Human Rights Witnesses

I found the movie that we watched in class about the Juniata alumni that are acting as human rights witnesses on the border where the Israeli government has erected a wall between Palestinian and Israeli communities. The concept of a human rights witness is very interesting because it is utilizing certain status and privileges. For these witnesses, to walk around with a camera as though they were tourists is to utilize the fact that they are Americans and therefore have privilege as a foreigner. Since Israel relies on massive support from the United States and know that a lot of this support is based on a good public perception. Therefore, human rights witnesses who are carrying cameras have a certain privilege as Americans because the Israeli soldiers know that these individuals have the ability to get them in trouble because solely of their privilege. I wonder though the attitudes that human rights witnesses get from the people that they are protecting. In the case of the video that we watched in class, it seems like these individuals were well received but I can understand how some people may be offended by the idea of others using their status like that. It may especially be problematic in areas where maybe being an American doesn't carry as much weight. Perhaps in countries like Iran which already has a bad reputation with America would be less inclined to respect such an international body. Maybe my reasoning is flawed. After all, if an American is hurt even in Iran who was not actively participating in anything illegal, it can garner a lot of international pressure on countries that may need to watch their footing with the United States or other countries least avoid a confrontation.

The notion of human rights witnesses is actually very fascinating. The whole concept is a form of nonviolence being used as an intervention. When talking about international politics, in this country we create what I believe is a false dichotomy between having to be aggressive and violent or passive and weak. The notion of nonviolent intervention indicates that practitioners of nonviolence have certain power . This in a way comes back to Gandhi with the notion that nonviolence is a tactic of the strong. However, with human rights witnessing, how much of this pressure comes from an actual threat of violence. If you use "citizens of the world" as a physical barrier to stop a particular government from violating human rights, how much of this barrier is going to be respected because the government fears violence if these individuals are harmed? It seems in a lot of nonviolence movements that the treat of violence is a way that nonviolence practitioners can convince an opponent. For example, we can see how repeated human rights abuses that attract international attention has been shown to perhaps make a nation or government vulnerable for invasion. Iraq would be an interesting example. Saddam Hussein's human rights abuses was one of the explicit reasons for the U.S. invasion. Therefore, governments may not be so eager to announce human rights violations in a world where the international community feels inclined to use violence to intervene.