Intifada - NYC
Living in New York one only ever so often has to deal with really stupid things, like groups wearing shirts with “Intifada -NYC” printed across the chest.
Now I don’t care who or what group made these shirts, if anyone doesn’t think they have to do with a solidarity movement with Palestinians must have their head examined.
The kicker is that the principal of the new Arab charter school in the city said she supports the statement these shirts make only later to back down due to pressure from other groups (mostly Jews).
However I think this outrage is justified. Regardless of what you want to believe the Intifada is a violent uprising that has been stolen by radicals and terrorists. It may have started as a student revolt but now it is terrorism. This would be like having kids wearing shirts that said Meir Kahane was Right or White Power or Zig Heil.
People have the right to show whatever the hell they want on their shirts, freedom of speech is funny that way. But what we can’t ignore is what the message is that is being freely expressed. If a new and divisive school (which many are unjustly afraid will foster Islamisist tendencies in NYC) sees this going on with in the community, the leaders of this school should be careful about what they say in the media.
But really what are these shirts doing? Making money for Arab Women Active in Arts and Media or AWAAM (does that mean anything in Arabic?) It is only a profit move. I have very little respect for the devaluation of life and terminology only to turn a buck. Thousands of Palestinians and Israelis have been killed in the Intifadas. To print that on a shirt to make money for an organization that says it is committed to arts and society just doesn’t sit right with me.
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You don’t understand what intifada means to Palestinians and others around the Arab world. Intifada, the word and the movement, predates attacks on civilians as you’ve described them. If to you it means terrorism, then you have your own meaning for it.
In any case, I am looking forward to reading a post by you which criticizes people who wear IDF shirts, which to me and many others symbolize terrorism, war crimes, brutality, and oppression.
In my opinion you could turn this reasoning around: the intifada or ‘uprisising’ started as a broad movement by Palestinians protesting the occupation. It has later been hijacked by groups that commited terrorist attacks (which IMO means violent actions targetting civilians). This is the classic problem with a lot of other extremisms: people committing crimes in the name of a faith or an ideal stigmatize the whole group that does not approve these crimes. This is not a reason to dismiss the whole ideal or the whole group that associates itself with it. Today a politician in my country said the Koran should be banned because two men hit a men who apostated from Islam. I think this is the wrong way to think, Islam in itself is not ‘evil’, only some interpretations, and those are only helped by extreme reactions.
The same goes for the idea of ‘intifada’. I think the Palestinians have a right to resist and rise up against the occupation, so the idea is not bad itself. People supporting this should distance themselves from terrorism though, which a lot of them have done.
Yaman-
Read the post I just wrote. Then ask yourself this question: Does Peter say that it is about perception or reality?
When you figure out that it is about perseption and not reality, (therefore that Intifada means what it has become, not what it once meant) then you might understand the post.
Also look towards the part of about the other issue based T-shirts. Is it right to wear a Che t-shirt and not expect Cuban nationals to think you are glorifing a man who killed their families? Can you wear a shirt from the IDF and not be associated with Occupation?
With that in mind, you bring up the IDF so I will address that because Israel is constantly under attack (reality or perception, your call) and needs to fight back for protection. It does not target cafes or discos but goes after terrorist in their hide outs…now that is one way to look at this … you provide another.
The t-shirt issue at hand is more about perception. Not the true meaning…Israel Defense Force has nothing to do with its Occupation…
Sorry, Peter, I don;t agree. The term “intifadah” means rebellion and it symbolizes a resistance to Israelis occupation. We could argue the same thing and say the term “disputed” is an incendiary violent act of occupation and oppression. But, I prefer to ignore the term and use the more accurate one, occupation.
Trying to turn the term Intifada into something it is not is like trying to make the word Jihad more than it really is. Do people use it as a term of conflict, yes. But do most Muslims view it as a term that means noble struggle to do the right thing, that is a far cry fromt he hate spewed by Daniel Pipes who is promoting the attacks against the Arabic language school.
