Richard Falk: Pros and cons of Western Palestinian solidarity

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Sympathetic Westerners should avoid insisting on their own solutions, and let Palestinians lead instead.

"These comments reflect my reading of a passionate and provocative essay by Linah Alsaafin entitled "How obsession with 'non-violence' harms the Palestinian cause", which was published online in Electronic Intifada on July 11, 2012. The burden of her excellent article is the insistence that it is for the Palestinians, and only the Palestinians, to decide on the forms and nature of their resistance. She writes with high credibility as a recent graduate of Birzeit University who was born in Cardiff, Wales and lived in England and the United States, as well as Palestine.

She persuasively insists that for sympathetic observers and allies to worship at the altar of Palestinian non-violence is to cede to the West the authority to determine what are acceptable and unacceptable forms of Palestinian struggle. This is grotesquely hypocritical considering the degree to which Western militarism is violently unleashed around the planet to maintain structures of oppression and exploitation, more benignly described as "national interests". In effect, the culturally sanctioned political morality of the West is indicative of an opportunistically split personality: nonviolence for your struggle, violence for ours. Well-meaning liberals, by broadcasting such an insidious message, are not to be welcomed as true allies."
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(Richard Falk is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.)