Slow Death in Gaza

Byrnzie

reborncareerist wrote:

Can you please:

reborncareerist wrote:

a) Clarify your argument that everyone thinks Arab = terrorist, as well as your point regarding "using the Holocaust" as an excuse to murder people? Do you have data that back up the point that the average American honestly believes that all Arabs are terrorists, and can you say more about how the Holocaust is used as an excuse? By whom, exactly?

I think your first point wouldn't be too dificult to prove. Your average man on the street in the U.S, or Britain, will equate most Arabs with terrorism. I'm sure you could easily find plenty of evidence to show this.
As for the second point, that's asking for a very detailed explanation. Maybe I'll just refer you to Norman Finkelstein's book - 'The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering'.
http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/185984488X/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212812084&sr=8-1

reborncareerist wrote:

b) Explain what this "genociding everyone who stands in their way" look like? To me, genocide is a systematic approach to exterminating all people of a particular creed. Not just combatants on the battlefield, and not just civilians killed within the context of war, but actual concentration camps, systematic use of force to kill everyone in a given area (rather than trying to be selective, etc.). Usually, there is some extremist form of ideology backing up the genocidal practices. Are you proposing the existance of a more subtle approach to genocide? The Diet Coke of genocide, perhaps?

Ethnic cleansing, genocide...the Palestinians are being forcibly expelled from their land. Thousands are murdered every year. It is a form of genocide. Maybe not as blatant as the Nazi death camps, but I think the description still fits.

reborncareerist wrote:

c) Explain how the actions of Palestinian militants do not meet most or all commonly excepted definitions of terrorism? If you're just using that old chestnut, the whole "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" adage, can you explain how exactly Palestinian "resistence" is helping the situation, in any sense? Do militant actions seem to be bringing the region any closer to peace? Are militant actions likely to lead to more or less Israeli military intervention? Does two wrongs indeed make a right, perhaps just this time?

Thanks.

No, it doesn't help the situation. But neither does Israeli terrorism. Then again, what other options do the Palestinians have? Ceasefires don't work as Israel continues building more settlements and continues it's incursions, and extra-judicial executions, home demolitions e.t.c.
Israel has all the options but refuses to use them.
The Palestinians have no option save violence.

One more thing...I find it interesting that anyone who crticises the illegal and brutal Israeli occupation is nearly always expected to clarify and explain their comments, whereas it seems to be quite acceptable to throw out comments such as 'the Palestinian terrorists', or 'the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel', e.t.c, e.t.c, without any demand being made for clarification.
I wonder why this is?

RolandTD20Kdrummer

reborncareerist wrote:

Can you please:

a) Clarify your argument that everyone thinks Arab = terrorist, as well as your point regarding "using the Holocaust" as an excuse to murder people? Do you have data that back up the point that the average American honestly believes that all Arabs are terrorists, and can you say more about how the Holocaust is used as an excuse? By whom, exactly?

b) Explain what this "genociding everyone who stands in their way" look like? To me, genocide is a systematic approach to exterminating all people of a particular creed. Not just combatants on the battlefield, and not just civilians killed within the context of war, but actual concentration camps, systematic use of force to kill everyone in a given area (rather than trying to be selective, etc.). Usually, there is some extremist form of ideology backing up the genocidal practices. Are you proposing the existance of a more subtle approach to genocide? The Diet Coke of genocide, perhaps?

c) Explain how the actions of Palestinian militants do not meet most or all commonly excepted definitions of terrorism? If you're just using that old chestnut, the whole "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" adage, can you explain how exactly Palestinian "resistence" is helping the situation, in any sense? Do militant actions seem to be bringing the region any closer to peace? Are militant actions likely to lead to more or less Israeli military intervention? Does two wrongs indeed make a right, perhaps just this time?

Thanks.

Firstly look into the neo-zionist mindset. It's not about sharing. It about Gods given right to take and own.. They believe only ONE people have rights to that land.. and that's Jews...and Jews only. No exceptions. No sharing. When you oppose this extremely racist ideology, one is immediately labeled a anti semitic racist Jew hater, and they say "maybe you''d wish we all burned to death in the ovens".