My only concerns is the principle is too close to the New York Chapter of the ADL, which is viciously anti-Arab — unlike the Chicago ADL office and others around the country. (Come to think of it, the comparison is with CAIR which has a great Chicago office and a horribloe extremist Washington main office).
The school should be focused on teaching Arabic, not Islamic studies, not Muslim studies, not Jeeehads, just Arabic and it should be secular representing the majority of Arabs who live in the United States and in Brooklyn, not religious extremists.
But, I digress as I walk down the middle road of the valley of death … I will fear no axis of evil …
Ray Hanania
http://www.hanania.com
you always feel disturbed, annoyed or even disgusted if you find people using slogans, words that had another & may true meaning in real context or just to you personally -
if e.g. the true words of a movement are used just for commercials etc. - just like if a pimp uses the word love over & over again, when he means exploitering, if too much people join a movement, they will change sooner or later the original meaning, - first come the true believers & disciples & idealist, then follow the curious, those who just join to be with the crowd & then those who just take those words up like a fashion - just for fun - without even caring anymore about the origin real meaning, ideology or whatever - just for fun & because it’s so hip.
so let’s all go down to Joe’s Hussein bar - let’s sip on some intefada longdrinks with a hot little Che Guevara pepperoni in it - prefer Jesus- or Mohammad sausages on that Hare Krishna snacks? - eat some Zionist cookies, dance the mideast jive, while the crusaders band plays the jihad shuffle & the martyr maids serve the drinks - reflected by the Nazi-mirror behind those greenpeace bottles where the bartender-Marxist shakes his special brew
Some people don’t even know what’s written on their t-shirts - they bought it because the colour & script design was nice..
I think it all has to do with the context the T-shirts are worn in.
Someone wearing an intifada T-shirt in the Arab world is something normal and it shows support for the cause, which certainly doesn’t mean terrorism in such a context but legitimate resistance instead.
Let’s go to another context. Israel. Someone wearing an IDF T-shirt there would be pretty normal obviously. Try that in an Arab country and you’ll be bye bye.
Now let’s go to NYC, the city that suffered the biggest hit during 9/11. The city is multiracial and multi-cultural. It has a big population of Jews. Moreover after 9/11, let’s be honest, it’s the perception towards Muslims that has been damaged. Not Jews or Israelis. Moreover America regards Hamas as a terrorist organization. So in such a context wearing an intifada T-shirt will obviously draw some negative attention.
here in Germany there are sometimes demonstrations by Kurdish people - who find here a possibility to show their case, while that’s hardly supressed in Turkey - but they don’t write slogans like ‘resistance to Berlin’ etc. on their shields - they write about things that happen in their country..
most people who are in the least interested in world views know about the intifada & where it happened - I believe that a New York citizen reading this lines ‘Intifada - NYC’ after what had happened on 9/11 will interpret it as ‘muslimic threat or provocation for further terror attack in NY’ - it’s not a wise idea to do feed those prejudices which are already that present in the US world - well I would deeply mistrust a guy with a t-shirt ‘intifada Nuremberg’
Whose perception?
Tasnim-
The perception of the White American Establishment.
Ray-
As always you are right. But here we can’t agree. again a question of perception.
Were Islamic extremist philosophies not abroad and hard at work in the world, perhaps the response to the logo would not have been so sharp. The fact that their cultural dialog lacks consensus, and that there is not a great outcry of rejection on the part of moderates, sufficient enough to sway public opinion, also contributes to the display of distrust in this issue.
The fact that diverse commentary and interpretation exists in the preceeding responses gives us cause to be cautious. We are confronting an extremely serious social movement on this planet, one who’s proponents are seriously willing to spill blood for a higher cause. If such individuals were in seats of power in October 1961 it is possible that we would not be sitting here now. NONE OF US!!
There is little to persuade me not to think that in Arab culture the secular and the relgious are not intertwined and that the latter drives the former. The struggle to establish nation states founded upon Islamic law certainly gives me cause for concern when, emblazoned on one chest is the call for “Intifada NYC”. The questions then arises as to what oppression these women are truly calling to overcome. Our tradition of civil liberties and free speech can certainly been viewed by some as a chink in our armor to be exploited for political gain.
