On November 22-28, Adbusters and its network of activists and culture jammers (now nearly 87,000 strong) are organizing a “Carnivalesque Rebellion,” with the goal of “shutting down consumer capitalism for a week.”

Think of it as an adventure, as therapy, as Buy Nothing Day times a hundred … think of it as the World Cup of global activism – a week of postering and pranks, of talking back at your profs and speaking truth to power. Some of us will poster our schools and neighborhoods and just break our daily routines for a week. Others will chant, spark mayhem in big box stores and provoke mass cognitive dissonance. Others still will engage in the most visceral kind of civil disobedience.

One creative action that Adbusters cites as an inspiration is this video (above) of The Love Police stirring things up in the UK.

The first action that the magazine has launched is a worldwide boycott of Starbucks, which should be accompanied by a shift to local indie coffee shops. In their most recent tactical briefing, they announced a similar boycott of Nike.

The next issue of the print magazine will be a “theoretical and practice handbook for the November rebellion,” and they are currently asking that you send along your best ideas for coordinated acts of civil disobedience to memewarriors@adbusters.org, which they’ll share in future briefings.

Earlier this month, over at Religion Dispatches, Kim Bobo, the executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice – a great organization that I visited with earlier this summer – had a nice article about why and how the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) have stepped up as leaders in the campaign against SB 1070 in Arizona. She boils down seven lessons that the faith community can learn from the Unitarian experience about how to mobilize people around immigration reform or any other social justice issue:

1) Engage leadership.

The UUA president made a personal commitment on the issue. He offered to go to Arizona. He issued an invitation to others. He agreed to get arrested. Denominational leaders are often overwhelmed with their responsibilities and commitments. And yet, their personal involvement in economic and social justice issues, on the ground, particularly in the midst of tough situations, can support and embolden local leadership and draw others into the work. Leading through action is always stronger than through words.

Equally important was the leadership of the local pastors in Phoenix, especially the terrific work of Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray and of the UUA’s moderator, Gini Courter, who came to Phoenix with members of the UUA Board.

2) Link to principles and history.

The UUs consistently linked the struggle in Arizona to their longstanding commitment to civil rights and their core principles. The UUs also linked the campaign to the denomination’s anti-racism initiative.

3) Assign staff and resources for planning.

The UU committed money and staff to the planning and preparation in Arizona. Presumably, the UUs are as cash-strapped as other denominations, and yet they committed resources to action and witness. As a result of the denomination’s commitment, contributions flowed to help with bail, legal defense, and additional outreach work.

Read the rest of this article »

• Singing choruses of “we shall not be moved” while scattering sunflower seeds, 14 activists were arrested in Kansas City on Monday after blocking an earth moving vehicle on the site of a proposed nuclear weapons manufacturing facility.

• Last Friday, around 35 Palestinians demonstrated against Hallamish settlement with around 15 Israeli and international peace activists in the village of An Nabi Salih.

• German workers on Tuesday protested against what their union says are plans by the country’s central bank to have euro banknotes printed by foreign companies.

• Some Pakistani flood victims blocked highways to demand government help on Tuesday.

• Three television channels in Ukraine went on strike on Saturday in protest of steadily increasing pressure on media in Ukraine, with hundreds of other journalists declaring readiness to join the action.

• Students from various schools and universities in the Philippines traded the four corners of their classrooms for the streets last Friday to join the National Youth Walkout and appeal for more government support for the education sector.

• On Monday, hundreds of protesters started a sit-in outside the legislature, fueled by mounting anger over the government’s cross-strait policies and the expected passage of a controversial trade agreement with China later this week.

• The 19-day long protest in Bolivia’s Potosi province was finally brought to an end with the protesters lifting the blockade of the airport and major roads after a deal was struck with the government.

• The entire team of Sri Lanka’s government wildlife vets has gone on strike amid mounting controversy over an elephant conservation plan that has led to increased clashes between the animals and villagers.

