
What is your position on Israeli violence? Palestinian violence? What do you
think Israelis and Palestinians should or should not do? What do you think of
Barak Obama? What makes Christian Zionists support Israel? These and many
other questions came during over 30 talks given over the past three weeks. In a
few minutes available in a Q&A segment, addressing these questions is by nature
limited to making few comments and summarizes a lot of available material from
my and other books and data available. But these questions also always give us
opportunity to ask about personal responsibility. After all, the only people
you and I can change are ourselves. Sometimes this leads to follow up
conversations over dinners and via emails and phones about where we go from
here. Since those who read these emails also occasionally ponder similar
questions, it may be worthwhile for us all to expand the conversation. I hope
here to provide food for thought on issues of tactics and strategy for the
collective struggles for justice, a prerequisite for peace, in Western Asia and
in Europe and North America.
First, I think it important to realize as Howard Zinn stated that "you can't be
neutral on a moving train". IMHO, we all have choices regardless of what we
think of the trains speed and direction (if it is heading to a cliff?): sitting
back and enjoying the fast ride for a while, buy products on the train, talking
to the train conductor, mounting a rebellion, jumping off, getting off at the
next station and taking another train. And these are metaphors for what
obviously are more complicated choices in our lives. One could even argue that
with Global warming, globalization, the internet etc, we are all in this boat
together.
Being a scientist and a medical professional, I always believe that we must
first objectively characterize the symptoms and from those infer the etiology of
the disease (the underlying cause) then design rational treatments. In all of
this we are always guided by study of history. Knowledge accumulates whether
some individuals chose to ignore it or to learn from it. This is true in
medicine as it is in politics. Of course different issues and struggles have
unique features but also many common ones with previous struggles. But lessons
from successes and failures can be instructive. How can we judge conduct and
plans of US occupation of Iraq if we do not study what happened in Vietnam? How
can we understand Israeli Hafrada (Segregation) if we do not know about
Afrikaaner Apartheid (Segregation)? What was the role of violent and nonviolent
resistance in achieving civil rights or an end to slavery in America? How can we
understand why French colonial settlers were evicted from Algeria while Spanish
colonial settlers succeeded in South America? Each of these struggles is worth
studying carefully and applying relevant lessons learned to today’s struggles.
Lest I make this assay too long, I will try to focus on the issues of violent
and nonviolent resistance in Palestine and the personal responsibility each of
us have (especially those of us who live in states that financially and
diplomatically support occupation and oppression and endless wars). The
underlying etiology of the struggle here is actually not very complicated (even
though many gate keepers in the media and politics want you to think it is). It
can be summarized in a few sentences. Jews were discriminated against
especially in 19th century Europe when ethnocentric nation states were created
by Europeans (who are now abandoning the concept for a European Union!). A
minority of Western European Jews egged on and supported by colonial powers of
the time (primarily France and England) created its own ethnocentric
nationalistic paradigm called Zionism as a response (originally supposedly to
benefit Eastern European Jews). With the support of primarily the British
government (and other allies in WWI), they planned and executed a strategy to
establish a Jewish state in Palestine at the expense of the native Christians
and Muslims. Thus, 530 villages and towns were completely depopulated between
1947-1950 and, in the six decades that followed, most of the remaining land was
taken over. Today, the remaining Palestinians live as either 10th class citizens
or under occupation with no citizenship on the still shrinking reservations left
for us (less than 10% of historic Palestine). Of the 10 million Palestinians in
the world, 7 million are refugees or displaced people. Israel is now heavily
funded by our taxes (over $1 trillion spent so far per a study published in the
Christian Science Monitor) and protected by a US hegemony that prevents the
International community from forcing Israel to comply with human rights and
International law (Israel is in violations of 65 UN Security Council Resolutions
and over 200 UN General Assembly Resolution and shielded from many others by use
of 35 US Vetoes).
This is the essence of the problem. The solution would be rather simple and
peace could have been achieved decades ago if the US stopped its support of
Israel until it complies with International law (e.g. allowing Palestinian
refugees to return to their homes and lands). In fact, in 1956, US President
Eisenhower forced Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and Sinai, which
Israeli forces occupied with the support of the British and the French. After
that, the Israel-first lobby in Washington and the US media got stronger and
more effective. Thus, we do not only support Israel's wars (e.g. the latest
2006 war on Lebanon that killed 7000 civilians or the past 7 years of war on the
Occupied Gaza and the West Bank that killed 5000 civilians), but we are fighting
wars partially to help Israel (e.g. Iraq and plans for conflict with Iran). So
this is an issue of relevance not only for Israelis and Palestinians but Iraqis,
US citizens and the whole world (Europeans surveyed rated the US and Israel as
the two most dangerous countries in the World!).