Forty years ago, someone wearing a T-shirt
with “Che’s” image, or Chairman Mao’s for that matter, would definitely have been given a cautious eye by me. Even today, I would take pause to wonder whether or not such a person were ignorant of the fact, or making a veiled statement that only the learned student of history would fathom.
PS:
…and while we’re at it, perhaps this calls for an intense review of 20th Century German history…let’s say….1917-1945….and how the rise and embracing of the philosophy of a madman and his following plunged an entire planet into chaos, cost millions and millions of unfulfilled lives (including generations never to be born), and concluded with the ultimate destruction of his country and his perverted dream.
With the power of today’s weaponry, what do you suppose we have to look forward to under similar circumstances???
I am sick and tired of people labeling the Palestinian movement as “terrorism”. You speak of cafes and discos being attacked by the Palestinians, but why do you fail to mention the Palestinian HOUSES, SCHOOLS,and HOSPITALS that are constantly under attack by the Israeli army? Why do you not mention the thousands of innocent women and babies that have been slaughtered by Israeli tanks and missiles? Or do Palestinian children not count as human beings? Why do you not mention the hundreds of women who were forced to deliver babies at checkpoints in the middle of the street because Israeli soldiers wouldn’t let them through to the hospitals? How could the world forget the massacres in Sabra and Shatila, and more recently, Jenin, yet one club is under attack and it’s considered a major crisis. Do these acts not define terrorism? In my dictionary, they do. It is because we have racist presidents in the U.S. who would like to wipe all Muslim and Arab countries off the map that the media portrays all Palestinian acts of self-defense as terrorism. It’s sad that the masses of people who are brainwashed by this propaganda are too ignorant to see the blatant truth that is right before their eyes. The truth is that if Israel would end the occupation and stop the murder of the innocent Palestinians, there would be no need for them to retaliate.
It’s time for you to become a serious student of history and correct your myopic point of view. as to when these struggles began.
Consider one significant milestone of many over the centuries. Look at this an ask yourself: “Why did the Arab world stand by and allow the Palestinians to live in squalor after the Arab’s military challenge to UN partition in 1948 ended with Israel prevailing?”" Why didn’t some of that oil-based economic power go to their betterment as opposed to palaces, and expensive automobiles?”
Is it only now, in the end of the last half century, that there is a cause to rise to and a reason for unity. Are you blind to all the multilateral geopolitical superpower gamesmanship that has plagued that region over the last several hundred years? Not to mention the self-interests of the ruling families of the region.
Could Israel have developed out of the desert the way it did without the help of government and private involvement whose self-interests were the motivation for same? Do you not believe that the same could have become true for the Palestinian cause if they had only the motivation and the sponsorship.
You talk about truth. The truth is that you can’t stand the truth. Here’s the truth. When century after century finds the world’s powers doing everything they can to exterminate a people up to and including the Nazi state’s official policy on the final solution of the jewish question, they will call on everything they have to. The world says “You shall not live”. Their reply: “Yes we shall”
In all you have written you have yet to condemn the terrorism on BOTH sides. They feed each other and it has taken a wall, and a lock down border policy to bring the madness under control.
It continues unabated in Iraq, not because American interests removed a tyrant’s foot from the necks of the oppressed, but because at the root of it are two religious factions of the SAME FAITH who have hated each other for centuries, and are willing to do murder in the name of their god because for their differences. Not to mention the others, with their own agendas, who are willing to capitalize on the conflict to achieve their own ends.
Shakespeare wrote, in Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings”.
WAKE UP and smell the coffee. There are people out there with a view to kill and they have already visited New York City. You need to look deep inside yourself,decide whether or not you are prepared to stand up and speak out against them.
Consider this. You accuse the US of having racist President(s)(plural) whose motives are to wipe Muslim and Arab countries off the map. No more wildly idiotic and unsupportable a statement if ever I have heard one. If one were to examine ethnic cleansing from an historical perspective the nation of Islam can be shown to have earned its stripes in that theatre.