The history of nonviolent social change is filled with injunctions to refuse compliance with unjust laws and policies. As Gandhi once famously said, “non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” Reflecting on the Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr. observed that “what we were really doing was withdrawing our cooperation from an evil system. … We were simply saying to the white community: We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system. From that moment on I conceived of our movement as an act of massive non-cooperation.” In Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau mapped out the terrain in ways that would later influence both Gandhi and King:

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? … It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. … Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

These teachings were alive and well during the demonstrations in Arizona against SB 1070, the state’s anti-immigrant law that was partially struck down by a federal judge two days before it took effect. In recognition of the larger issues raised by the bill, as well as the realization that open persecution of “illegals” would remain official state policy going forward, hundreds of people took to the streets on July 29th under the banner of the movement’s mantra, “We Will Not Comply.” Almost 100 people were arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience during these protests, and a clear message of the refusal to cooperate with injustice was communicated to both local officials and an international audience alike.

While many of the events of that day have been well-reported, the opening salvo that set the tone of noncompliance and civil resistance seemed to slip by almost without notice. It was, however, a poignant and powerful action that reflected the best qualities of the nonviolence paradigm. Here is my recollection of what transpired that night as SB 1070 was to take effect: Read the rest of this article »

• Public sector workers went on strike across South Africa Tuesday, closing schools and wreaking havoc on a wide array of public services. As many as 1.3 million people were expected to walk off their jobs. Between 10,000 and 100,000 workers also demonstrated Tuesday across five provinces.

• Dozens of construction workers building a subway in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, have vowed to begin a hunger strike today to demand three months of unpaid wages.

• On Monday, a few dozen Embassy Suites workers who claim they are routinely denied breaks walked off the job in Irvine, California.

• Anti-government protesters in Bolivia tightened their siege of Potosi on Saturday, launching a hunger strike and cutting rail links to Chile, as tourists began negotiating their way out of the mining city, 10 days into the blockade.

• Nine protesters were arrested for blocking the main gate to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor on Monday. They were among members and supporters of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, which holds an annual vigil at the base on the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

• More than 30,000 truck drivers in the Dominican Republic went on a 24-hour strike yesterday to protest a government proposal to raise the fuel tax.

• Workers at the Post-Gazette walked out at Noon on Monday to protest pending staff cuts the paper says are needed to stay afloat.

• In India, Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev staged a sit-in protest at Haridwar with a demand to halt the hydropower projects across River Ganga and also to protect the river from further exploitation and pollution. Several Hindu monks also accompanied Baba Ramdev in this crusade.

• A three-day strike launched on Monday by customs workers in Ivory Coast over benefits that have been withheld is blocking exports of cocoa from the world’s top grower of the beans.

• This past Friday, in Bryant Park  in New York, Medicare celebrated it’s 45th birthday with a flash mob of over one hundred singing and dancing protesters that warned President Obama’s newly created Deficit Commission to keep their hands off Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

• South African government ministers met with public sector workers’ unions to try to end an open-ended wage strike by 210,000 teachers, nurses and other state employees that began last Thursday and prevent it from spreading.

• Greek truck drivers’ associations say they will continue a protest that has halted fuel supplies across the country and is hurting tourism, despite an emergency order by the government to force them back to work.

• Hundreds of hotel and restaurant employees and supporters were arrested around the US Thursday in coordinated civil disobedience against the Hyatt Corporation. Fifteen cities saw protests.

• A group of families of political prisoners gathered in front of the office of the General Prosecutor to protest the lack of information about the situation of their loved ones, especially those political prisoners who went on hunger strike in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison last week. Meanwhile, it was reported yesterday that anti-riot units and Special Forces barged into the facility  after learning of prisoners’ mass hunger strike.

• More than 200 Afghans participated in a rally in the capital Kabul on Sunday to protest the alleged NATO killing of 52 civilians on July 23, in the Sangin district of Helmand province.

• Some 800 dockers and activists staged a rally in Indonesia on Saturday to demand that a major port operator honor a negotiated agreement.

Despite a judge’s ruling to delay enforcement of key provisions in Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law hours before it was scheduled to take effect, protesters descended on Phoenix yesterday. Hundreds blocked a street near City Hall and were confronted by officers in riot gear, while others beat on the metal door of the county jail. More than 50 protesters were arrested by the end of the day.

