Dialogue on Nonviolence: Why did Jewish nonviolent resistance against Hitler not work?

"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals." - Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964 

Nonviolence Icons: Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

The above quote posted on twitter led to a response from fellow human rights defender Maria Al-Masani who asked an important question: "So why did Jewish non violent resistance against Hitler not work?"

Mohandas Gandhi did call for the Jews of Germany to carry out a campaign of nonviolent resistance to the Third Reich but it was rejected and he is still criticized for it today. The answer to Al-Masani's question is that it did not work because it was not tried.

Jewish resistance to the Nazis was violent and widespread.  David B. Kopel in the Journal of Firearms & Public Policy wrote a paper explaining that "Contrary to myth of Jewish passivity, many Jews did fight back during the Holocaust. They  shut down the extermination camp at Sobibor, rose up in the Warsaw Ghetto, and fought in the woods and swamps all over Eastern Europe. Indeed, Jews resisted at a higher rate than did any other population under Nazi rule."

No one seems to ask "Why did Jewish violent resistance against Hitler not work?" Koppel concludes with a counter-intuitive argument calling for more weapons and defending the morality of violence:

"The experience of the Holocaust shows why Jews, and all people of good will, should support the right of potential genocide victims to possess defensive arms, and refutes the notion that violence is necessarily immoral."

At the same time holocaust survivor Bruno Bettelheim described the other phenomenon that took place:

The unique feature of the extermination camps is not that the Germans exterminated millions of people—that this is possible has been accepted in our picture of man, though not for centuries has it happened on that scale, and perhaps never with such callousness. What was new, unique, terrifying, was that millions, like lemmings, marched themselves to their own death. That is what is incredible; this we must come to understand.

The idea that one could only resist the Nazis violently with guns, bombs and explosives because they were so evil led to two outcomes: 1) acts of violent resistance which the Nazis used to escalate their violence against those populations that resisted and 2) that millions who did not have a "weapon" cooperated believing they had no choice and marched to their deaths.

This tragedy is the result of an outlook that does not see the third option: nonviolent resistance as a realistic alternative to dealing with harsh totalitarian regimes. Other groups did try nonviolent resistance to Hitler and history reports that even the Nazis could be stopped in particular instances with nonviolence. In Denmark for example under Nazi occupation the Danes disobeyed under penalty of death and saved between 70% -90% of the Jewish population between 1940 and 1945 first hiding them and then smuggling approximately 7,500 Jews out of the country. 

In Germany in February and March of 1943 German (non-Jewish) wives married to Jewish men and their relatives organized mass demonstrations in Rosenstrasse Street in Berlin to protest their husband’s being sent to concentration camps and escalated the protests until their men were released and returned home which they were.

Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" analyzed the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns between 1900 to 2006. The data showed that major nonviolent campaigns achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. 

There study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.” This depends on the nonviolent opposition movement having a strategic vision and maintaining its non-violent posture even under the worse repression. However the more brutal the regime the better the results with nonviolent resistance and the worse the results with violent resistance.

The latest example of this can be seen in Syria. The uprising against Assad in 2011 was initially nonviolent and despite the brutal repression of the Syrian regime the nonviolent opposition registered great victories until elements of the Syrian military defected  and the resistance abandoned its nonviolent posture in the mistaken belief that violent resistance would achieve change faster. The end result was that rather than undermine the Assad regime it changed the entire dynamic of the struggle and the body count of the opposition skyrocketed. Assad remains in power and does not appear to be going any where soon and a Christian genocide is underway in that part of the world.

Lastly the conceit that nonviolence is more successful against "civilized regimes" isn't true. If by civilized regime one means "free societies" then one finds that these societies can handle mass protests and demonstrations without shaking the foundations of their political systems. Meanwhile dictatorships of all sorts are much more fragile and vulnerable to civic nonviolent actions that open societies can easily resist. This is why nonviolent resistance is more effective against regimes that are more brutal and despotic.  What the tyrants and dictators need are violent opponents to justify their brutal repression. This is why violent resistance is less effective paradoxically when confronting brutal regimes.