As you look back across the gulf of time, and the pages of history, consider, for example, the contribution of the Arab slave traders in bringing the African to the New World. No less barbaric and brutal a feather in your cultural cap than any other you might choose to point to in your umbrage as you argue your position.
No less admirable than the impact of the westward movement in the US on the indigenous Native Americans, or the gifts of smallpox and syphilis bestowed on native populations in Central and South America, and the islands of the Pacific as western civilisation(sic)extended its domain and dominion with the good book in the left hand, and the sword in the right.
Such a legacy we all bear.
We are a human family sharing the same space on a subatomic particle in this endles universe. Do you not feel humbled by it all? Is it not time we started acting as both human, and family?
You begin your blog by attacking and name-calling, then you end it by saying we should all be family and co-exist. It is wise for you to pick a side, then stand by it.
Don’t know if it was mentioned, but the principal of the school mentioned, Debbie Almontaser, has resigned in response to all of this.
http://urltea.com/1768
Sumaya:
Perhaps you should review your commentary and then again, mine. I have made observations and raised questions, none of which your brief reply either supports or rebutts.
I have taken sides: against despots, against tyranny,against murder, against charasmatic leaders who, to achieve their own ends urge the blinded faithful to self slaughter. Against any and all philosophies which rob people of their dignity, self-esteem, and self-determination, and bind them, in the name of a higher calling.
Where is your perspective??? A band of Islamic fundamentalist revolutionaries has undertaken guerilla warfare against sovereign states, their leaders hide in caves, they sequester their tools of war in the sanctuaries of houses of worship and schools, and you accuse the US president of having a genocidal agenda against Arabs and Islam. Are you totally wrapped? If you want some idea of what serious military action is, against a people whose government has gone mad, and who were foolish enough to support it, go back into history and review what the Allied airpower did to Dresden, Germany one night.
That’s war!!!
There is another thing I do not do. I do not suffer fools easily. I have lived too long, and seen and known to much. Do your homework when you come to these pages. I have likely personally witnessed most of what you call your history. Be guided by it, not blinded by it.
You’ll be far better for it.
Sumaya: “the media portrays all Palestinian acts of self-defense as terrorism.”
Depends on which media, actually. What specific acts of self-defense did you have in mind?
She alleges that the media is able to portray all Palestinian acts of self-defense as terrorism because America has racist president(s) who want to wipe every Muslim and Arab country off the map.
So far she has not chosen to take issue with any of the historical facts I have placed on the record. However, she HAS found herself able to brand the policy of American presidents towards Muslim/Arab countries as genocide.
I mentioned Dresden, Germany with the hope that she would see that there are no places to hide in war and, unfortunately nobody is innocent. Perhaps those contemplating war ought to consider the welfare of their women and children first before making them targets.
Sumaya: Kindly enlighten us on the rationale and philosophy behind the wanton acts of murder against a Muslim minority in northern Iraq committed by other Muslims. It’s this kind of mindless primitivism against which the rationale thinkers among you fail to rise up in droves which works against your legitimate causes. You cannot make allegations of genocide against American presidents when the very same policies of ethnic cleansing are being carried out against your own by your own.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
one question; how dare you compare palestinian solidarity movements with white supremacist movements? more importantly, how do you intellectually justify this comparison?
I am not making any such comparisons. You draw that conclusion based upon your own political and social convictions. I am basing my commentary on historical events and looking on an ongoing and continuously evolving geopolitical and social phenomenon which has at least two thousand years behind it.
I’ve put some serious questions which no one has yet chosen to respond to.
What you see as solidarity movements, others see as guerilla warfare and or terrorism against sovereign governments and the citizenry thereof.
The fact that the societies and cultures who remain the targets of these criminals have chosen to measure their reponse has likely given undeserved encouragement to press forward. For the sake of the innocent behind whose skirts they hide themselves, they are, for the time being, fairly sheltered.
What they, and those who harbor them truly deserve is a response so utter and final, that their complete destruction would be assured.