Hard line Arizona officials were no less deterred by the ruling as well. Gov. Jan Brewer and State Senator Russell Pearce both called it a “bump” in the road, while Sheriff Joe Arpaio went ahead with one of his controversial crime raids targeting illegal immigrants. But in a moment that should only bolster the resolve of those determined to fight this law nonviolently, Arpaio also told the Associated Press that he is “not going to put up with any civil disobedience.”

As if comparisons to the Civil Rights Movement weren’t already strong enough, such a statement practically summons the ghost of Alabama’s infamous law enforcer Bull Connor, whose aggressive tactics against peaceful demonstrators backfired when broadcast on national television.

But rather than wonder if Arpaio is so blinded by power that he would make this same mistake, protesters should be asking themselves if they are up to the challenge of remaining nonviolent if he does?

So far they have shown remarkable determination.

It’s out: an enormous trove of documents about the war in Afghanistan yesterday appeared on Wikileaks (whose servers currently seem to be overwhelmed by the traffic) together with comprehensive reports by The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the Guardian. The leak represents no less than a historic act of civil disobedience; consisting of 92,201 US military internal records, this is the largest leak of classified material in history. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, may be a criminal in the eyes of the US government, which has roundly condemned his work even while begging for his help to plug up his sources (this administration has been harsher with informants than its predecessor). A 22-year-old American intelligence analyst in Iraq named Bradley Manning has already been arrested for, under the online handle Bradass87, funneling the documents to where Wikileaks could arrange to publicize them. He wrote in an online chat of the trove, “it[']s beautiful and horrifying … It’s public data, it belongs in the public domain.”

To Assange and Manning, and to many others, keeping records like this classified is far worse a crime than releasing them. Explore the documents, particularly at those three outlets above which have had access to them for several weeks, and see the dark impression they convey about what has really been going on in Afghanistan. The Guardian summarizes:

• coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents

• Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

• a secret “black” unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial.

• the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.

• the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.

• the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.

“The war logs” inevitably bring to mind Daniel Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, which helped turn the tide of public opinion against the Vietnam War. What impact will this leak, which is considerably larger, have?

The documents all date from before December 2009, when the new “surge” was launched, so they don’t tell us anything about its progress. But they do suggest the true challenges that it faces, with a clarity which the public didn’t have access to when it put its continued support behind Obama’s war last year. If we had known then what we know now, would Congress have allowed itself to fund the surge? And, if things are getting so much worse, why does the administration continue to insist on escalating?

Some who have opposed the war since its beginning back in 2001 may feel the temptation to be gratified that Afghanistan has become so much the quagmire that we predicted. That apologists for the war continually use military successes, such as they are, to retroactively justify military force only encourages the war’s critics to claim failures as a kind of vindication—which in turn makes the critics vulnerable to accusations of siding with the so-called enemy. No—what these documents portray is nothing other than a disaster, one to be regretted by all and forcing all to come to grips with what we are actually dealing with: a dreadful war and a government unwilling to admit it.

What the trove reveals, also, is how information resistance may be a form of resistance par excellence today. Bringing the truth to light like this, on such a massive scale and in such a concerted fashion, lends new meaning to Gandhi’s call for “truth force.”

• About 30 people, including a priest, protesting working conditions in front of the Hyatt Regency in downtown Chicago were arrested by police Thursday in a staged act of civil disobedience.

• French air travel has suffered significantly since Tuesday morning when some air traffic controllers went on strike to protest the reorganization of European skyways.

• In Las Vegas, eight activists protesting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s inaction on gay rights legislation were arrested for blocking traffic at one of the Strip’s busiest intersections today.

• On Tuesday, about 20 undocumented youths held sit-ins and risked arrest at various congressional offices in Washington D.C., including California Senator Dianne Feinstein, to urge the passage of the DREAM Act.

• Yesterday morning, a group of Barriere Lake Algonquins set up a peaceful blockade on the access road leading to their reserve, about 300 km north of Ottawa. The defensive action was aimed at stopping a government-appointed electoral officer from holding a nomination meeting on the reserve for the government’s highly-controversial imposed Band Council Election.