Martin Luther King Jr. and his constant commitment to nonviolence as a method of struggle

"Before the victory's won, even some will have to face physical death. But if physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children from a permanent psychological death, then nothing shall be more redemptive." - Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., We Shall Overcome, June 17, 1966

Martin Luther King Jr. Photograph (c) Bernard J. Kleina (1966)

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was born 87 years ago today on January 15, 1929. Although a day has been set aside in recognition of his impact on American history his nonviolent legacy is not fully understood but remains relevant and important for the future of human civilization. This was a man who came to national prominence leading a bus boycott in the nonviolent defense of Rosa Parks who had been arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus to a white man on December 1, 1955. Before the boycott was successfully ended, Martin Luther King Jr.'s home was bombed on January 30, 1956.

This southern baptist minister was considered so dangerous that both the FBI and the KGB targeted him in campaigns to discredit him because they could not control him and the civil rights movement under his leadership achieved concrete successes that challenged established structures of power. Reverend King advocated standing up and being aggressive but with "understanding, good will and with a sense of discipline," that was also "a demanding love" that rejected hatred. His ideas and example deserve a closer examination.

50 years ago in Hollywood, Florida on May 18, 1966 Martin Luther King Jr. discussed in great detail, at a time when other voices were counseling revolutionary violence, the nonviolent alternative in which he first described how a nonviolent movement must mobilize oppressed people for nonviolent resistance to injustice:

People are huddled in ghettos, living in the most crowded and depressing conditions. They need some outlet; some way to express their legitimate discontent. What is a better way than to provide non-violent channels through which they can do it? If this isn't provided they are going to find it through more irrational, misguided means. So the non-violent movement has a job to do, in providing the non-violent channels through which those who are caught in these conditions can express their discontent and frustration. 

Martin Luther King Jr. reaffirmed his commitment to non-violence while recognizing the consequences of such a position: 

Now let me say that I'm still convinced that non-violence is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and human dignity. And I'd like to say just a word about this philosophy since it has been the underlying philosophy of our movement. It has power because it has a way of disarming the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses, it weakens his morale. And at the same time it works on his heart and on his conscience, and he just doesn't know what to do. If he doesn't hit you, wonderful. If he hits you you develop the quiet courage of accepting blows without retaliating. If he doesn't put you in jail, that's very nice, nobody with any sense loves to go to jail. But if he puts you in jail you go in that jail and transform it from a dungeon of shame into a haven of freedom and human dignity. Even if he tries to kill you, you develop the inner conviction that there are some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they are worth dying for. If a man has not discovered some thing that he will die for, he isn't fit to live. 

Reverend King understood, as did Mohandas Gandhi, that Machiavelli was wrong, the ends do not justify the means:

 There's another good thing about non-violence: through it a person can use moral means to procure moral ends. There are still those who sincerely believe that the end justifies the means, no matter what the means happen to be. No matter how violent or how deceptive or anything else they are. Non-violence at its best would break with the system that argues that. Non-violence would say that the morality of the ends is implicit in the means, and that in the long-run of history destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends. So since we are working toward a just society in this movement, we should use just methods to get there. Since we are working for the end of a non-violent society in this movement, we must use non-violent means and methods to get there.

Martin Luther King, Jr. would've been 87 years old today but never saw 40 because an assassin shot the 39 year old Baptist minister in the head on April 4, 1968 at 6:01pm in the midst of the final campaign before his death: the support of a strike by sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. King's legacy lives on not only in the United States but inspired Cuban democrats such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas who have also been martyred in the struggle for justice, freedom and human dignity.

Fact Checking President Obama's State of the Union Address Remarks on Cuba

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - President John Adams

President Barack Obama in his 2016 State of the Union Address in the space of one paragraph on Cuba uttered so many inaccuracies that a fact check is needed. Below is what he said tonight broken down sentence by sentence.

Sentence One: "Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America."

FACT: The United States did not isolate Cuba for fifty years and three administrations (Carter, Clinton and Obama) have engaged with the dictatorship and sought to normalize relations prolonging the life of the Castro regime.

