Palestinian stone-throwing refers to a Palestinian practice of
throwing stones
"Throwing Stones" is a song by the Grateful Dead. It appears on their 1987 album '' In the Dark''. It was also released as a single, with a B-side of "When Push Comes to Shove".
The song is based loosely on the nursery rhyme Ring Around the R ...
at people or property. It is a tactic with both a symbolic and military dimension when used against heavily-armed troops. Proponents, sympathizers, as well as some analysts have characterized stone throwing by Palestinians as a form of "limited", "restrained", "non-lethal" violence. Such stone-throwing can at times prove lethal: over a dozen Israelis, including women, children, and infants, have died as a result of stones being thrown at cars. Some Palestinians appear to regard it as symbolic and non-violent, given the disparity in power and equipment between the Israeli forces and the Palestinian stone-throwers. The state of Israel has passed laws to sentence throwers convicted of the charge to up to 10 years imprisonment even without proof of intent to harm.
In some cases, Israelis have argued that it should be treated as a form of
terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...
, or that, in terms of the psychology of those who hurl stones, even in defense or in protest, it is intrinsically aggressive.
It has also been described variously as a form of traditional,
[ Mary Elizabeth King]
''A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance''
Nation Books, 2009 pp. 257-264:'Residents of the West Bank and Gaza say that the use of stones is traditional . . Most Palestinians interviewed here see the practice as hard evidence they were not using weapons.'(p.259). popular protest
[Yitzhak Reiter]
''Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution: National Minority, Regional Majority: Palestinian Arabs Verses Jews In Israel,''
Syracuse University Press, 2009 pp. 60, 141. guerrilla tactic or action,
[Anne Marie Oliver and Paul F. Steinberg p. 57.] or a tactic of
civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active and professed refusal of a citizenship, citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be cal ...
[Belén Fernández]
''The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work''
Verso Books, 2011 p. 112 for 'non-lethal civil disobedience' :'What the Palestinians under occupation were saying by using primarily stones instead of firearms was that the most powerful weapon against the Israelis was not terrorism or guerrilla warfare. The most powerful weapon, they proclaimed, was massive non-lethal civil disobedience. That is what the stones symbolized". which came to prominence during the
First Intifada
The First Intifada (), also known as the First Palestinian Intifada, was a sustained series of Nonviolent resistance, non-violent protests, acts of civil disobedience, Riot, riots, and Terrorism, terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinians ...
.
Gilles Kepel
Gilles Kepel, (born June 30, 1955) is a French political scientist and Arabist, specialized in the contemporary Middle East and Muslims in the West. He was Professor at Sciences Po Paris, the Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) and direc ...
''Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East''
Harvard University Press 2009 pp. 85-86.:'the first intifada, a Palestinian uprising that began in December 1987. This protest entailed strikes, boycotts, barricades, and acts of civil disobedience, but what caught the attention of news media around the world was stone-throwing by Palestinian youths against the tanks and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. These guerrilla tactics . . . At least 14 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian stone throwing, including three Arabs mistaken for Jews.
It has occasionally been imitated by activists among the
Arab citizens of Israel
The Arab citizens of Israel form the country's largest ethnic minority. Their community mainly consists of former Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925, Mandatory Palestine citizens (and their descendants) who continued to inhabit the territory ...
.
In many occasions IDF uses
Palestinian civilians as human shields, including children, against Palestinian protesters throwing rocks.
Stone throwing is not considered a deadly force in most countries: in
the West
West is a cardinal direction or compass point.
West or The West may also refer to:
Geography and locations
Global context
* The Western world
* Western culture and Western civilization in general
* The Western Bloc, countries allied with NAT ...
firearms are generally not used in crowd or riot dispersals and proportionality of force is the norm, except where immediate danger to life exists.
Stone-throwers also employ
catapult
A catapult is a ballistics, ballistic device used to launch a projectile at a great distance without the aid of gunpowder or other propellants – particularly various types of ancient and medieval siege engines. A catapult uses the sudden rel ...
s,
slings and
slingshot
A slingshot or catapult is a small hand-powered projectile weapon. The classic form consists of a Y-shaped frame, with two tubes or strips made from either a natural rubber or synthetic elastic material. These are attached to the upper two ends ...
s armed with readily available materials at hand: stones, bricks, bottles, pebbles or
ball bearing
A ball bearing is a type of rolling-element bearing that uses balls to maintain the separation between the bearing races.
The purpose of a ball bearing is to reduce rotational friction and support radial and axial loads. It achieves this ...
s, and sometimes rats
or
cement blocks. Slingshots are often loaded with large ball bearings instead of stones. Since the 1987 uprising, the technique is favoured as one which, to foreign eyes, will invert the association of modern Israel with David, and her enemies with Goliath, by casting the Palestinians as David to Israel's Goliath.
Benny Morris
Benny Morris (; born 8 December 1948) is an Israeli historian. He was a professor of history in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Beersheba, Israel. Morris was initially associated with the ...
br>''Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1998''
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011 p. 580 Despite there having been frequent acts of protest all over the Palestinian territories, the number of shooting incidents has been less than 3%. Nonetheless, the international press and media focused on the aspect of Palestinian stone-throwing, which garnered more headline attention than other violent conflicts in the world, so that it became iconic for characterizing the uprising.
According to
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, and political activist. As a professor of literature at Columbia University, he was among the founders of Postcolonialism, post-co ...
, a total cultural and social form of anti-colonial resistance by the Palestinian people is
commodified for outside consumption simply as delinquent stone throwing or mindless terroristic bombings.
Israeli law
Israeli law is based mostly on a common law legal system, though it also reflects the diverse history of the territory of the State of Israel throughout the last hundred years (which was at various times prior to independence under Ottoman, t ...
treats stone throwing as a
felony
A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "''félonie''") to describe an offense that r ...
, with a maximum penalty of up to 20 years, depending on the circumstances and intentions: a maximum of 10 years for stoning cars, regardless of intent to endanger passengers, and 20 years for throwing stones at people, without proof of intent to cause bodily harm. A three-year temporary measure was enacted in November 2015, mandating minimum sentences and creating a legal equivalence between rocks and other weapons. Israeli undercover forces have been observed infiltrating protests on numerous occasions, inciting demonstrators and themselves throwing stones at Israeli troops. According to Israel's statistics, no
IDF soldier has died as a result of Palestinian stone-throwing, only civilians (but see
Binyamin Meisner, killed by a dropped concrete block).
History
Cultural context and historical precedents
The practice of stone-throwing has deep religious, cultural and historical resonance, and is grounded in the age-old use of slinging stones among young rural herders whose task it was both to keep watch on livestock, and ward off predators of family flocks, and to hunt birds.
[McDonald p. 133.] A Palestinian legend has it that after the creation God sent the angel
Gabriel
In the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), Gabriel ( ) is an archangel with the power to announce God's will to mankind, as the messenger of God. He is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Quran. Many Chris ...
to distribute rocks all over the world, but he tripped on entering Palestine and spilled most of his load over that country. Children learn to use the same kind of sling employed by
David to kill Goliath, and stone throwing has been, according to
Jonathan Cook, an 'enduring symbol' of how the weak can challenge the strong.
[ Jonathan Cook]
'Netanyahu seeks to impose a new reality at Al Aqsa'
The National, 5 October 2015 From the verse of
Ecclesiasticus
The Book of Sirach (), also known as The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, The Wisdom of Jesus son of Eleazar, or Ecclesiasticus (), is a Jewish literary work originally written in Biblical Hebrew. The longest extant wisdom book from antiqui ...
, 'a time to gather stones and a time to scatter', stones themselves evoke different traditions, from Jewish mourning and the rite of
tashlikh
''Tashlikh'' or Tashlich ( "cast off") is a minhag, customary Atonement in Judaism, Jewish atonement ritual performed during the High Holy Days on Rosh Hashanah. In some Judaeo-Spanish-speaking communities the practice is referred to as ''sakudirs ...
to ultra-Orthodox Jewish stone-throwing to protest violations of the Sabbath or Palestinians in protests or to defend the
Haram-al-Sharif. In Jerusalem, whose first king,
David
David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament.
The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Dam ...
, slew Goliath with a single stone, and where the practice of stoning prophets, or those condemned to death, was frequent, religious dissensions in the city repeatedly exploded into vicious stone-throwing matches. It was a shared Muslim and Jewish tradition in Palestine, noted by travelers, to hurl stones at the
Tomb of Absalom
The Tomb of Absalom (), also called Absalom's Pillar, is an ancient Rock-cut tombs in ancient Israel, monumental rock-cut tomb with a conical roof located in the Kidron Valley in Jerusalem, a few metres from the Tomb of Zechariah and the Tomb of ...
for rebelling against David.