Such a predictable and common tactic to see. Zionism is has evolved into a war party now. Just as The republican ideology has been hijacked into a group of war mongers. They are now one and the same entity glued together by AIPAC.

Genocide is happening in slow motion in Gaza, but it's definitely happening. It need not be carried out through bullets and guns or quickly, In any event, the Palestinian ethnicity is being cleansed and wiped from those lands. If i I cut off your food, money, and sanitation and ability to obtain those basic human needs guess what...you're officially dying! Now apply that to your entire family and relatives. Make no mistake about it, it's genocide towards a group of people. Basic common sense.

You need to understand a human beings basic right to defend themselves when an foreign enemy combatant attacks them, steals their land, occupies it in spite of their existence.

This is all 101 type stuff.

rebornFixer

Byrnzie wrote:

The Palestinians have no option save violence.

One more thing...I find it interesting that anyone who crticises the illegal and brutal Israeli occupation is nearly always expected to clarify and explain their comments, whereas it seems to be quite acceptable to throw out comments such as 'the Palestinian terrorists', or 'the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel', e.t.c, e.t.c, without any demand being made for clarification.
I wonder why this is?

The Palestinians have no option but violence? How so? Why is this ineffective option somehow preferrable to other ineffective options (assuming that nonviolence is ineffective, something that has yet to be proven). Is there something that you inherently like about terrorism? I am going to assume not, but you haven't stated why you think violence is the only choice.

And quite frankly, I can do without the "101 type stuff" comments. If you want to call me stupid, do it directly.

rebornFixer

And I will check out that book ... Looks interesting.

Byrnzie

reborncareerist wrote:

And I will check out that book ... Looks interesting.

I've not had a chance to watch these yet, but they could be inteteresting. He's a very impressive public speaker. I'll give them a look later - just on my lunch break now.

The Holocaust Industry
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeVR8xHODxU
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaeMT44yX2M&feature=related
Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-UOwwigVGU&feature=related
Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Anf4BgLzA&feature=related
Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nvL5BHla2o&feature=related
Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhbF1uHocV8&feature=related

Byrnzie

reborncareerist wrote:

The Palestinians have no option but violence? How so? Why is this ineffective option somehow preferrable to other ineffective options (assuming that nonviolence is ineffective, something that has yet to be proven). Is there something that you inherently like about terrorism? I am going to assume not, but you haven't stated why you think violence is the only choice.

Firstly, as far as nonviolence being effective. Maybe you can provide one example of where it was effective, especially in regards to one country attempting to cope with an invasion from an outside force which wishes to establish an ethnic sovereignty on the area which it has moved into. I'm not aware of any.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

reborncareerist wrote:

The Palestinians have no option but violence? How so? Why is this ineffective option somehow preferrable to other ineffective options (assuming that nonviolence is ineffective, something that has yet to be proven). Is there something that you inherently like about terrorism? I am going to assume not, but you haven't stated why you think violence is the only choice.

And quite frankly, I can do without the "101 type stuff" comments. If you want to call me stupid, do it directly.

When someone is hell bent on taking your land, and they don't care if you live or breathe, or protest, but actually prefer that you are in fact dead and gone. What choice do you have? It's a life or death situation based on a theft instigated from a foreign occupying force that has zero respect for you and what you want.

Israel creates an environment for oppression and anger, and conflict by continually stealing land and denying the basic human rights of the Palestinian people. When the Palestinians do get fed up (from seeing their family members get murdered on a regular basis amongst soo many other unbearable daily realities), and try to defend themselves, they are demonized in the media which is in fact fully complicit and owned by the very same people doing the deed in the first place.

It's closed loop age old recipe designed to eliminate a group of people, take what they have, and continue on doing it.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world. An entire population is being brutally punished.
http://sudhan.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/jimmy-carter-a-human-rights-crime/

Gaza: The Auschwitz of our Time
http://sudhan.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/gaza-the-auschwitz-of-our-time/

Who's daughter is this?
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/americans-must-see-this-they-paid-for-it/

Byrnzie

reborncareerist wrote:

The Palestinians have no option but violence? How so? Why is this ineffective option somehow preferrable to other ineffective options (assuming that nonviolence is ineffective, something that has yet to be proven). Is there something that you inherently like about terrorism? I am going to assume not, but you haven't stated why you think violence is the only choice.

