Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: What would Gandhi do?

The Dangers of Violent Protest
Jun 7 2010, 8:00 AM ET | Comment
Mahatma Gandhi, in his effort to end the British occupation of India, 
laid out a very strict set of rules for protesters wishing to join his 
movement. They would under no circumstances resort to violence. They 
would not provoke their opponents or instigate any violence, and they 
would express no anger and refrain from any retaliation, including 
swearing or insults. They would put up with even unprovoked assaults 
from an opponent, and surrender voluntarily to arrest or attachment and 
removal of property without resistance. Indeed, if, in the course of a 
struggle, anyone insulted or attacked an official, Gandhi's protesters 
were to protect the official from that insult or attack, even at the 
risk of their own lives.
The activists on the Mavi Marmara--the ship that attempted to run the 
Israeli blockade of Gaza last week--did not follow Gandhi's strictures. 
Indeed, it appears that some of them had no intention of acting 
non-violently. Earlier in the week, I listened to a PBS phone interview 
with one of the Free Gaza founders, after her return to Turkey. When 
asked about the reports of protesters attacking the commandos as they 
descended onto the ship, she said, "well, you can understand that they 
[the protesters] were going to defend themselves."
No, Gandhi would say, you cannot. Not if you're going to conduct a 
non-violent act of civil disobedience.
An article in Saturday's New York Times analyzing the botched 
assumptions on both sides that led to the tragedy reported that the 
activists went into the confrontation looking for conflict, to draw 
attention to their cause of ending the Israeli blockade of Gaza. If 
that's so, it appears they achieved their objective. And while the 
Israeli/Palestinian/Hamas conflict is not a simple case of the good guys 
and the bad guys, there's certainly an argument that the harm caused by 
the blockade outweighs any of Israel's arguments for it.
But regardless of the merits of their cause, I found myself disturbed by 
two aspects of the activists' departure from what Gandhi or Martin 
Luther King would have advocated. First, there is at best a naivete, and 
at worst a disingenuousness, in provoking a fight and then complaining 
noisily that a fight broke out. The activists decided to take on the 
Israeli military. It doesn't matter whether the military should have 
resisted their passage to Gaza, in a moral sense; the fact remains that 
Israelis had been very clear that they were going to take whatever 
measures were necessary to stop the boats. So the activists knew they 
were going to meet resistance.
The decision of at least some activists to tie off one of the commandos' 
rappelling ropes to an antenna on the Mavi Marmara, leaving the 
commandos able to descend only one at a time and in a vulnerable 
position, then taking away the weapons of the first to descend and 
attacking them with pipes or clubs ... is akin to provoking a grizzly 
bear. What, I found myself asking repeatedly, as I read and listened to 
the coverage, did the activists think was going to happen when they did 
that? Commandos who see their comrades under attack and outnumbered 300 
to 1 (or even 20 to 1) are going to do what commandos are trained to do. 
They're not trained negotiators. They're going to use force to gain 
control of the situation. Deadly force, if they think it's necessary. 
You can count on it. And if they then arrest you, they're not going to 
be nice about it.
A couple of years ago, when I was on assignment in the eastern Congo, I 
had permission to take photos of a transaction taking place on a jungle 
road near the coltan mines west of Goma. The rebel soldier who walked 
up, pointed an AK-47 at me and angrily demanded that I put the camera 
down had no right to tell me to do that. On the other hand, to continue 
taking pictures, or to assault him verbally or physically for intruding 
where he had no right, would have had severe consequences. At best, I 
would have lost the camera. At worst, I could have been shot. And if I'd 
had the idea that I could assault the soldier and not reap those 
consequences, I would have been rightly criticized as naive, immature, 
or stupid. Was it fair? Of course not. It's not about fair. It's about 
understanding the realities of the world, making choices accordingly, 
and maturely accepting the consequences of those choices.
Leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King understood that truth. 
They also understood that even in a noble fight, the means matter as 
much as the ends. In going into the confrontation looking for a fight, 
the activists on the Mavi Marrmara made the decision that conflict--and 
at least a low grade of violence--was an acceptable method to gain 
awareness for their cause. If the helicopter carrying the commandos to 
the ship had crashed into the ocean because its rappelling line was 
anchored to the boat, I suspect the activists who were fighting to keep 
the commandos from boarding ship would have cheered, despite the fact 
that commandos' lives would have been lost.
For all the arguments one can make about armed commandos versus 
activists armed only with makeshift clubs and pipes, the question 
remains for me ... once you cross the line into a place where conflict 
and violence become an acceptable means of achieving your objectives, 
where does it end? What if one of the commandos had been killed? Would 
that have been acceptable? And if one is acceptable, what about 10? And 
if it's acceptable to take the lives of 10 commandos on the open seas, 
is it acceptable to kill them somewhere else? And if it's acceptable to 
kill them somewhere else, is it okay if a stray civilian gets killed in 
the process? And if losing one civilian life is OK, is 10? There's a 
long distance between violently resisting  commandos attempting to board 
a ship and actively taking lives to bring visibility to a cause. But the 
slope between the two is slippery. Gandhi and Martin Luther King 
understood that. Violence begets violence, and you can end up in a 
dangerous place, once you decide to step into the world where conflict 
and violence are an acceptable means to an end.
I used to argue this point with a friend of a friend who was an ardent 
supporter of the Palestinian cause, back in the early 1980s. To him, the 
cause was important enough to justify whatever means were necessary. To 
me, the ends did not justify any means. Rick moved to the West Bank, and 
I lost track of him for many years. Later, I heard that he'd renounced 
his endorsement of conflict and violence as a means to an end and had 
taken a job as a middle east expert for the U.N. Ironically, that meant 
that he was in the U.N. building in Baghdad when it was bombed in August 
of 2003 by extremists wanting to advance their cause. He did not survive 
the attack.
There are no lack of individuals, groups, or nations who use violence as 
a means to an end. But if you decide to step in that world, you can't 
complain when your opponent uses violence in return. When Martin Luther 
King, John Lewis, the Freedom Riders and the rest of the non-violent 
protesters for civil rights set out, they knew what they were walking 
into. And if we admire their courage, it's because they walked into a 
hailstorm without so much as a word of complaint. When King was beaten 
and unjustly arrested; when John Lewis had his head bashed in on the 
Selma bridge; when the Freedom Riders were assaulted almost to death 
upon disembarking at various stops, they didn't attack their attackers. 
They let their courage speak for them, and for the rightness of their 
cause.
Quiet, uncomplaining courage is harder and less satisfying than 
provoking an opponent, retaliating against attacks or noisy accusations, 
of course. It takes a lot of inner strength and maturity, and a level of 
devotion that few of us possess. But that's why it's such a powerful 
weapon.
The activists aboard the Mavi Marmara may have achieved their goal. The 
incident may even bring about the end of the blockade of Gaza, when all 
is said and done. But the means by which the activists went about 
accomplishing that end gives me pause. I think it would have given 
Gandhi pause, as well.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/06/the-dangers-of-violent-protest/57743/

On 6/8/2010 1:01 AM, נחום wrote:
#_Sciacquati la bocca prima di nominarlo... ebreo ERRANTE!!
...e non e`il participio presente (che sei piu`scemo e incastrato di un 
palo) ma sai gia` a quale sostantivo intendo!