Meron Benvenisti likened the very way Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities use their traditions to stone-throwing:
'The chronicles of Jerusalem are a gigantic quarry from which each side has mined stones for the construction of its myths-and for throwing at each other.'
Gaza, where the First Intifada broke out, has had a long history of stone-throwing, which, according to Oliver and Steinberg, goes back at least to an incident where
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...
, while laying siege to the city, was hit by a stone, and almost lost his life.
[Anne Marie Oliver and Paul F. Steinberg]
''The Road to Martyrs' Square: A Journey into the World of the Suicide Bomber''
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). p. 12. The incident is recorded in Plutarch
Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...
, ''Life of Alexander the Great,'' 25:3, where a bird drops a nugget or clump of earth (βῶλος) on his shoulder. The medieval Christian pilgrim
Fabri wrote that 1483 pilgrims took care to arrive in Gaza at dusk to avoid being stoned by "the little Muslim boys".
According to historian
Benny Morris
Benny Morris (; born 8 December 1948) is an Israeli historian. He was a professor of history in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Beersheba, Israel. Morris was initially associated with the ...
the practice of throwing stones at Jews is a venerable one in the Middle East, symbolic of Jewish degradation under Muslim rule. Morris quotes a 19th-century traveler: "I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching
hem
A hem in sewing is a garment finishing method, where the edge of a piece of cloth is folded and sewn to prevent unravelling of the fabric and to adjust the length of the piece in garments, such as at the end of the sleeve or the bottom of the ga ...
to throw stones at a Jew."
William Shaler, American Consul to Arab Algiers from 1815 to 1828, reported that the practice of Muslims throwing rocks at Jews was commonly seen.
The practice of Arab rioters throwing stones at Jews was seen in the
1948 Anti-Jewish Riots in Tripolitania, Libya.
It has been used as a weapon against colonialism in other Arab countries.
To modern Palestinians in Gaza, their practice is likened to ancient precedents in Islamic history. Their media draw an analogy between their situation and that of the people in
Mecca
Mecca, officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, is the capital of Mecca Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia; it is the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley above ...
, when the Christian Ethiopian king of
Yemen
Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia. Located in South Arabia, southern Arabia, it borders Saudi Arabia to Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, the north, Oman to Oman–Yemen border, the northeast, the south-eastern part ...
,
Abraha al-Ashram, launched an attack on the city and the
Kaa'ba in 571 C.E. the year of
Muhammad
Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...
's birth. The
Quran
The Quran, also Romanization, romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a Waḥy, revelation directly from God in Islam, God (''Allah, Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which ...
Al-Fil
Al-Fīl (, "The Elephant") is the 105th chapter (surah) of the Quran. It is a Meccan sura consisting of 5 verses. The surah is written in the interrogative form.
: Have you not seen Prophethow your Lord dealt with the army of the Eleph ...
sura
A ''surah'' (; ; ) is an Arabic word meaning 'chapter' in the Quran. There are 114 ''suwar'' in the Quran, each divided into verses (). The ''suwar'' are of unequal length; the shortest ''surah'' ( al-Kawthar) has only three verses, while the ...
("Sura of the Elephant") recounts that elephants were deployed in the assault, and birds loaded with stones repulsed the attack. Numerous Palestinian poems and popular songs celebrate the heroism of children who throw stones, and in some of them the imagery of this episode in the Quran is deployed so that America is compared to the elephant herd, while Palestinians are assimilated to the stone-throwing birds, (a connection made also by
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until Saddam Hussein statue destruction, his overthrow in 2003 during the 2003 invasion of Ira ...
, who called one of his missiles, somewhat ungrammatically, ''al-ḥijāra al-sarukh'', 'the stone that is a missile'.):
;And we are making war with black stones
So to whom will be the victory, Abraha al-Ashram or Muhammad?
American will make war on us with airplanes, tanks, and dollars
And collaborators and incompetents and mercenaries
And we will make war on them with the sword of Salah ad-Din
And we will know the duration of the darkness
It is impossible to blot out the moon of the poor
It is impossible to extinguish the sun of the bereaved.
According to one
hadith
Hadith is the Arabic word for a 'report' or an 'account f an event and refers to the Islamic oral tradition of anecdotes containing the purported words, actions, and the silent approvals of the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his immediate circle ...
or saying ascribed to Muhammad by Abdullah b. Mughaffal al-Muzani, the prophet of Islam proscribed stone-throwing, saying: "It neither stops a game nor inflicts injury on an enemy, but rather puts out the eye and breaks the teeth." Many Palestinians take the tradition as harking back more directly to the
Peasant Revolt that broke out in the wake of the
Egyptian–Ottoman War (1831–33) when
Ibrahim Pasha invaded Palestine and imposed harsh taxation and conscription policies on the local
fellah
A fellah ( ; feminine ; plural ''fellaheen'' or ''fellahin'', , ) is a local peasant, usually a farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa. The word derives from the Arabic word for "ploughman" or "tiller".
Due to a con ...
in.
Mandatory Palestine
Stone throwing played an important, if secondary role, after firearms, in the
1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine (''thawra'') against the
British Mandatory authorities. In October 1936 a Collective Punishment Ordinance was invoked to impose punitive measures on villages implicated in stone-throwing against passing vehicles. The Nablus District Commissioner
Hugh Foot posted a notice warning that not only boy stone-throwers but also their fathers and guardians would be punished.
In October 1933, Palestinian Arabs went on strike and staged several demonstrations in
Nablus
Nablus ( ; , ) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 156,906. Located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a ...
,
Haifa
Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...
and
Jaffa
Jaffa (, ; , ), also called Japho, Joppa or Joppe in English, is an ancient Levantine Sea, Levantine port city which is part of Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel, located in its southern part. The city sits atop a naturally elevated outcrop on ...
in opposition to Jewish immigration. The
Palestine Police Force (PPF) opened fire on a protesting Arab crowd which threw stones at a
Barclays
Barclays PLC (, occasionally ) is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services ...
bank in Nablus, wounding several. Four Arab protestors who were among a stone-throwing crowd swarming a PPF police station were killed by policemen on the same day; similar incidents also occurred in Jaffa. The incidents ultimately resulted in 26 Arabs and one policeman being killed and a further 187 wounded as the strikes were suppressed by the PPF. In Gaza, one British railway official was killed in 1937 when he left his car to observe Arab stone-throwers. Another Briton escaped four such attacks by showing he was not circumcised.
The practice was not limited to Gaza. A PPF police officer reflecting on the period of the ''thawra'', remarked: "Arabs for some reason can throw a stone more accurately than anyone else in the world. They rarely miss."
Jews also used this tactic: when it was reported in Palestine that the British Foreign Minister
Ernest Bevin
Ernest Bevin (9 March 1881 – 14 April 1951) was a British statesman, trade union leader and Labour Party politician. He co-founded and served as General Secretary of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union from 1922 to 1940 and ...
declared that Britain had never undertaken to establish a Jewish state but rather a Jewish home, the news was received with outrage, and led to Jewish riots in Tel Aviv. On 14 November 1945, the megaphones blared 'Disperse or we fire' towards a milling crowd of Jewish stone-throwers. Care was taken to shoot over their heads, and they dispersed without injury, relocating to another suburb to continue the riot.
1967–1987
After the
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states, primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June ...
left Israel in
belligerent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, stone throwing occasionally emerged as a form of social protest. The first death was the
Esther Ohana in 1983.
In clashes with Israeli forces, students would be detained for beatings, subject to a brief trial on charges of stone throwing, and fined before they were released. Protests among Israel's Palestinians at times also quickly turned into stone-throwing demonstrations at towns like
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest Cities in Israel, city in the Northern District (Israel), Northern District of Israel. In its population was . Known as "the Arab capital of Israel", Nazareth serves as a cultural, political, religious, economic and ...
. When
Mubarak Awad, a
Gandhian
The followers of Mahatma Gandhi,one of the prominent figure of the Indian independence movement, are called Gandhians.
Gandhi's legacy includes a wide range of ideas ranging from his dream of ideal India (or ''Rama Rajya)'', economics, environ ...
pacifist, set up workshops, as part of his
Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence to teach non-violent forms of resistance in the early 1980s, many Palestinians reacted negatively to his criticism of the traditional practice.
Though advocating that Palestinians throw flowers not stones, to protest the occupation, he was deported for putatively fomenting civil disobedience in the early months of the First Intifada. In this period, Palestinian university students played a major role in the organization of stone throwing and other disturbances.