Though I certainly agree with the observation that one person’s terrorist is another person’s martyr, and that history has shown time and again, how change might be effected by these kinds of tactics, there should never be the expectation that an overwhelming response is not deserved.
I used the example of Dresden to illustrate the fact that, in a true state of war, something like Falujah would have been dealt with in like fashion. The community would have ceased to exist.
You, in your naivete, should not make the mistake of perceiving the Western response as one of weakness. Not withstanding your present opinions on the matter, pray the day never comes when the people of the United States of American press their elected officials to move to take off the gloves and lower themselves to the level of moral debasement that certain Muslim groups have stooped to in the name of their deity and their faith.
The present disillusionment with the situation in Irag, for example, lies in the fact that, rather than move to the extreme, which this electorate and its representatives loathe to do, there is a pressing urge to withdraw, regroup, and wait for the next phase.
I again remind you to read your history carefully. Put our backs to the wall and you will find this people a formidable enemy.
….and Nadia, one more suggestion. Instead of wrapping yourself tightly in the cloak of attitude, I suggest you spend some serious time reviewing at least the last 100 years of global gamesmanship in that region on BOTH SIDES>!!!
Familiarize yourself with the history or the Arabian Peninsula from that time, the League of Nations, the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, the Balfour Declaration, the French and British mandates,the UN Partition, the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia and the deals that went down, the political alliances the Arab states made between 1900 and the fall of the Soviet Union, the War of Liberation, the numerous conflicts between Israel and its neighbors in the years since 1948, and on, and on, and on.
…and then….after all of that….tell me why the senseles murder of 250 innocent souls because their level of faith did not rise to another groups self-proclaimed standards or why, on the eve of Ramadan, a suicide murderer justifies and attacks a group of mourners, or wy, on the eve of Yom Kippur, a sovereign state justifies and launches an attack on Israel.
This is what the world watching measures events against. Like it or not, itis all dumped into the same pot. If you want to have support for a cause, you have to take it to a moral high ground and separate it from senseless brutality, otherwise public opinion will be against you.
…and thereafter…return to my commentaries of 8/11 and 8/16 and, after reviewing them, “intellectally justify” to me, the issues I have questioned the legitimacy of.
Nadio: With respect to your question of me, I put something the table in my commentary of 8/11/07 which you might have at least addressed. Israel succeeded because it had friends. The displaced Palestinian Arabs apparently did not. If this were not the case, they would not have been permitted to languish in absolute squalor in western Jordan for all those years. There was certainly enough oil money around for the Arab states, particularly the Saudis, to prevent this from happening. There’s little to say for Arab solidarity in this issue. Nobody wanted them. Those displaced peoples were left to rot because they became pawns in geopolitical gamesmanship regarding the statehood of Israel. If they were not to be absorbed, at least their quality of life could have been substantially elevated. It was not.
I raise these issues and all I get in response is rhetoric. It seems to be characteristic of these pages. There is a lot emotion demonstrated, but little hard knowledge of past events.
Perhaps that is why you fail.
Intifada literally means to “shake off.” It comes from the arabaic verb nafada which means to shake.
Google rocks!
http://www.comebackalive.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=280665&sid=c1784e7760f3b82b9e86311adae34e48
What does the word “Intifada” mean?
What is the Arabic root of “Intifada’? What are the verb and noun meanings of the word? What is the historical background to the use of the word? When was it first coined? Were there differences between the First and Second Intifadas? How did the Second Intifada begin?
“Intifada” is an Arabic word derived from the root nafada, meaning “to shake”.
As a verb intifada means “to be shaken, to wake up”. As a noun it means “shudder, awakening, uprising”, with the implication of “a shaking off” — referring to the process of shaking off sleep or shaking off the dust from one’s feet.
In the context of 37 years of Israeli military occupation (as of 2004), Intifada represents a ’shaking off’ of the chains of occupation.
The word was first coined in 1987, to describe the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli military rule.
Indeed, the first Intifada was largely characterised by Palestinian disentanglement from the systems that administered the military occupation — a very important “shaking off” — and by community self-organisation.
