Steve Burns: "Bombing had the opposite effect" - a brief history of an "obvious" idea

A report in the Jan. 23 New York Times on efforts by residents of Gaza to reconstruct tunnels from Gaza to Egypt includes this passage:

Israel has contended that the bombing is a way to drive a wedge between the people and Hamas, but it seems to be having precisely the opposite effect. A tunnel manager in his 30s named Mahmoud said he had felt closer to Hamas since the war, because, however flawed, Hamas was the one group that stood up to Israeli aggression.

Where else have we seen this seemingly perverse response to violence? Google the phrase "bombing had the opposite effect" and you get this:

Hitler's intention was to break the morale of the British people so that they would pressure Churchill into negotiating. However, the bombing had the opposite effect, bringing the English people together to face a common enemy. Encouraged by Churchill's frequent public appearances and radio speeches, the people became determined to hold out indefinitely against the Nazi onslaught

And this, from an eyewitness to NATO's efforts to depose Serbian strongman Slobodan Milisevic through aerial bombing:

I could feel the mood out in the villages – right in Milosevic’s heartland – was that they had turned against him, yet as soon as the bombing began, even my friends who hated Milosevic were going to the bridges being bombing wearing targets and yelling, ‘Bomb me!’ If I had thought the only way to get rid of Milosevic was bombing, I would have supported it. But the bombing had the opposite effect, and it wasn’t necessary anyway.”

And this:
Rather than scare the fledgling civil rights movement into silence, as the Klan wanted, the bombing had the opposite effect.

That last quote is from a report on the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four young African-American girls who were attending Sunday school.

My intent here isn't to compare the Israeli military to the Nazis or the Klan (although such comparisons become harder to avoid as Israel escalates the level of violence it uses against the Palestinians.) Rather, my intent is to compare the people under the bombs - to compare the people of Palestine with the people of London, and with the people of Serbia, and with African-Americans living in the south during the civil rights movement.

By now, it should be obvious that people who are subjected to collective punishment respond by setting aside whatever questions they may have about their own leadership and rallying to that same leadership, as their only means of getting back at the people attacking them (George W. Bush, a Supreme-Court-selected President loathed by at least half the country the day before 9/11, was himself a beneficiary of this effect.)

But, if this is obvious to you and me, why isn't it obvious to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, or to the Generals in charge of NATO? I can think of several possible explanations. First, having invested billions in the machinery of aerial bombardment, those in power can't accept the idea that all of this machinery is useless, or even counterproductive. Second, those in power think, "I know that we would respond to heroically to attacks that are intended to break our will, but they are not like us. Not being fully human, the people under our bombs won't respond the way humans typically do in such circumstances." And finally, the most sinister explanation of all: those in power know very well that bombing will have the "opposite effect", but that's the effect they're looking for. In Israel's case, Olmert may want the Palestinian people to rally to Hamas, because Hamas provides a convenient enemy with which to justify continued Israeli efforts to appropriate Palestinian land.

One doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe this last explanation. Wars often involve a symbiotic relationship between warring parties, where each attack by the enemy helps to solidify the leadership's hold on its own people. Just as Al Qaeda's attack was a political windfall for George W. Bush, Bush's occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq was of benefit to Al Qaeda, helping it to recruit new members to the cause, and to spread its organization around the world. No outright collusion is necessary, each side simply vows to "continue the struggle" - heroically, of course.

And, while I've emphasized the wrongheadedness of those in power, we shouldn't let the public off the hook for its instinctive "rally behind the leadership" tendencies. By now, it should be crystal clear that rallying behind George Bush was exactly the wrong response to the 9/11 attacks. Isn't it possible that rallying behind Hamas - or behind Milosevic - is also the wrong response?

In any population, there seems to be a relatively small percentage of people who are immune to the "rally behind the leadership" response. A Pew Research Center poll taken two days after the 9/11 attacks showed President Bush with an 80% approval rating and only 9% disapproval. That 9% (which most Americans today would probably claim to have been a part of) may hold the key to breaking the endless cycles of violence that we find ourselves in. And we desperately need to find a way to inject the idea that "bombing has the opposite effect" into the discussion before the bombs start falling.

Northwoods Peace Initiative: Thoughts on Inauguration Day

Dear Peacemakers,

So the torch has passed and no one can deny that today is truly an historic occasion. I wish for a moment I could accept the hope that a new day has dawned and the national nightmare is truly over. The decades of working for the common good that Barb and I have traveled actually began in Chicago influenced by many of the same circles that helped shape Barak Obama. The Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education (SCUPE) trained many of us who became pastors, educators, and community organizers in the neighborhoods of Chicago. We went about our work with the understanding, in the words of a former professor of ours, "that we can't know God unless we are doing justice." That phrase and the class in which it was spoken (The Biblical View of Oppression) absolutely shaped who Barb and I have become over the years. While it is a long way from the neighborhoods of Chicago to promoting nonviolence, community, and sustainable living in the wilds of northern Wisconsin our mission has never altered. If we can abandon fear and learn to share the common wealth, the world can truly learn to live as one. This is where I retreat from the celebration on the television in our sun room to the bidding of my cyber task master in the cave of an office we have on the north side of the house. The facts on the ground require an ongoing reality check so we don't get blinded by our wishful thinking.

