Not sure a lot of you guys know about this, but for all the people out there who say that Palestinians never have peaceful protests, the small town of Bil'in in the West Bank has been holding them since 2005, and the second child of one family died on New Year's Day due to fatal teargas inhalation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8523221.stm

(The article is almost a year old - I'd link to Al Jazeera English, but the trolls would start yelling)

I figure it's interesting how nonviolent protests like this typically don't get much attention - there is only a focus on Palestinian violence and rarely on anything peaceful, such as this.

"Flame on!" ~that fire dude from Fantastic 4

P.S. I dedicate this post to NukEvil. <3 <3 <3

light yourself on fire is how the real men did it back in the day

actually, the real men still do that.

a tunisian man recently lit himself on fire (and died in the hospital due to severe burns, obviously) to protest Tunisian police confiscating his fruit stall.

his self-immolation and subsequent death caused a riot that is still ongoing in the Tunisian province of Sidi Bouzid.

when do any non-violent, non-inflammatory protests get a ton of attention?

I don't think that is not unique to the west bank

ok just to clarify when i say back in the day your not supposed to actually know what im talkin about is still being done

Yeah Pang, but the problem is only the violence is focused on - there is a lot of civil and nonviolent disobedience that happens in Palestine, but all that ever gets attention is the violence.

Thus, the average person who watches the news thinks that Palestinians do nothing but attack Israel, whereas in fact there are lots of nonviolent methods of resistance that are just ignored.

It's deeply disturbing when Palestinians are viewed only as terrorists despite the large amount of grassroots nonviolence movements out there - for instance, taking land confiscation issues to the Israeli supreme court. That sorta stuff is never covered!

It's so irritating!

the simple answer? invade isreal.

I could go into this at great length, but I will refrain. You have an Israeli state founded on the Zionist movement with the outset goal of creating a Jewish majority in the Palestinian part of, at the time, Trans-Jordan. They have continued their policy of displacing the Palestinians which in the end will culminate in their non-existance within the currently expanded state of Israel (including the occupied territories of the Goland Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip). By the United Nations definition, the goal constitues genocide.

No one talks about peaceful protests in the West Bank, like no one talks about the blockade of aid tot he Gaza Strip, or the brutal dictatorial rule in Egypt because all of the actions are United States sponsored.

sorry, the simple answer? overthrow america.

Also like no one talks about the multiple human rights violation, or persecution of women in saudi arabia (US ally).

Or what is going on in the Sudan to any great extent.

Or the russan actions in Chechnya

Or Chinese involvement in the Sudan

Many parts of the world are rather oppressive. It's somewhat annoying to me that Israel gets all the attention to the exclusion of many others. Even if you could change Israel into an arab state and expel all the jews, nothing would get better in the middle east.

And russia/china/UK are just as guilty as the US.

I remember seeing a photo of a Buddhist monk doping that to protest the South Veitnamese governments harshness towards them during the Viet Name War. He was a far braver man then I.

Buddhist monks were lighting themselves on fire just a few years ago in Burma (or Myanmar, whichever one is the "official" name now) over the dictatorship there. As for nonviolent actions not making the news, this has almost always been the case. Even in the Civil Rights movement here in the US, the idea was to be nonviolent, but to purposely stir up a violent response by the authorities, so that the media would get their fill of violence while at the same time showing that the action itself was nonviolent (and was therefore being brutalized). I can't say that every march was designed this way, since I don't know specifics, but this had something to do with bringing in buses full of northerners to the big southern cities with as much hype as possible to get the news agencies--and the targeted cities--as riled up as possible.