Firstly, as far as nonviolence being effective. Maybe you can provide one example of where it was effective, especially in regards to one country attempting to cope with an invasion from an outside force which wishes to establish an ethnic sovereignty on the area which it has moved into. I'm not aware of any.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

Byrnzie wrote:

I've not had a chance to watch these yet, but they could be inteteresting. He's a very impressive public speaker. I'll give them a look later - just on my lunch break now.

The Holocaust Industry
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeVR8xHODxU
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaeMT44yX2M&feature=related
Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-UOwwigVGU&feature=related
Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Anf4BgLzA&feature=related
Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nvL5BHla2o&feature=related
Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhbF1uHocV8&feature=related

Just started watching these. Very good. Very illuminating.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

Chomsky re: Dershowitz 's outrageous smear campaign against Finkelstein

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ENawcSliA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBclWDYuoxI&feature=related

RolandTD20Kdrummer

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m44743&hd=&size=1&l=e

"Today, in the face of intensifying Israeli war crimes, impunity, and total disregard of international law, international civil society is called upon to initiate or support whatever BDS campaigns that are deemed appropriate in every particular context and specific political circumstances to support Palestinian civil resistance. This is the most effective, the most morally and politically sound, form of solidarity with the Palestinians. In these exceptional circumstances of slow genocide, exceptional, ethically coherent measures are called for. This is the most reliable path to freedom, justice, equality and peace in Palestine and the entire region."

""The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet but not to make them die of hunger," said Dov Weissglas, Sharon's closest advisor, a few years ago. Today, Israel is slowly choking occupied Gaza, indeed bringing its civilian population to the brink of starvation and a planned humanitarian catastrophe.

If the US government is an obvious accomplice in financing, justifying and covering up Israel's occupation and other forms of oppression, the European Union, Israel's largest trade partner in the world, is not any less complicit in perpetuating Israel's colonial oppression and special form of apartheid. At a time when Israel is cruelly besieging Gaza, collectively punishing 1.5 million Palestinian civilians, condemning them to devastation, and visiting imminent death upon hundreds of patients, prematurely born babies, and others, the EU is extending an invitation to Israel to open negotiations to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, instead of ending the EU-Israel association agreement due to Israel's grave violation of its human rights clause. The US and European governments are not only providing Israel with massive economic aid and open markets, they are supplying it with weapons, diplomatic immunity and unlimited political support, and upgrading their relations with it specifically at a time when it is committing acts of genocide.

By frequently freezing fuel and electric power supplies to Gaza for long periods, Israel, the occupying power, is essentially guaranteeing that "clean" water is not being pumped out and properly distributed to homes and institutions; hospitals are no longer able to function adequately, leading to the death of many, particularly the most vulnerable -- already more than 180 patients, mainly children and senior citizens have died in Gaza as a direct result of the latest siege; whatever factories that are still working despite the blockade will soon be forced to close, pushing the already extremely high unemployment rate even higher; sewage treatment is grinding to a halt, further polluting Gaza's precious little water supply; academic institutions and schools are largely unable to provide their usual services; and lives of all civilians is severely disrupted, if not irreversibly damaged.

In short, Israel is condemning a whole future generation of Palestinians in Gaza to chronic disease, abject poverty and long-lasting developmental limitations. UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, international law expert Prof. Richard Falk, considered Israel's siege a "prelude to genocide," even before this latest crime of altogether cutting off energy supplies. Now, Israel's crimes in Gaza can accurately be categorized as acts of genocide, albeit slow.

