Last month there was an astonishing display of successful, prayerful Palestinian nonviolent resistance, but you wouldn’t have known it from anything written in the mainstream media.

When the Israeli police installed Metal Detectors at the al-Aqsa mosque following an act of violence that killed two Israeli policemen on July 14, tensions on the Temple Mount were raised to an almost terrifying level. Palestinians Muslims responded, however, not with more violence but with prayer. For a week, the street in the Old City that led from Lion’s Gate to the Via Dolorosa was filled with scores of peaceful worshippers.

During the week of protest, even the right-wing Jerusalem Post noted the true meaning of this prayerful mobilization:

Although there have been clashes here during the last week, the general trend has been toward nonviolent prayer-protest. The profoundly religious aspect of this protest can be seen in the lack of Palestinian flags or outward political affiliation of the attendees. On Wednesday a dozen young men chanted against Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas, but in general political speeches have been rare and religious preaching has been common.

In a +972 article entitled “How the World Missed a Week of Palestinian Civil Disobedience” Aviv Tatarksky, from the Jerusalem-based NGO Ir Amim, said:

The decision to boycott the metal detectors and refrain from going up to Al-Aqsa, the continuous stream of people to the gates of the compound, the mass prayers, all of these are a form of civil disobedience. And as such, it is a legitimate form of protest.

And from Palestinian nonviolent activist Issa Amro, writing in the Jewish Forward:

What you witnessed this week when Israel took down the metal detectors was nothing short of the triumph of nonviolence over the occupation. And while it’s true that individuals carried out violent acts, against two Druze police officers and three Israeli settlers, these are the actions of individuals, while the face of this revolution has been the faces of many Palestinians engaged in nonviolence.

While the Western political elites and media continue to paint Palestinians – and Muslims at large – as incorrigibly violent extremists, I believe it is our sacred duty to lift up stories such as these. There will undoubtedly be more acts of violence committed by individual Palestinians in the future. History has taught us that when people are oppressed, they tend to resist their oppression – yes, often violently. But we must never fall into the racist dismissal of Israel’s devastating state violence as somehow “permissible.”

It is our job to bear witness to the courageous movement of Palestinian civil disobedience, which has a venerable history and occurs virtually ever day in a myriad of ways large and small.

We might start by sharing the pictures above far and wide. They are indeed worth a thousand words.