Small Acts Of Resistance

Posted by "Patrick Mac Manus"

Big changes often start with acts that looked pointless at the time: small acts of resistance, bold acts of defiance, subtle acts of subversion, and even witty acts of disobedience. Small Acts of Resistance celebrates the inspiring ingenuity and awe-inspiring courage of the human spirit and pays tribute to those who have been standing up to say “no”. Telling the stories of more than eighty acts of resistance, spanning the world and the 20th and 21st centuries, this book pays homage to the groups and individuals that treat the impossible as the possible that just hasn’t happened yet.

Three stories from Small Acts of Resistance from Burma, Uruguay and the UK.

Of Dogs and Dictators

In September 2007, tens of thousands took to the streets to protest against the lawlessness of the military regime in Burma (officially known as Myanmar). The protests were triggered by a sudden sharp increase in the cost of fuel, but quickly broadened to calls for basic rights and freedoms. The military beat, arrested, and killed protesters.

According to the UN, at least thirty-one people died. It became too dangerous to venture onto the streets, which were patrolled by the military. But the imaginative Burmese found a way around that problem: In Rangoon and other cities, they promoted the legions of stray urban dogs to the ranks of protesters.

Dogs are regarded as lowly creatures in Burmese culture. Being reborn as a dog suggests that you were up to no good in a previous life. To hurl a hefty insult in Burmese, throw the word dog or dog’s mother in somewhere, and you won’t go wrong.

Perhaps in an attempt to improve their chances in the next life, stray dogs began to be seen roaming around Rangoon with pictures of the military leader, Than Shwe, and images of other senior leaders tied around their necks.

Throughout the city and to the delight of its residents, troops were seen chasing the protesting mutts down, in a vain attempt to rescue the generals’ irretrievably low esteem. The Irrawaddy, published in neighboring Thailand, quoted a resident as saying with approval: “They seem quite good at avoiding arrest.”

The Great One-Liner

The military junta that ruled Uruguay from 1973 was intolerant in the extreme. Hundreds of thousands fled into exile. Political opponents were jailed. Torture was the order of the day. On occasion, even concerts of classical music were seen as subversive threats. A performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for Left Hand was cancelled because the title sounded leftishly dangerous. Meanwhile, however, a remarkable small protest took place at soccer games throughout the twelve long years of military rule.

Whenever the band struck up the national anthem before major games, thousands of Uruguayans in the stadium joined in unenthusiastically. This stubborn failure to sing loudly was rebellion enough. But, from the generals’ point of view, there was worse to come. At one point, the anthem declares, Tiranos temblad!—“May tyrants tremble!” Those words served as the cue for the crowds in the stadium suddenly to bellow in unison: “Tiranos temblad!” as they waved their flags. After that brief, excited roar, they continued to mumble their way through to the end of the long anthem.

The authorities could not arrest everyone in the stadium. Nor could they cancel games or drop the singing of the national anthem. The junta toyed with the idea of removing thetiranos temblad! line from public performances of the anthem, but that proved too embarrassing. Why, after all, would the generals remove words from a beloved nineteenth-century hymn, unless they believed that they might be the tyrants in question? Today, the national anthem can be sung at Uruguayan soccer games in full and without fear. Leaders of the junta have been jailed for the crimes committed during their years in power. The former tyrants tremble.

Which Side Are You On?

In Oxford and other British university cities, an unusual set of graffiti appeared above pairs of Barclays Bank cash dispensers in 1984. Above one ATM was spray-painted the wordBlacks. Above the other: Whites Only. The graffiti changed nothing, of course, in terms of who could use which cash machine. Customers were free to whichever ATM they preferred. Black customers could line up at the Whites Only machine if they wished to. Whites could take cash from the Blacks machine. The black-and-white labeling left people faintly unsettled, however. And unsettled was all that was needed. The graffiti made many of those lining up at the black-vs.-white machines feel uncomfortable about Barclays’ well-publicized involvement in the South African system of apartheid, where signs proclaiming Net Blankes—Whites Only—were at that time the order of the day.

Fewer graduates applied to work at Barclays, so as not to be tainted by the black-white division that the bank seemed to represent. Barclays’ once lucrative share of UK student accounts plummeted from 27 percent to 15 percent of the market. In 1986, the banking giant admitted defeat at the hands of the graffiti sprayers and their allies. The Barclays pullout became one of the most high-profile and punishing acts of divestment suffered by the South African regime.

Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for life because of his rejection of the government’s racist policies, was released after twenty-seven years in 1990. Democratic elections were held in 1994. The Barclays graffiti were scrubbed away. Barclays returned to South Africa in 2005.

Read: Steve Crawsaw and John Jackson, Small Acts of Resistance (2010)

Albert Camus: On Rebellion

Posted by "Patrick Mac Manus"

Rebellion proves…that it is the very movement of life and that it cannot be denied without renouncing life. Its purest outburst, on each occasion, gives birth to existence. Thus it is love and fecundity or it is nothing at all.

Revolution without honour, calculated revolution which, in preferring an abstract concept of man to a man of flesh and blood, denies existence as many times as is necessary, puts resentment in the place of love.

Immediately rebellion, forgetful of its generous origins, allows itself to be contaminated by resentment; it denies life, dashes toward destruction, and raises up the grimacing cohorts of petty rebels, embryo slaves all of them, who end by offering themselves for sale, today, in all the market-places of Europe, to no matter what form of servitude. It is no longer revolution or rebellion but rancour, malice, and tyranny.

Then, when revolution in the name of power and of history becomes a murderous and immoderate mechanism, a new rebellion is consecrated in the name of moderation and of life…

This is an excerpt from Albert Camus, Beyond Nihilism. His origin in Algeria and his experiences there in the thirties are dominating influences in his thought and work. Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest in philosophy, he comes to France at the age of twenty-five. The man and the times meet: Albert Camus joins the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation is a columnist for the newspaper Combat.

The Zionist and The Zealot

Posted by "Patrick Mac Manus" in Palestine

If anyone wants to attempt an understanding of any conflict they should study history. And if anyone wishes to understand the roots of the problems in the Middle East, and in particular Israel and Palestine, they should read Geoffrey Lewis’s beautifully researched and scholarly Balfour & Weizmann: The Zionist, The Zealot and the Emergence of Israel.

Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and midwife of the Balfour Declaration was the Zionist, while Chaim Weizmann, a distinguished chemist whose efforts help shorten World War II, was the Zealot and its father.

For its time, 2nd November 1917, the declaration is quite remarkable:

‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’

Despite this being Balfour’s dream, like so many evangelicals going back to the Puritans, that the Israelites should reclaim their ancient homeland of Palestine, the view of HMG was far less sentimental. The Ottoman Empire was being carved up by Old Europe and Tsarist Russia and the prospect of Jews controlling Palestine gave Great Britain an important strategic advantage.

Geoffrey Lewis plots Britain’s long, and sometimes quite barmy, attempts to relocate the Jews to their homeland with great skill and knowledge. In 1840, Palmerton’s stepson-in-law, Lord Ashley, ‘an evangelical of demonic energy’, propounded the establishment of an Anglican bishopric in Jerusalem, an idea favoured by the old boy. There was only one slight drawback. ‘Ashley’s scheme had one of its main purposes the conversion of the Jews once they had regained their inheritance.’ It didn’t seem to occur to them that the Jews would not be over the moon at having to ditch thousands of years of theology, the cement that bound them together as a race.

Joseph Chamberlain also had a cunning plan for a Jewish Homeland. He suggested to the great Zionist thinker Herzl in 1903 that the East African Protectorate (later to become Kenya) would fit the bill. Amazingly, this was given serious consideration by all sides. Not surprisingly, this little gem bit the dust.

The fascinating narrative about his book is the tireless efforts of Weizmann to bring a highly prejudiced British establishment on the right tracks and to attempt to keep a squabbling Zionist movement onside. Balfour was a privileged, detached figure whom, according to Churchill, ‘glided on the surface of life’. Lloyd George said, ‘when he is gone there will be nothing left but the scent of a handkerchief’. Robert Cecil (Later the Marquis of Salisbury) was his uncle and great patron. Hence the expression, ‘Bob’s your uncle’.

Weizmann had an instinctive gift for diplomacy: ‘His exposition was lucid and compelling and his charm of manner captivated those whom he wishes to seduce, especially British statesman. He knew what the other man most wanted to hear, but he would not flatter’.

These two men with very different backgrounds and skills became firm friends and committed to a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The trouble was that nobody paid too much attention to what the 800,000 or so Arabs who lived there thought about it all.

Picasso In Palestine: A Painting and The Bulldozers

Posted by "Patrick Mac Manus" in Palestine

The painting  “Buste de Femme” which Pablo Picasso painted in 1943 when he lived in Nazi-occupied Paris, arrived at the International Academy of Art, Palestine – in Ramallah. The painting is usually located at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven in the Netherlands. It was lent to the Palestinian gallery for one month.