First Intifada
In an anthropological overview of the First Intifada,
Scott Atran
Scott Atran (born February 6, 1952) is an American-French cultural anthropologist who is Emeritus Director of Research in Anthropology at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, Research Professor at the University of Michigan ...
traced conflict responses between Palestinians and Zionists back to the
Palestinian Revolt, 1936–1939 where a policy of "armed struggle" (''al-kifah al-musalah'') emerged against a generally defensive Zionist approach of "restraint" (''havgalah''). By contrast the first Intifada was, in his view, characterized by an opposition between a Palestinian emphasis on preaching restraint, if not invariably nonviolence (''al-la `unf''), and an explicit Israeli policy of using "the iron fist" (''ha-yad hazaqah, barzel Yisrael''), which, in the latter instance, marked to first time since Israel's independence that the former consensus of 'the utility and morality' of recourse to violence was broken.
Rock-throwing and mass demonstrations had played no part in
Fatah
Fatah ( ; ), formally the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (), is a Palestinian nationalist and Arab socialist political party. It is the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...
's previous guerrilla activities, and the uprising came as a complete surprise to the
PLO
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; ) is a Palestinian nationalist coalition that is internationally recognized as the official representative of the Palestinian people in both the occupied Palestinian territories and the diaspora. ...
.
This specific tactic was addressed by Military Order No. 1108 which ratcheted up the penalty for such an offence from one and a half years to 20 years imprisonment. Bail for young children arrested for throwing stones was $400–500 (1988) and if the offense was repeated, the money was forfeited and the child could be placed in
administrative detention
Administrative detention is arrest and detention of individuals by the state without trial. A number of jurisdictions claim that it is done for security reasons. Many countries claim to use administrative detention as a means to combat terrorism ...
for a year. The parents of children under 12 years of age could be imprisoned as punishment for their child's offense. Writing graffiti, an act vigorously censored by the military authorities, was also an important instrument for contesting the occupation. Stone-throwing, which had been intermittent and confined locally, broke out on a large systematic organized and spontaneous grassroots scale and took root with the
First Intifada
The First Intifada (), also known as the First Palestinian Intifada, was a sustained series of Nonviolent resistance, non-violent protests, acts of civil disobedience, Riot, riots, and Terrorism, terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinians ...
in December 1987 after two decades of Israeli rule,
becoming the major symbol of the intifada itself. Those who participated, among the best-educated in the Middle East, took to brandishing their banned national flag and throwing rocks and
molotov-bombs at IDF forces, to express their frustrations at limited opportunities after decades of growing up under Israeli occupation. It has been called 'the first stone-throwing rebellion against Israel.'
Shame and guilt for not doing enough to help their parents or free their land also played a motivational role.
[Chris E. Stout]
"The Psychology of Terrorism: Clinical aspects and responses,"
Greenwood Publishing Group Vol. 2, 2002 p. 207. Palestinians had access to some arms; they shot collaborators within their ranks – but decided to abstain from organized violence, except for stone throwing. Palestinians at the time, it is argued, were certain that Israel would not respond with gunfire if they limited their revolt to stone throwing.
The choice of stones caused a rift in the Human Rights world, with some human rights theorists justifying it as largely symbolic, others, like
Mubarak Awad, more critical. One Israeli general dismissed the idea that stone-throwing was terrorism; it was typical of a national movement. Others noted at the time that the practice had not incurred any fatalities among Israelis, despite several millions stones being hurled. What the practice did, it was theorized, was to set up the rebellion in terms of the David versus Goliath scenario.
The guerrilla tactics were partially inspired by the feats of the
Afghan insurgency against the Soviet Union and by various colonial uprisings such as the
Algerian war of independence against France (1954–1962),
but also relied on a perception that Israelis would not, like Jordanian, Syrian and Algerian armies, send in tanks to demolish entire villages.
Resisting temptations to resort to small-arms warfare in the face of the vast military resources of the Israeli armed forces, Palestinians took to throwing stones, an improvised weapon which had deep symbolic resonances of a cultural, historical and religious kind. As a popular song at the time put it, the stone became their
Kalashnikov.
''mā fī khawf mā fī khawf''
''al-ḥajar ṣār klashnikūf,''
('There is no fear, there is no fear
For the stone has become the Kalashnikov.')
Another popular refrain runs
''ṣabarnā kthīr bidnā thār''
''bi al-ḍaffaih w kull al-qitā' ''
…
''bi al-moqlayṭah w al-maqlā' ''
''thawrah thawrah sha'bīyyaih.''
('We have been patient for too long, we want revenge
In the West Bank and Gaza Strip . .
With the sling and the slingshot
Revolution, Popular Revolution')
Throwers ranged from small children (''alwād'') to adolescent youths (''shabab''). The former resented being classified as children, and asserted they also were "shabab".
[Kanaana p. 120. A compromise solution was to call all stone-throwers from ages 6 to 13 ''shabab izghar'' (little youths).] Those who were killed by Israeli fire are called
martyrs (''shahīd'' / ''shuhada'').
Participation required little organization, and had an element of spontaneity. Dina Matar, then 14, from the
refugee camp of Dheisheh, recalls that one was told to watch the street, and then join in stone-throwing. At the same time, leaflets did circulate asserting that every child 'must carry the stone and throw it at the occupier'.
School children in the
Jenin Refugee Camp created a game where Jews used guns and Palestinians threw stones, with the latter always winning.
It was in large part sustained by youths motivated by a moral sense of urgency to replace the Occupation with some form of a Palestinian national entity. To throw a stone was to throw a 'piece of the land' of Palestine at the occupiers. The stones of the land so crucial to the Israeli sense of history were gathered into caches to become the weapons of resistance.
[Barbara McKean Parmenter]
''Giving Voice to Stones: Place and Identity in Palestinian Literature''
University of Texas Press, 2010 p. 2.'Beginning in December 1987, the "children of the stones", the younger generation of Palestinians raised under occupation, brought the struggle to a new level in the Intifada, the uprising. The very stones so steeped in history for Israelis were carefully gathered and cached as weapons of resistance. The Intifada turned the encounter between David and Goliath, part of Israel's national mythology of a small community putted against giants, on its head.'. There was also, according to
Muḥammad Haykal, an unconscious analogy with the
ritual stoning that pilgrims on the
Hajj
Hajj (; ; also spelled Hadj, Haj or Haji) is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims. Hajj is a mandatory religious duty for capable Muslims that must be carried out at least once in their lifetim ...
perform at
Mina, in which
the devil is stoned symbolically 49 times. In Palestinian dialect the words for sling (''al-maqlā) and slingshot (''al-muqlay'ah'') derive from the same
Semitic root
The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or " radicals" (hence the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowel ...
, ''ql', '' which signifies 'ousting, expelling, casting out'.
Though
Palestinian Christians tended to be somewhat less prone to stone throwing during the intifada, preferring other forms of protest like resistance to paying taxes to Israel,
[Roger Friedland, Richard Hech]
''To Rule Jerusalem''
University of California Press, 2000 p. 377. the Catholic priest, Fr. Manuel Musallam, hailed the stone-throwers as nation builders, the "granite youth" of Palestine. Dr. Geries S. Khoury in his theological work ''Intifidat al-Sama'a Intifidat al-Ard'', (1990), while arguing for a non-violent challenge to the occupation, likened the uprising to Christ's search for social fairness, and praised stone throwing by children as an extension of Jesus's struggle for justice.
[Ilan Peleg (ed.)]
''The Middle East Peace Process: Interdisciplinary Perspectives''
SUNY Press, 1998 p. 153.
The conflict was known as "the war of the stones"
and Palestinians still call children who grew up during the first intifada "children of the stones"( ''awlād ahjār'') (''atfal al-ḥijāra'')
[Sharif Kanaana, 'Women in the Legends of the Intifada,' in Suha Sabbagh (ed.)]
''Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank''
Indiana University Press, 1998 pp. 114-135 p. 119. The difference reflects different categories of Palestinian folk classification of ages: (1) ''tifl''(sg.)/ ''atfal''(pl.), birth-6 years; (2) ''walad''/'' awlād'', 6-13; (3) ''shab''/''shabab'',14-25 (4) ''Izlam'' (''Rejul'')/''Rijaal'', 25-60; (5) ''Khitiariyeh'', 60+[Dina Matar]
''What It Means to be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood''
I.B.Tauris, 2010 pp. 160-161. When a tax was imposed on all Palestinian vehicles in Gaza and the West Bank, while exempting cars driven by settlers, Palestinians dubbed it 'the stone tax' (''daribat al-ḥijāra''), believing that it was a punitive measure to retaliate against the widespread stoning of Israeli cars in the Palestinian territories.
