What Might Martin Luther King, Jr. Say about Palestinian Resistance Today?
There are strong indications that Palestinian suffering under 75 years of Israeli violence and pauperization, and shameful international complicity with Israeli apartheid, have convinced large segments of Palestinian society that they can rely only on themselves. They see no alternative to armed resistance to protect themselves, no matter how high the price. This article aims to raise questions of how a rise in grassroots-based Palestinian armed resistance could affect the international solidarity movement that is largely supportive of a nonviolent path to peace and justice in Palestine/Israel, and how we in the U.S., especially in faith-based communities, have a crucial role in strengthening the vibrant non-violent resistance movement in Palestine.
Many Israelis view an escalation of land grabs and violence against the Palestinians as a necessity for the continued viability of Israel as a state that privileges its Jewish citizens. The mass theft of Palestinian land and water resources and the systematic destruction of the Palestinian economy, have been the foundations of Israel’s establishment and its economic successes. How else could a minority of the population before 1948 become the dominant majority without inflicting devastation on the native majority population? Without continuing the theft of land and water from Palestinians for expanding illegal settlement of Jews, Israel’s nightmare about the Palestinians again becoming a majority would come true. And this escalation of land theft necessarily means intensification of violence against Palestinians. Israel’s economy is also becoming increasingly dependent on this violence. Today, Israel’s exports of weapons and surveillance technologies are an important and growing component of its prosperity. Repressive governments around the world covet Israel’s deadly technologies to suppress the resistance of indigenous peoples and to silence protest movements. (See “The Palestine Laboratory”: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation | Democracy Now!) Israel’s suppliers of these technologies boast that their products and services are continuously field-tested against Palestinians and their allies in Lebanon and Syria
More moderate Israelis and their supporters in the West may protest that the current rise of the extreme Right is an abomination, (See Opinion | Netanyahu Is Shattering Israeli Society - The New York Times (nytimes.com,) but they have greatly contributed to this inevitable outcome. For example, under Laborite Ehud Barak’s tenure as Prime Minister, more illegal Jewish-only settlements/colonies were built than under the tenure of Likud leaders Menachem Begin or Yitzhak Shamir. Some major media outlets in the West are also now lodging feeble criticism of Israel’s extreme Right. However, their relentless historic bias favoring the Israeli narrative, and their failure to report on the plight of the Palestinians have greatly contributed to the rise of Israel’s extreme Right and its blatant impunity
It is doubtful that South African apartheid would have ended without an even more extreme bloodbath were it not for the great successes of the international anti-apartheid boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The oppressed majority under the apartheid regime needed hope that the nonviolent struggle for emancipation could be a truly viable alternative to an enormously destructive armed struggle. The same may be even truer in the case of Palestine/Israel. This is the time for us to redouble our solidarity with the Palestinians and the small community of Israelis who support their cause. Many discouraged Israeli peace and justice activists are likely to grow their movement with such hope.
The danger is that some of us, especially in the churches, will react negatively to the inevitable rise of Palestinian armed resistance in places like Jenin and Nablus by young people who see themselves as protectors of their communities. The following excerpt from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s [MLK’s] Letter from a Birmingham Jail is instructive. By referencing Palestinians in the brackets in certain places in the text, we try to surmise how MLK might have viewed the critics of the Palestinian struggle for liberation today.
M.L.King: Letter from the Birmingham Jail (massresistance.org)
I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of… Negroes [Palestinians] in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and at points they profit from segregation [the Palestinian Authority’s “security” cooperation with Israel,] have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred and comes perilously close to advocating violence [Palestinian fighters engaged in armed resistance against Israeli settlers and the army.] It is expressed in the various black [Palestinian] nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement [the armed fighters in Jenin.] This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination [Israeli theft of Palestinian land and ghettoization of Palestinians.] It is made up of people who have lost faith in America [the sham American-led “peace process,”] ….
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come.
--- If his [Palestinians’] repressed emotions do not come out in … nonviolent ways [in the form of nonviolent resistance,] they will come out in ominous expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. …
In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro [Palestinians,] I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.
…. I have looked at [the] beautiful churches [of Mississippi] with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. … Over and over again I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett [Israel’s Kach Minister of Security, Ben-Gevir] dripped with words of interposition and nullification [racist language?] Where were they when Governor Wallace [Natanyahu] gave the clarion call for defiance and hatred [with the passage of Israel’s racist Basic Law in 2018?] Where were their voices of support when tired, bruised and weary Negro [Palestinian] men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest [Boycott, Divestment and Sanction?]"
MLK, Jr.’s words were not too dissimilar in spirit from what Gandhi said in response to a question from his son:
"Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done had he been present what I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used physical force, which he could and wanted to use, I told him it was his duty to defend me even by using violence...Hence I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence...But I believe nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence. “Why non-violent Mahatma Gandhi preferred violence to cowardice. (Source: India Today.)
Every movement of emancipation of oppressed peoples included both violent and nonviolent forms of struggle. The most destructive outcomes were in countries like Algeria and Vietnam, where the armed struggle was the dominant path to ending colonial/imperial hegemony. The story of Indian independence was certainly not only the story of nonviolent resistance to British colonial rule. Highly revered Indian leaders, like Subhas Chandra Bose, called for violent resistance and had numerous followers. Fortunately, the nonviolent movement led by Gandhi and others was more effective, avoiding a far bloodier path to independence. But while international solidarity with India played a very important role, it was impossible for Britain to maintain control over India’s population of hundreds of millions as their nonviolent movement grew stronger.
In the case of Palestine, the role of international solidarity is arguably more important. For the path of non-violence to have a remote chance of success for a viable future for Palestinians and Israelis, we, especially in the United States, and most especially in faith communities, must redouble our efforts on the side of justice.