On that same day, at almost exactly the same hour that the valuable painting arrived at the showroom in Ramallah, bulldozers of the Israeli Defence Forces made their way to the tiny village of Bir Al-Ad in the South Hebron Hills, and in less than an hour demolished its miserable huts, destroyed sacks of animal food, uprooted plants and shrubs, leaving behind heaps of rubble and ninety homeless people. The nearby caves, also used for housing, were on this occasion not demolished, but the soldiers made sure to cut and sever the electricity cables, which the inhabitants had installed to light them. “You here don’t deserve to have electricity!” said one of the soldiers to a resident who dared to protest.

This destruction is nothing new or unusual in the history of the Israeli occupation on the West Bank. It happens routinely, on one week in the southern West Bank and next week in its east, although such events receive very little attention and are rarely reported in any media.

As usual in such stories, settlers – in this case, the settlers of the nearby Mitzpe Yair, covet the land of Bir Al-Ad. Officially, Mitzpe Yair is an illegal outpost, even by the rather permissive standards of the Israeli occupation. Which in no way disturbs the same authorities to consider its inhabitants fully deserving of a regular supply of electricity, which the army takes care to provide.

Two days after these events, the Army’s Home Front Command conducts a civil defence exercise in unprecedented dimensions throughout Israel. And in this exercise horror scenarios were postulated of war on four fronts, against the Palestinians and the Syrians and the Lebanese and the Iranians simultaneously and the fall of seven hundred missiles. And citizens were to take the air raid alarms seriously and run immediately to the nearest shelter, if any. And a senior Home Front Command officer expressed dissatisfaction with the indifferent behaviour of many citizens, especially in Tel Aviv where they ignored the blaring sirens and continued to bathe in the sea. “When real missiles fall, we will see them running,” said the officer with some vindictiveness.

But maybe the fall of the real missiles can be averted. If the day comes when residents of Bir Al-Ad can live peacefully in their miserable homes, and when loaning paintings to a gallery Palestinians would no longer need to struggle through the coils of Israeli military bureaucracy, and when all Palestinians – rich and poor, rural and urban - are a free people in their homeland of Palestine.

Official Report: 4.8 Million Palestinian Refugees Living In Poverty and Unemployment


Posted by "Patrick Mac Manus" in Palestine

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) has issued a report stating that, scattered across dozens of camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), the minimum number of Palestinian refugees registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) until mid-2010 had now reached approximately 4.8 million.

The report also stated that 43.4% of the total population of the Palestinian Territories are refugees; being a very young society, 41.3% of the population are also under the age of fifteen.

The report’s data explained that 29.7% of the occupied West Bank’s population are refugees, while the proportion in the Gaza Strip had reached about 67.3% indicating that 66% of the indigenous population of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 were displaced and expelled in that year.

The report, which was issued to coincide with World Refugee Day on Monday, June 20, also noted that, compared with the rural and urban areas, the refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip represented the poorest environments. This is due to the high rates of unemployment and large refugee family sizes compared to other rural and urban families.

It also pointed out that refugee camps in the Gaza Strip suffered under more acute conditions than those experienced in the West Bank; the percentage of those living in poverty in Gaza is 38% compared to 18.3% in the West Bank.

In spite of all this, according to official data, there has been a notable increase in educational attainment along with a decrease in the level of illiteracy among Palestinian; there was a 4.8% increase by the middle of last year for the over 15 age group among refugees and an increase of over 5.2% among the non-refugee population.

Middle East Monitor

20 June 2011

UN: Defining Terrorism

The UN remains unable to draw a distinction between "freedom fighters" and "state sponsored terrorism".

By Thalif Deen
Last Modified: 24 Nov 2010 13:19 GMT
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

When Israeli commandos killed nine mostly Turkish activists during a raid on a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians last May, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the attack as a prime example of "state terrorism".

"Even tyrants, bandits and pirates have their own rules of ethics," he said, but not terrorists killing on behalf of a UN member state.

And when several internationally renowned artists, including the rock band Pixies and British rocker Elvis Costello, responded by cancelling scheduled concerts in Tel Aviv, Shuki Weiss, one of Israel's leading promoters, called the growing boycott movement "cultural terrorism".

"Music and politics should not mix," he said, even as the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was picking up steam.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a UN Ad Hoc Committee to Eliminate Terrorism, created by the General Assembly back in December 1996, has remained deadlocked as it tries to reach agreement on a comprehensive draft convention to eliminate terrorism.

