I guess all of us Arabs have established the fact that we condemn, hate, object to, are against (… etc) the Israeli atrocities in Lebanon during the past few weeks, and certainly their atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories over the past decades.
The time has come to ask ourselves what can be done to effectively put an end to this.
Many of us have donated money, which is great, many of us have held protests and rallies which usually ended in brutal encounters with our “friendly” neighborhood policemen, very good, many of us have boycotted and are boycotting US and Israeli products, good, BUT, the question remains: What can we effectively do that cannot be considered an act of violence, and that can convince our governments that they need to listen to us?
I am not sure if people simply decided to forget about it, or if some western research institute decided that it no longer works, but has anyone considered recently the effectiveness of a simple, peaceful STRIKE lately?!?
In Europe, strikes happen almost every year, especially with new legislations and tax laws being issued under the new EU governing body. Truck drivers, airline employees, train station workers, fisherman, you name it! They simply decide jointly and peacefully not to go to work for a period of time, to demonstrate their true objection of a certain law or situation. No violence involved, and the government is forced many times to reconsider.
Objectively speaking, it takes 20-30% of an entire working community in a city to stay home for a couple of weeks to drive certain sectors in the economy to a stand still position!
This would certainly create a serious commotion that is untraceable by authorities as they cannot go knocking on every door, and at the same time unbearable by the economy!
Realistically speaking, we cannot change our governments overnight, we simply need to convince them to see things the way their people see them. And a civil strike may sometimes be the best way to attempt to do this.
A country without its economy in no longer a country, and a government without a country is no longer a government!
Duri Al Ajrami
July 30, 2006 في الساعة 3:56 pm
interesting thought… although rarely do you actually see workers strike for non-work related issues, and in this case foreign affairs… but if we are to do that, we need to have very specific and realistic demands to our governments… also strikes in small doses but more frequent and regular in occurrence might be powerful… rather than two weeks, we can have it for 2 hours every monday for the next 6 months…
But what i feel would be great is a systematic effort to embarrass Israel in this world… and this time we don’t want to talk to the US government, but to the people in the US and Europe… human rights activist should move on this big time, and have experts in branding and marketing assist them in bring forward a very strong campaign against israel… maybe also have an association that companies can be part of i.e. companies that don’t support Israel… and a slogan: “think Israel, think Qana”! “What does Q stand for in Israel?” “Israel short for: terrorist state”
Seriously… How about some travel agency or an organization have an ad on many tv stations abroad promoting for people the idea of spending their next holiday in Qana… this is not the typical trip to malaysia, turkey, cyprus… this is were things get real… Qana truly Israel….