International Nonviolence Conference
December 6, 2005
I wish I was going to be in Bethlehem this Christmas because Holy Land Trust (the organization I worked with this summer) is hosting an International Nonviolence Conference entitled “Celebrating Nonviolent Resistance.” It is going to be in Bethlehem, Palestine this December 27-30th. Some of the speakers will be:
- Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen): President of the Palestinian National Authority
- Azmi Bishara: Member of the Israeli Knesset
- Gene Sharp: Senior Scholar at the Albert Einstein Institution
- Martin Luther King III: Son of Martin Luther King, JR.
- Naim Ateek: Founder of Sabeel
- Bernard LaFayette, Jr.: Co-founder of SNCC in 1960
- Ingrid Newkirk: Co-founder and President of PETA
- Cindy Corrie: Mother of Rachel Corrie who was killed by Israeli soldiers while engaging in non-violent resistance
- Fr. Roy Bourgeois: Founder of the School of the Americas Watch
- Mubarak Awad: Founder of Nonviolence International in Washington D.C.
It looks like it’s going to be an amazing gathering of people from all over the world. If you have any chance to go to this conference, if you’ll be in the area, I encouarge you to check out the website.
I also encourage you to check out this video put together by Holy Land Trust. Sami, who is the Executive Director for Holy Land Trust, speaks on the video, and there are some videos of some of the HLT staff engaging in nonviolent resistance and you can see how the IDF responds. It’s a pretty good video - check it out here.
Tags: Bethlehem, Israel, Non-Violence, Palestine, Peace
Posted in 
Adam Walker Cleaveland: 
December 6th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
Watched the video. The deptiction of “how the IDF responds” is vague at best, and probably as good as one could hope in a border situation like that. I’m not sure what’s wrong with the way it looks like they’re handling the situation according to the video. Your insinuation seems to be that we would see the injustice, but we have no idea what was being said by the Palestinians and the Israeli’s, or why each was pushing the other in these videos. If you or I had been placed on a border, given a gun, and been warned that suicide bombers could approach at any moment, we would be careful and anxious, too. So, in the end, I think that Israel’s soldiers are to be commended for the evidence on this video.
December 6th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Sorry, forgot to add — unless I missed something. Did I?
December 6th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
Kellen, you are right (though I don’t know that I would say the IDF needs to be commended). I didn’t need to add in the “and see how the IDF responds” because there really isn’t much to see here. The video more just shows the HLT staff engaging in nonviolent resistance, and it doesn’t necessarily show the IDF using their tear gas, or shock bombs, or rubber bullets (that are deadly) to combat the nonviolent resistance.
That was a wrong phrase to use, when used in conjunction with this video. Thanks for bringing that to light.
December 6th, 2005 at 7:48 pm
Yeah, wish I could go too. But that same weekend there’s this really great conference Celebrating Violent Resistance - at Liberty University in Virginia. The keynote speaker will be Pat Robertson. Can’t possibly miss it…
December 7th, 2005 at 7:12 am
You do know that Abbas rejects the historic facts of the holocaust? Good that you didn’t go. He has to be boycotted.
http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=antisemitism&ID=IA9502
December 7th, 2005 at 7:58 am
Oh, and bro. I love you.