First Time
The Carter Administration was the first to lift the travel ban and hold high-level negotiations with the Cuban dictatorship, and both sides opened Interest Sections in their respective capitals between 1977 and 1981. Then from 1981 to 1982, the Castro regime executed approximately 80 prisoners, which was a marked escalation when compared to 1976. Furthermore, during the Carter presidency, Fidel Castro took steps that resulted in the violent deaths of US citizens.  

Outcome
During the Mariel crisis of 1980, when over 125,000 Cubans sought to flee the island, the Cuban dictator sought to save face by selectively releasing approximately 12,000 violent criminals or individuals who were mentally ill into the exodus. This first attempt at normalizing relations saw a worsening human rights situation and migration crisis.

Second Time
The Clinton Administration in 1994 initiated regular contacts between the U.S. and Cuban military that included joint military exercises at the Guantanamo Naval base. Despite this improvement of relations, the 1990s saw some brutal massacres of Cubans that are rightly remembered such as the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre and the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down. The shoot down involved two planes blown to bits over international airspace by Cuban MiGs killing three American citizens and a Cuban resident who were engaged in the search and rescue of Cuban rafters.   Bill Clinton on September 6, 2000 was the first sitting president to shake hands with Fidel Castro. One month later he signed the  Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TEFRA) that opened trade between the Castro regime and U.S. companies. Opposition in congress led to that trade not being subsidized by taxpayers by not providing government backed credits ensuring business would be cash and carry.
 
Outcome
The worsening human rights situation was a contributing factor in the August 1994 rafter crisis in which 35,000 Cubans fled the country. Experts have identified that this was a migration crisis engineered by the Castro regime. The Cuban dictatorship did this because it successfully reasoned that it could coerce the Clinton Administration to the negotiating table to obtain concessions, which indeed it did, and prolonged the life of the dictatorship for another twenty years.  Prior to Bill Clinton, Cubans fleeing the Castro regime were received into the United States. It was on his watch, beginning in 1995, that Cuban refugees were declared migrants and began to be seized on the high seas and deported to communist Cuba with the infamous wet foot/ dry foot policy.

Third Time
The Obama Administration beginning in 2009 loosened sanctions on the Castro regime. On his watch concluding on December 17, 2014 the Obama administration freed all five members of the WASP spy network, including Gerardo Hernandez, who was serving two life sentences, one of them for conspiracy to murder four members of Brothers to the Rescue murdered during the previous attempt at normalizing relations during the Clinton Administration. The Obama administration de-linked the pursuit of full diplomatic relations from the rise in human rights violations in Cuba and in the region by Cuban state security.  The White House has doubled down in concessions ignoring the Castro regime's continuing sponsorship of terrorism and smuggling of weapons to sanctioned countries in order to take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Outcome 
Still unfolding but will be addressed in response to the additional false claims made by President Obama that his policy is succeeding in promoting democracy.

Sentence Two: "That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people."

FACT: The lives of the Cuban people has worsened during the Obama administration with a worsening economic situation; the murder of democratic opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Laura Inés Pollán and a mass exodus of Cubans. Since December 17, 2014 the White House politicized the report on human trafficking to give the Castro regime a pass; made access to the U.S. embassy much more difficult for Cuban dissidents and independent journalists; did not invite dissidents to the opening of the embassy; and the State Department threatened the daughter of a murdered dissident who was properly accredited as a member of the press from asking questions during a press conference there with the Cuban Foreign Minister. Commerce between Cuba and the United States has steadily declined during the Obama administration. In 2008 the last full year of the George W. Bush administration the United States sold $711.5 million in sales to Cuba vs 175.4 million in the first 11 months of 2015 under the Obama Administration according to the United State Census Bureau.

Sentences Three: "You want to consolidate our leadership and credibility in the hemisphere?  

FACT: The Obama State Department's politicization of the human trafficking report that watered down critiques of China, Cuba and Malaysia is costing the United States credibility on this issue leading to a backlash.  Gerardo Hernandez, convicted of conspiracy to murder Americans on orders of the Castro brothers, has announced that he is ready for his “next order” from the Castro regime after returning home to a heroes welcome and agents of the dictatorship are traveling the world declaring victory. Inviting the Cuban dictatorship to the Summit of the Americas and the violence perpetrated by Cuban state security agents combined with President Obama's embrace of Raul Castro there while at the same time ignoring violence visited on U.S. citizens damaged U.S. credibility. American disengagement from Latin America under the Obama administration has also led to a loss of leadership.

