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Slide 2: 5 Contents Click on number to go to page Foreword................................................................................... 12 Preface to the Updated Edition.................................................... 15 Notes—Preface....................................................................34 1. Fanning the Flames................................................................ 36 Notes—Chapter 1 ................................................................45 2. The Origins of the “Special Relationship”.................................. 47 1. Levels of Support: Diplomatic, Material, Ideological ..............48 2. Causal Factors .................................................................54 2.1 Domestic Pressure Groups and their Interests ...........54 2.2 U.S. Strategic Interests.............................................61 2.2.1 Threats to U.S. Control of Middle East Oil ...................62 2.2.2 The Indigenous Threat: Israel as a Strategic Asset ........66 2.2.3 Subsidiary Services ..................................................71 3. American Liberalism and Ideological Support for Israel ..........78 Notes—Chapter 2 ................................................................87 3. Rejectionism and Accommodation ........................................... 95 1. A Framework for Discussion ..............................................96 1.1 The Concept of Rejectionism ....................................96 1.2 The International Consensus.....................................98 2. The Stands of the Major Actors ........................................102 2.1 The United States ..................................................102 2.2 Israel .....................................................................104 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 3: 6 2.2.1 The Rejectionist Stands of Labor and Likud ...............104 2.2.2 The Legacy of the Founding Fathers .........................114 2.2.3 The Disguise .........................................................116 2.3 The Population of the Occupied Territories ...................118 2.3.1 Attitudes under Occupation .....................................119 2.3.2 The Carrot and the Stick .........................................124 2.3.3 The “Peace Process” ..............................................131 2.3.4 The United States and the Conquered Population .......132 2.4 The Arab States and the PLO .................................134 2.4.1 The Erosion of Rejectionism and the U.S.-Israeli Response ........................................................................................134 2.4.2 Sadat’s Trip to Jerusalem and the Rewriting of History 144 3. The Continuing Threat of Peace .......................................152 Notes—Chapter 3 ..............................................................161 4. Israel and Palestine: Historical Backgrounds........................... 174 1. The Pre-State Period ................................................175 2. The War of Independence/Conquest..........................183 3. The Israel-Arab Wars................................................189 4. After the 1967 Conquest ..........................................196 4.1 The Settlement Policies of the Labor Governments ........197 4.2 Settlement under Begin and Reagan.......................202 4.2.1 Policies.................................................................202 4.2.2 Reactions..............................................................204 4.2.3 Policies (Continued) ...............................................212 4.3 The Demographic Problem and its Solution ............217 4.4 The Workforce and the Labor Alignment .................219 5. The Ways of the Conqueror .............................................229 5.1 The West Bank ......................................................229 5.2 The Golan Heights .................................................243 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 4: 7 5.3 The Attack on Palestinian Culture...........................246 5.4 “The Opportunity to Work in Israel” ........................255 5.5 Israeli Inquiries and American Suppression .............258 6. The Testimony of the Samidin..........................................261 7. The Cycle of Occupation, Resistance, Repression and Moral Degeneration .........................................................................267 7.1 Americans Hear the News ......................................267 7.2 The Rise of Religious-Chauvinist Fanaticism...........272 8. Conflicts within Israel .....................................................281 8.1 Within the Jewish Community................................281 8.2 Non-Jews in the Jewish State.................................282 9. The Zionist Movement and the PLO ..................................288 9.1 “The Boundaries of Zionist Aspirations” ..................288 9.2 Moderates and Extremists ......................................293 9.3 The Use of Terror ...................................................295 10. The Problem for Today..................................................300 Notes—Chapter 4 ..............................................................302 5. Peace for Galilee.................................................................. 