Why Israel Criminalizes Nonviolence
jj August 31st, 2010
This text is copied from http://blog.thejerusalemfund.org/.
An Israeli military court convicted Abdallah Abu Rahmah, the coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, of incitement and holding illegal demonstrations. The eight-month long ordeal, during which the peaceful activist was imprisoned, also ended with his acquittal on two other charges: stone-throwing and possession of arms.
Abu Rahmah gained international attention for his leading role in the growing nonviolent protest movement in occupied Palestine. His central West Bank village is the site of weekly protests against the encroachment of Israel’s wall and other occupation policies. The wall was considered illegal under international law by the International Court of Justice in a 2004 advisory opinion.
Quite often, Israeli military forces use violence and coercion against unarmed protesters there. Last week, Israeli soldiers in riot gear injured several of them, as well as a journalist. They detained two activists, one Palestinian and one foreign.
Increasingly, Israel criminalizes Palestinian protest, thereby reaffirming its cause and giving way to only more nonviolent opposition.
His conviction through the machinery of the laws of occupation highlight the fact that he, and other Palestinian prisoners, are processed by an illegitimate court administering an occupation and apartheid structure that contravenes international law and norms of justice. Legal prohibitions and enforcement against nonviolent resistance illustrate the inherent criminality of the system, a point made by purveyors and practitioners of civil disobedience, from Thoreau to Gandhi and King Jr.
Civil disobedience, as suggested by the philosopher John Rawls, is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies. The organizers of protests in Bil’in, as well as in Nilin, Budrus and other Palestinian areas, are working in the spirit of this definition.
The severity of the case against him demonstrates Israel’s official fear of nonviolent resistance. Abu Rahmah, himself, believes that this illegitimate campaign against him and the Bil’in activists will only inspire further activism:
Israel’s military campaign to imprison the leadership of the Palestinian popular struggle shows that our non-violent struggle is effective….Whether we are confined in the open-air prison that Gaza has been transformed into, in military prisons in the West Bank, or in our own villages surrounded by the Apartheid Wall, arrests and persecution do not weaken us. They only strengthen our commitment to turning 2010 into a year of liberation through unarmed grassroots resistance to the occupation….This year, the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee will expand on the achievements of 2009, a year in which you amplified our popular demonstrations in Palestine with international boycott campaigns and international legal actions under universal jurisdiction…
Elements of the conviction indicate the political motivations behind his arrest. The indictment cited this as evidence of indictment: Abu Rahmah collected spent Israeli tear-gas projectiles and bullet cases from the sites of demonstrations to prove that the violence was being used against demonstrators.
Israel’s military authorities effectively prohibit the collection of evidence against their policies and practices.
Under military law, incitement is “The attempt, verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the Area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order” (section 7(a) of the Order Concerning Prohibition of Activities of Incitement and Hostile Propaganda (no.101), 1967), and carries a 10 year maximum sentence.
The sentencing of Abu Rahmah, which begins next month, will be premised on the absurd argument that documenting Israel’s use of force against unarmed demonstrators disturbs the public peace. Public order in the case means the security of the military occupation. The prosecution is expected to recommend a two-year imprisonment sentence.
Beyond the criminality of the charges, the evidence presented against him should raise eyebrows. The prosecution presented the testimonies of minors who were arrested in the middle of the night and questioned without access to legal counsel. Under fair judicial systems testimonies by children made under duress would be inadmissible as evidence. The trial itself is testimony to the police state nature of the occupation.
Abu Rahmah’s case harkens back to the intifada that began in late 1987. This prosecution was the first use of the organizing and illegal demonstrations regulations since then. Military ordinances define “illegal assembly” in a much stricter way than Israeli law does (another example of the apartheid-nature of the occupation). It forbids any assembly of more than 10 people without a permit from the military commander.
The hidden charge, the one not expressly conveyed, is that Abu Rahmah was gaining international visibility, and was rising as a powerful voice of conscience against the forty-three year-old Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Israel is well aware of what damage a Palestinian figure of international stature could cause to Israel’s status quo.
After all, how often have western commentators criticized the Palestinians for lacking a Gandhi? This question was more often a function of the questioner’s ignorance than a reflection of the state of Palestinian nonviolent resistance — which has always been ubiquitous. From circumventing checkpoints, to refusing to pay fees to Israel, to building without permits, Palestinians fundamentally disobey Israel’s overbearing authority on a nearly continuous basis.
It is when leaders emerge that Israel targets them. In 2008, exactly a year before the Israeli military arrested Abu Rahmah in the middle of the night, he received the Carl Von Ossietzky Medal for Outstanding Service in the Realization of Basic Human Rights, which was awarded by the International League for Human Rights in Berlin.
The delegation of international figures and statesmen known as The Elders — including Mary Robinson, Fernando Cardoso, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and others — visited the memorial of the fallen Bil’in organizer, Bassem Abu Rahmah, in August 2009. Abu Rahmah accompanied them, and is pictured with them in the photo to the left. After his arrest in December, 2009, the South African former archbishop and anti-Apartheid Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu called for his release.
As with other nonviolent political prisoners, such as Mohammad Othman and Jamal Juma’, Abu Rahmah is intended to be made an example. Mubarak Awad was when he was deported by Israel in 1988 for organizing nonviolent resistance campaigns. However, Abu Rahmah’s case is an example of the excesses and authoritarianism of an occupation regime, one that suffers declining political support and increasing international ostracism.
The occupation is so rooted in violence and coercion that its only answer in the face of nonviolence is more of the same repression that inspires the protests. Because Israel’s occupation runs on force, it cannot distinguish physical and ideational threats by criminalizing them both. Its legal system punishes both through detentions, stripping what few freedoms there are, and through programs of state-sanctioned violence. Knowing that nonviolence has a powerful potential to politically shatter the occupation, the authorities see a need to punish it ruthlessly.
The ideological aims of occupation and settler-colonialism are embedded in this legal administration, making the system morally bankrupt.
For more information on Abu Rahmah, see the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee’s website.
- Boycott , Civil Disobedience , Democracy , Nonviolent Action , Occupation , Protest , Resistance , Violence , War , philosophy
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