Judith Levy: If This Is Nonviolence, You're An Objective Reporter

Oh, for heaven's sake.

The Economist is the latest stalwart of the quality press to swoon over the events of Naqba Day. The protesters were downright Gandhi-esque, apparently, in their commitment to peaceful, non-violent, civil disobedience. The paper issues the challenge:

Will we even bother to acknowledge that the Palestinians are protesting non-violently? Or will we soldier on with the same empty decades-old rhetoric, now drained of any truth or meaning, because it protects established relationships of power? What will it take to make Americans recognise that the real Martin Luther King-style non-violent Palestinian protestors have arrived, and that Israeli soldiers are shooting them with real bullets?

Here are some photographs from daisy-tossing, non-violent Naqba Day. 

1. The aftermath of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in which an Israeli Arab plowed his truck into vehicles and pedestrians, killing one and injuring 17, while shouting "Allahu Akbar" and "Death to the Jews":

2. A Palestinian throws a fire bomb towards Israeli soldiers following Friday prayer in Arab East Jerusalem:

3. Protesters surge over the Syrian-Israeli border fence near Majd al-Shams in a mass infiltration attempt:

4. A Palestinian throws a firecracker towards Israeli border police in the Shufat refugee camp outside Jerusalem:

[All images via The Atlantic.]