Nonviolence 2007 – Just World News with Helena Cobban

Good recent resources on Palestinians and nonviolence

Ten days ago I had the pleasure of attending a book event for Mary E.
King, in connection with the recent publication of her book A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian
Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (New York: Nation Books,
2007). Mary is a long-time friend and colleague, and this book is
a compendious mine of information on its subject.

Once I decided to write something here about Mary’s book, I thought it
would also be a good idea to discuss with the people who were my
collaborators and co-authors in the International Quaker Working Party
on Israel and Palestine of 2002-2004, to see if we could also put up
onto the web the great
chapter on Nonviolence in our 2004 book When the Rain Returns:
Toward Justice and
Reconciliation in Palestine and Israel. So I consulted with Tony Bing, who was the principal author of that
chapter and with the 12 other– mainly Quaker– people who were the
other co-authors of the book project; and now, I am happy to be able to do this.
(Sadly, our friend Misty Gerner, who was a wonderful colleague on the
project, passed away in 2006. So I consulted with her widower and
literary executor, Phil Schrodt, in her place.)

The good news, therefore: You can now access our Nonviolence chapter here in HTML format and here as a Word doc.
Please note the licensing conditions at the top there — as well as the
instructions for how you can order a copy of the whole of our book,
which is certainly still worth reading!

… Mary King brought to her book a long engagement in both the
practice and the study of nonviolence. Back in the early 1960s
she was one of “a tiny handful” of white women from the northern
American states who traveled to the south to work with the Southern
racial eqaulity movement called the “civil rights movement” that was
led by Martin Luther King, Jr.. Her memoir of those days, Freedom Song, later won the Robert
F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award. Her second book was Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.,
which surveyed not only the nonviolent freedom movements led by those
two men but also half a dozen more recent nonviolent movements for
radical social change. Along the way she also got a doctorate in
the topic of the role of nonviolence in international relations.
She has been closely involved in Middle Eastern issues for many years
and has done numerous projects with President Jimmy Carter’s Carter
Center. Indeed, Carter contributed a short Foreword to Mary’s
latest book.

Reading the book brought back so many memories for me! The first
intifada, which ran from 1987 through 1993, truly was a time of
enormous social, organizational, and ideological excitement for the
Palestinians of the occupied territories– as it was, too, for those
Israeli sympathizers who were mounting their own nonviolent actions
within Israel, with a view to “Ending the Occupation” and “Bringing the
Troops Home.” I spent two periods of time in Palestine and Israel
in those years: one visit that lasted two months or so, as I recall it,
in the summer of 1989, and then a shorter visit in 1992.
Actually, in 1989, I started off doing some research oin the nonviolent
movements on both sides of the Green Line– work that was
subsequently published in two articles in the short-lived “Wolrd
Monitor” monthly magazine… (I should really look them out and re-read
them.) But then I became fascinated with the relationship between
the people inside the OPTs who were running and leading their own
intifada there and the PLO leadership that was stuck in distant Tunis;
and I published an article on that topic in the Spring 1990 issue of
the Middle East Journal.

A couple of aspects of Mary’s book are particularly noteworthy.
One was the way she was able to convey just how widespread and
all-encompassing the mass organizing was that lay at the heart of the
resilience the Palestinians showed in the first intifada. For
example, she has a whole chapter on “Women at the forefront of
nonviolent struggles” during the intifada, and another on the
“Movements of students, prisoners, and work committees.”
Actually, a really good complement to these chapters is Joost
Hiltermann’s classic 1993 book Behind the Intifada which
provided a very rich account of the development of the many kinds of
mass organizations in the OPTs in the years before 1987 as well as (as
I recall it) during the early years of the first intifada.

Another notable aspect of Mary’s book is that at many points it
underlines the huge role that was played during the first intifada by
the activist Palestinian intellectuals who were based in occupied East Jerusalem.
Back in those days, the “special” status the Israelis acorded to East
Jerusalem by virtue of their claim that it was “part of” Israel meant
that the city’s 150,000 indigenous Palestinian residents had broad
freedoms to travel, both inside Israel and throughout the West Bank;
and even down to Gaza– that their compatriots in the rest of the
occupied territories did not have. Because of those freedoms, and
because East Jerusalem really still was in so many ways the historic
business, religious, and educational hub of the whole of the West Bank,
as it had been since the nakba
of 1948, the city’s community leaders played a huge role not only in
coordinating but also in leading the actions of the first intifada.