In parallel, Israel is slowly transforming the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, into unlivable reservations that make the term Bantustan sound desirable, in comparison. Israel is systematically causing the slow disintegration of Palestinian society under occupation through its colonial wall, its policy of fragmentation and ghettoization, its denial of the most basic Palestinian rights, and its obstruction of human development. Israel is slowly, steadily and systematically turning the lives of average Palestinian farmers, workers, students, academics, artists and professionals into a living hell, designed to force them to leave. The fundamental objective of the mainstream of political Zionism, to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous population to make room for Jewish settlers and them alone, has undergone only one significant change in more than a hundred years since the beginning of the Zionist settler-colonial conquest: it has simply grown slower.

Ever since the Nakba, the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 indigenous Palestinians from their homeland and the ruin of Palestinian society, many "peace plans" have been put forth to resolve the "conflict." Virtually all these plans have had one factor in common: they have sought to impose a settlement based on "facts on the ground," or the existing vast asymmetry in power that leave one side -- the Palestinians -- humiliated, excluded and unequal. They have been unjust; hence they have failed.

The path to justice and peace must take into account the particularities of Israel's colonial reality. At its core, Israel's oppression of the people of Palestine encompasses three major dimensions: denial of Palestinian refugee rights, including their right to return to their homes; military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), with massive colonization of the latter; and a system of racial discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, partially resembling South African apartheid. A just peace would have to ethically and practically redress all three injustices as a minimal requirement of relative justice.

The latest political developments in Israel -- particularly the last parliamentary elections, which brought to power a government with openly fascist tendencies and led to the criminal war on Lebanon and, most recently, the slow genocide against Gaza -- have unequivocally exposed that an overwhelming majority in Israel stands fervently behind the state's racist and colonial policies and its persistent breach of international law. A solid majority, for instance, supports the daily war crimes committed by the army in Gaza, including cutting off energy supplies; the illegal apartheid wall; the extra-judicial executions of Palestinian activists; the denial of Palestinian refugee rights; the preservation of the apartheid system against the indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel; and the control over large parts of the occupied West Bank, particularly around Jerusalem, as well as Palestinian water aquifers. If this is the peace that most Israelis want, it clearly falls short of the minimal requirements of international law and fundamental human rights.

As a result of the failure of the international community in holding Israel to account, many people of conscience around the world started considering Palestinian civil society's call for nonviolent resistance against Israel until it ends its three-tiered oppression of the Palestinian people. From the prominent Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, to the Jewish minister in the South African government, Ronnie Kasrils, to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an increasing number of influential international figures have drawn parallels between Israeli apartheid and its South African predecessor and, consequently, have advocated a South African-style treatment.

It is quite significant that former US President Jimmy Carter and the former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Prof. John Dugard, while not endorsing boycott yet, have both accused Israel of practicing apartheid against the Palestinians. Given the time-honored UN resolutions designed to counter the crimes of apartheid, Dugard's position should not be taken lightly. It may well be the first step -- in a very long march -- towards engaging the UN in identifying Israel as an apartheid state and adopting appropriate sanctions as a result.

As far back as 2001, in Durban, South Africa, despite the official West's unwillingness to hold Israel to account, the non-governmental organization forum of the UN World Conference Against Racism widely adopted the view that Israel's special form of apartheid must be met with the same tools that brought down its South African predecessor. Many hope that "Durban 2" will build on this momentous achievement.

Soon after Durban, campaigns calling for divestment from companies supporting Israel's occupation spread across American campuses. Across the Atlantic, particularly in the United Kingdom, calls for various forms of boycott against Israel started to be heard among intellectuals and trade unionists. These efforts intensified with the massive Israeli military reoccupation of Palestinian cities in the spring of 2002, with all the destruction and casualties it left behind, particularly in the atrocities against the Jenin refugee camp.

In 2005, a year after the International Court of Justice's ruling against Israel's colonies and apartheid wall, Palestinian civil society issued its call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS. More than 170 Palestinian civil society organizations and unions, including the main political parties, endorsed this call to make Israel comply with international law. Twelve years after the dismal failure of the so-called "peace process" that was launched in 1993, Palestinian civil society started to reclaim the initiative, articulating Palestinian demands as part of the international struggle for justice long obscured by deceptive and entirely visionless "negotiations." In a noteworthy precedent, the BDS call was issued by representatives of the three segments of the Palestinian people -- the refugees, the Palestinian citizens of Israel and those under occupation. It also directly addressed conscientious Jewish-Israelis, inviting them to support its demands.