But what was stated in the last two paragraphs is what we call in the medical
field diagnosis. What we need is evaluation of previous therapies and designing
additional therapies as well as make more predictive diagnosis. That is what I
hope to address.
Some would argue the 2002 Bush "Road Map to Peace" to arrive at two states need
to be simply implemented and force Palestinians and Israelis to comply. That
road map has some good elements (e.g. requiring Israel to freeze all settlement
activities including natural growth in all the occupied territories). But it is
remarkable that in 2218 words it fails to mention or address International Law
and Human Rights. Further Israel has the fourth or fifth strongest army in the
World with hundreds of nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons etc
while Palestinians are occupied, colonized people with few resources at their
disposal. "Negotiations" in such a situation are predicted to yield no fair
resolution.
Israeli General and Army Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan once stated: "When we have
settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry
around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4034765.stm
But of course, the "cockroaches" may have proven themselves amazingly
resilient. Here we are 120+ years later and 50% of Palestinians still live
between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean (i.e. in their historic
homeland). Here we are 120+ years later with a solid majority of people in what
was designated as Eretz Yisrael (the same geographic area) rejecting Zionism.
Anti-Zionism and Post-Zionism are now common not only among the 1.5 million
Palestinian who are Israeli citizens and the 3.5 million under the brutal
Israeli occupation but is widespread in segments of the Israeli Jewish society
(the 4.5 million who are identified by the state as privileged Israeli Jews).
Further, nearly half a million Israelis have voted with their feet by choosing
to live in Western countries (Europe and North America).
The problem thus remains: Zionism requires maximum geography (for a Jewish
state) with minimum demography (of Palestinian Christians and Muslims living in
the coveted land). The offered solutions of a Palestinian statelet in the West
Bank and Gaza is increasingly recognized as an illusion/mirage promoted to delay
the inevitable day of reckoning with the what it means to the nature of the
Jewish nation state (some in Israel are engaging in this discussion by for
example questioning the national anthem which is about Jewish yearning or the
national symbols/all Jewish). But this and the need to maintain both a Hebrew
Jewish as well as the endogenous Arabic and Islamic culture and religion (and
native Christians) are subjects for another conversation. Here we want to deal
with the issue of resistance to a colonial program and our role in it.
The Zionist program did not start in 1967 or even in 1948; it started in 1882
with the establishment of the first European Ashkenazi colony in Palestine.
Right from the beginning and as expected (even by Zionist leaders), Palestinians
engaged in resistance. In the first 100 years of the struggle, the evolution of
the methods and strategies of resistance was similar to other struggles by
native people facing a colonial settler population. There are many published
comparative studies of struggles of people in Palestine, Native Americans, South
Africans under apartheid, Algeria under French rule, Vietnam, and others. While
each of these situations is unique, what is common in all of them is
significant. First and foremost, when history is written objectively in all
these struggles, there is never any question as to the natural right of the
people being occupied/colonized to defend themselves and mount a vigorous
resistance to those who oppress them.
Israeli author Hans Lebrecht wrote in his book in Hebrew:
"According to international law, the people of a country, occupied by a foreign
power, has the full right to fight for their liberation....This right is based,
among other reasons, also upon the guiding lines set for the International
Tribunal in Nuremberg, which, after World War II, had been established to judge
the main Nazi criminals...The statutory argument in article 2 of the indictments
(concerning transgressions against the laws on conducts of war) at the Nuremberg
Tribunal was based upon the Den-Hague International Convention of 1907. Article
6 (b) of the Tribunal's rules relies upon articles 1 and 2 of the accompanying
letters of the said Den-Hague Convention, which particularly lie down the right
to popular resistance against military occupation, within the occupied
territories themselves, as well as outside them. Further on is said there, that
all the means of this resistance, political as well as military ones, are valid
(as far as they do not hurt civilians who have no part whatsoever in the
occupation regime and its forces). This determination was, at the time,
important to forestall any claim by the Nazis that the partisans, Ghetto
fighters, and other underground resistance forces in the territories occupied by
them had allegedly been bandits and terrorists. In the Nuremberg Tribunal it was
unequivocally set down, that resistance fighters, such as the partisans and
underground activists (also such who struggled within Germany itself), Ghetto
fighters etc., acted in accordance with the regulations of international law."