• The Teamsters Union, the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, Clean New York, WEACT for Environmental Justice, concerned parents, students and consumer activists protested toxic PVC plastic used in toys at the Toys R Us flagship store in Times Square yesterday.

• Rainforest Action Network activists disrupted Massey CEO Don Blankenship’s talk at the National Press Club yesterday sending by holding up two large banners that said:“Massey coal – not Clean, Safe or Forever.” They were eventually escorted out by security.

Since the recent passage of Arizona Senate Bill 1070, scheduled to go into effect on July 29, those of us working for social justice in the United States have a rare opportunity to register a particularly effective form of protest.  The inherently unjust nature of this legislation presents conscientious individuals with a real chance to go back to what many might say civil disobedience was originally intended to do: promote the repeal of an unjust law by openly and nonviolently breaking the law itself.

This is what has come to be known today as direct civil disobedience.  It is distinguished from indirect civil disobedience, where the law being broken is not itself the target of the protest.  Not many would argue, for instance, that a law prohibiting people from sitting in the middle of the street is unjust.  When used to draw attention to an issue of social importance, however, violating this law with a willingness to accept the consequences may be an effective tool.  Although the merit of such tactics can vary depending on any number of factors, to score a direct protest by violating an unjust law is very likely to be viewed as more legitimate.

The distinction is useful because in recent years we in the United States haven’t had to worry much about severely repressive, overtly dictatorial laws.  Not so very long ago, in certain parts of the country, violating an unjust law was as simple as ordering food at a lunch counter, sitting near the front on a city bus, or going swimming at a public beach.  More common in the US today we find people courting arrest by blocking entrances to buildings, occupying government offices, or chaining themselves to fences, seeking to address an injustice more or less unrelated to the law actually being transgressed.  Since these injustices don’t always allow for direct, public defiance, we try to create that tenuous link between issue and protest method as best we can.  But while indirect civil disobedience always beats inaction, from a strategic standpoint, if the opportunity is there, direct beats indirect every time.  And with this new Arizona law, the opportunity is definitely there.

Indeed, not since the end of the draft in 1973 has there been a law in the United States that seems to render itself so well to direct civil disobedience.  Arizona SB 1070 requires non-citizens to keep registration documents on them at all times, and forces police officers to inquire about immigration status during any kind of arrest or routine stop if they encounter “reasonable suspicion” that the person might be in the country illegally.  In addition, the new law gives police leeway to arrest someone solely on the basis of there being probable cause that they may be undocumented, at which point they’re to be turned over directly to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This basically boils down to the police in Arizona having new license to stop anyone looking remotely Hispanic – for no other reason than that they look remotely Hispanic – demand papers from them, and take them into custody if satisfactory documents are not immediately produced.  Predictably this has led some people, such as Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger Mahony, to draw parallels to the lives of those in Europe forced to live under the Nazi régime.  Additionally – and this concerns all of us – the new Arizona law makes it a crime to “transport or move”, or “conceal, harbor or shield” undocumented immigrants, reminding me more of something out of the Fugitive Slave Acts from this country’s dark past.  Against such blatantly unjust, potentially far-reaching legislation, at least we’re armed with a chance for everyone to participate in its direct disobedience, instead of just abandoning our undocumented brothers and sisters to their fate.

In a relatively short amount of time, Martin Luther King, Jr. became somewhat of an expert on unjust laws.  In a speech he delivered before the Fellowship of the Concerned in 1961, King defined an unjust law as “a code that the majority inflicts upon the minority, which that minority had no part in enacting or creating, because that minority had no right to vote in many instances.”  Although close to 50 years old, this definition holds up in modern-day Arizona quite well.  The undocumented minority, having virtually no recourse to its voice being heard, is at the mercy of the majority – in this case that of the Arizona Senate – 60 percent Republican, and 100 percent white.

Read the rest of this article »

• In North Carolina, a thousand marchers from the state NAACP, local churches, student groups and civil rights organizations took to downtown Raleigh streets on Tuesday morning, rallying at the State Capitol to protest the dismantling of a Wake school diversity policy they believe will lead to de facto resegregation. Afterwards, nineteen protesters, including the leader of the North Carolina NAACP, were arrested at Wake County school headquarters in an act of civil disobedience.

