The Right to Protest

What Happens When You See A Wrong Being Done

Published on January 18, 2004 By Larry Kuperman In Politics

I have written several posts about the conflict in Israel. In one of them entitled "What Do We Do About Hamas?" I argued that the members of this terrorist organization have a vested interest in keeping the pot stirred up and little personal incentive to negotiate a peace, as that would mean abrogating their ont-inconsiderable power. You can see the original article at http://kupe.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=194

Today I attended an educational seminar put on by B'tselem which defines itself as "The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories." I watched film footage of the destruction of houses occupied by Palestinian civilians living peacefully within the borders of the Israeli state. The homeowners were not accused of being terrorists nor the families of terrorists. They were not arrested, nor were they tried. Their houses were simply demolished because they were inconvenient. No plans were made to offer them alternative housing, not were they reimbursed for the loss of their property. Far from it. They were in fact presented with bills for the costs of demolishing their homes.

Some Israelis protested. These included two former members of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. Some of the soldiers were plainly embarrassed to have been assigned such a duty. You may have heard the term "refusenicks" being applied to soldiers who refuse to take part in what they deem to be immoral activities in the Occupied Territories. See http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/02/60minutes/main507886.shtml for one example. These are not cowards. In many cases the soldiers involved were decorated veterans who had served honorably in war conditions, but now were protesting a government policy they don't believe in.

I fervently believe that individuals must stand up for what they believe in. We must protest against actions that go against our moral principles. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for a few good men to do nothing."

Protesting against the actions of the government of Israel or of any government for that matter is NOT being against that country. Areil Sharon is NOT the State of Israel anymore than George W. Bush is America or that William Clinton was America before him. Governments are composed of people and people are fallible. Protest is the way to call into question the actions of people and to try to change policy. It was my right to protest the war in Vietnam and it is the right of young people today to protest the war in Iraq. Do you agree with the war? Then it is your right to offer a counter-protest.

In the warcrime trials at Nuremburg, again and again it was said "I was only following orders." The same was said by soldiers who followed orders at My Lai in 1970. (See http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/mylai.htm for reference.) Our highest courts have stated over and over that an order to commit crimes against humanity is not valid and the individual is responsible for maintaining a moral code of conduct.

The right of protest is one of the cornerstones of democracy.

It strikes me that the government of Ariel Sharon is in much the same position as the leaders of Hamas. Both parties need a war to give them a raison d'etre. Likud is a minority party in Israel and the coalition that keeps him in power is held together by fear and anger. The seminal event of the current Intefida was Sharon's vist to the Al Aqsa Mosque, with the rumored destruction of the mosque. By provoking the Palestinian reaction he created a casus belli that has kept him in power. Sharon's actions during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon led him to retire in disgrace for a time, before his career was revived. He is absolutely the wrong man to lead a peace movement (as is Arafat on the other side of the table) and a peace accord would make him irrelevant.

So, when you look at who benefits from actions clearly intended as provactions, the answer is that the government of Ariel Sharon benefits, arguably at the expense of the people and the nation it is to serve.

It is our right, perhaps our duty, to protest wrongs when we see them. Destroying the houses of people accused of no crime who are living in peace is such a wrong.