[Glenn E. Robinson]
''Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution''
Indiana University Press, 1997 p. 84.
Second Intifada

In the
Second Intifada
The Second Intifada (; ), also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was a major uprising by Palestinians against Israel and its Israeli-occupied territories, occupation from 2000. Starting as a civilian uprising in Jerusalem and October 2000 prot ...
, the generally non-violent methods of the earlier uprising gave way to more brutal methods
against both IDF troops and Israeli citizens: stone-throwing as the hallmark of resistance yielded place to
martyrdom operations, overwhelmingly conducted by
Hamas
The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (the Arabic acronym from ), is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islam, Sunni Islamism, Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. It has Gaza Strip under Hama ...
and
Islamic Jihad. The intifada broke out with rock throwing to protest
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon ( ; also known by his diminutive Arik, ; 26 February 192811 January 2014) was an Israeli general and politician who served as the prime minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006.
Born in Kfar Malal in Mandatory Palestin ...
's visit to the
Haram al-Sharif on 28 September 2000, which led to a clash in which 6 Palestinians were killed, and 220 wounded by Israeli gunfire, while 70 Israeli police were injured by stoning. The incident rapidly escalated into the Second Intifada when, as rock-and Molotov-cocktail-throwing continued over the next two days, 24 Palestinians were shot dead, and an Israeli soldier was killed. At the outset, participating teenagers resumed the traditional stone-throwing to deny vehicles access to settlements. Israel's response was, according to Lev Luis Grinberg, to use all the weapons in its arsenal, including snipers, and shooting missiles from
Apache helicopters at demonstrators and buildings. He concludes 'It responded with disproportionate force that only an army can unleash totally out of place against stone-throwing civilians.
[Lev Luis Grinberg]
''Politics and Violence in Israel/Palestine: Democracy Versus Military Rule''
Routledge, 2009 pp. 155-p.160. — "These were the tribals borders - Jews against Arabs, without geographical borders"[Amahl Bishara, 'Weapons, Passports and News: Palestinian Perceptions of U.S. Power as a Mediator of War,' in John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, Jeremy Walton (eds.) ''Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency'', pp. 125-136 pp. 127-128.] Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...
documented early that IDF soldiers were shooting stone throwing youths where no serious threats to their safety existed.
According to IDF statistics, in the first 3 months 73% of incidents, some 3,734 attacks by Palestinians, did not involve the use of arms. 82 of the 272 Palestinians shot dead in these clashes with the IDF (a further 6 were killed by settlers) were minors. Of the 10,603 Palestinians wounded over the same time, 20% by live ammunition and roughly 40% by rubber-bullets, 36% were minors.
One of the iconic images of the Second Intifada was of a little boy,
Faris Odeh, in Gaza confronting an Israeli tank and winding his arm up to throw a stone from his sling.
Snipers were used to put down stone-throwers within Israel at
Umm al-Fahm
Umm al-Fahm ( , ''Umm al-Faḥm''; ''Um el-Faḥem'') is a city located northwest of Jenin in the Haifa District of Israel. In its population was , nearly all of whom are Palestinian citizens of Israel. The city is situated on the Umm al-Fahm ...
inside Israel during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. When news of the killings reached Nazareth on
Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur ( ; , ) is the holiest day of the year in Judaism. It occurs annually on the 10th of Tishrei, corresponding to a date in late September or early October.
For traditional Jewish people, it is primarily centered on atonement and ...
, a strike was declared, which was, according to one local report, met by hundreds of Israelis from
Nazareth Illit
Nof HaGalil is a city in the Northern District (Israel), Northern District of Israel with a population of .
Nof HaGalil was founded in 1957 as Nazareth Illit (; ), it was planned as a Jewish town overlooking the city of Nazareth and the Jezreel V ...
who began to stone Palestinian houses. Police were called and hundreds of Palestinian Israelis were arrested, while the youths from Nazareth Illit were reportedly left alone.
Just one Palestinian minor, out of a total of 853 charged with stone throwing between 2005 and 2010, was acquitted. After pressure was exerted by international legal organizations, Israel finally instituted an Israeli Juvenile Military Court in the West Bank in November 2009. The rate of conviction for juvenile stone-throwers is close to 100%, and upwards of 70% of them suffer some form of violence when detained.
Israeli tactics against the first wave of stone throwing
A minority (15%) of these demonstrations turned violent. Israeli public perceptions overwhelmingly viewed these protests as predominantly violent, aimed not only at soldiers but civilians, and at the existence of the state of Israel. The mass civil unrest, called by the Israelis, ''hafarot seder'' ( disruptions of order) found IDF soldiers and staff unprepared.
Ruth Linn
Ruth Linn () is a professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Development at the University of Haifa. Specializing in moral psychology, she has focused on moral disobedience, including resistance to authority.
Linn is the author of five bo ...
''Conscience at War: The Israeli Soldier as a Moral Critic''
SUNY Press, 2012 pp. 62-62: 'an undeclared war that often led by women and children who used "cold", though very often lethal, ammunition.' Soldiers, particular
Druze
The Druze ( ; , ' or ', , '), who Endonym and exonym, call themselves al-Muwaḥḥidūn (), are an Arabs, Arab Eastern esotericism, esoteric Religious denomination, religious group from West Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic ...
border guards, initially used extreme and indiscriminate violence to shoot, bash and interrogate throwers of stones and Molotov cocktails, to the point that sickened some fellow soldiers.
[David McDowal]
''Palestine and Israel: The Uprising and Beyond''
University of California Press, 1991 pp. 6-7. Israel's standard strategy for responding to Palestinian stone throwing protest had been to fire live ammunition at a relatively long distance from the site of the disturbance, and shoot canisters of tear gas into crowds.
Untrained for riot control on this scale,
[Glenn Frankel]
''Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on the Hard Road to a New Israel''
pp. 82-83., p. 83: 'By the standards that police use in dealing with civilians, the IDF was unusually violent. For the first eighteen months of the intifada, undertrained, undermanned, under-equipped soldiers killed a Palestinian a day. By contrast, the highly trained riot police of South Korea, faced with a steady barrage of firebombs and brutal attacks, killed a total of one person during a year of constant unrest in the mid-1980s.' Israeli troops fired rubber-bullets, then live ammunition, at the lower extremities or into crowds, so that, within a month of the outbreak (28 December 1987) 28 Palestinians had been killed and 180 injured by such methods, as opposed to 60 Israeli soldiers and 40 civilians.
[F. Robert Hunter]
''The Palestinian Uprising: A War by Other Means''
University of California Press, 1991 p. 81, p. 104 (tear gas into crowds), p. 201 In September 1988 the Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir
Yitzhak Shamir (, ; born Yitzhak Yezernitsky; October 22, 1915 – June 30, 2012) was an Israeli politician and the seventh prime minister of Israel, serving two terms (1983–1984, 1986–1992). Before the establishment of the State of Israel, ...
proposed reclassifying rocks as lethal weapons to enable both settlers and soldiers to shoot immediately, without prior warning.
The then deputy head of the IDF,
Ehud Barak
Ehud Barak ( ; born Ehud Brog; 12 February 1942) is an Israeli former general and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister from 1999 to 2001. He was leader of the Israeli Labor Party, Labor Party between 1997 and 20 ...
, disavowing any desire to fire at children stated at the time that, 'when you see a child, you don't shoot'.
A new military device which hurled out pebbles at high speed was also deployed.
[Leslie Derfler]
''Yitzhak Rabin: A Political Biography''
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 pp. 115-119. p. 118. IDF forces were permitted to respond to stone-throwing with lethal fire even when it posed no risk to their lives.
[James A. Graff, 'Targeting Children,' in Tomis Kapitan (ed]
''Philosophical Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict''
M.E.Sharpe pp. 160-170, p. 169. From the outset, in Gaza, tire-burning and stone throwing was answered with fire from
M16 assault rifles. Those caught were given exemplary punishments: 4 teenagers in Gaza alone were given prison sentences of 10–14 years for throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, compared to 13 years for
Sheikh Yassin, the leader of Hamas at the time, for having creating clandestine weapon caches in Gaza back in 1983. Where earlier, disturbances by schoolchildren such as raising the Palestinian flag, had been negotiated by the IDF, harsh measures under the new policy led to immediate quelling by military force.
