"Operation calamity" and nonviolent resistance

The Sunday Times has a detailed report on what they call "Operation calamity" - the disastrous encounter between the Mavi Marmara and the Israeli commandos. (I'm rather suspicious of this report, however - some of the information clearly comes from public sources; they quote by name people who were on the Marmara and the other boats, and what they say matches the earlier reports. It's the other stuff that makes me suspicious - supposedly from the leader of the commandos, from commandos themselves, and inside information on the working of the Israeli command post during the seizing of the Marmara, as well as some psychological interpretation of the relationship between Ehud Barak and Bibi Netanyahu).

Bob Cargill has a really interesting blog post on what real nonviolent resistance is - Flotilla the Hun. He writes:

So what is to be done? How does one advocate for social justice in a place where the people are governed by terrorists? The answer is a nonviolent, humanitarian protest. It brings attention to Israel’s blockade policy, and delivers much needed aid to Gazan Palestinians, without allowing arms into Gaza. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to do a nonviolent protest. Here’s a general rule of thumb:

If you’re going to participate in a nonviolent, humanitarian protest, it had better be both “humanitarian” and “nonviolent.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. did not attack the police officers who came to arrest him. Mahatma Gandhi did not beat the British soldiers who attempted to arrest him with metal pipes. The whole point of a nonviolent protest is to use your body in a peaceful protest to draw attention to a cause and to shame what the protester believes to be the offending party into rethinking and ultimately changing its policies. Reverend King’s nonviolent protests were instrumental in the American Civil Rights movement in the 60s. Gandhi’s protests helped bring about the departure of the British from India. Closer to my home in Fresno, César Chávez led nonviolent protests to bring attention to often invisible migrant farm laborers in the central San Joaquin Valley of California. Nonviolent, humanitarian protests must be just that: nonviolent and humanitarian.