Also, check out the recent article by the brilliant Amira Hass, Lexicon of most misleading terms in Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for a much-needed factual and historical corrective to the amnesia that too often afflicts mainstream journalists covering the issue. Incidentally, she has this to say about the discourse of “(non-)violent resistance”, raised by Robin Yassin-Kassab in an essay published earlier on P U L S E:
When we define the struggle against foreign rule as “non-violent” or “violent,” it’s as if we asked the occupied to prove their resistance is kosher (or not ). And to whom? The very foreign ruler who considers boycotting settlement products to be unkosher. The adjectives “non-violent” or “violent” presume that the occupation is a natural state of affairs, whose violence is permitted, a civilized norm meant to tame its subjects. “A non-violent struggle” therefore diverts attention from the fact that forced rule is based on the use of violence. Every soldier at a roadblock, every camera on the separation fence, every military edict, a supermarket in a settlement and an Israeli diaper factory on Palestinian land – they are all part of the nonstop violence.
P U L S E 