For more than a century, civil resistance has always been an authentic component of the Palestinian struggle against Zionism. Throughout modern Palestinian history, resistance to Zionist settler-colonialism mostly took nonviolent forms: mass demonstrations; grassroots mobilizations; labor strikes; boycotts of Zionist projects; and the often-ignored cultural resistance, in poetry, literature, music, theater and dance. The first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993) was a uniquely rich laboratory of civil resistance, whereby activists organized at the neighborhood level, promoting self-reliance and boycott, to various degrees, of Israeli goods as well as of the military authorities. In Beit Sahour, for instance, a famed tax revolt presented the Israeli occupation with one of its toughest challenges during the period. BDS must therefore be seen as rooted in a genuinely Palestinian culture of civil struggle, while its main inspiration today comes from the South African anti-apartheid struggle. It is this rich heritage that inspires the current pioneering grassroots resistance in Bil'in against the wall.

In the last few years, many mainstream groups and institutions around the world have heeded Palestinian boycott calls and started to consider or actually apply diverse forms of effective pressure on Israel. These include the two largest British trade unions, UNISON and the Transport and General Workers Union; the British University and College Union, which recently reaffirmed its pro-boycott stance; Aosdana, the Irish state-sponsored academy of artists; the Church of England; the Presbyterian Church USA; top British architects; the National Union of Journalists in the UK; the Congress of South African Trade Unions; the World Council of Churches; the South African Council of Churches; the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Ontario and, more recently, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers as well as ASSE, the largest student association in Quebec; and dozens of celebrated authors, artists and intellectuals led by John Berger, among many others. Many European academics and cultural figures are shunning events held in Israel, practicing a "silent boycott." Most recently, Jean-Luc Godard, the iconic filmmaker, cancelled his planned participation in a film festival in Tel Aviv after Palestinians had appealed to him. Before him, Bjork, Bono, the remaining Beatles, the Rolling Stones, among others, all opted not to perform in Israel, effectively boycotting the "Israel at 60" celebrations.

In November 2007, hundreds of Palestinian boycott activists, trade unionists, representatives of all major political parties, women's unions, farmers' associations, student groups and almost every sector of Palestinian civil society convened at the first BDS conference in the occupied Palestinian territory. A direct result of this effort was the recent establishment of the BDS National Committee, or BNC, to raise awareness about the boycott and lead its local manifestations as well as act as a unified reference for international BDS campaigns.

For cynics who still consider the above too little progress for the given timeframe, I can only reiterate what a South African comrade once told us: "The [African National Congress] issued its academic boycott call in the 1950s; the international community started to heed it almost three decades later! So you guys are doing much better than us."

Today, in the face of intensifying Israeli war crimes, impunity, and total disregard of international law, international civil society is called upon to initiate or support whatever BDS campaigns that are deemed appropriate in every particular context and specific political circumstances to support Palestinian civil resistance. This is the most effective, the most morally and politically sound, form of solidarity with the Palestinians. In these exceptional circumstances of slow genocide, exceptional, ethically coherent measures are called for. This is the most reliable path to freedom, justice, equality and peace in Palestine and the entire region."


...

Byrnzie

America and Israel. Side by side in genocide.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols2/usa_israel_flag2.jpg

rebornFixer

Byrnzie wrote:

Firstly, as far as nonviolence being effective. Maybe you can provide one example of where it was effective, especially in regards to one country attempting to cope with an invasion from an outside force which wishes to establish an ethnic sovereignty on the area which it has moved into. I'm not aware of any.