• On Saturday, an estimated 2,000 farmers in Taiwan began their protest against government expropriation of their land and spent the night on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office Building. They turned part of the wide road into a field by rolling out patches covered with plants while also paying their respects to farming deities.

• About 150 Jordanian activists demonstrated before the Egyptian embassy in Amman on Tuesday to protest Cairo’s refusal to allow a humanitarian convoy to reach the besieged Gaza Strip.

• On Monday, hundreds of teachers, councilors and pupils have protested over the axing of England’s school rebuilding programme. Led by trade unions, the Save Our Schools lobby urged ministers to reconsider the move which led to the halting of 735 school projects.

• Former employees of the closed Amonsito factory in Cairo have ended their sit-in, following Wednesday’s tentative agreement for overdue early retirement payment to the workers from Banque Misr, the factory’s creditor.

• In Greece, 170 migrants detained in the Samos detention camp started a collective hunger strike in an effort to stop their deportation.

• Starting last Wednesday, thousands of people in eastern China protested for at least five days against local authorities which they accuse of withholding land compensation.

• In Chile, more than 20 Mapuche political prisoners began a hunger strike Monday. The prisoners, jailed in Concepción and Temuco, took note of the recent prisoner releases in Cuba and began the strike in hope that President Sebastián Piñera would take notice.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes this week about the growing trend toward self-conscious nonviolent resistance among Palestinians against Israeli occupation. But he is also quick to point out its shortcomings, as in his account of one action in Bilin:

Most of the marchers were Palestinians, but some were also Israeli Jews and foreigners who support the Palestinian cause. They chanted slogans and waved placards as photographers snapped photos. At first the mood was festive and peaceful, and you could glimpse the potential of this approach.

But then a group of Palestinian youths began to throw rocks at Israeli troops. That’s the biggest challenge: many Palestinians define “nonviolence” to include stone-throwing.

Kristof, often sensitive to matters of gender, points out that women may be leading the charge toward a truly nonviolent resistance in Palestine:

But imagine if Palestinians stopped the rock-throwing and put female pacifists in the lead. What if 1,000 women sat down peacefully on a road to block access to an illegal Jewish settlement built on Palestinian farmland? What if the women allowed themselves to be tear-gassed, beaten and arrested without a single rock being thrown? Those images would be on televisions around the world — particularly if hundreds more women marched in to replace those hauled away.

He tells of one case in which a women’s movement was successful:

Most Palestinian demonstrations are overwhelmingly male, but in Budrus women played a central role. They were led by Mr. Morrar’s quite amazing daughter, Iltezam Morrar. Then 15, she once blocked an Israeli bulldozer by diving in front of it (the bulldozer retreated, and she was unhurt).

Israeli security forces knew how to deal with bombers but were flummoxed by peaceful Palestinian women. Even when beaten and fired on with rubber bullets, the women persevered. Finally, Israel gave up. It rerouted the security fence to bypass nearly all of Budrus.

While it may be that women will play a pivotal role in future nonviolent action in Palestine, men can do it too. If Palestinians, truly want to make progress—and galvanize international opinion—against Israeli power, they should follow the lead of these women and men calling for unyielding, courageous, nonviolent resistance. If they want to continue making matters worse, they can keep throwing rocks and launching rockets.

• Police arrested 37 people for entering a Tennessee nuclear weapons plant on Monday during a demonstration marking the anniversary of the landmark Plowshares protest in 1980 at a missile plant in Pennsylvania, where Dan and Phil Berrigan were able to get inside the General Electric facility, damage a missile nose cone and pour blood on various documents. Four of the original “Plowshares Eight,” each of whom served time in jails or prisons for their actions participated in the protest: John Schuchardt, Molly Rush, Anne Montgomery and Carl Kabat – as well as Liz McAlister, Phil Berrigan’s widow.

• Merchants in Tehran’s main bazaar gathered in protest on Tuesday to protest a government plan to dramatically increase taxes on their businesses. With threats of a general strike looming, authorities were forced to back down.

