[We know if we do nothing, the situation gets worse. If we step
into our power, we could potentially build a better future. People
around the world are contesting with large-scale mobilizations —
amounting to a people’s shock action.]
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3 KEY INSIGHTS FOR BUILDING A POWERFUL AND LOVING MOVEMENT AGAINST
OPPRESSION IN PALESTINE-ISRAEL  
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Rae Abileah and Nadine Bloch
October 18, 2023
Waging Nonviolence
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_ We know if we do nothing, the situation gets worse. If we step into
our power, we could potentially build a better future. People around
the world are contesting with large-scale mobilizations —
amounting to a people’s shock action. _

American Jews and allies gathered in Washington, D.C. this week
blocked several entrances to the White House, (Twitter/IfNotNow)

 

If you’re reading this, perhaps your eyes are bloodshot from
doom-scrolling or tears for the many victims in the current nightmare.
We can relate. We humbly invite you to take a breath and pause. For
any readers who need this reminder: When emotions run hot, it’s
extra important to take very good care of your body, spirit and each
other. Our team at Beautiful Trouble has a commitment to reflection
and offers a toolkit for community resilience
[[link removed]]. 

As an international network of artist-activist-trainers who created a
toolbox documenting the key strategies and tactics that have inspired
centuries of people-powered victories, we offer these three insights
that can help ground you in this destabilizing moment, and can help
guide effective, meaningful action.

1. Framing matters

Like the frame around a photograph, a conceptual frame highlights
certain events and facts, while making others invisible.
Effectively framing
[[link removed]] your message can
make the difference between winning and losing. Right now, much of the
U.S. news is running with a short and horribly incomplete story: that
Hamas coordinated surprise attacks on Israel that murdered more than
1,300 people and took hostages. Israel is retaliating by bombing the
Gaza Strip, striking a hospital
[[link removed]],
and coordinating a brutal land invasion. More than 3,000 Palestinians
[[link removed].] have
already been murdered, including hundreds of children. It is, the
mainstream media tells us, a horrible situation, nonsensical, out of
the blue. To move towards a fuller understanding, we must pan out the
camera to see the wider picture, the larger historical context.

For more than 75 years, the Palestinian people have been resisting
occupation, dehumanization, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement,
imprisonment, the denial of basic human rights and other injustices
from the Israeli state. These harms have been categorized, by credible
observers, as crimes of apartheid, recalling the brutal white minority
rule over Black South Africans. (See Amnesty International’s report
[[link removed]]). 

Five years ago, the U.N. deemed the 25-mile-long area called Gaza, one
of the most populated places on Earth, “unlivable
[[link removed]],”
due to Israel’s illegal land and sea blockade. There are more than
two million people — half of whom are children — living in Gaza
[[link removed]].
Since Oct. 10, Gaza’s residents have been cut off from water,
electricity and food
[[link removed]] by
the Israeli military. This is a war crime, endorsed by the Israeli
state and tolerated by the United States and its allies. 

Today’s horrific reality didn’t begin in 1948 with the creation of
the Israeli state, also known as the Nakba (great catastrophe) that
displaced thousands of Palestinians. It is built on a legacy of
colonialism that carved up the Middle East, as well as a history of
violent antisemitic oppression in Europe from pogroms to the
Holocaust. Israel was founded, in part, based on the need for a
sanctuary for Jewish people. Many Jewish people now feel in a double
bind, desiring both safety for their people and opposing the ongoing
segregation and oppression of Palestinians. 

But this framing is a dead end. The only way to achieve a genuine,
lasting, just peace — as Palestinians rightly insist, and many
Jewish voices have affirmed — is to address the root causes of the
Palestinian struggle by ending Israel’s oppression of the
Palestinian people. Palestinians deserve to be safe; Jews deserve to
be safe; but safety cannot, and will not, come at the expense of
Palestinian human rights. 