Last month, it made another unsuccessful effort at drawing a distinction between "freedom fighters" and "state sponsored terrorism".

"One knows terrorism when one sees it," said Ambassador Palitha Kohona of Sri Lanka, a former chief of the UN Treaty Section.

The draft convention, tabled in 2001 by India, has won agreement by several delegations to a substantial extent. However, it is bogged down on a few crucial issues. For example, it has been proposed by some that state sponsored terrorism or certain acts of states be covered by the draft, Kohona said.

Many others have resisted this proposal on the basis that acts of states are governed by other existing rules of international law and therefore, it was superfluous to cover this aspect under the draft.

Similarly, said Kohona, a proposal has been made to exclude certain acts of liberation movements from the ambit of the draft convention. But this has also met with wide resistance.

The proposed new comprehensive convention was intended to provide umbrella cover for situations not already addressed by the 13 existing sectoral conventions on terrorism concluded under the auspices of the United Nations.

Mouin Rabbani, contributing editor to the Washington-based Middle East Report, said that achieving and applying an objective definition of terrorism is rather beside the point.

He said terrorism has become a political epithet designed to place enemies beyond the pale as opposed to a technical term the purpose of which is to define certain criminal acts that violate the laws of war and for which the perpetrators can be held accountable.

"Thus, in the Middle East, it has reached the point where Palestinian or Arab armed activities that target Israeli military personnel are characterised as terrorist acts, while Israeli armed activities that deliberately target civilians are characterised as legitimate acts of self- defence," he said.

"We could even conclude that at least in the Middle East, terrorism refers to the ethnicity of the perpetrator as opposed to the perpetrator's actions," said Rabbani.

"Thus we enter into the realm of the absurd, where campaigns to boycott Israel or more narrowly illegal Israeli phenomena, such as settlement products - acts that are by definition non-violent and don't require so much as a water pistol - are termed terrorism," noted Rabbani.

The collective punishment of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, an ongoing act that has cost numerous lives with the sanction of the United States and the European Union, is by contrast justified as a legitimate anti-terrorist campaign, he said.

Dr. Rohan Perera, chair of the Ad Hoc Committee to Eliminate Terrorism, claimed the only way to reach a consensus on the issue is to follow the path of adopting an operational or a criminal law definition of terrorism, rather than a generic definition.

The former approach has been followed in the 13 sectoral conventions on terrorism, and avoids the pitfalls of the latter approach which involves excluding certain types of conduct such as those committed by national liberation movements (NLM).

Accordingly, he said, the draft contains a criminal law definition.

"The question of state terrorism will continue to be governed by general principles of international law, as it is not possible to deal with this aspect in a law enforcement instrument, dealing with individual criminal responsibility, based on an 'extradite or prosecute' regime," he said.

Similarly, said Perera, acts committed in the course of armed conflicts by NLMs will continue to be governed by international humanitarian law. "The negotiations started in 2000 and we were close to agreement in 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11 (terrorist attacks on the United States)". But since then, it has remained stalled, with little significant progress.

He said that negotiations would resume within the framework of the UN's Sixth Committee dealing with legal issues.

Asked if there will ever be a new comprehensive convention to eliminate terrorism because of the continuing deadlock, said Kohona: "Of course, there will be a convention."

The international community has repeatedly condemned the use of terrorism as a tool of political expression and for any other purpose and therefore will seek to address the gaps in the existing international legal framework by concluding this convention.

"It will also wish to send another unequivocal message to those who rely on terrorist force to achieve their goals," he said.

This article first appeared on the Inter Press Service News Agency.

The Poor Man's Artillery

What IEDs Can Do

By CLANCY SIGAL
September 16, 2010
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

The IRA tried to kill me on three separate occasions. Nothing personal, just that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Provos' deadly "mainland campaign" against Brits took the form of planting IEDs, improvised homemade bombs, in central London where I lived. In Picadilly, shrapnel from a device inside a letter box grazed my head; the same month, a McDonald's I walked past on Oxford Street blew up; and still later, outside a Sloane Square pub, glass shattered at my feet after an explosion. Such an intense level of exposure and vulnerability left me shaken.

The Provos had resorted to the "poor man's artillery" of IEDs because they were outnumbered and outgunned by the British army and Ulster constabulary. How else were they to achieve their political agenda other than by indiscriminately killing British civilians?