• Hundreds of people staged a demonstration in Rome on Wednesday to demand help from the government for the reconstruction of places damaged by the April 2009 quake.

• About 1,000 ex-militants in Nigeria, who last year laid down their arms under a government amnesty, drove a convoy of buses towards the Nigerian capital yesterday and blocked the highway for several hours to protest their exclusion from the on-going post-amnesty retraining program.

• Religious and immigrant rights activists gathered outside the White House yesterday to urge the Obama administration to approach immigration reform and voice support for the Justice Department’s recent challenge of Arizona’s hardline immigration policy.

• Four Earth First! protesters were arrested today after they temporarily stopped a semi-truck carrying a 140-foot wind turbine blade to Kibby Mountain in Maine. The protesters oppose alternative energy projects that profit corporations at the expense of sensitive ecosystems.

• The wife of a quadriplegic in Britain has gone on hunger strike to protest the lack of National Health Service care for her husband. She has vowed to starve to death to win the support he needs.

• Thousands of Italian farmers took part in a demonstration on the Austrian border to protest the importation of food with Italian-sounding branding that they feel harms Italy’s reputation for quality food.

Twenty-four Witness Against Torture activists were acquitted of an Unlawful Assembly charge in D.C. Superior Court on Tuesday, June 16th.   Back in January, while twenty-eight jumpsuit-clad activists occupied the steps of the Capitol building, fourteen others broke off from a tour inside the Rotunda and performed a memorial service for three Guantánamo deaths.

Judge Canan’s courtroom was crammed with pro-se co-defendants, supporters, and legal advisors. Bill Quigley, attorney advisor and Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, poignantly orated the motion to argue the activists’ defense of international law and necessity.  Drawing on stories of mistreatment and continued detention of over one hundred men in Guantánamo, Quigley argued that no further legal recourse is available to address the injustice of U.S. policies of torture.

While Judge Canan denied the defense request, he acquitted the twenty-four outright by way of a technicality – the government wasn’t able to argue their breaching of the peace.

The anti-torture activists cheered.

However, a year and a half after Obama’s issued promise to close the detention facility, 181 men still languish there, every day fading further away from their families and lives on the outside.  Many are facing their eighth year of illegal detention.  Many more, an estimated seven hundred men, are being held by the U.S. at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.  And now, after the action, the subsequent arrest, thirty-plus hours in a D.C. Central holding cell, and almost five months of trial preparation, I can’t help but wonder what other means we have to hold the Obama Administration accountable for this immoral disaster.

Certainly we can’t stop thinking of creative, controversial strategies to confront the decision-makers.  We can’t give up on efforts to continue to educate.  Human rights groups and solidarity networks throughout the world maintain their organizing to bring awareness to these crimes.  But beyond that, I’m at a loss as to the means necessary to ensure our Muslim brothers and sisters, despite their actions, will not be rendered, tortured, and held indefinitely in my name.

Still, we must revel in our small victories. “With his decision”, said Quigley following the acquittal, “the judge validated the effort of the demonstrators to condemn the ongoing crime of indefinite detention at Guantánamo.”  Surely, this struggle continues.

The New York Times reports:

Under intense international pressure after its commandos killed nine activists aboard an aid flotilla trying to breach its blockade of Gaza last month, Israel on Thursday announced what it called “adjustments” in its policy, promising to ease the entry of civilian goods by land while maintaining its naval blockade.

The announcement, which offered few details, said that the security cabinet had decided to “liberalize the system by which civilian goods enter Gaza” and to expand the inflow of construction materials for civilian projects that are under international supervision.

Israel has still barely budged on the Gaza blockade since the Freedom Flotilla incident, but they are at least beginning to recognize that their legitimacy among the international community in the future depends not on accusing activists of terrorism but on changing their profoundly repressive policies toward Palestinians. To the extent that the actions of the activists have cast light not on themselves and on the Mavi Marmara disaster but on the conditions that are undermining the prospects of peace, they are successful. The more they eschew violent resistance in the future, the more powerful their message will be.