[[link removed]]

_Jewish Voice for Peace ran a full-page ad in the New York Times on
October 18._

As we pan out, the Palestinian struggle is of a piece with the
historic struggles of Indigenous and oppressed peoples
[[link removed]] worldwide,
resisting settler colonialism. The alleged “land without a people
for a people without a land” was established on stolen land
populated for generations by Arab peoples. The struggle for collective
liberation has become an intersectional
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linked to people-powered movements around the world who are calling
for decolonization
[[link removed]] and
justice. 

We can also see how, in an area smaller than New Jersey, the safety of
Palestinians and Israelis is intertwined. As Jewish-American author
Peter Beinart writes
[[link removed]],
“This is a point that Martin Luther King tried to make to white
America again and again when there were riots in American cities year
after year in the ’60s. … Ultimately, there’s no other way but
recognizing the moral interconnectedness, which means you have to
recognize that [an Israeli] family’s safety and dignity and freedom
are dependent on you caring about the safety and dignity and freedom
of Palestinians and vice versa.”

Another frame can show us the intergenerational legacies of trauma at
play. Neuroscience explains how when we are in a hyperactivated
traumatic response, we become unable to think from our prefrontal
cortex, our logical brain. We shift into gears of
fight/flight/freeze/fawn, whatever our rational minds tell us of the
circumstances. How much of the saber rattling for attacks on Gaza is
infused with trauma, weaponized as a will to more violence, that
creates more trauma? For Jews, who have been persecuted throughout the
centuries, this trauma wound can run deep, as can the desire for
“revenge,” often suffused with anti-Arab racism. The slogan
centered in Jewish-led mass mobilizations in Washington, D.C. this
week calling for a ceasefire addresses this well: “My grief is not
your weapon.” 

Furthermore, ancestral trauma, coupled with actual rising
antisemitism, can make fake news seem incredibly real — like the
claim on Oct. 13 that Hamas had called for killing Jews around the
world. (This allegation led to buffering of security at synagogues and
the closure of a college campus that had scheduled a demonstration
calling for a ceasefire.) The allegation was proven false, and even
discredited by the U.S. State Department. Making room to acknowledge
trauma can help us keep out of the trenches of debates with people who
can’t hear the facts, offer a hug instead of volleying a fact, and
craft spaces to hold grief well, so that we might
mourn _and _organize.

In fact, re-framing the old adage, “Don’t mourn, organize” is
necessary here! We must express our profound sense of grief over the
lives that have been lost, so that we can work from a place of
grounded resolve to stop the further violence. Bypassing this step —
and refusing to acknowledge the grief so many are feeling right now
— limits our capacity to heal and achieve a just, political peace.
It also gives further ammunition to right-wing, Zionist leadership, as
well as their right-wing, American backers. Naomi Klein’s framing
[[link removed]] keeps
it simple. She tweeted: “Side with the child over the gun every
single time, no matter whose gun and no matter whose child.”

One of the tactics of an oppressive regime is to obscure or confuse an
issue, making people who would otherwise have a clear and coherent
critique feel disempowered, not knowledgeable enough to engage, or
feel that without “skin in the game” they cannot participate in
protesting injustice. Most of us in the United States (and around the
world) who opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq 20 years ago did not know
anyone from Iraq. Still, we knew enough to know that wars for oil and
imperial arrogance would harm children, kill soldiers on all sides,
exacerbate the climate crisis and line the pockets of weapons
manufacturers at our expense. 

Framing can help us ensure that we “create many points of entry
[[link removed]]”
so that new people can join the movement and feel empowered to speak
up. Utilizing the spectrum of allies
[[link removed]] tool
can help us clarify our audiences and discern messaging and tools for
best engaging passive allies and people who were formerly neutral but
have just been activated by this crisis. 

