{"id":2488,"date":"2017-10-20T22:24:50","date_gmt":"2017-10-21T02:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/?p=2488"},"modified":"2017-10-22T22:28:04","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T02:28:04","slug":"michael-harris-practice-and-theory-of-the-arab-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/michael-harris-practice-and-theory-of-the-arab-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Harris | Practice and Theory of the Arab Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"
There are passing references to the Palestinian experience of uprising in the readings <\/a>for Uprising 3\/13. \u00a0Did the First Intifada, in particular, serve in any way as a model for the protests of the Arab Spring? \u00a0Commentators have\u00a0pointed out parallels<\/a>\u00a0between the events that were separated by an interval of 24 years:<\/div>\n
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Similar to the uprisings in the \u201cArab Spring\u201d, there were no political\u00a0parties and leaders to organise the mass [First Intifada]. It was in every sense\u00a0an organic revolt which began with mass\u00a0civil disobedience, which\u00a0included the boycotting of Israeli goods, refusal to pay tax, organising\u00a0strikes and demonstrations, unarmed confrontations with the Israeli\u00a0military, famously\u00a0by stone throwing youths, establishing their own\u00a0mobile medical clinics and providing social services as a measure to\u00a0take back some control of their lives.<\/i><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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And the direction of influence can be reversed: \u00a0numerous articles were published during the first half of 2011 proposing explanations for the apparent absence of a “Palestinian spring.”<\/div>\n
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For a short time, New Yorkers who are following Uprising 13\/13 will be able to draw their own conclusions with the help of the\u00a0Freedom Theater<\/a>\u00a0of Jenin, whose production of The Siege <\/i>is\u00a0now playing<\/a>, through October 22\u00a0at NYU’s Skirball Center. \u00a0The Siege<\/i>\u00a0is a lightly fictionalized account of an extended faceoff that took place in 2002, during the Second Intifada. \u00a0 The all-Palestinian cast plays a small group of armed militants who had taken refuge in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity to escape a massive Israeli military deployment. \u00a0The circumstances are rather different from the demonstrations in Tunis or in Tahrir Square in Cairo, or for that matter in Ramallah during the First Intifada. \u00a0Nevertheless, the play makes it dramatically clear that the practical issues faced by the besieged militants are inseparable from the kinds of ethical and political \u2014 and existential \u2014 questions that any uprising has to address.<\/div>\n
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The performances are astonishing, and there are apparently still tickets (though they are not cheap).<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are passing references to the Palestinian experience of uprising in the readings for Uprising 3\/13. \u00a0Did the First Intifada, in particular, serve in any way as a model for the protests of the Arab Spring? \u00a0Commentators have\u00a0pointed out parallels\u00a0between… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38961],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-3-13"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}