Sentence Four: "Recognize that the Cold War is over."  

FACT: The Castro regime never recognized that the "Cold War is over" and following the collapse of the Soviet bloc met in Sao Paolo, Brazil in 1990 for the totalitarian left to regroup and carry on the objectives hostile to the interest of the United States. Recent examples of this continuing "cold war" mentality can be found in the tons of weapons smuggled by Cuba under bags of sugar on a freighter, detected and intercepted in July 2013 by Panamanian officials, while on its way to North Korea in violation of international sanctions. Among the weapons found were Cuban MiGs, rockets and ballistic missile technology. In February of 2015 a shipment originating in China with final destination in Cuba was also smuggling tons of weapons and ammunition when discovered in Colombia. In the past few days it has been learned that a U.S. Hellfire missile that was supposed to be returned to the United States from Europe ended up in Cuba in 2014. The emerging information in the media is pointing to a possible espionage coup by the Cuban intelligence services. The Cuban government, despite requests by the Obama administration, has refused to return it. Ironically during the Cold War the United States did return Cuban MiGs piloted by defecting fighter pilots from Cuba.

Sentence Five: "Lift the embargo."

FACT: The Clinton administration opened up cash and carry trade with Cuba in 2000. Beginning in 2009 the Obama administration began to unilaterally further loosen and weaken economic sanctions on Cuba. The main objective of the Obama administration, the Chamber of Commerce, agribusiness and the Castro regime is to provide credits to the dictatorship. This means that if the Castro regime is granted credits but defaults in paying American creditors, the cost will be passed on to American taxpayers. 

Remembering Bowie and the song that contributed to bringing down the Berlin Wall

Requiescat in pace David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), a.k.a David Bowie  

David Bowie at the Berlin Wall in 1987 (Getty Images)

Still shocked by the passing of this musical icon whose music was first a part of the sound track of my adolescence and continued on through to the present. At the same time impressed by his example in preserving his privacy while at the same time leaving a final piece of art reflecting on the mortal challenge that he faced in the end.

However it was the message sent by the German Foreign Office that brought back for me the power of one of my favorite Bowie songs: "'Heroes'".  Co-written by David Bowie with Brian Eno in Berlin in 1977 the song delivers a powerful message precisely because it is not a political song but one about two lovers by the Berlin Wall.

"I, I can remember
Standing, by the wall 
And the guns, shot above our heads
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, forever and ever
Then we could be heroes, just for one day"

Ten years later Bowie's performance of "'Heroes'" on June 6, 1987 at the German Reichstag in West Berlin was considered by some to be a catalyst to the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall two years later. In 2002 he returned to the German capital then unified and sang the song again.

Crackdown in Cuba as international media there engage in self censorship and regime propaganda

Repression in Cuba and the under reporting by the international press.

Image loaded by Cuban Activist Angel Moya with text "They're going to arrest us"

A crackdown is underway on democratic opposition activists in Cuba, but you won't learn about it from the various news bureaus on the island. Today over twitter Cuban dissident leader Angel Moya Acosta reported more than 200 hundred dissidents arrested in Oriente-Camaguey, including opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia. Among Moya's last tweets on Sunday afternoon he reported that 48 Ladies in White were marching through 5th Avenue in Havana and at 1:49pm that they were going to be arrested. 

Oscar Elias Biscet along with 24 other activists were arrested yesterday to prevent them peacefully associating. Lady in White Maria Cristina Labrada was arrested following a search of her home by state security agents. Others are being hunted by state security and the national revolutionary police.  On Friday state security bused in school children to take part in an act of repudiation against the Ladies in White. Activists in the island photographed and video recorded the proceedings but international journalists, self censored and did not report it.

Children brought in by state security for act of repudiation

The international press in Cuba understand that if they report the news objectively in the island the Castro dictatorship will not grant them interviews and may expel them from the country or not renew their accreditation. 