[F. Robert Hunter]
''The Palestinian Uprising: A War by Other Means''
University of California Press, 1991 p. 94:'Where this (new tough policy) could lead became clear in an incident in the northern West Bank village of Anabta
Anabta () is a Palestinian town in the Tulkarm Governorate in the northern West Bank, located 9 kilometers east of Tulkarm. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Anabta had a population of 8,077 inhabitants in 2017. Anabta ...
on 1 February (1988) when schools reopened after their winter recess. After an altercation broke out in the village, troops surrounded a school and fired tear gas grenades into the classrooms. Two young men were hit by live ammunition fired by the troops. News of the shootings set off a wave of protest in the village and in its other schools. According too military sources, troops entered schools and used force to remove pupils who were throwing rocks at them and at the mayor who was trying to supervise the exit of the pupils. One of the women who converged upon the schools to rescue their relatives was shot in the head. Two young men were killed, one while standing on the school veranda.' 'Consequently,' it has been argued, 'the traditional view, which had so helped Israel maintain its self-image as a righteous nation that used force only in self-defense, against much greater and virulent Arab aggression, had dissolved in a matter of weeks.'
[Sergio Catignani]
'' Israeli Counter-Insurgency and the Intifadas: Dilemmas of a Conventional Army''
Routledge, 2008 pp. 81-82.
Tactics eventually changed, as large crowds were replaced by small groups of 10-20 youths who would stand round watching soldiers, making them nervous. Quick attacks became the rule,
though incidents of children being gunned down for simply insulting troops are known .
[George D. Moffett 111]
'Report Condemns Israeli Violence Save the Children Findings Show Little Correspondence with Official Army Statements
the Christian Science Monitor
''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles both in Electronic publishing, electronic format and a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 ...
, 17 May 1990, on an incident at the Jenin Refugee Camp on 13 August 1988:'Four Palestinian youths encounter a foot patrol of three Israeli soldiers near the entrance to the camp. They jeer and curse at the soldiers, who order them home. One of the youths, 12-year-old Yousef Damaj, then lifts his foot and says, "My dirty old shoes are cleaner than your face." One of the soldiers responds by firing a rifle shot into Yousef's chest. An hour later, Yousef is dead.' Faced with persistent stone-throwing, commanders were instructed to identify and shoot those whom they regarded as the chief instigators, masked youths.
By late December 1989, 85% of the incidents of violence consisted in stone throwing, 10% in tire-burning, 5% firebombings and stabbings. Given the high number of Palestinian deaths, an order of January 1988, ultimately thought to derive from
Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin (; , ; 1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the prime minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–1977, and from 1992 until Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, his ass ...
, was executed for a large-scale military incursion into the Territories in order to implement a policy of "force, might, and beatings", in order to "avoid a bloodbath", since "nobody dies of a beating"
Specifically soldiers were authorized to "break bones", arms and legs, as retaliation for stoning. Countless instances of beating stone throwers ensued, Within five days of the new directive's promulgation, Gaza's
Al-Shifa Hospital
Al-Shifa Hospital ( ''Mustašfā aš-Šifāʾ'' ) was the largest medical complex and central hospital in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, located in the neighborhood of northern Rimal in Gaza City.
The hospital was first established by the govern ...
had to treat 200 cases of broken elbows and knees and fractured skulls, and hands were smashed to deny youths the ability to throw stones.
Between 19 and 21 January 1988, 12 demonstrators of
Beita alone were rounded up without resistance, assembled and had their bones broken.
and videos of soldiers breaking the bones were flashed round the world, one showing soldiers smashing a pinned-down stone-thrower's femur with a rock: some are still available on
YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
.
In March 1988, since it was found that wooden cudgels were prone to shatter in beating Palestinians, plastic and fibre-glass truncheons were soon introduced.
Within two years,
the Swedish Branch of the Save the Children Fund estimated that some 23,600 to 29,000 children required medical assistance after being beaten by Israeli forces in the first two years of the Intifada,
[ John J. Mearsheimer, Stephen M. Walt, " The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, " (2007) Penguin Books 2009 p. 100.] while in the same period, Palestinian attacks resulted in the death of five Israeli children.
In August 1988 plastic bullets were introduced which retained effectiveness at 100 metres, out of range of stone-throwers, and were potentially lethal at 70 yards. Over 5 months, these munitions still killed 47 Palestinians, and injured a further 288 in riot dispersal clashes.
By the autumn of 1988 the ''de facto'' rule permitted the use of lived ammunition against children caught stone-throwing or seen fleeing from a scene where such behavior had occurred, even if there was no impending risk to soldiers' lives.
[James A. Graff, in Tomis Kapitan (ed.)]
''Philosophical Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict''
M.E. Sharpe, 1997 pp. 160-170.
The practice flowed over into Israel when the country's Arab minority adopted the method. Some 133 incidents involving stone-throwing were registered there in 1988.
Regulations in early 1988 stipulated force could be used in quelling riots or overcoming resistance to arrest.
These envisaged lethal response when one's life was endangered, and the use of weapons within a context of direct conflict.
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...
, in a review of soldiers dispersing incidents of stone-throwing, noted that soldiers, whose lives were not endangered, still frequently shot Palestinians who were neither armed or "wanted", often when fleeing clashes.
In 1991 an Israeli journalist, Doron Meiri, discovered that a police interrogation unit had been operative for some time whose function was to torture suspected stone-throwers (and youths who waved a Palestinian flag) to extract confessions by using
electric shock treatment. It had an extraordinary high level of success. Policies of deportation and
home demolitions were also instituted, the latter of which extended to, according to
B'Tselem, razing the homes of youngsters accused of stone throwing, These measures only stiffened the resistance of the stone-throwers.
At the end of the 6 year uprising, 120,000 Palestinians had been arrested, from 1,162 (a half under 16)
to 1,409 killed, and of the 23–29,000 children beaten, a third were under 10 years of age,
[Arthur Neslen]
''In Your Eyes a Sandstorm: Ways of Being Palestinian''
University of California Press, 2011 p. 122. as opposed to 172 Israelis, some killed in terror attacks waged by militants outside the control of the Intifada's
UNLU.
[Mient Jan Faber, Mary Kaldor, 'The deterioration of human security in Palestine,' in Mary Martin, Mary Kaldor (eds.]
''The European Union and Human Security: External Interventions and Missions''
Routledge, 2009 pp. 95-111 p. 101. 'In terms of human security, the first intifada didn't threaten the lives of Israeli citizens. . . Despite the use of so-called non-lethal weapons, - Israeli soldiers used bricks and batons to break the bones of the arms of Palestinian youngsters who had thrown stones at them-lethal weapons were also used to crush the intifada.' It has been calculated that 90% of the 271 Palestinian minors shot dead on the basis of the army criteria for the use of live fire were killed at moments when they were not actually throwing stones.
In clinical follow-up studies of the intifada children hurt in these clashes, 18-20% of the sample should a high incidence of psychopathological symptoms, while in Gaza 41% of children evinced symptoms of
posttraumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder that develops from experiencing a Psychological trauma, traumatic event, such as sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, warfare and its associated traumas, natural disaster ...
, and a Palestinian mother explained the effect of the traumatic experiences:
These children are the ''intifada'' and they have been hurt deeply . . If there is no solution, these children will one day throw more than stones because their hatred is great and they have nothing to hope for. If hope isn't given to them, they will take it from others. . . We fear they will take the knives from our kitchens to use as weapons.'
Large stones and concrete blocks from rooftops
During the first Intifada, large rocks and cinderblocks were often dropped from above in Gaza on Israeli soldiers patrolling the city's alleys.
In Nablus on 24 February 1989, Israeli Paratrooper
Binyamin Meisner was killed by a cement block dropped from the top of a building during clashes between Israeli troops and local residents in the
town market.
In May 2018,
Duvdevan Unit soldier Ronen Lubarsky was killed inside the
al-Am'ari Refugee Camp near Ramallah, during an operational raid to capture people suspected of engaging in recent attacks, after a marble slab hit his head after being hurled from a rooftop.
David and Goliath symbolism
The First Intifada's mode of confrontation between armed soldiers and stone throwing youths was as much a 'battle of perceptions' as a military clash. The myth of
David and Goliath
Goliath ( ) was a Philistine giant in the Book of Samuel. Descriptions of Goliath's immense stature vary among biblical sources, with texts describing him as either or tall. According to the text, Goliath issued a challenge to the Israelit ...
in which ancestral
Israel's first king defeats the
Philistines
Philistines (; LXX: ; ) were ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan during the Iron Age in a confederation of city-states generally referred to as Philistia.
There is compelling evidence to suggest that the Philistines origi ...
by the use of a slingshot and stones had been reenacted in the
Zionist
Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...
struggle to establish a state against a much larger Arab world's opposition, a "few against the many" narrative, of a David slaying Goliath, which some argue still exercises a hegemonic hold over Western attitudes.