I read Afghanistan casualty lists almost every night, and my rough calculation seems to agree with the Pentagon's: that IEDs – jerry-built, cleverly-disguised roadside bombs – cost way more American (and Afghan) lives than snipers, mortars or RPGs. According to NATO and the Department of Defense, despite General Petraeus's soothing assertion that the incidents are "flattening out", since 2007, the number of Taliban IEDs has increased nearly 400 per cent, and IED kills by that same 400 per cent and IED-crippled troops by 700 per cent. At least 30 per cent of combat soldiers, in Iraq and Afghanistan, are at risk of potentially disabling neurological disorders from IED blast waves – without suffering a scratch.

But percentages don't bleed. For yourself, look up the casualty lists from your own state or district, add up the IED "kinetic events", and study, really look at, the names and photographs of the dead soldiers who suddenly seem part of our own families. The harsh lesson is that no foreign invading army like ours can beat a "backward" native people who, for a few dollars and in five minutes, can build a dish pan, copper wire, a left-over 155mm Soviet shell and a bit of Semtex or C-4 and fertilizer into a killer IED hidden in potholes, among garbage and even inside animals.

It's terrifyingly easy for a soldier to get blasted apart by these devices. You don't even have to step on a pressure plate any more, just walk by an innocent-looking rock and – bang! – you're shredded by remote control. Increasingly, these things are set off by text messages from afar. Jihadists may be typecast as primitive "ragheads" on TV news, but they have learned to be thoughtful and high-tech assassins.

In his latest Oval Office speech, President Obama, in paying anodyne tribute to the troops, glancingly referred to "the signature wounds of today's wars, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury (TBI)". Let's pause a moment on TBI, where a visible wound may not show but the person's brain has been shaken as in a Mixmaster by the faster-than-speed-of-sound blast of an IED explosion. No helmet or body armor yet invented can protect from its peculiar one-two punch that causes, on the battlefield or much later, microscopic cellular and metabolic damage, leading to blindness, deafness, memory loss, premature ageing and destruction of neurons that cannot be replaced.

As the pediatric surgeon and Vietnam veteran Ronald Glasser says, "the symbol (of the new IED-dominated battles) is not the cemetery but the orthopedic ward" and neurological unit. Strangely, army commanders are extremely reluctant to award Purple Hearts for IED wounds, which can be hard for combat medics to diagnose in the heat of battle. Even skilled field-hospital emergency doctors may miss the insidious danger signs. If a soldier looks unscratched, just a little dazed, military culture demands he or she be shipped back to fight again. Troopers themselves may be reluctant to report symptoms, fearing career damage or being seen as a goof-off.

Once back home, soldiers very often have to struggle for treatment. Congress is eager to vote the Pentagon $20bn for JIEDDO, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Organization – who thinks up these names? – whose own boss, general Michael Oates, confesses is only marginally useful. But when it comes to money for medical research into the little-known effects of TBI, the government drags its feet.

At the moment, despite evidence that 30 per cent of our battlefield casualties are bomb-concussion cases, the military and the Veterans Administration make it as hard as possible to get help. President Obama boasts that "because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to go on the offence" in a deteriorating Afghanistan, which translates into more visible and invisible wounded. Soldiers lose their lives, arms, legs, eyes, even faces. We can see those terrible wounds. But concussed, TBI-suffering soldiers also lose parts of their minds sometimes without even knowing it. Until they get home and can't remember their daughter's name.

Clancy Sigal is a novelist (Going Away) and screenwriter (Frieda) in Los Angeles. He can be reached at clancy@jsasoc.com

Resistance As A Culture

Beyond Violence and Non-Violence

By Ramzy Baroud
Saturday, Jul 17, 2010
Courtesy Of "Axis Of Logic"

Resistance is not a band of armed men hell-bent on wreaking havoc. It is not a cell of terrorists scheming ways to detonate buildings.

True resistance is a culture.

It is a collective retort to oppression.

Understanding the real nature of resistance, however, is not easy. No newsbyte could be thorough enough to explain why people, as a people, resist. Even if such an arduous task was possible, the news might not want to convey it, as it would directly clash with mainstream interpretations of violence and non-violent resistance. The Afghanistan story must remain committed to the same language: al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Lebanon must be represented in terms of a menacing Iran-backed Hizbullah. Palestine's Hamas must be forever shown as a militant group sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state. Any attempt at offering an alternative reading is tantamount to sympathizing with terrorists and justifying violence.