The largely symbolic stone-throwing protests against occupying Israeli soldiers and the involvement of children in these protests resulted in the situation of Palestinians under Israeli occupation being brought before the eyes of the world via the international media.
In 2000, the word Intifada was again applied to the uprising following Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Al-Haram Ash-Sharif in Jerusalem.
Sharon’s visit to the third holiest site in Islam, guarded by — according to the most conservative reports — 1,000 armed Israeli soldiers, was overtly designed to demonstrate Israel’s “sovereignty” over Jerusalem, especially over the Al-Haram Ash-Sharif (which most Israelis call “the Temple Mount”) and provoke an angry response.
However, at a deeper level, the Palestinian protests reflected years of mounting Palestinian frustration, rage and despair over the failure of the “peace process” to address their basic human and national rights.
Police Minister Ben-Ami publicly approved of the Israeli army’s shooting of Palestinian demonstrators following Sharon’s visit, an excessive reaction that guaranteed the snowballing of massive demonstrations. Speaking at a press conference for foreign journalists on 1 October 2000 in Tel Aviv, Ben Ami commented:
“As I said before, we cannot give in to violence […] We are not going to be intimidated by stones thrown at our civilians and at our security forces.”
Later, making clear that Israel’s sovereignty was being asserted by Sharon’s visit, he stated:
“We are a sovereign government, and Jerusalem is our sovereign capital. This is something we need to make clear.”
In the continuing strife since then, what has become abundantly clear is that the Palestinians do not agree and, despite heavy repression by Israel resulting in massive Palestinian deaths and injuries, the Second Palestinian Intifada has continued to the present day.
Though your observations are historically accurate the error lies in the persistent dating from 1967 when arguements are made in these matters.
Lines of division began to be drawn a good 60 years before. British and French mandates were established which spoke to the self-interests of those colonial powers in the region. Partition was established based upon the geographic location of Jewish and Arab settlements. The military actions beginning in 1948 and the subsequent conflagrations in the ’50’s and ’60’s lead to further displacement and polarization, a consequence of where the warring parties found themselves positioned when the hostilities ceased. At one point, the Israelis sat at the doorstep to Cairo. They held the Sinai as a negotiating chip in the geopolitical power politic of the region and, it could be argued, that if the military action against them which eventually put them in control of Jerusalem had never been intiated, it is possible that they would not be sitting there at the present time.
Intifada became necessary to the Palestinian cause because history had taught them that they were the only ones who were going to act in their own best interests. There certainly was no concerted effort by the Arab states to better the Palestinian position. In fact, the tactic of maintaining them as underdogs was better policy, and played more into goals of the Arab League, than any economic or social efforts on their behalf, to raise them up by their boot straps.
A peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was definitely not in the best interests of their collective long range goals. On a global scale, it certainly would not have been to the advantage of the former Soviet Union, with respect to their hoped for gains in that theatre.
One wonders what today’s world would be like if it had been accepted as fact that the Nazi machine had failed, and the Jews were just not going to disappear from this planet. There has been such a cost in the continued attempt to obliterate their presence in the region. Every time they were pushed, they pushed back only to gain a further advantage. In response to these successes over their adversaries, the ensuing event has been labeled “the occupation”.
When the Germans were defeated, the Russians drew back behind a line of defense which included all the countries west of them on which they bordered, and Churchill coined the words “Iron Curtain”. Those nations became known as “The Iron Curtain Countries”, and were referred to as such for decades.
Stalin had a place for those who dared to oppose him. It was called the Gulag Archipelago. Need I remind you of Hungary in 1956?? That is serious occupation and repression and it took an international effort, combined with a unique set of economic circumstances to bring that entire structure down.
How this on going conflict will ultimately be resolved is anyone’s guess. We now have a Palestinan splt, each region under a different control. Each with a different agenda. This is a new game, with a new set of rules.
We wait.
