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So how do you topple a government?

An interview with Yaniv Junam, who founded the "Activist Library", and recommends that those who want to end the war and topple the government think seriously about a strategy 

By Tom Alfia

Editor Maayan Galili

Translation using Google Translate with minor edits by Lior Suchoy

Date of original publication: 21/11/2024

Original Hebrew text: https://www.rosamedia.org/episodes/articles/59

In the last two years, masses of [Israeli – LS] citizens have been protesting endlessly for various reasons: the return of the [Israeli] hostages [in Gaza – LS], the toppling of the government, opposition to the take-over of the legal system [See comment below – LS], or the end to the war [in Gaza – LS]. After such a long period of consistent, prolonged, and persistent public activity, the protesters do not seem to achieve their goals. On the contrary - 101 hostages are still in Gaza, the government is enduring well, the take-over is progressing, and the war will not stop end soon. It is very discouraging to be a protester in Israel today. Many protesters ask themselves how to intensify the struggle? Or what else can be done besides demonstrations to achieve these very just goals?

To answer these questions, we spoke with Yaniv Junam, a left-wing activist who is currently launching the "Activist Library" as a body of democratic knowledge that deals with non-violent struggles, whose goal is to help activists in Israel expand the toolbox for changing reality beyond protests.

Yaniv, tell me about yourself

I have lived in Jerusalem since 2011 and come from a liberal-left background. In 2014 with the breach of Operation Protective Edge [Tzuk Eitan צוק איתן; the 2014 Isarel-Gaza war – LS] I participated along with many others in demonstrations against the war. I began to follow the violence perpetrated against demonstrators in Zion Square [in Jerusalem – LS], mainly by the Lahava organisation [להב"ה; a far-right grassroots movement – LS]. I found myself participating in activities related to resistance to the occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, etc. After a period of this activity, when I knew that the struggle against the occupation had been going on for so many years, I felt that there was something odd in that the [resistance] activity had been going on for so long and the situation is only worsening.

I asked myself how to run an [effective – LS] non-violent struggle, and I started reading studies on the subject. I realised that there is a lot of theoretical and practical knowledge that was not used enough, and if it was used, it was very intuitive. For example, we [the activists – LS] are not violent, so we stand in front of the settlers. We do not come with sticks, we do not raise our hands, and we will only block vehicles. These are really methods of non-violent struggle. However, if the settlers don't mind running you over, the police don't care that the settlers run over you, and nobody in the country cares that the settlers run over you, something in your struggle is missing.

Around 2018 I had the idea of ​​establishing a library. I realised that we need to learn about non-violent struggle. that we need to plan our campaigns according to some kind of rationale, to have goals, to be able to move forward according to some kind of plan. Even if we were able to help Palestinian shepherds in the Jordan Valley with their livelihood in a certain case, at the end of the day, in reality, the government is becoming more right-wing, the settlements are expanding, etc.

After the take-over of the legal system and the [Hamas attack of – LS] 7.10, I realised that we must move forward with establishing the library. The focus is on helping the Israeli public acquire tools for a non-violent struggle. [The goal is – LS] also, to give very concrete practical tools for individuals - for example, the tool of non-escalation: a policeman or a Bibist [see comment – LS] arrives and starts agitating, how do you as an individual or a group make sure that the incident ends with the least possible violence. On the other hand, tools on how to build a group that can interact with other groups that operate in other places.

And who is the library's target audience? The goal is that the individuals referred to as "protest leaders" will use these tools or is the target audience the concerned citizens who want to understand how they can change something in Israel?

If you are a concerned citizen who wants to know how to run a non-violent struggle – you’re welcome. Is this who the library will try to attract? not necessarily. From the beginning it seems to me that the direction was always more towards existing groups - you said 'leaders and spearheads of the protest', so I would say ‘leaders and spearheads in general’. For example, near my house, there is a demonstration of 20-30 people every week. Someone organises it. I would be happy if those people who organise the weekly demonstration knew that there is a knowledge institution that can help them with their problems. It may be that they are asking themselves what to do with the situation that they go on the road and [the locals – LS] beat us, or call the police ‘to report – LS] us and people leave the group. Or maybe they are asking themselves how we can get more people to the weekly demonstration. Questions of recruitment, organisation, distribution of roles - all these issues should be answered through the library for those who are already troubled by these problems. Of course, both at the local level and at the national level.

If we return to the context of the large protests against the government and the war, and for the return of the hostages, there is a strong sense of despair. As someone who is engaged in a non-violent struggle - what do you think can be done to intensify the struggle, or what are the principles that should guide the protesters to continue?

One approach to answer this is that of one of the founders of the Otpor organisation in Serbia who founded the CANVAS organisation that deals with non-violent struggles. According to this approach, the three elements of nonviolent struggle are strategy, organisation, and nonviolence. Strategy, which means having a clear picture of what you want to achieve and how to reach the goal. Organisation means that there are people who will be able to implement the plan. Non-violence means the organisational ability to maintain the discipline of non-violence on the part of the members of the group.