The deliberate conflation and misuse of terminology has made it almost impossible to understand, and thus to actually resolve bloody conflicts.

Even those who purport to sympathize with resisting nations often contribute to the confusion. Activists from Western countries tend to follow an academic comprehension of what is happening in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. Thus certain ideas are perpetuated: suicide bombings bad, non-violent resistance good; Hamas rockets bad, slingshots good; armed resistance bad, vigils in front of Red Cross offices good. Many activists will quote Martin Luther King Jr., but not Malcolm X. They will infuse a selective understanding of Gandhi, but never of Guevara. This supposedly ‘strategic' discourse has robbed many of what could be a precious understanding of resistance - as both concept and culture.

Between the reductionst mainstream understanding of resistance as violent and terrorist and the ‘alternative' defacing of an inspiring and compelling cultural experience, resistance as a culture is lost. The two overriding definitions offer no more than narrow depictions. Both render those attempting to relay the viewpoint of the resisting culture as almost always on the defensive. Thus we repeatedly hear the same statements: no, we are not terrorists; no, we are not violent, we actually have a rich culture of non-violent resistance; no, Hamas is not affiliated with al-Qaeda; no, Hizbullah is not an Iranian agent. Ironically, Israeli writers, intellectuals and academicians own up to much less than their Palestinian counterparts, although the former tend to defend aggression and the latter defend, or at least try to explain their resistance to aggression. Also ironic is the fact that instead of seeking to understand why people resist, many wish to debate about how to suppress their resistance.

By resistance as a culture, I am referencing Edward Said's elucidation of "culture (as) a way of fighting against extinction and obliteration." When cultures resist, they don't scheme and play politics. Nor do they sadistically brutalize. Their decisions as to whether to engage in armed struggle or to employ non-violent methods, whether to target civilians or not, whether to conspire with foreign elements or not are all purely strategic. They are hardly of direct relevance to the concept or resistance itself. Mixing between the two suggests is manipulative or plain ignorant.

If resistance is "the action of opposing something that you disapprove or disagree with", then a culture of resistance is what occurs when an entire culture reaches this collective decision to oppose that disagreeable element - often a foreign occupation. The decision is not a calculated one. It is engendered through a long process in which self-awareness, self-assertion, tradition, collective experiences, symbols and many more factors interact in specific ways. This might be new to the wealth of that culture's past experiences, but it is very much an internal process.

It's almost like a chemical reaction, but even more complex since it isn't always easy to separate its elements. Thus it is also not easy to fully comprehend, and, in the case of an invading army, it is not easily suppressed. This is how I tried to explain the first Palestinian uprising of 1987, which I lived in its entirely in Gaza:

"It's not easy to isolate specific dates and events that spark popular revolutions. Genuine collective rebellion cannot be rationalized though a coherent line of logic that elapses time and space; its rather a culmination of experiences that unite the individual to the collective, their conscious and subconscious, their relationships with their immediate surroundings and with that which is not so immediate, all colliding and exploding into a fury that cannot be suppressed." (My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story)

Foreign occupiers tend to fight popular resistance through several means. One includes a varied amount of violence aiming to disorient, destroy and rebuild a nation to any desired image (read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine). Another strategy is to weaken the very components that give a culture its unique identity and inner strengths - and thus defuse the culture's ability to resist. The former requires firepower, while the latter can be achieved through soft means of control. Many ‘third world' nations that boast of their sovereignty and independence might in fact be very much occupied, but due to their fragmented and overpowered cultures - through globalization, for example - they are unable to comprehend the extent of their tragedy and dependency. Others, who might effectively be occupied, often possess a culture of resistance that makes it impossible for their occupiers to achieve any of their desired objectives.

In Gaza, Palestine, while the media speaks endlessly of rockets and Israeli security, and debates who is really responsible for holding Palestinians in the strip hostage, no heed is paid to the little children living in tents by the ruins of homes they lost in the latest Israeli onslaught. These kids participate in the same culture of resistance that Gaza has witnessed over the course of six decades. In their notebooks they draw fighters with guns, kids with slingshots, women with flags, as well as menacing Israeli tanks and warplanes, graves dotted with the word ‘martyr', and destroyed homes. Throughout, the word ‘victory' is persistently used.

When I was in Iraq, I witnessed a local version of these kids' drawings. And while I have yet to see Afghani children's scrapbooks, I can easily imagine their content too.

Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

Arab International Forum For Support Of Resistance

Beirut Lebanon 15-17 January 2010 (english version)

By Lasse Wilhelmson
February 02, 2010
Courtesy Of "Information Clearing House"

The conference concerning the resistance, held in Beirut from the 15th to 17th January 2010, was an overwhelming experience for me personally with its almost 10 000 delegates from all over the Arab world and a small number from Europe and the US. It was indeed a great honour for Sweden to have a delegation of four. The conference opened at the UNESCO Palace where the leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas and Iraq’s armed resistance, in that order, held introductions that set the tone for the conference. Prominent religious Muslim leaders and representatives of Syria’s government also spoke. It was a powerful manifestation of unity against the politics of Israel and the US and, with no name mentioned serious criticism of Egypt, and open praise for Iran.

Introductory speech in the lecture hall. Those dressed in white are the Sudanese.

The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasralla, for security reasons talking on video, here in a room adjacent to the packed lecture hall.

This was my first visit to Lebanon. Nearly fifty years ago I was only able to glimpse the country from the Israeli side, it was then enemy territory to me. I lived in Israel for a few years searching for my identity. At that time, the Jewish state was part of my identity and I contemplated staying there. Here I was again, surveying enemy country, only this time from the opposite side. Now I wholeheartedly support the Palestinians’ resistance and their right to return home in accordance with FN resolutions. In fact, I go even further. I believe that the whole of the Jewish settlement state is illegitimate and should therefore be returned to its rightful owners who should decide which settlers stay.

The border with Palestine showing an Israeli kibbutz on the hill.

On the second day of the conference, I took part in a seminar where representatives from most of the countries that have liberated themselves from colonialism told of their experiences. I was particularly struck by the fact that none of the liberation movements agreed to disarm as a condition for peace negotiations, and that historically recognised, justifiable struggles for liberation such as those in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan are today called terrorism by the western world, though nothing in the armed struggle has actually changed and it is still protected in human rights law.

A journalist from Syria’s largest daily newspaper who interviewed me asked especially why I, in connection with my work for the Palestinians, had abandoned my Jewish identity. I replied that as a Jew I felt guilt about the treatment of the Palestinians because it is carried out in the name of all Jews. I converted guilt into responsibility by taking up the political cause for the dissolution of the Jewish state. Thus, as I have never been a religious person, the grounds for my identity as a Jew ceased to exist. I then urged all diaspora Jews to distance themselves from the Jewish apartheid state, mainly for the sake of the Palestinians, but also for their own, as they otherwise risk being held to account for Israel’s crimes on the day of reckoning.

I also had the opportunity to talk with leaders for different Palestinian organisations from the refugee camps in Lebanon. They were very keen to stress their close collaboration with Hezbollah and Hamas, that they had open minds and that they were Islamists. I now have a standing invitation to visit the refugee camps and they will be my guides.

Lasse Wilhelmson with leaders for different Palestinian organisations from the refugee camps in Lebanon.

It should be said that Palestinians in Lebanon are not permitted to buy land or houses, or to work outside of the camps; they cannot become Lebanese citizens, and as stateless persons they have fewer rights than the Palestinians living under the apartheid laws in Israel. They cannot launch armed attacks against Israel without permission because Hezbollah controls the whole of southern Lebanon and the border. However, Hezbollah wholeheartedly supports the Palestinians and tries to improve their situation in Lebanon. But Hezbollah is not a Palestinian liberation movement. It is a national Lebanese movement that governs in coalition with others, and has successfully defended its country against Israeli attacks.

Along the road that borders Palestine, there are pictures of martyrs from the latest war and of Hezbollah’s leader, Nasrallah, and loot. Special permission is needed to travel on this road. We passed several UN outposts.

UN personnel.

Our caravan of buses and cars from the resistance conference was on its way to the top of a hill at the entrance to the Beqaa Valley and the border to the country of Palestine. We had a break there and visited a large open-air establishment with a restaurant, probably built by Iran because only the Iranian flag was flying. Viewing the terrain south of the Litani River in Lebanon with its mountains and deep valleys and narrow winding roads, it is easy to understand why Israeli tanks encountered great problems in comparison with Hezbollah’s small, easily moved units in the war of 2006.

The entrance to the Beqaa Valley with Palestine to the right.

One of several large rooms and a tasty meal on the way back from our excursion to the border with Palestine.