Comments

AR-15

on Jan 18, 2004

Wahkonta Anathema

on Jan 18, 2004

I just visited the site AR15 got his photo from. Sorry, but I really don't think this is what the article had in mind. That is a site that doesn't protest anything except Citizens who protest. They claim to be, "liberty-loving" yet apparently devote their time to stopping and interfering with those who are Democrat or 'left' - as they term them- protesting government. What a strange group of Citizen, Anti-Citizens. I mean they are a contradiction in terms and end up no different than the police or government agency that doesn't want freedom of dissent to be heard or exercised.
Maybe someone can explain to me the reasoning for the group that I don't see from a short viewing of the one sentence blather on their messaage board. It is essentially a Republican subterfuge. I kind of think that the kind of protest that Larry Kuperman has in mind would not be deemed allowable by such a group. As the view you express is termed, 'leftist' they would try to assist government in stopping it.
This points up how things have changed since 1992 when Clinton came to power. His moves to take away the second amendment led to much being written about the Federal government as manipulated by the 'controlled media' of "jews", and leftists. Now we have this same 'controlled-media' being held up as purveyors of a truth the Right only understands. What has changed? There are still left and right views, and it's still a largely Jewish owned and funded 'controlled-media', the only difference being that there has been a change in leadership in Israel and America. Amazingly, it is the Left who are now being termed anti-semites and it is their views being suppressed. Who benefits from both cases? The Jews. So tell me, am I a left or right 'anti-Semite' to point this out? Of course I'm neither, just a American who writes a blog occassionally on views of what is right or wrong in this Empire from his own point of view.
I personally view 'protest' as a tool to use to get the views out that the 'controlled-media' tries to suppress from people's awareness. Beyond that, it serves as a recruiting ground for followers, and also does allow ideas to be shared as to the issue at-hand. In this case, there is no way the 'controlled-media' is going to allow the news of what is occuring in the Middle East, and especially Israel, to be known. For more on this you should check out the series of articles I posted titled: On The Death of Tom Hurndall, which goes into how a photojournalist was shot and killed by a Israeli soldier for doing his job and trying to report on real events in that region. The soldier has subsequently been charged with assault for the murder, which further proves how the media is suppressed.
I'm not trying to use this post as launch for my site, but it does have several articles of Israeli troops resigning and other 'Zionist' actions and behaviors that aren't known due to suppression by 'Zionist' controlled media.
It is of use to let people know there are a great number of Americans who oppose the views of the present Administration and not only outside of his own Party. Laura Ingrham[sic] on her radio show was quite vociferous in her denouncement of Bush for his Immigration Act, which betrays the Party and his own Campaign promises. While she is well known, the media has not reported anything of substance on the matter, choosing to define it as for Mexican rights or against Mexican rights, when the issue has nothing to do with Mexicans but everything to do with National Sovereignty. Do you think the 'controlled-media' is going to go to this point though? Of course not, for their job is to contain dissent by re-directing the issue to sidereal matters and so diffuse it.
So we also need to be aware of how government is able to manipulate dissent by its very organization. I once was invited to some 'anarchist' meetings at the time the group was first meeting. They were headed by a graduate student in Political Science who was doing it as a task by his staff Mentor. Over the next month I watched this group of 'Anarchists' define and limit themselves into a anti-male, pro-gay, pro-choice, anti-Republican, pro-queer (their term not mine) group of puppets for the leader. I walked off laughing.
These were people who had come seeking fundamental change in their society, choosing a political philosophy of NO control, and ended up homo-loving anti-Conservative, Leftists who called voting for greens 'Activist' dissent. Worse than that, they could not even understand how I could see anything wrong with their beginning premise and end result. I told the leader he was at fault for he had used their naivete to manipulate them into his own gay-loving sort of loose affiliated singles club. Of course that didn't go over well, but he still tried to challenge me to come back for over a year and debate his actions. I didn't feel they were even worth it, and never went back.
Likewise, I once observed a lawyer who was representing a true activist named, Sister Grace in Rochester, NY. She was a for-real hunger-striking, get arrested activist who let her actions speak for her beliefs. Yet this attorney insinuated himself into her domain and meetings under the guise of providing legal advice of her upcoming afforts to protest various acts agains the homeless and minority community. He actually had them sitting and considering dressing up the homeless in clown suits and parading them down the street on the fourth of July and making them the ridicule of the entire city. Had I not been sufficiently outraged to be thrown out of the meeting, they might well have not stopped to consider what the infiltrator was actually trying to do, derail her credcibility for his controller, for you see they had just lit a fuse under the welfare reciepients -an effort the gov't fears most and THE number one group they fear -by walking in and putting ink hand prints all over the gov't building to protest the fingerprinting of the poor before they could get food to live on.
So you have to be careful of protests as most are contrivances of usurpers having no interest in your views but who are often actually trying to channel and control your dissent so it can be diffused and discredited. Any one from the '60's will tell you about how the government infiltrated movement and even founded them to gain control of dissent rather than respond to it on its own terms and issues.

Today, I think a good issue to draw people in would be to protest the protest zones the President and Government have created to corral you. This is an outrage, and the idea that there is an area designated for dissent and freedom of expression dictates that then there is no freedom of expression outside that zone. It defeats the whole idea of dissent and suppresses freedom at least as effectively as the group I mentioned at the beginning of this reply. It is repugnant to Americans and hasn't been seen as policy since John Adams declared the Liberty Pole a 'Sedition Pole' and ordered arrest of all who went to one. Even Richard Nixon went out into the crowd of kids protesting him and wanted to hear their views - something not generally known of him. I have to believe that a protest zone would be opposed to his political views as well, and he was subject of more protests than about any President this Nation ever had.
Thanks for the post and I hope it invites further comments. I will return to check your progress.

Wahkonta Anathema

on Jan 18, 2004

Larry Kuperman

on Jan 19, 2004

AR15, other social activists who felt the need to speak out against injustice:

Tom Paine, author of Common Sense (1776) and the Rights of Man, 1791.

Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence.