When the first revolt against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories broke out, according to Mira Sucharov, the myth reappeared in a subverted version, in both a kibbutz song:
Dudi, you always wanted to be like David
Red headed and nice eyes, And always with a smile
In an alley in Nablus
Nablus ( ; , ) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 156,906. Located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a ...
you forgot everything
and turned into Goliath.
and as a reformulation in significant areas of the policy in which Israelis imagined themselves as Goliath, and their Other, the unarmed Palestinians asserting their nationalism, as David.
[Mira M. Sucharov]
''The International Self: Psychoanalysis and the Search for Israeli -Palestinian Peace, ''
SUNY Press, 2012 p. 57
At the same time, the myth was consciously
appropriated by Palestinians who 'returned to the ancient method: the sling and stone like David.'
[Eitan Alimi]
''Israeli Politics and the First Palestinian Intifada: Political Opportunities, Framing Processes and Contentious Politics''
Routledge, 2007 p. 155.'Last, but not least, the uprising's framers appropriated a historical exemplar from their antagonist's mythical heroic history. Taking into consideration the ancient rivalry between the two People might help us to grasp the Palestinian use o0f the Jewish myth: David and Goliath. The Myth is embedded within the wider context of the Hebrew People's nationalist claim over the "promised land" and their struggle against the Philistine menace. "The leader told me . ." writes Makhul (1988:97). . that in addition to the stone and the Molotov, they had returned to an ancient method: the sling and stone like David." Thus, just as young David, against all odds and using handmade weapons succeeded in bringing Goliath down, so do the Palestinians, so evidently inferior to the Israeli army, cause the army to retreat.' The image thus became recurrent in descriptions of the different means employed by both sides in the confrontations in this
asymmetric warfare
Asymmetric warfare (or asymmetric engagement) is a type of war between belligerents whose relative military power, strategy or tactics differ significantly. This type of warfare often, but not necessarily, involves insurgents, terrorist grou ...
. Eitan Alimi argues that this transfer of the Israeli story into Palestinian hands gave the latter three advantages: it was a spiritual resource for insurgents against a strong army; it followed David's rejection of Saul's advice to employ armour and lethal weaponry in favour of techniques they were more traditionally familiar with; and it was newsworthy to face off Israeli tanks and heavily armed soldiers with stones and
burning tires.
Astute Palestinian planning to see that media representatives were present, despite Israeli efforts to hinder coverage, were demoralizing not only for Israel's foreign image, but to the parents of IDF soldiers watching the news. The international press, through television broadcasts of the uprising, contrasted heavily armed troops against rock-throwing boys as a 'David-and-Goliath standoff,' casting the Palestinians as the underdog. According to
Stuart Eizenstat, the 'reverse David-and-Goliath image of Israelis with tanks against rock-throwing Palestinian teenagers' distorts foreign perceptions of Israel's battle against terrorism. It is argued that this asymmetric stand-off has reversed the traditional global impression of Israel as a David facing an Arab Goliath.
Media coverage
In certain documented cases,
Israeli undercover units have thrown stones at uniformed IDF and police alongside Palestinians.
['Undercover Israeli combatants threw stones at IDF soldiers in West Bank']
Chaim Levinson, 7 May 2012, Haaretz
''Haaretz'' (; originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , , ) is an List of newspapers in Israel, Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel. The paper is published in Hebrew lan ...
According to a
Haaretz
''Haaretz'' (; originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , , ) is an List of newspapers in Israel, Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel. The paper is published in Hebrew lan ...
investigation, police testifying about clashes with protesters in
Bil'in
Bil'in () is a Palestinian village located in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, west of the city of Ramallah in the central West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Bil'in had a population of 2,137 in 2017. I ...
have in a number of cases given false testimony by claiming that rocks were being thrown in what were, on analysis, peaceful protests. In other cases in that village
Israel Border Police
The Israel Border Police () is the gendarmerie and border security branch of the Israel National Police. It is also commonly known by its Hebrew abbreviation Magav (), meaning border guard; its members are colloquially known as ''magavnikim ...
were, nonetheless, injured by rock-throwing.
At times false reports of Israelis being injured or killed by Palestinian stone-throwers have circulated. On 4 April 1988 an Israeli teenager, Tirza Porat from the settlement of
Elon Moreh
Elon Moreh () is an Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Jewish Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Located northeast of the State of Palestine, Palestinian city of Nablus, on the slopes of the Mount Kabir ridge, it falls under the jurisdiction of Shomr ...
was said to have been killed by a stone thrown at a busload of teenagers passing through the village of
Beita. Settlers called for the village to be razed, and 13 houses were demolished. Two days later, it emerged she had been shot in the head by a Jewish guard's bullet.
[Ghada Talhani, The Homeless Palestinians in Israel and the Arab world,' in Robert J. Kelly, Jess Maghan (eds]
''Hate Crime: The Global Politics of Polarization''
SIU Press, 1998 pp. 83-110 pp. 91-93. Reports of stone-throwing that lead to court cases have at times been dismissed, as trumped-up charges. A soldier, under arrest, swore in an affidavit that a certain Palestinian had thrown stones at him. The accused was shown to be physically disabled, and the case was dismissed, as was another in which a settler identified the defense lawyer, not his client, as the person who threw stones at him.-
According to Louis J. Salome, newspapers buried reports critical of Israeli shootings of stone-throwers for fear of offending 'powerful Israeli and Jewish interests'.
Peter Beinart
Peter Alexander Beinart (; born February 28, 1971) is an American liberal columnist, journalist, and political commentator. A former editor of ''The New Republic'', he has also written for ''Time'', ''The Atlantic'', and ''The New York Review of ...
notes that similarities exist between political reactions in Israel and the United States to stone-throwing protests by Ethiopian Israelis and
Afro-Americans. One condemns the violence, but calls are made to look into and attend to the problems that give rise to such episodes. He then asks why Israeli attitudes are different if the stone-throwers are Palestinians. In the former instances, he argues, the grievances behind the violence are acknowledged and promises are made to redress them. The IDF website brands all Palestinian stone-throwing as 'unprovoked', and as 'threats to the stability of the region', and yet Beinart thinks it absurd to characterize behaviour by 'people who have lived for almost a half-century under military law and without free movement, citizenship or the right to vote,' unprovoked.
Statistics
According to IDFG statistics, since 2004 an average of 4,066 stone throwing incidents are observed annually. The peak year was 2005, with 4,371 incidents. The lowest incidence was registered in 2007, when 3,501 events involving the throwing of stones at soldiers and passing cars were registered.
[Chaim Levinson]
'Israel Defense Forces: Rock-throwing in West Bank reaches new high'
Haaretz
''Haaretz'' (; originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , , ) is an List of newspapers in Israel, Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel. The paper is published in Hebrew lan ...
6 October 2011.
According to the Israeli police, in 2013 7,886 events of stone throwing were recorded in comparison to 18,726 of such events in 2014.
According to Israel's statistics, no
IDF soldiers have died as a result of Palestinian stone-throwing.
B'Tselem has asked the authorities to supply the relevant statistics for injuries sustained by this activity, but it was reported that the data is not collected.
Reactions by Israelis
Settlers
A settler or a colonist is a person who establishes or joins a permanent presence that is separate to existing communities. The entity that a settler establishes is a Human settlement, settlement. A settler is called a pioneer if they are among ...
in the First Intifada reportedly followed the army's example after the
Yesha Council approved shooting as a response to Palestinian stoning of cars even in situations where there was no threat to life.
Settler militias began to initiate retaliations in the form of violent rampages against Arab 'terror', disrupting village routines, shooting at water tanks, setting cars on fire and burning agricultural fields. After one stone throwing incident Rabbi
Eliezer Waldman led a rampage on a neighbouring village, where a mosque was burnt, and stated: "We have to shoot stone throwers. There is nothing more absurd, immoral and dangerous than to endanger ourselves in order to safeguard the attackers' lives."
[Roger Friedland, Richard Hech]
''To Rule Jerusalem''
Cambridge University Press (1996) 2000 p. 218
During the period of the Al-Aqsa intifada, settlers organized 'independent armed patrols' employing firearms to shoot when they encountered stoning or road blocks and, according to an IDF commander, 'Almost any event of Palestinian attack elicits ''ad hoc'' a violent response that is organized by the settlers'.
Participation by Palestinian children and women
Palestinian children routinely participate in incidents of stone throwing.