("HaPalestinaim - Avar veHoveh" The Palestinians- Past and Present, Tel-Aviv
University Publishers, 1987, in Hebrew, page 219, translated by Lebrecht himself
and shared over the internet on a listserve of Israelis 3 April 2002
http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2006/06/hans-lebrecht-right-to-resistance.html)
Resistance (violent and nonviolent) is also obviously predictable from a
Psychological standpoint even when land was not yet being taken (but the
writings was on the wall that the intention is to create a Jewish state - run by
Jews in Palestine). Here is an excerpt from a letter by the father of
psychotherapy and a great anti-Zionist Jew, Sigmund Freud in 1930:
"...I do not think that Palestine could ever become a Jewish state, nor that the
Christian and Islamic worlds would ever be prepared to have their holy places
under Jewish care. It would have seemed more sensible to me to establish a
Jewish homeland on a less historically-burdened land. But I know that such a
rational viewpoint would never have gained the enthusiasm of the masses and the
financial support of the wealthy. I concede with sorrow that the baseless
fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab
distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which
transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending
the feelings of the natives..." Dr. Sigmund Freud on the Arab-Israeli Conflict:
Vienna: 26 February 1930: Letter to the Keren Hajessod/Dr. Chaim Koffler
http://www.freud.org.uk/arab-israeli.html
Of course one must realize that while International law does sanction violent
resistance, nonviolent resistance can be and is practiced in all struggles. In
fact, I cannot think of a single historical precedent where the struggle for
rights was waged solely by violent means (or solely by nonviolent means). It
seems the history of human struggles is a history of admixture of both to
varying degrees. In retrospect, societies that change will naturally chose to
emphasize the positive elements. Thus in the US, Martin Luther King Jr and
others who struggled with nonviolence are far more emphasized than black
panthers, inner city riots, and so on.
In reflecting on Apartheid South Africa people in the West tend to forget that
the African National Congress under the leadership of the jailed Nelson Mandela
was a guerrilla movement fighting violently for liberation (and has never
renounced violence). But on the other hand some individuals who believe very
strongly in violent also tend to minimize the roles of people like Desmond Tutu,
Mahatma Ghandi or MLK jr. Ironically in both situations, a similar argument is
made. On the one hand some argue that liberation could not succeed without
violent resistance and others would argue that it would not have succeeded
without nonviolent resistance. I think this is a moot question because it
remains a hypothetical situation that never existed: i.e. all struggles to date
contained various mixtures if violent and nonviolent struggles. Can we really
know exactly what the tipping points were in each situation? Can we truly say
that we know what would have happened to the civil rights movement without the
"good cop" of the MLK Jrs of the world or the "bad cop" of Malcolm X. What
would have happened in South Africa without the Desmund Tutu's or the
For that matter, can we even imagine what would have happened without the
diversity within the oppressor population? In white ruled America was President
Johnson relevant to acquiring civil rights? Do Israeli groups like the Israeli
Committee Against Home Demolitions and B'Tselem make a difference? I think the
answers are obvious.
Most Palestinian resistance has been nonviolent. I am now finishing a book on
the history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance going back 120 years. It is a
very rich history that testifies to the resilience and resourcefulness of that
society (a glimpse is at
http://qumsiyeh.org/palestiniannonviolentresistance/ ). These struggles
would not be covered in US mainstream media that are self-censoring to serve
their Israel-first agenda. Further,
"One of the reasons these [nonviolent] struggles are missing from the history
books or misrepresented is that it was never in the interests of the oppressors
to record or teach us that history. It is in the interest of oppressors to
teach that only violence is successful because the oppressors usually have the
superior capacity for violence. They will therefore have a greater chance to
maintain their oppression if the oppressed also believe in violence. The
oppressed need to learn that they do not need to fight with the oppressor’s best
weapons. Instead of using violence, they have a greater chance of mobilizing
their power capacity by working and acting together using psychological, social,
political, and economic weapons-weapons that enable them to become stronger."(p.
40, Afif Safieh: "Gene Sharp: Non Violent Struggle", interview. Journal of
Palestine Studies, Autumn, 1987 pp. 37-55).
Ofcourse, doing nonviolent resistance is just as risky (and sometimes more
risky) than doing violent resistance. Countless Palestinians were killed doing
nonviolent resistance. Even an American student, Rachel Corrie was killed
standing in front of a bulldozer (that is an unusual event for internationals,
Palestinians are killed regularly). But in a colonial occupation, people get
killed, injured and jailed who are not resisting (other than by being on the
coveted land, which can be considered a form of nonviolent resistance).
