Action not words are needed
to change Israel’s behaviour

Today I read an email on a list server from one peace person to another who was full of all the sad news of violence and killing each day. She told him to hang it there that she said: “I’m putting the final pieces of my book together now … to show folks what is in place and how we can mold it together more tightly to solve our world problems together with other countries.”

After smiling I recalled Howard Zinn historian and author writings on how change really happens. He said: “The really critical thing isn’t who’s sitting in he White House, but who is sitting in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating ? - those are the things that determine what happens….”

Howard was a expert defense witness in the Milwaukee 14 trial back in 1969. He justified our burning of 1 A draft records as a valid and legal as necessary civil disobedience. Howard did not think civil disobedience was a problem. He said: “Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war.

Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem. We recognize this for Nazi Germany. We know that the problem there was obedience, that the people obeyed Hitler. People obeyed; that was wrong.”

In some ways this is what our Breaking the Silence group tries to do, use actions not words to speak “truth to power”. However in this day and age the “powers that be” are willing to allow us protest, sign petitions, make phone calls, speak out as long as we do not comit civil disobedience of any significance. Sadly we are satisfied to talk, write letters, articles, speak out, sign petition, elect politicians but relunct to break the law with acts of civil disobedience.

I get one or two electronic petitions a day to sign. They are for good things but I believe they make no change and are just a distraction for the real way of change, refusal to obey unjust laws, acts of civil disobedience.

There is an old saying that actions speak louder than words. St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the religious order the Society of Jesus said in his writings in the Spiritual Exercise, “ Love ought to show itself in deeds over and above words.” Change happens with action not words.

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