Annually, Israeli military courts sentence approximately 700 Palestinian children, predominantly on charges of throwing stones. Under Israeli law children under 12 may neither be arrested nor detained, but a boy as young as 7 or 9, suspected of stoning a bus, has been detained for 4 hours on 30 April 2015. According to Reem Bahdi, between 2000 and 2008, 6,500 children were arrested, mostly for this activity. One study found that of 853 Palestinian children indicted by Israel for stone-throwing between 2005 and 2010, 18 were between 12 and 13 years old; 255 were between 14 and 15; 60% received jail sentences of up to 2 months, 15% received over 6 months and 1% served a year in prison.
According to
B'Tselem from 2005 to 2010, 834 minors 17 and younger were brought before Israeli military courts on stone-throwing charges, a third, some 288, were between 12 and 15 years old. All but one were found guilty, mostly in
plea bargains, and spent a few weeks to a few months in jail. Bahdi considers that Israel criminalizes stone-throwing as a threat to state security.
[Reem Bahdi, 'Phosphorus and Stone:Operation cast Lead, Israeli Military Courts, and International Law as Dennial-Maintenance,' in Willem de Lint, Marinella Marmo, Nerida Chazal (eds.)]
''Criminal Justice in International Society,
Routledge 2014, pp. 170-191, p. 186.
During the large-scale
2018 Gaza border protests
Eighteen or 18 may refer to:
* 18 (number)
* One of the years 18 BC, AD 18, 1918, 2018
Film, television and entertainment
* ''18'' (film), a 1993 Taiwanese experimental film based on the short story ''God's Dice''
* ''Eighteen'' (film), a 2 ...
, some Gazan women made collections of stones for youths whose eyes were blurry from the effects of tear-gas, in order to save them time.
Israeli law
According to
Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera Media Network (AJMN; , ) is a private-media conglomerate headquartered in Wadi Al Sail, Doha, funded in part by the government of Qatar. The network's flagship channels include Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English, which pro ...
, Israeli prosecutors usually ask for jail sentences of up to 3 months for rock throwing that does not cause serious injuries.
['Palestinian official slams Israel's stone-throwing bill']
Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera Media Network (AJMN; , ) is a private-media conglomerate headquartered in Wadi Al Sail, Doha, funded in part by the government of Qatar. The network's flagship channels include Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English, which pro ...
31 May 2015
In response to the
killing of Sergeant Almog Shiloni and the
2014 Alon Shvut stabbing attack, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a Security Cabinet meeting in which he announced that fines would be imposed on the parents of minors caught throwing stones. In November 2014, the Cabinet approved a preliminary draft of a bill that would, if passed, increase the legal penalties for stone-throwing to up to 20 years imprisonment where there is intent to cause bodily harm.
In May 2015, a version of the bill was adopted by the Cabinet that would also allow for a 10-year sentence without a requirement to prove the accused harboured an intention to harm. The approved amendment was proposed by
Ayelet Shaked
Ayelet Shaked ( ; born 7 May 1976) is an Israeli former politician, activist, and Software engineering, software engineer. She served as Ministry of Interior (Israel), Minister of Interior from 2021 to 2022 and as Ministry of Justice (Israel), ...
.
['Israel advances bill increasing stone-throwers' sentences']
Ma'an News Agency
Ma'an News Agency (MNA; ) is a large wire service created in 2005 in the Palestinian territories. It is part of the Ma'an Network, a non-governmental organization media network created in 2002 in the Palestinian territories among independent journ ...
1 June 2015: 'The new version would enable 10 years imprisonment for "throwing stones or other objects at travelling vehicles in a manner that could endanger the passenger's safety" or harm the vehicle, the bill read.'
In November 2014, an Israeli court decided, for the first time, not to release a minor who was awaiting trial for stone-throwing due to an upsurge in stone-throwing in the
Isawiya neighborhood in Jerusalem, where the 15-year-old lived. In response to the rise in stone-throwing incidents the Israeli military redefined the practice as a felony, a judgement backed by a High Court ruling. In cases where accidents or casualties result, the house of the youth's parents is demolished.
Lisa Hajjar
Lisa Hajjar is an American sociologist. She is a professor and department chair at the University of California, Santa Barbara sociology department, and a co-editor and contributor at the online magazine ''Jadaliyya
''Jadaliyya'' (" dialectic") ...
''Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza''
University of California Press, 2005 p. 99.
In June 2015, 4 Palestinians—3 of them minors—convicted of hurling large rocks at a car on Route 375, severely injuring
Ziona Kala, were sentenced to between 7 and 8 years in prison.
In September 2015, following other incidents on a road where stone-throwing was frequent, Attorney General
Yehuda Weinstein was asked by Benjamin Netanyahu to authorize live fire against stone-throwers in
East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem (, ; , ) is the portion of Jerusalem that was Jordanian annexation of the West Bank, held by Jordan after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, as opposed to West Jerusalem, which was held by Israel. Captured and occupied in 1967, th ...
. According to B'Tselem, if passed, the measure would contravene the recommendations for the restricted use of live fire set forth by the
Or Commission
The Or Commission (), fully the Commission of Inquiry into the Clashes Between Security Forces and Israeli Citizens in October 2000 (), was a panel of inquiry appointed by the Israeli government to investigate the events of October 2000 at the b ...
in 2000. The Israeli Cabinet unanimously passed a proposal on 24 September to create a 4 year mandatory minimum sentence for adults throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. The measure allows police to open fire if any lives are perceived to be in danger, which is interpreted by Ynet to mean that minors can also be targeted. The families of minors between 14 and 18 found to have thrown rocks, Molotov cocktails, or firecrackers will be subject to fines and imprisonment.
Collective punishment
Collective punishment is a punishment or sanction imposed on a group or whole community for acts allegedly perpetrated by a member or some members of that group or area, which could be an ethnic or political group, or just the family, friends a ...
has been used to obtain information about stone throwers. In April 2015, the 7,000 inhabitants of
Hizma had all exits to their town closed down, until informers would emerge to tell the Israeli authorities who in their ranks had been responsible for stoning incidents. According to
Haaretz
''Haaretz'' (; originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , , ) is an List of newspapers in Israel, Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel. The paper is published in Hebrew lan ...
, the police removed the sign explaining the move when an activist was observed filming in the area.
Deaths and casualties
Victims of stone throwing
According to historian
Rafael Medoff, 14 people have been killed by Palestinian stone throwing, including 3 Arabs mistaken for Jews by the rock throwers.
[ Rafael Medoff]
'Baltimore 'riot mom' needed in Jerusalem'
JNS.org 3 May 2015
*
Ester Ohana was the first Israeli killed by Palestinian stone-throwing. She was killed on 29 January 1983 when a stone was thrown through the window of the car in which she was a passenger, hitting her in the head.
* On 5 June 2001,
Yehuda Shoham, a 5-month-old baby, was killed when a rock hurled by stone-throwing Palestinians crashed through the window of the car he was riding in, crushing his skull.
* On 23 September 2011,
Asher (25) and Yonatan Palmer (1) were killed when the car Asher was driving was attacked by stone-throwing Palestinians, causing it to crash killing him along with his infant son.
* On 14 March 2013,
the Biton's family car was attacked, near neighboring village of
Kif el-Hares, with stones which caused it to get out of control and collide with a truck.
Adele Biton was critically injured along with her mother and 3 sisters who were moderately injured, and died two years later.
* On 13 September 2015
Alexander Levlovich was killed by thrown rocks that caused his car to swerve out of control in a Jerusalem neighborhood.
Cement-block dropping
* On 24 February 1989, a cement block was dropped from a rooftop by a Fatah activist, Samir Na'neesh, onto the head of Staff Sergeant
Binyamin Meisner, while he was patrolling the
casbah
A kasbah (, also ; , , Maghrebi Arabic: ), also spelled qasbah, qasba, qasaba, or casbah, is a fortress, most commonly the citadel or fortified quarter of a city. It is also equivalent to the term in Spanish (), which is derived from the same ...
in
Nablus
Nablus ( ; , ) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 156,906. Located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a ...
. The block crushed his skull, killing him.
Evaluations
* For Amani Ezzat Ismail, Palestinians see stone-throwing as a primitive method of retaliation, in a situation where power-equivalency is lacking: stones are deployed against Israeli soldiers who are armed and use rubber-coated bullets and, in major uprisings, missiles and helicopter gunships.
[Amani Ezzat Ismail]
''Constructing an Intifada for Statehood: Palestinian Political Violence in United States News, 2000--2004''
ProQuest 2006 p. 74.