Thousands of Palestinian civilians were killed and tens of thousands injured
over the past few decades for simply being Palestinian in Palestine. Over
650,000 Palestinian males have gone through Israeli detention at some point in
their lives (Gideon Levy in Haaretz). That is over 40% of the male population in
the occupied/colonized territories. And every Palestinian has stories of
oppression to tell beyond the issues of killing, injuring, and unjust
imprisonment. For example, over 5000 homes were demolished in the past 7 years
alone and hundreds of Palestinians died while being denied medical services. So
what was surprising is not the extent of the violent resistance but the extent
of steadfastness and nonviolent resistance among Palestinians. After all, the
first suicide bombing was in April 1994 over 100 years after the start of the
Zionist colonization program. Further, that suicide bombing in 1994 occurred 2
months after an Israeli colonial settler (from the US) entered a mosque in
Hebron and killed 29 Palestinians (including Children) and injuring many
others. The Israeli government (democratically elected) responded not by
punishing the racist settler movement but by punishing the Palestinians in
Hebron with a process that resulted in further ethnic cleansing and economic
devastation to make life more comfortable for the racist Jewish settlers. Yahya
Ayyash, a leading Hamas bomb maker who was killed by Israel in 1996, was quoted
as saying that "martyrdom bombings" were adopted to "make the [Israeli]
occupation that much more expensive in human lives, that much more unbearable."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3256858.stm
(For a discussion of the issue of state and individual terrorism, please see my
earlier article
http://www.cactus48.com/struggle.html for now let us stay on the issue of
violence generally in colonial systems.)
There are arguments to be made on all sides as to the value of different methods
of resistance by a colonized occupied people. Did scalping by native Americans
of white settlers terrorize them to leave the land or inflamed passions and
enforced stereotypes of savagery etc thus causing accelerated colonization?
Again I think that is a useless discussion; first you have to be in the mindset
of a Native American response than a native Palestinian subjected to years of
colonization (or decades as the case maybe) to begin to understand.
Psychological studies done on suicide bombings show that perpetrators are
actually driven not by nationalistic ideologies but largely by personal revenge
(home demolished, relative hurt, land or job taken away). It may seem easier to
understand and even sympathize with such motives at least as compared to someone
like Goldstein who comes from a privileged life in the US to engage in violence
against Palestinians thousands of miles away. But that also an illusion.
Ideologies like Imperialism, Zionism, or Nazism by those in positions of power
obviously resulted in far more motivation to violence that those of us not
caught in it cannot comprehend. But we do see that it is possible and it does
happen that people who engaged in violence may decide to abandon violence. This
is true both for the violence that is considered legitimate by international law
(self defense/resistance to colonialism and occupations) as well as that
considered illegitimate (occupying other people's lands, ethnic cleansing etc).
In Palestine/Israel, we see Israeli occupation soldiers and Palestinian
resistance fighters who turned to nonviolence (e.g. the Israeli Refusenkick
movement and the "Combatants for Peace").
It is clear from any historical, legal, and moral examination that:
a) Violence and nonviolence occur in all colonial situations. How can one steal
someone else's land or natural resources without violence!
b) That violence and that theft generate resistance. Most of it nonviolent,
some of it violent and some of it extremely violent. That resistance is a Bell
shaped curve. As any statistician would tell you eliminating a portion of the
curve would cause it to renormalize in short order (whether what you eliminate
is those who engage in violence or nonviolence).
c) The violence of the occupiers/colonizers always kills many times more natives
than colonial settler populations. For example the ratio of civilians killed
was 10:1 (Palestinain:Israeli) and over>100:1 (European settlers:Native
Americans).
d) While resistance is sanctioned by International law, the native can and do
chose other forms of resistance and do frequently switch modes of resistance.
e) It is rather useless for armchair theorists to lecture people thousands of
miles away about tactics and strategies. What will we do: engage in personal
struggle by violent or nonviolent resistance? Isn't it better for people in
Europe and North America to work to effect change in their own governments and
media (entities that are directly involved in perpetuating the injustices)?
If we believe that we must wait for others to do something for us, we are doomed
to fail as humans (not as "Palestinians", as "Israeli", or as "Americans"). In
our respective traditions, we can find some useful guidance. In the
Arab-Islamic traditions we find the statement that "Wala Yughayiur Allah Ma
Biqaumen 3atta Yughaiyuru ma biAnfusihim" "Verily, God does not change
[condition of] a people until they change what is within themselves." Similar
commandments of self-reliance and choice exist in every culture and tradition.
Thus and as the old canard goes: do not ask for whom the bells ring, they ring
for thee.
Other relevant material
Azmi Bishara, the Right of Resistance, and the Palestinian Ordeal
http://www.transnational.org/SAJT/forum/meet/2002/Falk_Bishara.html
See the book "Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law," Francis A
Boyle, Transnational Pub., 1987
Gilad Atzmon - The Right to Self-Determination - A Fake Exercise in Universalism
"given the reality on the ground, instead of demanding some rhetorical rights,
we should fight for the Palestinian and Arab right to rebel against the Jewish
State and against global Zionist imperialism. Instead of wasting our time on
rhetorical fantasies and academic exchange, we better expose Jewish tribal
politics and praxis. To support Palestine is to be courageous enough to say what
we think and to admit what we see."
http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2008/03/gilad-atzmon-right-to-self.html
Mazin Qumsiyeh
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://justicewheels.org