Joe Jones:
What I keep ramming home in my arguements is that there is a historical thread throughout this region . An ebb and flow through armed conquest, subjugation, supplantation of religious and cultural dogma. From very first naming of the region by the Romans as Palestina, to the westward movement of Islam by invasion, to the imposition of Christianity as a state religion and horrors like the Spanish Inquisition, to the Crusades and forward, there has always been ‘intifada’ of one kind or another on the part of one group or another not withstanding name or cause. The Second World War can be interpreted as ‘intifada’ against the German and Japanese aggressors. However,
Examine the historical record of the entity called Jerusalem. From a historical perspective, the ‘Palestinians’ cannot argue that they have always been there. The Hebrews can, and do. Judaism as a monotheistic social and relgious entity predates Islam by at least two thousand years. It was the basis for a nation-state. Jerusalem was its center, where two temples once stood, both destroyed by invading and occupying nations. First, Babylon, then Rome.
There is an historical record of the kingdoms of Israel and Judea as distinct and autonomous nation states embroiled in the politics of the times. Christianity had its nasence there long before Mohammed walked the earth. The region was the bane of the Roman Empire. It was a persistent hotbed of unrest and revolt, nearly impossible to control, which is why they sent Pontius Pilate there. Which is why they named it “Palestina”,(Philisitia..for the Philistine Greeks.an enemy of the Jews.)In all of history which evolved up to the present day, there has not yet existed a Palestinian state having had equal standing with that aforementioned entity even to this day.
Though Islam embraces key figures in Judaism and Christianity as prophets it swept westward and imposed upon the nations which it’s proselytizers occupied. When they occupied Jerusalem, they threw down the sympbols of other faiths and build their own on the ruins. It can also be argued that, coming out of Egypt, the Hebrews entered and took possession of territories in Canaan by force. This is taken as ‘fact’ from Biblical records. The whole tide of history in that region reflects waves of invasion and conquest, victory and defeat. The sinned against become the sinners, and so, on and so, on and so on.
The circumstances you outline in your presentation are but another episode in the cycle I have just outlined. The difference is that I recognize it, and you, and many others of your ilk, appear not to.
The fact that you do not is cause for my not having sympathy for your dilemma.
When violence is implemented as a means of change, the strongest will prevail. As the Philistines subjugated Israel, so the Macabeen Revolt was ‘intifada’ of its own kind. Babylon was conquered, Rome decayed from within and evolved into something new. The Islamic empires of the past have become dust. The colonial period in world history is nearly gone. The Middle East is still suffering under the dregs of it, as are parts of the Indian sub-continent.
Something else is stirring. The question is whether or not we as a planet will survive it.
The world intifada means “shaking off”. It can be applied to all sorts of movements, whether violent or peaceful. In the Palestinian context, it can be associated with terrorism or with peaceful forms of resistance to occupation.
If it has ‘come to mean’ something different to you or your peers, that’s fine, but that doesn’t justify imposing that definition on others and declaring the wearing of the t-shirt to be offensive.
I have lived in a number of countries and most people in the world (including the Western world) who are reasonably well educated about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and who don’t have an ideological axe to grind) understand the actual meaning of the term. You may be right that there are many people who are not reasonably well educated about the conflict who do not understand the meaning of the term, but is it wise to leave it to the ignorant to set the terms of debate?
To assuage the concerns about wearing the t-shirt in the city where 9/11 took place, I would like to say that 9/11 was carried out by Osama Bin-Laden’s al-Qa’idah network. It had nothing to do with the Palestinians or the Intifada. Bin Laden has referred to the attack as part of a global ‘jihad’, but I’ve never heard anyone associate 9/11 with any sort of Intifada. An Intifada involves a movement (peaceful or otherwise) that rises against the authorities (e.g. a government or occupying force). An international attack like 9/11 cannot be considered an Intifada by any stretch of the imagination.
The where and when of finding something offensive or not must be taken within the context of its environa and cannot be ignored. A non-resident female, such as a reporter, not covering her head, in a Moslem society where such a practice is expected, would be considered offensive.
To fully understand the reaction to those t-shirts, you needed to have been a resident of NYC for at least the past half century, at best, and borne witness to the changes wrought therein.
Beyond that, you have no hope of fully internalizing the response.