For newcomers to this crisis, we can help explain the complex
narrative by sharing usable tools like this six-minute cartoon
[[link removed]]. Short, pithy
framing such as this list of “5 things you need to know about
what’s happening in Israel and Gaza
[[link removed]]”
help break down the issue into usable info. As emergency actions to
oppose genocide in Gaza 
[[link removed]]are
organized, we can remember to also create teach-ins (like this one
[[link removed]] centering
Palestinian voices, happening on Oct. 19) for people asking “How did
we get here?” 
Framing beyond the binary can also be helpful when done intentionally.
Or reframing the binary: Yes, there are two sides. The side of life
and the side of death. As Palestinian poet Suheir Hammad wrote
[[link removed]]: “You are either
with life, or against it. Affirm life.” The bottom line, as
Jewish-American activist and author Anna Baltzer shared
[[link removed]] in
her recent op-ed: “All people deserve to live in safety and peace.
The only way to achieve that is freedom and justice for all. In
Palestine, that means an end to Israel’s colonial occupation and
apartheid regime — which no person would accept for their own
people.”

2. Studying the beautiful history of Palestinian creative nonviolent
resistance can inspire our solidarity actions

Another way to reframe this moment is to explore and celebrate
the long legacy of Palestinian creative activism
[[link removed]].
Learning about this resistance — which so often is left out of
dominant narratives — humanizes the Palestinian struggle and
decreases the othering going on. It can also help us understand how we
got here today, recalling the widespread civil disobedience and mass
boycotts during the First Intifada (1987-1993). 

In response to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1988,
residents of Beit Sahour decided to buy 18 cows and produce their own
milk as a co-operative, so they wouldn’t need to buy Israeli milk.
These cows became local celebrities, a sign of self-sufficiency and
resistance. They were then cruelly placed on the Israeli military’s
most wanted list, declared “a threat to the national security of the
state of Israel.” Stories like this one — known as the Wanted 18
[[link removed]] — illustrate the
absurdity of the occupation. 

More recently, Palestinian creative resistance
[[link removed]] has
spanned the arts from the stage to the streets, from marches to murals
(on the face of the separation wall). The Great March of Return
[[link removed]] in
2018 utilized the time-honored nonviolent tactic of making a trek
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practiced from Gandhi’s Salt March to cross-continent walks for
nuclear disarmament. The images that went around the world
of grandmothers hugging their olive trees
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they were bulldozed told the story without needing words,
exemplifying action logic
[[link removed]]. Prisoners
detained without charge or trial
[[link removed]] have
organized hunger strikes
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over 1,800 prisoners fasting in 2012. Creative tactics have helped
galvanize international attention and made the occupation personal.

Children in Gaza set a world record [[link removed]] for
the most kites flown simultaneously. They flew 12,350 kites
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one time from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in Gaza. “We
brought happiness to our country by breaking the world record,” said
13-year-old record-breaker Nadia el Haddad, “[and today] I feel like
I have rights and that I’m like everyone else in the world.” The
use of so many kites brilliantly illustrates the principle
that simple rules can have grand effects
[[link removed]].
Organizations like the Jenin Freedom Theater
[[link removed]] and Alrowwad
[[link removed]], a center for culture and arts based in
Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, whose tagline is “Beautiful
Resistance,” have educated the next generations of Palestinian youth
on creative expression. 

This strategic, artistic activism has sparked countless solidarity
actions around the world, and inspired solidarity activists to travel
to Palestine to engage in accompaniment, co-resistance, and flotillas
[[link removed]] to try to break
the siege of Gaza and deliver urgently needed aid. Israelis — who
understand that their fate is bound up with the wellbeing of their
neighbors — have also joined in the struggle. Since 1988, Women in
Black
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been holding peaceful vigils to oppose Israeli oppression. Young
Israelis refusing draft orders have served time in prison, and IDF
veterans have spoken out
[[link removed]] about the crimes they
committed while serving in the Occupied Territories. Israeli
anti-occupation activists have also joined in civil disobedience to
help protect Palestinian neighborhoods threatened with demolition. In
the past week, Israelis issued a petition calling for an
immediate ceasefire
[[link removed]] of
the attacks on Gaza. 

