As someone who is [originally] from israel, I can assure FE that merely resorting to non-violent means of resistance will not work against the israeli mentality as it is today. Perhaps it could have worked once, before hearts got harder and minds closed up, but not any longer. I can write a long and boring post about the differences between the US and the israeli cultural models, despite some superficial similarities. maybe another day. But here's one issue to consider:
The US was founded on the concept of assimilation of people from wide backgrounds, classes and origins. In a way, so was israel, with one caveat: such assimilation was a desired outcome only for the jews. No one, even in zionism's heyday (that supposedly illustrious, glorious past before '67) remotedly considered the possibility of integrating WITH (rather than OUTSIDE) the Arab community. This would have been a heresy (as in "proposterous") in any circle - even those of the most open-minded socialist zionist founders. The reason is obvious: a key component of the jewish existence (cultural, religious, what not) is a desire to maintain its "purity' (in parenthesis here because that "purity" is highly suspect and has long ago been compromised). Furthermore, Judaism was never an evangelizing religion (except for a brief period of time in history) unlike most christian and moslem denomination who actively sought new members. Judaism never sought to assimilate others to its world views, customs or traditions, and the halacha makes it quite an ordeal to convert - by design. The opposite is also true - Judaism relied from its very beginning on exceptionalism - virtually by definition (cf the Covenant - singling jews out of all others).
What that means in this context is that the ones who consider themselves jewish in Israel (a consideration that is far from clear, at least to me) do not regard the Arabs as fundamentally integratable with themselves. And if integration is precluded, that means associations are fundamentally limited. One can be colleague and/or collegial with an Arab. But one cannot (or should not, on pain of being ostracized) marry them, date them or otherwise bring them home for dinner. What that leads to unfortunately is a hard separation which so far, only a party like hadash has dared cross (and even that under the guise of "communism", which it has of course ditched long ago). And where there's hard separation, there's no respect, and basically no real empathy (though one can still have sympathy). And where there's no respect, all resistance - whether violent or non-violent - will be regarded with the utmost suspicion, and be reacted to accordingly. Anyone who doesn't believe this should consider the recently concluded escapade in gaza and compare the callousness with which civilians were treated there (the excuse of hamas using all gaza civilians as "human shields" notwithtanding). Then think of the horrified reaction in the US to say, kent state shootings, or the murder of the civil right workers from the South. Would the reaction to such "excesses" be similarly horrifed in israel? or would they find thousand and one ways to rationalize them away - and then proceed to commit some more of the same (a la "show them who's boss")?
I once suggested that palestinians - as a new tactic could declare themselves as really Jewish (why not - many of them probably descend from the original jews anyways) who just happen to have adopted certain customs - christian or moslem or samaritan, etc. They can then demand their right to be absorbed in israel proper under the right of return laws, just as any descendent of jewish refugees could. After all, if one were to look at their customs as compared with, eg, the falashi, there may be many palestinian communities who are more similar to the jews of old (if not the more recent European version) than Israelis would care to admit. Interestingly, the reaction to this [admittedly tongue-in-cheek] exercise in gendankenspiel was far more gut-level angry from israelis (and certain jewish-americans) than from Arabs. Something I found kind of telling. Anyone who doesn't believe it can try this on their own (at your own risk, of course...).