As I watch the pomp and circumstance I cannot get Gaza out of my mind. My visit there in 2003 haunts me as does my trips to Iraq during the sanctions period. My dear friends and fellow travelers Kathy Kelly, Barbara Lubin, and Caoimhe (Kwee va) Butterly are in Gaza now distributing aid, lending support, and filing almost daily reports. My experience of both Gaza and Iraq was that of siege warfare where the attackers surround the besieged, cutting off supply lines so poverty and lack of essential services (medical, sanitation, fuel, electricity) slowly kill the targeted population in an attempt to force capitulation. It is not uncommon to hear people in this situation exclaim how they would rather be bombed and get it over with than to go on watching the suffering and death of the most vulnerable among them-namely children and the elderly. While the House and Senate almost unanimously back Israel's disproportionate assault on people living in one of the most broken, densely populated locations on the planet they fail to see that decisions they have been making for decades have broken the US economy creating conditions that the head of the IMF warns may provoke massive, global unrest even in the "advanced economies". Here in the US local municipalities are preparing military solutions to deal with the chaos of collapse from within. It is all too reminiscent of the decline of so many historic empires.

The popular misconception is that turning over the calendar gives us a new start. We can heave a sigh of relief, set 2008 squarely behind us, and proclaim, "we're not going to do that again!!" In the meantime corporate bankruptcies; housing foreclosures; collapse in non-residential construction, global shipping, and exports; black hole bailouts, and unemployment figures continue to accelerate. The news from Great Britain is even worse because they don't have the luxury of owning the world's reserve currency to give them an unfair advantage. And you seriously don't even want to hear about Zimbabwe. The markets cannot be trusted because of the lack of transparency by the Fed and the US unemployment rate may be as high as 17.5% which makes the military the employer of last resort for many young (and older) Americans. If you get tired of hearing this stuff from your favorite pessimist consider this report from Fortune Magazine from eight of the markets "sharpest thinkers" President Obama can't even begin to level with the American people about what they are facing because the markets demand confidence to be able to work and if people really faced up to the truth of it all they may start rioting in the streets.

I guess I would feel better about the euphoria of the millions who see this as the dawning of a new age if President Obama hadn't deferred to Dick Cheney's comments about 9/11. If you will remember, Cheney's response after the attacks was, "the American way of life is not negotiable." Obama's take on the theme was,"we will not apologize for our way of life." It is precisely our "way of life" that must change if we are to rejoin the global community and become one of many nations looking to a common future instead of the dominant nation consuming more than our fair share of everything under the sun. It is our "way of life" that has looted the past of stored (fossil fuels) primary productivity ( the sum total of energy that strikes the earth on a given day captured by plants during photosynthesis) and equally robbed the future by running up debts that our children and grandchildren will NEVER be able to pay back. All so we can have more stuff than anyone could ever have imagined they would have. This is what must change. And this is what will change whether we like it or not. The only promise I am looking for from the new Administration and Congress is honesty about how our "way of life" is about to become more in line with what the rest of the world experiences. That is the challenge that US citizens must begin to acknowledge. It is not a call to deprivation as much as it is a call to modesty and sustainability. Hope is not wishful thinking for happy endings. Hope is rolling up ones sleeves and getting down to the hard work of building a new tomorrow in spite of the odds that we may not succeed. Our first grandchild arrives next spring so despair or retreat is not an option. It doesn't get any more personal than that. Our hope is that we are up to the task of change regardless of the outcome.

Best regards,
Mike and Barb
anathoth@lakeland.ws
Northwoods Peace Initiative

Steve Burns: Recovering our memory of Dr. King

A powerful memory of Martin Luther King, long suppressed, came out of hiding on Monday night, at the 24th annual Dane County – City of Madison King celebration.

In the past, I’ve been critical of these events, because the memory of King that is often presented is one that is de-politicized, de-radicalized, and even de-racialized. Speakers have emphasized community service over collective political action, and the message to the Black community has been one of personal responsibility and self-help, an approach I’d summarize as “Dr. King wants you to stay in school.”

I think the man who once called the United States government the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” would probably have something else to say to Black youth besides “Stay in school,” but this idea was seldom hinted at.