Unfortunately, some in the press have gone beyond omission to publishing articles that are essentially Castro regime propaganda. Two high profile news organizations that have been engaged in this practice, the first since 1959 and the second more recently are The New York Times and the Associated Press. Sadly this is not a new practice or confined to Cuba.

It is important to criticize those in the press who go along with regime lies and profit from the deception while recalling how this is a profound failure of their ethical and professional duties as journalists. However at the same time one must praise the courageous few that published the truth and paid the ultimate price for practicing good journalism.

Courageous Welsh journalist broke story on Russian famine

Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist broke the story on the Ukranian famine on March 29, 1933 despite official denials. Walter Duranty of The New York Times wrote an article a day later rebutting Jones's claims that was published in the paper of record on March 31, 1933. In the end seven million starved to death in a communist regime manufactured famine in the Ukraine between 1931 and 1933. He was banned from returning to Russia by the Soviet regime. Two years after publishing this story he was murdered in Inner Mongolia on the eve of his 30th birthday by Chinese bandits in what his family believes was a Moscow plot to punish him.

In the case of Cuba, The New York Times actively promoted Fidel Castro over other opposition figures in the struggle against Cuban dictator Batista with the reporting of Herbert Matthews. Once Fidel Castro was in power in January of 1959 and consolidating his communist regime over the first few months of his dictatorship the New York Times continued to defend the young dictator. In July of 1959 Matthews reported: "[t]his is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the term. Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist."

Over a half century later and the totalitarian dictatorship in Cuba has an international press corps that carries on the shameful tradition of Walter Duranty and Herbert Matthews. The New York Times continues with coverage and editorial page that goes as far as providing advice to the dictatorship on how to build coalitions with U.S. business to change Cuba policy in Washington. 

However the Associated Press has gone further in reporting that: 1) Leaves out critical facts to advance lifting sanctions and providing credits to the dictatorship. 2) Describing common sense precautions by foreign based NGOs as a "clandestine operation" in language used by the regime while also engaging in the same practices themselves. 3) Consistently providing coverage that portrays the democratic opposition in a negative light repeating the Cuban dictatorship's talking points with the most recent example being on January 8, 2015. 4) Not providing context of the totalitarian nature of the regime and the "demonstrators" bussed in by the political police to attack pro-democracy activists on International Human Rights day. 

Andrea Rodríguez, the correspondent of the Associated Press in Cuba, is a worse case example of all the above practices and was challenged by the late Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas after one of her biased filled articles. On September 20, 2011 the Cuban human rights defender released the video he had made of his interview with Andrea Rodriguez because he believed that what he had told her was not fairly reflected in the article she had written. He provided a transcript along with the video of the interview and in it challenged the false narrative peddled by The New York Times and the Associated Press stating:

"Where in the world does a woman dressed in white walking down the street constitute a provocation? Only in a fascist-communist regime like this. Therefore the victim gets criticized because no one dares to criticize the executioner.

There is a real “moral inversion,” in what the foreign media, intellectual circles, ecclesiastical circles, diplomats and politicians are doing against the people of Cuba and against the dissident right now. They judge the persecuted, the poor, those who are silenced, but they do not dare to judge the government. And what the government needs to be told is what we say in “the People’s Path”. Hold free elections; change the law so Cubans can express themselves, so they can choose. But what they want is to keep their privileges while they say that everything has been agreed upon. This joke will go very wrong because the people of Cuba are not stupid, and the majority are still poor and distressed.

But the worst is that the foreign media, intellectual circles, ecclesiastical circles, and entire states are accompanying the Cuban government in setting up this fraud, this joke that will bring only confrontation and pain to Cubans, and that is keeping the majority of the Cuban people silent and gagged while this virtual scenario for change is being created.

Sadly, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was killed on July 22, 2012 and all the evidence points to an extrajudicial execution carried out by the Castro regime's security services. However on July 22, 2012, despite the misgivings of Oswaldo's family, the AP correspondent in Havana over twitter echoed the official position of the Castro regime. The truth of what happened is coming out and the regime's false narrative is crumbling, no thanks to the Associated Press or The New York Times.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was murdered but his legacy of speaking truth to power in the defense of human rights and freedom lives on as do his words and the Christian Liberation Movement that he founded.