Turning to the nonviolent tactic of activating international
mechanisms
[[link removed]],
Palestinian leadership tirelessly worked toward passing U.N. measures
to stop the building of Israeli settlements, which Israel has not
heeded. U.N. Resolution 194 aims to ensure the Palestinian right of
return, which has also not been enforced. Since 1997, the United
States has vetoed 
[[link removed]]more
than a dozen U.N. Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel for
its actions in the West Bank and Gaza. 

And finally, 18 years ago in the aftermath of the violent uprisings of
the Second Intifada, Palestinian civil society issued the
international nonviolent call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
[[link removed]], or BDS, harkening to the
anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the long legacy of
nonviolent economic activism that helped win victories from the Delano
grape boycott for farmworker rights to the Montgomery Bus Boycott
during the civil rights era. BDS campaigns have emerged around the
world and had many wins, from Dump Veolia
[[link removed]] to Stolen
Beauty [[link removed]].
Meanwhile, divestment
[[link removed]] campaigns on
college campuses, in churches, and within large pension funds have
pressured reputable institutions to divest from war crimes. 

Leading human rights organizations, like Amnesty International
[[link removed]],
have found that “Israel imposes a system of oppression and
domination against Palestinians across all areas under its control: in
Israel and the Occupied Territories, and against Palestinian refugees,
in order to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid as
prohibited in international law.” 

One might say that Palestinian resistance to occupation has exhausted
Gene Sharp’s well-known list of nonviolent methods
[[link removed]].
Yet, while this tremendous history of nonviolent resistance has
been well-documented
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it has not been widely covered in mainstream media, and certainly
isn’t in the spotlight now. We must reckon with the enormity of
ongoing occupation and ethnic cleansing that continues in spite of
these creative and bold actions. We also must understand the severe
repression of Palestinian nonviolent resistance and the West’s
double-standards when it comes to this violence. 

As Peter Beinart pointed out in his _New York Times_ column
[[link removed]],
“Israel, with America’s help, has … repeatedly undermined
Palestinians who sought to end Israel’s occupation through
negotiations or nonviolent pressure.” The BDS movement has been
particularly stymied, he noted, “including by many of the same
American politicians who celebrated the movement to boycott, divest
from and sanction South Africa. … About 35 states — some of which
once divested state funds from companies doing business in apartheid
South Africa — have passed laws or issued executive orders punishing
companies that boycott Israel.”

We are now observing the seeming inevitability of armed resistance
amidst the severe worsening of the siege of Gaza. As we lament the
loss of life on all sides and oppose violence, we must
also acknowledge the threads of racism
[[link removed]] that
privilege condemnation of one form of violence over another.
Palestinian-American professor and human rights attorney Noura
Erakat writes [[link removed]] of how the
peaceful efforts to oppose occupation have been silenced, demonized
and smeared. “The message to Palestinians” she concludes, “is
not that they must resist more peacefully but that they cannot resist
Israeli occupation and aggression at all.

3. Understanding the Shock Doctrine is the first step to resisting
disaster capitalism.

In the chaos following wars, natural disasters and economic panics,
military and corporate neoliberals aggressively try to push
privatization, deregulation and cuts to social services as part of a
“ Shock Doctrine
[[link removed]].”
This is a critical time to resist these disaster capitalists and
defend our human, environmental and economic rights and resources.
Remember after 9/11 when President Bush seized the opportunity of
national grief and fear to call for an all-out assault on Afghanistan?
The bombardment of Iraq was soon to follow. 

What is less remembered is that prior to 9/11 there was a growing and
effective anti-globalization movement in the U.S. That movement
effectively shut down the WTO’s Doha Round of negotiations at
the Battle in Seattle
[[link removed]].
Activists were preparing to shut down the IMF in Washington, D.C. on
Sept. 12 to demand systemic anti-poverty changes, but protests were
canceled when the country went into widespread grief and panic over
the attacks of 9/11. Protesters were attacked as being unpatriotic as
the U.S. was “under attack.”

Many civil society activists were fearful and fell in line behind the
government and NGO calls to fight external terrorists. A large number
of the activists remaining in the streets shifted towards peace or
antiwar work in a vain attempt to prevent violent retaliation for
9/11. U.S. anti-corporate globalization work all but ground to a halt.

