The Nonviolent Victory That Wasn’t

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
08 October '10

The New York Times ran a paean this week to a new documentary, Budrus, that purports to show how 10 months of nonviolent protests in 2003-04 persuaded Israel to reroute its security fence near the eponymous West Bank village. The story has only two flaws: the protests weren’t nonviolent, and the victory was at least partly due to Israel’s own legal system. And those flaws reflect a problem far larger than the film itself.

Though the movie shows occasional stone-throwing, most of the protests look “utterly peaceful,” noted reporter Ethan Bronner. But even some of the protesters themselves told Bronner otherwise.

“It is obvious that the filmmaker was not there,” said one, Jonathan Pollak. “The movie represents what happened as more nonviolent that it really was.”

And Pollak is no Israeli flack He co-founded the Israeli group Anarchists Against the Wall, which regularly joins Palestinian protests against the fence; he’s been injured and arrested repeatedly during anti-fence demonstrations; and he even toured the U.S. with the film’s hero, Ayed Morrar, to fundraise for the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement.

Indeed, even the usually pro-Palestinian Haaretz admits that most anti-fence demonstrations involve “a great deal of stone throwing” — generally with slingshots, which are lethal weapons — and “many [Israeli] soldiers and Border Police are wounded.”

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Terra Incognita: The Colonization of the Conflict

Seth J. Frantzman
Think Israel
27 July 09

Recent revelations that European embassies in Israel and the EU fund some radical Israeli human rights organizations beg the question: To what degree is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians choreographed and colonized by outsiders?

In the weekly protest at Bil'in, Palestinians again threw rocks at soldiers and attempted to break through the security fence. But as happens every week, there were more foreigners than Arabs. Even the Arabs that come aren't from nearby. The event is like a play or sitcom staged again and again; the format is the same every time.

So why does it go on? The protesters don't have an actual goal. They claim to be Anarchists Against the Wall or peace activists, but the events at Bil'in aren't peaceful and there is no realistic expectation that the weekly ritual will actually affect the fence. Nor is the fence in that area particularly egregious; it deviates from the Green Line by less than two kilometers and doesn't bisect Arab homes or anything of that nature.

So why does it go on? It goes on because those who arrive there have a vested interest in having it go on. Web sites (such as Bilin-village.org) devoted to the protest stress that many important people and organizations have joined, including the Israeli Jewish organization Physicians for Human Rights, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and Gush Shalom. It is a mandatory stop on any protest-tourist's visit to the Holy Land. And it is the place to get wounded for foreign protesters.

Thus European Parliament Vice President Luisa Morgantini and Julio Toscano, an Italian judge, were injured there in June 2008. Mairead Corrigan, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for work in Northern Ireland, was hurt in an April 2007 protest. Lymor Goldstein, an Israeli lawyer, was wounded in 2006. But these people weren't wounded accidentally or because the soldiers intended to wound them; they were wounded because they wanted to be wounded. They chose to be wounded as a sort of badge of honor.

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