As I have noted several times before, it was only after Oslo that the
Israelis started erecting a ring of steel around East Jerusalem,
cutting it off in any way they could think of from its historic West
Bank hinterland and forcing many aspects of the city’s life to wither
on the vine. Since Israel was at the same time also building the
fence that started to completely enclose Gaza, the residents of East
Jerusalem then became effectively shut off from that other main
concentration of the “also-occupied” among the Palestinians.
Thus, since Oslo, the Jerusalem Palestinians have been cast into a
cut-off form of limbo, and their once-proud institutions have been
either suffocated or– as in so many cases– shut down completely by
the occupation authorities, even while the building of Jews-only
settlements and Israeli ministries and other forms of national
institutions has continued apace within every corner of the city…

So there is a particular poignancy to reading Mary’s account of the
crucial and exciting leadership role the Jerusalem Palestinians played
in the first intifada.

Her book is very broad, very detailed, and meticulously
researched. I might wish, though, that she had taken the story a
couple of steps further and added a couple of chapters about what
happened at the end
of the first intifada, that is, effectively, what happened with the
September 1993 signing of the Oslo Accord and then, hot on its heels,
the “Return” of the PLO leadership from Tunis to the OPTs. In our
chapter on Nonviolence in When the
Rain Returns we wrote quite a lot about that, because we judged it to be an important part of the whole long story of
nonviolence activism among the Palestinians.

Regarding what became of the Palestinians’ use of, and attitudes
towards, nonviolence as the intifada ground on and on, we wrote:

… As the intifada dragged on
into its fourth and fifth years with no respite in sight, the
Palestinians’ use of physical violence mounted–both against the
Israelis and to try to resolve differences of opinion inside
Palestinian society. National unity
started to erode, as national exhaustion set in.
The activists and leaders of the intifada
had all along resisted the urgings of Israeli and U.S. government officials
that they negotiate their own future themselves, without involving the
exiled PLO. “Only the PLO can represent
us,” they stated repeatedly. In 1993, they
got what they had asked for: Israel did finally conclude
the Oslo Accords directly with the PLO. Once
Arafat and his colleagues “returned” to the occupied territories,
however, they proved a hugely damaging disappointment for the people
there. Long used to the secretive,
authoritarian ways of an exile-based underground, Arafat almost
immediately felt threatened by the network of community organizations
he found in Gaza and the West Bank. As Raji
Sourani reminded us in Gaza,
Arafat then set about
working to dismantle the very community-based organizations whose
grassroots activism had brought him back to his homeland.

We also have a whole section there on the debate that raged inside the
Palestinian movement on the question of nonviolence, in the decade
after 1993.

Nonviolent actions growing in Burma

I have been so moved to read of the determined and well-disciplined pro-democracy activities of the Buddhist monks (and nuns) in Burma. The Boston Globe has a good picture, along with the AP daylead on the story, here.
English-Al-Jazeera has pretty good version of the Burmese events, too. It includes a picture of monks walking with calm, nonviolent nonviolent activism.
One little mistake there. The parliamentary election that the National League for Democracy won was on 8-8-1988, not in 1990. The results of that election (= power to govern) were then immediately stolen from them by the military– very similar to what happened to Hamas, 18 years later. And since then, the NLD’s leaders and many of its cadres have been ruthlessly hunted down, imprisoned, and in many cases tortured.
NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991; but that has not prevented the junta from keeping her either in prison or in very tight home-confinement since 1988– with just one short period when she was allowed a small amount of travel around the country before they clamped down once again.
In my 2000 book The Moral Architecture of World Peace: Nobel Laureates Discuss Our Global Future I had a whole chapter about Daw Suu, as she is called. It was very inspiring to learn about her and the development of the NLD’s thinking and organization. I learned a lot from, in particular, these two books: The Voice of Hope (1997), a compilation of discussions she had with writer Alan Clements; and Freedom from Fear (1995), a compilation of her own writings.
In the discussions with Clements, in particular, he seems to be somewhat of a skeptic, asking “But what about choosing violence out of compassion, if it’s the right word… ?” Daw Suu replies, “It depends on the situation and I think that in the context of Burma today, non-violent means are the best way to achieve our goal. But I certainly do not condemn those who fight the ‘just fight’, as it were. My father did, and I admire him greatly for it.”
… Well, I am in the last couple of days of work on my book. I totally need to get back to it. Right now. But I couldn’t resist blogging about this.
What’s happening in Burma these days could change things a lot. In Burma, I certainly hope. But also, far beyond Burma.