*
Gene Sharp
Gene Sharp (January 21, 1928 – January 28, 2018) was an American political scientist. He was the founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the study of nonviolent action, and professor of po ...
classifies stone-throwing as a form of "limited violence", writing that, "Palestinians see the stones as a way of expressing their defiance and rage", but, in Sharp's opinion, the tactic is "counterproductive" because Israelis "almost never see a stone thrown at them as a relatively nonviolent (form of) expression".
* Colonel
Thomas Hammes, an analyst of
asymmetrical warfare
Asymmetric warfare (or asymmetric engagement) is a type of war between belligerents whose relative military power, strategy or tactics differ significantly. This type of warfare often, but not necessarily, involves Insurgency, insurgents, terro ...
, considers that the tactical use of stone-throwing in the First Intifada was the key strategic move that enabled the Palestinian movement to "transformed (Israel) from the tiny, brave nation surrounded by hostile Arab nations to the oppressive state that condoned killing children in the street".
*
University of Windsor
The University of Windsor (UWindsor, U of W, or UWin) is a public university, public research university in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's southernmost university. It has approximately 17,500 students. The university was incorporated by ...
professor of law Reem Bahdi argues that, while Israel justifies its use of phosphorus weaponry in areas where the civilian density is high, as in Gaza, as legitimate in international law, it criminalizes stone-throwing as a threat to the security of the State.
*
Thomas Friedman
Thomas Loren Friedman ( ; born July 20, 1953) is an American political commentator and author. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a weekly columnist for ''The New York Times''. He has written extensively on foreign affairs, global ...
argued that stone-throwing is compatible with "the teachings of
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2October 186930January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalism, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethics, political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful Indian ...
".
* Jodi Rudoren, writing for the
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
, states that many Palestinians see stone-throwing as, "a
rite of passage
A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of social status, status in society. In cultural anthropology the term is the Anglicisa ...
and an honored act of defiance".
*
Amira Hass in an article published the day after a Palestinian stone-thrower was convicted of the
Murder of an Israeli settler and his son has defended Palestinian stone–throwing as the, "birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule", and as "a metaphor of resistance".
* Israeli pro-Palestinian anarchist
Jonathan Pollak argues that stone throwing is one form of violence that is at times necessary and moral, as an act of collective empowerment that enables the occupied people to avoid the traps of victimization.
* Marouf Hasian and Lisa A. Flores have the interpreted stone-throwing that took place during the First Intifada as a means of creating a collective identity, a historical tradition, and – ultimately – a Palestinian nation.
* David A. McDonald understands stone-throwing as a "resistance performance... strategically engineered to reinforce the sacred relationship between the nation and the land".
* Palestinian intellectual
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, and political activist. As a professor of literature at Columbia University, he was among the founders of Postcolonialism, post-co ...
, then terminally ill, threw a stone across the border on 3 July 2000 while visiting Lebanon, with no Israeli in sight. When the incident attracted international attention, and it was adduced as proof he was a terrorist, Said justified it as a, 'symbolic gesture of joy' at the end of Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. In one of his essays, he wrote of Palestinian youths who, 'with stones and an unbent political will standing fearlessly against the blows of well-armed Israeli soldiers, backed by one of the world's mightiest defence establishments, bankrolled unflinchingly and unquestioningly by the world's wealthiest nation, supported faithfully and smilingly by a whole apparatus of intellectual lackeys.'
*
Azmi Bishara
Azmi Bishara ( born 22 July 1956) is an Arab-Israeli public intellectual, political philosopher and author. He is presently the General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of th ...
, Israeli-Palestinian politician and academic, denies that stone-throwing is a weapon or guerrilla tactic: it symbolizes, he argues, "nakedness against the occupier . . the non-accessibility of weapons in the hands of the people.'
*
Todd May says that "technically, the throwing of stones is not a form of nonviolent resistance" but that it sets in motion the same dynamics as actions that are.
*
Robert L. Holmes says that "stone-throwing, as pathetically ineffectual as it is as a military tactic against heavily armed soldiers, is still a form of violence, as is the throwing of firebombs and the dropping of blocks from buildings."
[Robert L. Holmes, 'Nonviolence and the Intifada,' in Laurence F. Bove, Laura Duhan Kaplan (eds.]
''From the Eye of the Storm: Regional Conflicts and the Philosophy of Peace''
Rodopi, 1995 pp. 209-221 p. 220.
* Julie M. Norman says that throwing stones is a "'limited violence' tactic", and notes that a majority of Palestinian youth surveyed consider it nonviolent.
*
Mary Elizabeth King says that throwing stones or petrol bombs is a violent action, but that "to many Palestinians the hurled stones were meant to impede and harass - not kill - the occupying Israeli military forces and Israelis settlers in the West Bank and Gaza".
In popular culture
Many popular songs and poems, some written in admiration by other Arabs, such as the Syrian
Nizar Qabbani,
dwell on the function of stones in expressing the identity of Palestinians and their land. One which arose during the First Intifada runs:
'' yā ḥijārah yā ḥijārah''
''Uw'ī trūḥī min al-ḥārah''
''anā wiyāk trabbaynā''
''mithl al-baḥr wa biḥārah''
(Oh stones, oh stones
Do not leave our cramped quarters
You and I were raised together
Like the sea and the sailor)
In Palestinian theatre, a play staged at the beginning time of the First Intifada (1987) bore the title ''Alf Layla wa-Layla min Layāli Rāmi al-Ḥijāra,'' (A Thousand and One Nights of the Nights of a Stone Thrower) and portrayed an encounter between an Israeli military governor and a Palestinian youth who is represented as a Palestinian David facing down an Israeli Goliath and his well-equipped warriors. The military governor loses, and the narrator comments:
'Already a man by the age of ten, the stone thrower child's game with the stones became a gesture of a free man. He saw that nothing remained but the stones themselves to defend his home from the gluttony of the governor, who was gobbling away at the trees, the stars and the sun.'
The leader of the troupe François Abū Sālim, was subsequently arrested for staging the play.
In
Michel Khleifi's 1990 film on the First Intifada, ''Canticle of the Stones, '' a woman collapses on seeing her house demolished by an Israeli bulldozer, and another woman comments: 'Even if every Palestinian dies, the stones will throw themselves by themselves.'
Runa Mackay, commemorating an incident at
Beit Sahour
Beit Sahour or Beit Sahur (; Palestine grid 170/123) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian town east of Bethlehem, in the Bethlehem Governorate of the West Bank in the State of Palestine. The city is under the administration of the Palestinian Nat ...
, writes:
While shepherds watched their flocks by night
A mile away the soldiers dynamite the inn
Of the little family whose fifteen year old, like David
Threw a stone at the Israeli Goliath, but without David's success.
For this crime against the mighty, the lowly are rendered homeless,
And pitch their tent beside the empty tomb.
''
Slingshot Hip Hop'' is a 2008 documentary film about Palestinian youth culture and
hip hop music
Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music Music genre, genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African Americans, African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide r ...
.
The 2012 film
Rock the Casbah
"Rock the Casbah" is a song by the English punk rock band The Clash, released in 1982 as the second single from their fifth album, ''Combat Rock''. It reached number eight on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart in the US (their only top 10 single ...
deals with the struggle of Israeli soldiers and Arab civilians to deal with, "asymmetrical warfare i(n which) one side has guns, the other merely rocks," after an incident where a washing machine is dropped onto, and kills, a soldier.
See also
*
Jewish Israeli stone-throwing
*
Palestinian political violence
Palestinian political violence refers to acts of violence or terrorism committed by Palestinians with the intent to accomplish political goals in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Common objectives of political violence by Pal ...
*
Stone pelting in Kashmir
*
Serhildan
{{Infobox civil conflict
, title=Serhildan
, partof=the Kurdish–Turkish conflict
, image=
, caption=
, date=14 March 1990 – 12 May 2025
, place=Eastern Anatolia region, Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia region, Southeastern Turkey
, coordinat ...
*
Stoning
Stoning, or lapidation, is a method of capital punishment where a group throws stones at a person until the subject dies from blunt trauma. It has been attested as a form of punishment for grave misdeeds since ancient times.
Stoning appears t ...
*
Timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{refend
Bibliography
* David A. McDonald, 'Performative Politics: Folklore and Popular resistance in the First Palestine Intifada,' in Moslih Kanaaneh, Stig-Magnus Thorsén, Heather Bursheh, David A. McDonald (eds.
''Palestinian Music and Song: Expression and Resistance since 1900'' Indiana University Press, 2013 pp123–140, p. 133.
Anti-Israeli sentiment in Palestine
Articles containing video clips
Political violence in Palestine
Protests in Palestine
Revolutionary tactics
-