But all that changed on Monday night. After seven years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was startled to hear a speaker at our City-County Martin Luther King Jr. observance note that Martin Luther King was strongly opposed to the Vietnam war. For the first time, I heard a speaker refer to King’s opposition to the “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.” The speaker was Rev. Trinette V. McCray of Milwaukee, president of the American Baptist Churches, and the memory of King that she brought forth was a memory of a political activist, a man who could be passionately angry at his own country, who went beyond demanding personal responsibility from African-Americans to demand justice from the larger society. And, like King, Rev. McCray did not shrink from making audacious demands of our country, insisting that our nation set the goal of “eliminating poverty in our lifetime.”

Why the welcome change in tone? Credit should go to Rev. McCray, of course, but I also wonder if the present moment doesn’t inspire us all to more powerful memories of the real Dr. King. The past thirty years, a bleak time for those who hoped for justice, have been a time for the retrenchment and downsizing of dreams. King made demands on the conscience of our nation, and after Reagan, Clinton and Bush, African-Americans could be forgiven for thinking that the conscience of our nation was dead, or at least deaf. And a message of self-help is the logical response to a society that has made it clear that no other help will be forthcoming.

To have called for “eliminating poverty in our lifetime” when we were still in the depths of the dark days of Bush would have seemed like lunacy. Does it seem so today? A little less so, I think.

First, there’s the possibility of racial reconciliation offered by Obama’s election. As Rev. McCray put it, ”When Iowa happened, we knew then…When that state, with its predominantly white population, handed Barack Obama his first primary victory, we could strongly sense then that something much bigger than what we had ever seen before was at hand." Racism has always been a powerful tool for those who have tried to kill Federal anti-poverty programs in the past; perhaps it’s a less potent tool today.

Our calamitous economic situation is another inspiration for thinking big. When the banks on Wall Street needed money, hundreds of billions of dollars were “found”, in an instant. For years, those who work against poverty have been told “Sorry, but there’s no money.” Paradoxically, at a time of economic collapse, we’ve discovered that there is money – if those in power want there to be money – and that’s a lesson the working poor of our country won’t forget soon.

President Obama has received credit for a new spirit of hopefulness in our country today. But, on Monday night, I saw a new aspect of the “Obama phenomenon.” That community leaders like Rev. McCray might see, in Obama’s election, an inspiration for making new demands on our society, and that we all might be more likely to believe that those demands could be met – well, that’s where I’ll be getting my hope from in the days to come.

Todd Dennis:Does the world support violence as a response in Gaza?

As the death toll continues to rise, currently put at over 700 dead Palestinians and ten Israelis (seven IDF members), during Israel’s offensive in Gaza we are only left with stories contending that Israel has a right to defend itself and that Gaza provoked the attacks by violating the ceasefire agreement. As Steve pointed out earlier in the week, Israel has even produced graphs which mislead people about the number of attacks launched from Gaza into Israel, even removing the older and easier to understand graph. However as in most conflicts we are led to believe that there is only one side of two that you can be on, support Israel and its right to defend itself or support Gaza and Hamas’ right to attack Israel and use violence against the invading forces. Little is heard about the peace movement whether it be in Israel, Palestine or in the U.S. Many groups exist and they have been calling for a cease fire and a resumption of the peace talks to end the ongoing crisis. So just who are these groups and what are they saying?

Courage to Refuse (CTR) was founded in 2002 during the Second Intifada by members of the IDF Reserve who refuse to serve in the occupied territories but will serve in Israel and support efforts to defend Israel. For the first time CTR has called on Israeli military members to refuse to take part in the artillery shooting and the air strikes targeting Gaza’s civilian neighborhoods. They make this call because of the illegal and immoral killing of civilians that is occurring. For more information on Courage to Refuse check out their website here.

Combatants for Peace was formed jointly by Palestinians and Israelis, who have taken an active part in the cycle of violence; Israelis as soldiers in the Israeli army (IDF) and Palestinians as part of the violent struggle for Palestinian freedom. Combatants for Peace member Chen Alon recently appeared on the Erev Hadash program on Israeli Channel 1 TV, on January 6, 2009, during the 10th day of the battles in Gaza. Unfortunately the video doesn’t have subtitles.

Gush Shalom was formed in 1993 as an independent peace organization independent of political parties. They participated in a demonstration of some ten thousand protesters from all over Israel marched in Tel-Aviv in a massive demonstration against the war. All four lanes of Ibn Gvirol St., one of the city's main throughfares, were packed full of demonstrators who marched the two kilometres from the Rabin Square to the Cinemateque, chanting and waving banners all the way. However you probably have not heard of this demonstration since it was not covered in the media. The only outlet I could find with coverage was a copy of Gush Shalom’s story on the protests in Worker’s Liberty from the UK.