Well, its not a perfect example because the situations do differ in specifics, but the non-violent aspects of India's reistence to British colonial rule appeared to bear more fruit than the violent aspects did ... Another possible example could be Tibet. Granted, Tibet is not free. However, much of the world can sympathize with the Tibetan plight (whereas the Palestinian plight gets all mixed up with the "war on terrorism" idea). People seem to have that much more sympathy for people who are oppressed but who do not stoop to using terrorism to resist. Even the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. focused on political change and nonviolent protest; the militants (e.g., Black Panthers) just got slapped down by the cops ... The people who worked towards change without trying to tear the whole system down ultimately got the results. Whether or not increased global concern will ultimately lead to freedom in Tibet or elsewhere is debatable, to be sure. And for the record, I am not a pacifist. There are times when violence might be an appropriate response. One has to look at whether violence gets results, in terms of freedom, statehood ... I think in the Palestine case, it is clear that violence has backfired. It is difficult to know anymore whether the violence is actually legitimate resistence, or if it is a tool used by Islamic fundamentalist whackjobs who are no better than those "nuke 'em all" Rabbis that you guys like to talk about.

Commy

agreed. Martin Luthar King jr had it right. Non-violent resistance is the only effective path towards social progress.

Byrnzie

I don't think there's any conclusive evidence that non-violence has ever worked. I also don't think that we're in any position to cast judgement on the Palestinian response to Israel's race war. I also think that we in the West are in no position to cast judgement on terrorism when we fully support the murder of innocents ourselves.

Commy

Byrnzie wrote:

I don't think there's any conclusive evidence that non-violence has ever worked. I also don't think that we're in any position to cast judgement on the Palestinian response to Israel's race war. I also think that we in the West are in no position to cast judgement on terrorism when we fully support the murder of innocents ourselves.

right. When the US is the biggest sponsor of state spnsored terror in the world, how can they lead a war on terrorism?

RolandTD20Kdrummer

Commy wrote:

right. When the US is the biggest sponsor of state spnsored terror in the world, how can they lead a war on terrorism?

Easy...you stir in a dash of racism.

Works amazingly well.

Commy

RolandTD20Kdrummer wrote:

Easy...you stir in a dash of racism.

Works amazingly well.

yeah, andone of the most advanced propaganda programs in the world.

Byrnzie

Commy wrote:

agreed. Martin Luthar King jr had it right. Non-violent resistance is the only effective path towards social progress.

Michael Neumann:
'It is sometimes supposed that the Palestinians should have adopted nonviolent resistance as their strategy; even that their "failure" to do so is some dark indication of their character. Such opinions are voiced in apparent ignorance of the fact that the Palestinians have always used a mixture of violent and nonviolent responses - petitions, strikes, marches. This means in part that many Palestinians have never resisted by any but nonviolent means. The results have been less than impressive. In addition, the entire first intifada, brutally suppressed, used forms of "violence" - so juvenile and tentative - kids throwing rocks - that they hardly deserve, in the face of the massive professional army thrown against them, that description.

Nonviolence has never "worked" in any politically relevant sense of the word, and there is no reason to suppose it ever will. It has never, largely on it's own strength, achieved the political objectives of those who employed it.
There are supposedly three major examples of successful nonviolence: Gandhi's independence movement, the U.S civil rights movement, and the South African campaigns against Apartheid. None of them performed as advertised.
Gandhi's nonviolence can't have been successful, because there was nothing he would have called a success. Gandhi's priorities may have shifted over time: he said that, if he changed his mind from one week to the next, it was because he had learned something in between. But it seems fair to say that he wanted independence from British rule, a united India, and nonviolence itself, and end to civil or ethnic strife on the Indian subcontinent. What he got was India 1947: partition, and one of the most horrifying outbursts of bloodshed and cruelty in the whole bloody, cruel history of the postwar world. These consequences alone would be sufficient to count his project as a tragic failure.
What of independence itself? Historians might argue about it's causes, but I doubt any of them would attribute it primarily to Gandhi's campaign. The British began contemplating - admittedly with avrying degrees of sincerity - some measure of autonomy for India before Gandhi did anything, as early as 1918. A.J.P Taylor says that after World War I, the British were beginning to find India a liability, because India was once again producing it's own cotton and buying cheap textiles from Japan. Later India's strategic importance, while valued by many, became questioned by some who saw the oil of the Middle East and the Suez canal as far more important. By the end of the second world war, Britain's will to hold onto it's empire had pretty well crumbled, for reasons having little or nothing to do with nonviolence.
But this is the least important of the reasons why Gandhi cannot be said to have won independence for India. It was not his saintliness or the disruption he caused that impressed the British. What impressed them was that the country seemed (and was) about to erupt. The colonial authorities could see no way to stop it. A big factor was the terrorism - and this need not be a term of condemnation - quite regularly employed against the British. It was not enough to do much harm, but more than enough to warn them that India was becoming more trouble than it was worth. All things considered, the well-founded fear of violence had far more effect on British resolve than Gandhi ever did. He may have been a brilliant and creative political thinker, but he was not a victor.