Grathocke

on Jan 20, 2004

The animosity between Israelis and Palestinians is a result of the Holocaust. The creation of Israel may have occurred anyway due to the terror campaign of the Zionists, but the Holocaust certainly created an atmosphere conducive to the political action of the time. At the time Israel was created the pendulum had swung far in favor of the Jews because so many had been killed. This gave them a very strong political base. The Palestinians had no such political base. I laugh when I hear people say that these people have no basis for their claims to the land, as though they just migrated to the area recently and plopped down a tent or two. The fact is Judea and the Jews were destroyed nearly 2000 years ago. The people were dispersed throughout the world, primarily within the Roman Empire; but the Levant did not remain unpopulated. For those 2000 years Jerusalem and Judea have been populated by people who became Christians and Muslims and their descendants still lived there when the British Empire first took control and finally broke it up at the behest of the United Nations. While I don't believe in or condone the actions of the radical elements of the Palestinians, I do understand and believe in the reasons for their struggle.

The problem I have with the creation of Israel (moot as it is) is its basis on ancient history. The argument boils down to we used to live there, so that is our land. Well, a lot of our tribal ancestors lived in other places. As a matter of fact, they all moved around and many were forced from their land by invasions of other peoples. That does not mean we should create homelands for these tribes in their ancient hunting grounds. Imagine if some descendents of Philistines should decide to demand their ancient heritage. There would go nearly half of Israel today. If the Greeks should rise up and take back what was rightfully theirs, the Southern half of Italy would be lost, as well as most of the best coast land across the Mediterranean and Black Sea. It all becomes ridiculous after a time. The fact is we must live in the world today. When it becomes necessary to create new political order then we must do so intelligently, not in a manner that will beget more problems than it solves. For all their greatness in defeating the Axis in WWII, the leaders of the world were miserable failures in dealing with the aftermath.

bakerstreet

on Jan 21, 2004

I agree, with some reservations. I have never agreed with Israel's original 'Right to Exist' in the biblical sense, and I think that the parlor-room way they negotiated themselves a nation in the the first half of the 20th century is one of the sad oddities of world history. They entered a populated nation with little or no plan on how to deal with the indigenous people, and have treated them in a horrible way. People whose family lived in the same house since the 1300's were booted out to make room for immigrants of a different ethnicity. It reminds one of the US treatment of indigenous Americans during our westward expansion.

That said, Israel is also blessed with a (convoluted) form of represent government. Ariel Sharon doesn't represent the hard-line in the spectrum of opinion. Perhaps he veils a harder stance for the sake of political survival, but there are those in Israel that would simply eradicate the Palestinian problem, or drive them into a neighboring nation at gunpoint. The irony of such from an ethnic group that suffered the same during WW2 is sick, but it is true. At the same time, those hard-liners are balanced by literalist counterparts on the Islamic Palestinian side that simply believe that Jews are sub human and Israel cannot exist in any form.

The terrorism problem isn't the Palestinian people in Palestine. The problem is the support that militant Islamic racists receive from non-combatants all over the world, from private 'investors' to the soft stance of nations like France. Without that material and moral support Palestinian terrorists wouldn't have the resources to stage attacks, and without those attacks the average Israeli wouldn't tolerate the kind of nazi-ism that you describe in your post. Many people around the world not only sympathize with the Palestinian plight, but accept terrorism as a way to provoke change.

Sharon couldn't possibly take a soft-line when people are being murdered by terrorists. In recent years those who did either had a short tenure or were assassinated. The acting parties on both sides are enabled by the mean opinion on either side, and that opinion is the root cause of all the problem. Sure, dissenting 'soldiers' on both sides refuse to commit horrible acts, but here are always ten more ready to commit them. If Sharon was ousted, there are untold legions of folks of much, much worse bent ready to step up the acts.

As long is there is a demand for horror, there will be a supply. When people get sick of it on a large scale, it will stop. Israel should face repercussions for their behavior, and *anyone* who renders material support to Hamas and other terrorist organizations should be immediately treated as a criminal. The problem is that one or the other is enacted, and never both with simultaneous fervency.

Basically, states defined religiously or ethnically are dinosaurs that the world simply should no longer tolerate. Such Islamic states feed terrorism elsewhere, and those Israelis who consider it to be such simply won't accept any other definition. I see no end to it.

jeblackstar

on Jan 21, 2004

Wahkonta, you're quoting Dr. Laura in support of anti-government protest? ::laughs:: She may be opposed to liberal thinking, but if Bush were behaving himself you can bet your buttons she be in firm support of him

stevendedalus

on Feb 04, 2004

Go to my blog on Islam&Judaism. All this pain could've been avoided. i believe our stance on Israel results in terror against us.

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