Veterans for Peace was formed in 1985 and who goal is the abolishment of war. They released a statement saying they do not take the side of any government, but rather take the side of all people in the region who are victims of the most recent outbreak of violence raging between Palestine and Israel.

With these and many other organizations (UFPJ, Stop the War Coalition (UK), International Action Center, …) are calling for an end to the violence in Gaza why are we only told that most Israeli’s support the attacks? In a BBC article, the pro-war voices are double those who are opposed to the attacks but you would have to read the story and not just the headline, “Israelis back Gaza action - for now” to learn that. CNN has a story on the IDF launching a youtube and twitter account calling it a portrayal of the IDF's “humane action and operational success in operation ‘Cast Lead’.” These videos of course will not show the courageous acts of those resisting the ground war such as Huwaida Arraf, of International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who in this video tries to get IDF soldiers to stop firing on civilians. ISM has created a petition of Israelis who call for an end to the violence which is critical of Israeli press for promoting the war like the other media outlets above have and not allowing the voices of those critical to the war to be heard.

The recent violence in Gaza and Israel reminds us that violence is indeed a descending spiral and it only leads to the very thing it seeks to destroy. Taking sides leads us down this spiral and the complex situation cannot be solved but by casting off the hatred, with Israeli and Palestinians rehumanizing their purported enemy, so that a peaceful and long term solution can occur. Just as Combatants for Peace have done, violence by both sides must be rejected so that a just solution can be created.

Todd Dennis is an Outreach Staff member at the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Steve Burns: Feingold calls for a ceasefire...in the Congo

A review of press releases and statements on the websites of Wisconsin Representatives and Senators finds not a single public statement on the Israeli attacks on Gaza, despite the fact that the Israel is the recipient of three billion dollars a year in taxpayer-funded U.S. military aid.

Although Wisconsin representatives understandably focused many of their recent statements and press releases on the current economic crisis and other issues closer to home, our Congressional delegation has not been reluctant to speak out on other foreign policy issues. Senator Russ Feingold, for example, recently highlighted his efforts to call for a cease-fire in the civil war in the Congo – a conflict that the U.S. is not spending billions of dollars to support. A call to Senator Feingold’s Washington office today confirmed that Feingold has issued no statements on the Israeli attacks on Gaza, and the Senator’s staff person was unaware of any plans to issue a statement in the future.

If any of our representatives think that Israel is justified in an attack that has resulted in more than 500 deaths and the bombing of a UN-sponsored school, they should say so. If, on the other hand, they disagree with the Israeli attack, now is the time to speak up. But it is shameful for our elected officials to continue their silence while hundreds of people die under a barrage of U.S.-supplied bombs.

Steve Burns is Program Coordinator for the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Steve Burns: Adventures in Obfuscation

The term "information warfare" has been used frequently by Bush administration officials who argue that 21st-century warriors must consider the internet as a key battlefield in the struggle for public opinion. But how does one fight an "information war"? The Israeli Foreign Ministry shows us how.

First, consider the graph below, featured on the Foreign Ministry's website, showing the number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel over the past year:



The period from July to October corresponds to an Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas. This truce period was honored by Hamas, as the graph clearly indicates. Perhaps too clearly, because the graph above, after being linked to by blogs critical of the Israeli attack on Gaza, has been replaced by this graph:

The underlying data - numbers of rockets fired - are the same, but take out your magnifying glass and observe how the height of the bar for October (1 rocket fired) is now equal to the height of the bar for November (126 rockets fired).

And what happened in November? A November 5 New York Times article, "Israeli Strike Is First in Gaza Since Start of Cease-Fire" reported, “An Israeli security force had entered Gaza to destroy a tunnel and fought with Hamas gunmen”, after which “Israel carried out an airstrike on Gaza.” That was November 4. The rocket attacks resumed immediately afterwards. This chain of events is supported by Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories:

Hamas is blamed for the breakdown of the truce by its supposed unwillingness to renew it, and by the alleged increased incidence of rocket attacks. But the reality is more clouded. There was no substantial rocket fire from Gaza during the ceasefire until Israel launched an attack last November 4th directed at what it claimed were Palestinian militants in Gaza, killing several Palestinians. It was at this point that rocket fire from Gaza intensified.

Of course, the game of “They started it!” is always played on morally shifty ground, since each side can always conveniently start the clock ticking at the most recent act of aggression by the other side. But in this case, the facts seem pretty clear: there was a cessation of rocket attacks for four months, this was not reciprocated by Israel, which did nothing during the period to lift the blockade on Gaza, until early November, when Israel resumed armed attacks, followed by a resumption of rocket fire. For a moment, the Israeli Foreign Ministry allowed information to leak out to the public that confirmed this chain of events, at least until they were able to fire up their "fog machine of war."