Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Global March to Jerusalem: Mixed Message On Violence

Mixed messages about violence from the Global March to Jerusalem

On the one hand, the Global March to Jerusalem says they are peaceful:
In an interview with the Palestinian news agency Ma’an on March 19th, GMJ spokesman Zaher Birawi stated that the organisers are “not interested in confrontation with the Israeli army, after similar demonstrations a year earlier ended in bloodshed”.


Whilst it is difficult to imagine exactly what sort of effective controls the GMJ organisers have been able to put in place in order to prevent their aspired one million man march from descending into violence, it should also be taken into account that a considerable number of the GMJ organisers are veterans of the flotilla project who still describe the Turkish activists aboard the IHH-sponsored Mavi Marmara in 2010 as ‘humanitarian aid workers’.
Yet despite a Global March To Jerusalem brochure invoking the names of Gandhi and Martin Luther King as role models, in Kuala Lumpur on March 18th a flashmob of students gathered in order to “create awareness on the Global March to Jerusalem”--replete with dead Israeli soldiers:



Somebody obviously missed out on the ‘non-violence’ memo.


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