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On Heroes and Preachers:
Gaza's New
Resistance Paradigm
By Ramzy Baroud
Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, August 7, 2014
“Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? In Israeli
prison, of course!,” was the title of
an article by Jo Ehrlich published in Modoweiss.net 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 (December 27, 2008 – January
18, 2009) was, till then, the deadliest Israeli attack against the
impoverished strip for many years. 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..” 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’. 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
horrendousness 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. The Second Palestinian Intifada or
uprising (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. 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, retrospectively
explain Israel’s military occupation, and justify its harsh military
tactics. 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. Many
westerners (from presidents, to philosophers, to journalists, to social
media activists..) deliberated the matter with much enthusiasm. The fact
that few western countries have truly experienced anti-colonial national
liberation struggle in its modern history, thus lack 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. 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 message: “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.”
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. More, he either didn’t know or
wished to ignore Palestinian history where popular, nonviolent resistance
that goes back to the 1920’s and 30’s, and arguably, earlier than that.
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. 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). 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
futility 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.
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.
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 pulverised 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 neighbourhood – be it Shujaiya, Jabalya or Maghazi. 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 defence before the western-financed death
machine, but Gaza’s own sons and daughters. If Gazans don’t defend their
cities, no one else will. 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 dozens of soldiers and only three civilians should be noted, as
is Israel’s disgraceful targeting of hospitals,
schools, UN shelters and even graveyards. Maintaining that level of
discipline in the most unequalled fight one can imagine is as close to the
very battlefield ethics that the US and Israel often breach, but never, ever
respect. 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.
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, vast
majority of them are civilians. - Ramzy Baroud is a PhD scholar
in People's History at the University of Exeter. He is the Managing Editor
of Middle East Eye. Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a
media consultant, an author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His
latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto
Press, London).
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