While I felt very happy about the generous support given by all to the Palestinians, I could not but help realise that their chances of liberating themselves, especially through military struggle, are smaller than ever today, not least because of the rift caused by Abbas’ s collaboration with Israel. Considering the Wall, the sectionalised West Bank and the crowded flatlands of the Gaza Strip, the odds of winning an armed struggle against one of the world’s most powerful military forces are very bad. I therefore believe that a prerequisite for the liberation of Palestine is that Israel’s influence on US foreign policy must stop, and Zionism’s hold over the media in the western world must end.

Sheik Dr Mohemmed-Nemer Zaghmout President, Palestinian Islamic Council Lebanon/Overseas and myself.

In my discussions with religious leaders, I was astonished not only by their vast general political knowledge and insight but also that they were so keen to distinguish between Jewish settlers, Jewish leaders, ordinary diaspora Jews and the Jewish mafia in their struggle against the Zionist enemy. I had the feeling though, that they do not really understand that most people who identify themselves as Jews are actually secular and to them the line drawn between Judaism and Zionism is indistinct.

Dr Sheik Hareth Al-Dari.

The Swedish group had a long, specially arranged interview with Dr Sheik Hareth Al-Dari, spokesman for most of the Iraqi resistance and general secretary of The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI). He lives in exile in Jordan, together with his closest colleagues. A delegation from AMSI visited Stockholm in the spring of 2009, a visit I helped plan and implement. I conveyed my warmest greetings before I asked some questions about how we might improve our support of the resistance in Iraq. I pointed out that the delegation had encountered marvellous weather and warmth that probably did not correspond to their expectations of Sweden. Al-Dari replied that given such a warm reception, even snow and ice would have melted.

Dr Sheik Hareth Al-Dari (AMSI) and myself.

He said that the resistance continues with unimpaired force, but that information on the web has been scarce due to resistance websites being hacked into by the enemy. Al-Dari was eager to point out that all tribes/families in Iraq consist to a certain extent of both Shia and Sunni and that the absolute majority of the people are against the occupation and also critical of Iran’s interference.

A small amusing example of this is that the now world- famous journalist who threw his shoe at President Bush was a Shia Muslim. His brother was present at the interview and can be seen here with me.

The shoe thrower’s brother and myself.

Most of the armed resistance fighters, however, are Sunni Muslims. Up until now it has been difficult to enrol Shia Muslims. According to Al-Dari this is partly because, before the invasion, the US bargained with certain Shia leaders promising favours if they did not resist, partly because Shia leaders in southern Iraq keep postponing their promises to start armed resistance.

I myself believe the fact that the Quisling regime is dependent both on the occupation powers and on Shia-governed Iran makes it difficult to enrol Shiites in the armed resistance movement. The Quislings’ foreign minister and all their foreign ambassadors are Kurds and this also favours the occupiers’ attempts to divide the country.

Al-Dari was keen to point out that the picture, promoted by the occupation powers, of the division between Sunni and Shia is greatly exaggerated, and that it is the occupiers themselves who are responsible for the terror against civilians and often they who perpetrate it. Al-Dari concluded by stressing the Muslim duty to resist and the importance of national unity against US warfare – which in actual fact is primarily a war for Israel, I added and received a nod and a wide smile for an answer.

Dr. Al-Dari

1. Final declaration of the conference.

2. Revoking Israel´s UN Membership.

3. Gaza and the Diaspora Jew´s Responsibility.

4. Lasse Wilhelmson on the war on Lebanon 2006.

5. Iraqi Resistance According to the Iraqis Themselves, by Snorre Lindquist.

Lasse Wilhelmson

Afghanistan Is A "War Of National Resistance"

Former CIA Agent

By Rethink Afghanistan
Video Posted November 25, 2009
Courtesy Of "Information Clearing House"

In the latest video from the Brave New Foundation's "Rethink Afghanistan" project, former CIA agent Robert Bear says that what the U.S. faces when it comes to the Afghan insurgency isn't terrorism, but a war of national resistance. "The people that want their country liberated from the West have nothing to do with Al Qaeda," Baer says. "They simply want us gone because we're foreigners, and they're rallying behind the Taliban because the Taliban are experienced, effective fighters." Because these insurgents see the U.S. as a colonial force, Baer says, they are unlikely to ever rally around the Afghan national army the U.S. is looking to establish. "This is an occupying force," explains Matthew Hoh, a former U.S. official in Afghanistan who resigned last month over the war. "The Afghan National Army is led by Tajiks and Uzbeks and urban Pashtuns, and it is occupying the rural Pashtun South." This is why the U.S. should ask itself, Hoh says, "do we want to support one side in a civil war?"