sadly - violence works - and there ARE times when you have to fight back. Initiating violence is wrong though

Interesting she should reference Gandhi on cowardice and violence since Norman Finkelstein makes a similar comment and more after having read half (about 25,000 pages) of Gandhi's collected works, seeking an historical precedent to consider non-violent protest against occupation. In my view an interesting interview and a view of Gandhi many of us - myself included - have never appreciated.

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/3/23/part_ii_scholar_norman_finkelstein_on_next_steps_towards_resolution_in_israel_palestine

 Not sure if Suu Kyi ignored the rest of the sentence (in bold, below) before quoting it...

The theory of satyagraha sees means and ends as inseparable. The means used to obtain an end are wrapped up in and attached to that end. Therefore, it is contradictory to try to use unjust means to obtain justice or to try to use violence to obtain peace. As Gandhi wrote: “They say, 'means are, after all, means'. I would say, 'means are, after all, everything'. As the means so the end...”[11]

Gandhi used an example to explain this:

If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to fight for it; if I want to buy your watch, I shall have to pay for it; and if I want a gift, I shall have to plead for it; and, according to the means I employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation.[12]

Gandhi rejected the idea that injustice should, or even could, be fought against “by any means necessary” — if you use violent, coercive, unjust means, whatever ends you produce will necessarily embed that injustice. To those who preached violence and called nonviolent actionists cowards, he replied: “I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence....I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour....But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.”[13]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha

Read it and it will take a while to digest and probably a few further readings. I do recognise in it a number of the things Finkelstein touched on and one is a seeming cultishness about Gandhi, which Finkelstein seemed to say was separate from the political Gandhi but I found one rule that if you can't agree with one rule then you should abandon all and Satyagraha.

I think the advice to the Jews was naive as the evilness of Hitler was perhaps something underestimated by Gandhi and the Zionists (many of whom collaborated - see http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm - believing that it was possible to develop a sort of entente cordiale with an uncompromising monster like Hitler and his gang of thugs). However Gandhi seems to think as many Indians would perish under the Japanese non-violently or with violent resistance. Quite a bold prediction to make and how would you ever prove it?

Sounds nice in theory but I don't think I would like to or could follow it in practice.

In any event thanks for the further information (and I'll fight to the death to defend your right to inform me further - until my death of course!).

I'm with Leo's conclusion on this. Non-violent resistance is a great ideal, and there are some rare examples where it worked real well. 

To put serious pressure on the other side and get an instant shift in priorities, violence is a proven tool and sooner or later most folks get to it. Very sad, but true.  

Leo also stated it is wrong to initiate violence which I think we would all agree on in theory but in practice it is often difficult to determine who initiates the violence. Also not all acts of violence/aggression/confrontation are grand scale armed interventions such as the Iraq war nor necessarily of a kind involving military arms but what one might call skirmishes or disputes over forced land dispossesion, or land despoilation bynational/international mining and dam building corporations for example.

Examples abound in South America where indigenous people are protesting the Canadian mining practices in their regions which poison their water. Similarly in parts of Indonesia colossal mining operations have devastated ecosystems and peoples. Indigenous peoples try non-violently and through representations to their governments and the companies and find themselves often on the receiving end of police viollence and disappearances.

After the Honduran coup labour rights activists and journalist were disappearing or turning up dead with signs of torture. In all these cases the instigators of real viollence i.e. torture and death are the companies and their agents as we have seen with the cases against Chiquita in recent years. In provinces of India Maoist so-called rebels are trying to defend their land by mining corporations who want to displace the indigenous.

Resistance to attacks on violence against ecosystems and peoples take the form of peaceful political and legal means often to little or no avail to more violent militaristic forms as with Maosit 'rebels' in India.

Violence is not only the violence of arms but that of attacks (e.g. cyanide pollution from gold mining in Central and South Amerrica, mountaintop mining in the Appalachians, Alberta oil sands pollution of Canadian aboriginal lands, climate change effects, radiation poisoning of the Tuareg in Niger and Mali) on nature and the inhabitants of ecosystems.

So violence and non-violence has also to be seen in this broader context before dismissing armed violence or claiming it to be a useful tool. Useful to whom, victim or aggressor?