Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Terror in Jerusalem

It had been more than three years since the last terrorist bombing targeting civilians in Israel — until a blast caused by an explosive pipe placed next to a telephone pole near the bus station in central Jerusalem on March 23 ended that period of relative quiet. Suddenly, the familiar images appeared across our screens, of shattered streets, frantic rescue efforts, harsh denunciations. And the familiar sorrow of lives lost and irreparably injured.

But the Middle East has changed dramatically during those three years, something that seems to have escaped the cowards who hold onto the discredited belief that bombing civilians in the heart of a cherished city will serve their cause. How can they ignore the obvious? Besides being morally wrong, this sort of terrorism simply does not work.

As of this writing, no one has claimed responsibility for the attack that has killed one and wounded at least 30, but whoever the culprits, they clearly have willfully ignored the powerful lessons from elsewhere in the region. First in Tunisia, then in Egypt, nonviolent uprisings drove despotic leaders from office.

The efficacy of peaceful protest is not wishful thinking but historical fact. A major study published in 2008 comparing the outcomes of hundreds of violent insurgencies with those of major nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 found that 53% of the nonviolent movements succeeded, compared with only 26% of the violent insurgencies.

Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, who conducted the study, reason that nonviolent movements are more effective because they are broad-based and enjoy more domestic and international legitimacy, in part because they are perceived to be less extreme. Violent reactions to peaceful protest, meantime, can backfire, as former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak learned the hard way.

The Palestinian people deserve their own, viable state. But 40 years of terrorism hasn’t brought them any closer, and the uprisings of 2011 only reinforce that message.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.