Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Letters

Actually, The Intifadas Were Nonviolent Uprisings, Too

Dear Editor,

In your interesting article on P is for Palestine, you described the First and Second Intifadas as violent uprisings. They were also nonviolent. Indeed, Palestinians have long engaged in the nonviolent protest of Zionism, from petitioning the King Crane Commission to engaging in BDS. In the First Intifada, experts in nonviolent, non-cooperation such as Mubarak Awad led Palestinians in marches while shopkeepers observed strikes and even married couples avoided lavish public parties (haflas) as a form of solidarity. The government deported Awad, but the tradition of nonviolence continued, and eventually led to the growth of the BDS movement, especially for Protestant Palestinian advocates of non violence whom I first met while living in Beit Safafa in 1992. The omission of the nonviolent aspect of Palestinian uprisings is important since it erases an important part of Israeli-Palestinian history and hides stories of what might have been.

Edward Curtis is a professor at Indiana University School of Liberal Arts.

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.