Prior to the Hamas-led attack on civilians in Israel, there was a
strong and growing movement of opposition to Prime Minister
Netanyahu’s increasingly authoritarian regime, resulting in
historically large pro-democracy movements within Israel and public
and governmental outrage around the world. While Israel may have never
been a full participatory democracy given the mass disenfranchisement
and displacement of Palestinians, these protests created a hallmark
fissure in an otherwise impenetrable topic: questioning Israel. 

Only four days after Hamas breached the border, Netanyahu was able to
rally the necessary support within the country to form a unity
government in the Knesset (for the first time in months of turmoil
[[link removed]]).
Israel garnered sweeping support from major Western military powers.
And in just a week, the apartheid regime’s flag colors were lighting
up major capitals around the world. The surge of support for
Israel’s hardline government has greenlighted and legitimated a
truly horrific escalation of the collective punishment of the civilian
population in Gaza, while the world’s military-industrial
billionaires get even richer.

We know if we do nothing, the situation gets worse. If we step into
our power, we could potentially build a better future. People around
the world are contesting with large-scale mobilizations
[[link removed]] —
amounting to a people’s shock
[[link removed]-] action.
We hope to see you beyond the fray of the Facebook wars. We’ll meet
you in the streets, the halls of Congress, at artistic vigils
[[link removed]] mourning
the loss of life, and in meaningful dialogue with your family,
colleagues, friends and local leaders. Amidst the horrific headlines,
skewed mainstream media coverage and institutional Western hypocrisy,
we are seeing moving examples of beautiful trouble sprouting around
the globe.

_Hundreds gathered for a candlelight vigil in San Francisco with
Palestinian and Arab groups on Tuesday. (Twitter/JVP)_

If you are in the U.S., you can take immediate action to call on
Congress to stop fueling violence, to call for a ceasefire and to stop
sending weapons and military support to the apartheid regime. You
can send a letter
[[link removed]] to
your representatives via Jewish Voices for Peace, send letters to
Congress
[[link removed]] via the
U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, or click-to-call 
[[link removed]]your
congressmember. For more ideas/background, also visit Beautiful
Trouble’s Palestine Solidarity Organizing Set
[[link removed]].

Chances are by the time this is published it will be outdated. But the
tactics and principles mentioned here won’t be. As we watch the
present unfold with grief, we are holding out a drop of hope for that
better world that is possible. We derive our hope from the power of
sumud, of steadfast persistence — doing what we can today so that,
as Paulo Freire puts it, tomorrow, we can do what we cannot do today.

_Rae Abileah is a Jewish clergy person, social change strategist,
author and editor for collective liberation. She is a trainer
at Beautiful Trouble [[link removed]], and
co-creator of the global Climate Ribbon
[[link removed]] art ritual. She was the
co-director of CODEPINK, consulted on digital strategy for social
justice at ThoughtWorks, and now runs her own consultancy, CreateWell
[[link removed]], and facilitates design workshops for The
Nature Conservancy. Rae is a contributing author to books including
"Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists."
Rae graduated from Barnard College at Columbia University, and
received ordination by the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute._

_As an activist artist, strategic nonviolent organizer, and Training
Director of Beautiful Trouble, Nadine Bloch explores the potent
intersection of art and people power. Find more of her writing in
"Beautiful Trouble [[link removed]]," "SNAP: An Action
Guide to Synergizing Nonviolent Action and Peacebuilding
[[link removed]],"
and "From Airtable to Zoom:An A-to-Z Guide to Digital Tech and
Activism 2021
[[link removed]]."_

_Waging Nonviolence is a nonprofit media organization dedicated to
providing original reporting and expert analysis of social movements
around the world. With a commitment to accuracy, transparency and
editorial independence, we examine today’s most crucial issues by
shining a light on those who are organizing for just and peaceful
solutions.  We publish all of the content on this site free of
charge and without any kind of paywall.  Donate
[[link removed]]_

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