Two weeks ago Mairav and I gave an interview to Pressenza about Ta’ayush.

Pressenza: Critics of non-violence say that non-violent methods may be morally right, but they are inefficient. Also, there always seems to be a justification for the absolute necessity of an immediate violent intervention… What is your explanation for the choice of non-violence?

MZ: In the international media the Palestinian resistance has been known to be quite violent, so we need to make our struggle more credible. Also, we are citizens of a country that claims to be democratic, so for us, unlike for the military, it is most important to uphold basic values. We have been met with a lot of verbal and physical violence, but both for your own soul when you go home at night and for the legitimacy of the opposition, it is important to remain non-violent.

JD: Ta’ayush as an organization is very non-conformist and very free form. We do not have any political stands on whether there should be one states, two states, five states, seven states…The only two things that we can agree on is that we are non-violent and that we are against the occupation. This is the foundation of our initiative, maybe as a reaction to the intensely militarized society that we live in. One of our goals is not to engage in the game of provoking and then responding to violence with violence. Also, if we were tempted to react in a violent way, we would be very quickly discredited and we would all go to jail immediately. So we have to look at the situation as pragmatically as possible.

Have a look at the entire interview.