Ebola in the DRC; Nonviolence events suspended

The people of the chronically conflict-riven Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) now have another assailant to face: the ultra-deadly Ebola virus, which has erupted in Kasai Occidentale province in the past couple of weeks reportedly killing 170 people so far.
Kasai also apparently has cases of typhoid and the also-deadly Shigella virus. These are the tragic consequences of the complete breakdown of state authority and of chronic inter-group armed conflict.
I am very concerned about this because one of my good friends in the Global Network for Nonviolence has been working in Kasai Occidentale for a while and is now involved in the quarantining effort there and feeling, obviously, personally at risk from the Ebola.
Our friend, who asked to stay anonymous at this point, gave us permission to post his most recent letter to the GNN Steering Committee over at the GNN website. (It’s here.) It is also his birthday today, which makes everything harder for him.
He asks for people’s prayers and support for all the people dealing with the Ebola. Please go over to that post on the GNN site and send him a message to tell him you care about what’s happening to him and his colleagues.
As you’ll see, our colleague Sagar Gurung also had to postpone his plans for International Peace Day, in Kathmandu, because of the new political risks and uncertainties there. I am so in awe of what these GNN colleagues are trying to do, in extremely difficult circumstances.
All strength and comfort to them! (And really, please do send your messages of support to them there.)

Introducing the “Right to Dry Movement”

In the category of the “completely different,” let’s hang-out for a moment with the burgeoning “right to dry” movement. That’s right, the right to dry — one’s clothes on an outdoor clothes line.
What’s become of our land? Some of my most sublime early childhood memories in the 60’s are of running through backyards of Texas-Eastern company row-homes in Eagle, PA, dodging and twisting through the billowing sheets. Sometimes the lines would get stretched down and became a nasty way to lose a baby tooth. My generation recognizes where the sports phrase, “getting clotheslined” originates.
But do today’s football players have a clue what a clothesline is? Tried recently to buy “clothesline” at your local Lowe’s or Wal-Mart?
What’s become of our supremely efficient air-drying technology?
A key culprit, it seems, originates in the national proliferation of homeowners’ associations. In their collective “wisdom,” they tend overwhelmingly to ban the airing of our clean laundry as too uncivilized, too unsightly. Especially – and ironically – in California. Fer sure dude.
Now, with energy prices reaching new peaks, independent spirits in Vermont (where else?) are leading a counter-culture movement to restore our right to get clotheslined!
Consider the Vermont Clothesline Company, with its stylish lines for hanging your duds. (if you aren’t creative enough to “rig” your own solution.)
And if you’re stuck with an authoritarian homeowners’ group block, help is here in the form of “Project Laundry List.” Curiously, on their home page, PLL lists these six “rational” reasons why the right to dry naturally should be not be abridged.

1. Clothes last longer.
2. Clothes and sheets smell better.
3. Conserve energy. (as electric dryers use 5-10% of residential electricity)
4. Save money.
5. Physical activity which you can do outside.
6. Clothes dryer fires account for about 15,600 structure fires, 15 deaths, and 400 injuries annually.

I think the Project can be more bold! Let’s take a page from the Bush machine and invoke national security!
Those of us able and willing to dry our laundry outside, even sometimes, are saving energy – lots of it. Even better than wildly inefficient ethanol or the distant hope of switchgrass, “hanging out” with your laundry is something many of us can do.
We now have a “new” simple answer to the question of how can we reduce our dependence on foreign oil

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

Next time your Association Lords want to tear down your clothesline, wag the red, white & blue in their faces. It’s all about national security.

Announcing: The Global Network on Nonviolence!

Attentive JWN readers might recall that last fall I wrote about having taken part in an amazing, four-day course/conference on Leadership for Nonviolence at the UN University’s International Leadership Institute in Amman… After the course, a high proportion of the participants, both “faculty” and “students”, felt so energized by our days together there that they kept in good touch (via email and a specially created Google Group). We constituted a Steering Committee to plan the establishment of a more robust follow-up organization; and the Committee held a short meeting in Amman in late February…
And today, dear readers, I am happy to announce that the website of the Global Network for Nonviolence has gone public; and along with it, GNN announces its birth to the world!
(Small drum-roll there. But mainly, a big bouquet of appreciation to our webmasters Michael Simmons and Linda Carranza, and to the site designer, Martin Kelley.)
If you go to the present homepage, you can learn a little about the incredible, multinational group that is leading the GNN. It tells us that:

Actually, if you play the great little video that’s there on the present home-page– which was planned and shot by Hagit Tarnari at the end of our October conference– you can most likely pick out all the Steering Committee members except, perhaps Zoughbi Zoughbi and Jairam Reddy.
(Memo to self: Talk to webmasters Michael and Linda about getting the SC members’ bios up as as clickable links onto the site… )
There are so many aspects of GNN that I find really inspiring. One is the talented, committed, and caring group of people involved. Another is the truly multi-cultural flavor of what we’re trying to do– check out the five different language-versions we’ve already produced, of the Mission Statement we adopted in February… with hopefully more to come!
Another is the fact that nonviolence work as such is something that everyone can (and should) do in their own communities, at all different levels, and in their own best-considered way… Speaking for myself, I recall that back in the early 1990s I worked on an Arab-Israeli citizens’ peacebuilding project in the context of a notably different kind of organization, a US-based NGO that focused on “conflict resolution” as such. But I found there were several aspects of that work that troubled me. Firstly, there was the iron control that the US leaders of the organization exercized over the project. And secondly, the way in which, for many Israeli participants, it seemed that getting Arab state nationals and Palestinians to sit down and talk with them was the main (or only) goal they sought– and indeed, for some of them, it seemed that every additional Arab they met was a personal “trophy” for them… Whereas for the Palestinian and other Arab participants, there were issues of very burning concern that they needed to talk to the Israelis about. But many of the Israeli participants refused even to put these issues onto the agenda, seeing the simple fact of the meetings having occurred as being enough to meet their goals. And the US leaders of the project simply indulged that bullheadedness.
And so, that organization’s meetings went on and on, without making much discernible headway at all, but consuming huge amounts of donors’ very well-intentioned funds. (In effect, the meetings merely mirrored what was happening in the “official” peace process during those years.)
With GNN, by contrast, it involves solid principles of universal applicability, –see our Mission Statement!– and and a truly global operating context. And nonviolence work is something people do where they are— it doesn’t depend, for its raison d’etre and future funding, on X number of Israelis being able to get Y number of Palestinians into a room and saying “Look! We’ve had a meeting!” In the GNN’s case, it involves people who are already nonviolence activists in their own countries, and because of the location of our parent institution, the UNU-ILI, these people include people from Israel, Palestine, and a number of Arab countries, along with a broad array of non-Middle eastern countries, who all come together to brainstorm on common challenges, and exchange ideas on what might be good ways to meet them…
And here is the final reason why I find GNN to be so inspiring: This violence-wracked world of ours needs a robust, global nonviolence movement more than ever before– and right now, in many countries of the world, there is a new awareness that the paths of violence that have been taken until now have not brought people the security and wellbeing that they (we) all so desperately need.
The time feels so right for this.
I believe that– especially after the tragic failure of the US’s military adventure in Iraq, of Israel’s military action of last summer in Lebanon, and of so many other military campaigns around the world in recent years– the citizens of many of the world’s countries are definitely open to seeking another, less violent path.
Many people have already been doing great work in the field of nonviolent organizing, for many long decades already, I know. (We list some them on our Links page there, and will be putting more links up soon.) Over the months ahead, the GNN Steering Committee is certainly planning to open up the network’s membership to a much broader group than just the 55 or so people who took part in last October’s conference.
Oops, did I mention that that the new website is still very much a work in progress? I see that the “Contact Us” and “Donate” buttons still don’t have any content. But they will, they will… Our webmasters Michael and Linda, who live in Hungary, are doing some nonviolence trainings in Serbia today and for the next few days. But I think on Monday or so they’ll be able to do the next update of the site.
In the interim, though, I strongly urge you to contribute whatever funds you can to support this great new effort. (Okay, it’s my job on the Steering Committee to be fundraising director… Help me out here, folks, please!) You can contact me to find out how– or with any further questions you have about GNN.
Finally, I should note that one of the first networked actions that many GNN people are getting involved in is activities that impart a specifically nonviolence-focused message to the events being held throughout next week to mark the 40th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan. See the June 5th section of the website for info about and links to some such activities.
(For my part, I have made a big sign that says “Occupation = Violence: End it!” that I intend to use in both an Israeli-Palestinian and a US-Iraq context.)
Anyway, please do go and spend a bit of time exploring GNN’s site. And since you can’t send comments there yet, you might as well put them here… and I promise I’ll pass them on.

‘Justice’ and war: A conundrum

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself this: How come, in all the long history of warfare, very, very few leaders engaging in a war have ever done so on the basis of a cause that they publicly proclaimed to be any less than perfectly just?
Seems like no ‘unjust war’ has ever been fought. Amazing.
Especially if you consider that any war that has any duration is always engaged in by at least two parties or nations, each of whose leaders is there publicly proclaiming that his cause is perfectly just.
What does this tell us about the nature of war– and about the nature of claims of ‘justice’?

Soldiers and clowns in Tuwani, Palestine

This, from Art Gish, with the Christian Peacemakers Teams in At-Tuwani, Palestine:

Not one person obeyed any of the soldiers’ commands. They were practically powerless. What can one do, even if armed with an M-16, when no one will comply with one’s orders and one is being filmed? They moved the handcuffed young man to the other side of the jeep, but the women also moved to the other side of the jeep. The village women were calm, but strong.