How about the U.S civil rights movement? It would be difficult and ungenerous to argue that it wa unsuccessful, outrageous to claim that it was anything but a long and dangerous struggle. But when that it is conceded, the fact remains that Martin Luther King's civil rights movement was practically a federal government project. It's roots may have run deep, but it's impetus came from the Supreme Court decision of 1954 and from the subsequent attempts to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The students who braved a hell to accomplish this goal are well remembered. Sometimes forgotten is the U.S government's almost spectacular determination to see that federal law was respected. Eisenhower sent, not the FBI, not a bunch of lawyers, but one of the best and proudest units of the U.S army, the 101st Airborne, to keep order in Little Rock and to see that the "federalized" Arkansas national guard stayed on the right side of the dispute. Though there was never any hint of an impending battle between federal and state military forces, the message couldn't have been clearer: we, the federal government, are prepared to do whatever it takes to enforce our will.
This message is an undercurrent throughout throughout the civil rights struggles of the 1950's and 1960's. Though Martin Luther King still had to overcome vicious, sometimes deadly resistance, he himself remarked that surprisingly few people were killed or seriously injured in the struggle. The surprise diminishes with the recollection that there was real federal muscle behind the nonviolent campaign. For a variety of motives, both virtuous and cynical, the U.S government wanted the South to be integrated and to recognize black civil rights. Nonviolence achieved it's ends largley because the violence of it's opponents was severely constrained. In 1962, Kennedy federalized the National Guard and sent in combat troops to quell segregationist rioting in Oxford, Mississippi. Johnson did the same thing in 1965, after anti-civil rights violence in Alabama. While any political movement has allies and benefits from available circumstances, having the might of the U.S goverment behind you goes far beyond the ordinary advantages accompanying political activity. The nonviolence of the U.S civil rights movement sets an example only for those who have the overwhelming armed force of a government on their side.

As for South Africa, it is a minor miracle of wishful thinking that anyone could suppose nonviolence played a major role in the collapse of Apartheid.
In the first place, the ANC was never a nonviolent movement but a movement that decided, on occasion and for practical reasons, to use nonviolent tactics...
Secondly, violence was used extensively throughout the course of the Anti-Apartheid struggle. It can be argued that the violence was essentially defensive, but that's not the point: nonviolence as a doctrine rejects the use of of violence in self-defense. To say that blacks used violence in self-defense or as resistance to oppression is to say, I think, that they were justified. It is certainly not to say that they were nonviolent.
Third, violence played a major role in causing both the boycott of South Africa and the demise of Apartheid....the boycott only aquired some teeth strating in 1977, after the Soweto riots in 1976, nd again in 1985-1986, after the township riots of 184-1985...

In short, it is a myth that nonviolence brought all the victories it is supposed to have in it's ledger. In fact, it brought about none of them.
How does this bear on the Israel-Palestine conflict? In that situation, success is far less likely than in the cases we have examined. Unlike Martin Luther King, the Palestinians are working against a state, not with one. Their opponents are far more ruthless than the British were in the twilight of the empire. Unlike the Indians and South Africans, they do not vastly outnumber their oppressors. And neither the Boers nor the English ever had anything like the moral authority Israel enjoys in the hearts and minds of Americans, much less it's enormous support network. Nonviolent protest might overcome Israel's prestige in ten or twenty years, but the Palestinians might well suppose they do not have that long.'