So, the question of what to do next is actually a derivative of the strategy. There are times when blocking roads will be a super effective tool. If, for example, the government is trying to move things from one place to another, blocking a road can be an excellent answer because it is a disruption to the government. If you want to mobilise people for your protest, it is not certain that blocking roads and creating traffic jams is the right way to achieve this goal. A group of people should sit down, talk and decide what the strategy is, what they want to achieve and how.

Yes, it can be said that the local groups that demonstrate in cities, towns, and intersections, that do banner-posting operations, block local roads, work with [the ruling political – LS] coalition members, etc., all of these are initiated actions of local groups that are the basis of building power. How do you promote it further? First thing, do bolder operations - not necessarily in the risk that the members take on themselves, but in the group abilities that the group displays. Do more complex operations. For example: bringing 50-100 protesters to demonstrate in the city centre is not a big deal. But bringing the same 50-100 people to a nightly operation of hanging banners and posters that will fill the entire city - this is another operation, one that shows higher organisational abilities.

Groups that equip themselves with these abilities, in practice, build their own strength. These abilities of local groups will serve them in the here and now of their activity, but also in the long term will allow them to take part and lead moves within a decentralised protest movement, without having to "give them instructions" from above. They know how to build their own local plan and can carry it out. Some examples are operations of manufacturing and hanging banners and posters, regular protest actions, shaming collaborators with the regime at the local level, and booths to recruit additional members for the activity. Actions of local groups should focus on their local space because that is where their greatest influence is.

The next step could be building strength in regional groups, which consist of several local groups. A regional group can carry out actions that require several local groups. For starters, anything a local group does, a regional group can do in several orders of magnitude: demonstrations, roadblocks, blockades, art displays, etc. Beyond that, a regional group can build plans and lead things that cannot be done at a local level, such as roadblocks in several key places at the same time, or blocking in waves - after one wave is cleared, another wave arrives.

In addition to this, regional groups can take more serious actions that require preparation, planning and organisation of many participants, for example, boycotts of businesses close to the government, strikes of parents and students against a local authority that cooperates with the government, a social boycott of collaborators of the regime such as heads of ​​government offices, Ben-Gvirist policemen [see comment – LS], etc., such actions require consistency and specificity, and this is something that only the members of a regional group can do. For example, "stop cooperating with the Netanyahu government" would be a much less effective demand than "distribute the education budget in a transparent and equitable manner" against a close authority that improperly prioritises institutions close to the coalition or "punishes" institutions identified with opposition to it. Regional groups can maintain such activity over time because they have a large membership that can divide the labour and does not require those few activists to be "full-time".

You have previously written about non-violent protests in other parts of the world - in India, Serbia, and the USA - do you think there is anything we can learn from non-violent protests in these places today?

There definitely is. The basic concept of nonviolent struggle is that power is not something that is at the top and trickles down. Rather, power is a product of structure. If tomorrow everyone decides that they no longer listen to the government, then the government has no power. It is important to understand this. For example, if the citizens decide that they don't listen to the government, and the government says - okay, then we send the police over you. And then the police don't listen to the government either, so they say - ok then we send the army over you, and then the army also refuses to listen to the government, etc. That is, the power of the government rests on the structure of cooperation. The basic thing is to find where we collaborate with the government daily, and how we can evade and avoid them.

This is where the specificity of the strategy comes into play - in some places it is a tax revolt, in others it is simply staying at home and not going to work or organised strikes. There were a variety of methods in the world. In Serbia, for example, coal was a third of the total energy sources at that time. When you have coal miners that stop working the government starts to get stressed because energy is less available. Another example is from apartheid in South Africa: in Port Elizabeth, the blacks decided that they no longer shop in the city centre because the whites' businesses were based on the purchasing power of the blacks.

A similar example was in the USA in the 1960s during the civil rights movement to end segregation. They realised that they were not going to convince the KKK, but that there was a large force of the middle-class bourgeoisie, mainly merchants, who did not necessarily support segregation ideologically, but they benefited from the existing situation. So, they stopped shopping in these stores. These are the things to consider in nonviolent struggle: you think about where you are cooperating with the existing power structure. Whether it is with the state, the local authority, or the workplace.

In Israel today, one of the biggest centres of power is the army. There, through the reserves army, we mobilise for the [existing] power [structure – LS]. It is not coincidental that every time there is a call [to avoid answering the call to join the reserveד army – LS] from reservists, pilots, from high school students, it reaches the news because this is the most significant place, I think, that Israelis give power to the structure that the government is counting on. And this is not only in relation to the current war but also in relation to the occupation. And people are beginning to understand that this is the main focus of power. When will they say we stop serving this thing? I don't know. It is important to say that this is not the only power centre either. It may be that even if this is the most significant thing, the Israeli public may not be ready [to avoid army service – LS], and it may be that we can find another significant power centre that can be toppled.

That is, it is important to identify not only the largest and most significant power centre but also realistically, to understand what can be asked from the public.

The activist library is still in the process of being established, but it is already possible to find relevant materials there for those interested in reading, hearing, or viewing additional material [see comment – LS].

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