323 1. The Rational Basis for Attacking the Civilian Population ......325 2. The Northern Border of Greater Israel................................327 3. The Background in Lebanon ............................................329 3.1 The PLO and the Civil War .....................................329 3.2 Syria and Israel in Lebanon ....................................330 3.3 The Population under the PLO and the Phalange ....332 3.4 Israeli Military Operations in Lebanon in the 1970s 335 4. From July 1981.............................................................343 4.1 The July Bombardments and the Habib Cease-Fire .343 4.2 The Occupied Territories.........................................343 4.3 The Sinai Withdrawal .............................................344 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 5: 8 4.4 Israeli Provocations and the U.S. Response ............346 4.5 The Pretext for the Invasion of Lebanon ..................349 4.6 The Reasons for the Invasion of Lebanon................352 4.6.1 The Imperatives of Rejectionism...............................352 4.6.2 Achieving National Unity.....................................369 4.6.3 A New Order in Lebanon .....................................371 4.7 The Green Light from Washington ..........................374 5. War is Peace .................................................................380 5.1 Extermination of the Two-Legged Beasts.................381 5.2 Beirut: Precision Bombardment ..............................392 5.3 Caring for the Victims: Prisoners, Patients, Refugees ........................................................................................399 5.4 The Grand Finale ...................................................419 6. The Taste of Victory........................................................422 6.1 The Victors.............................................................422 6.2 The Liberated.........................................................423 6.3 Israelis ...................................................................436 6.4 The American Scene...............................................454 7. The Critique of the Media ................................................483 7.1 The American Media ..............................................483 7.2 The “Broad-scale Mass Psychological War” against Israel ................................................................................496 7.3 The Israeli Media ...................................................509 8. The Image Problem ........................................................512 8.1 In Lebanon.............................................................512 8.2 Solving the Problem ...............................................515 8.2.1 Extraordinary Humanitarian Efforts ...........................515 8.2.2 Flowers and Rice ................................................521 8.2.3 “The Biggest Hijacking in History”.......................530 8.3 The Image of the Fighters.......................................535 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 6: 9 8.3.1 The Palestinians ....................................................535 8.3.2 The IDF ................................................................538 Notes—Chapter 5 ..............................................................541 6. Aftermath............................................................................ 563 1. A Chapter of Jewish History............................................564 2. A Glorious Victory...........................................................570 2.1 The Achievements of Operation “Peace for Galilee”.570 2.2 The Syrian Phase of the War ..................................574 2.3 The West Falls into Line.........................................577 3. The Taste of Victory Turns Sour .......................................583 3.1 Reagan’s Peace Plan ..............................................584 3.2 The Israeli Response ..............................................593 3.2.1 The Incorporation of the Occupied Territories .............594 3.2.2 The March on West Beirut ......................................604 3.3 Ungrateful Clients ..................................................606 4. The Invasion of West Beirut.............................................612 4.1 The Gemayel Assassination ....................................612 4.2 “To Prevent Bloodshed and Acts of Revenge”..........613 5. A Chapter of Palestinian History .......................................619 6. Who is Responsible?.......................................................637 6.1 The Background for the Inquiry ..............................637 6.2 The Charges...........................................................640 6.3 “We” and “They”: Defiling the Beautiful Israel ........642 6.4 On “Moral Idiocy”...................................................654 6.5 “Putting a Snake into a Child’s Bed”: The United States and its Commitments .............................................658 6.5.1 The Defenseless Remnants......................................658 6.5.2 The “Brought-in”....................................................661 6.5.3 More on Hypocrisy .................................................663 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 7: 10 6.6 The “Principal Culprits” ..........................................665 6.7 Reactions: Israel and Elsewhere .............................667 6.8 The Commission of Inquiry (the Kahan Commission) ........................................................................................674 7. Elsewhere in Lebanon.....................................................693 7.1 The South ..............................................................694 7.2 The Chouf ..............................................................706 7.3 Beirut after the Israeli Invasion ...............................710 7.4 Under Syrian Control ..............................................714 8. Israel’s Moral Lapse........................................................715 Notes—Chapter 6 ..............................................................726 7. The Road to Armageddon...................................................... 742 1. The Fateful Triangle........................................................743 2. The Threat to the Local Parties ........................................744 2.1 The Logic of Occupation .........................................744 2.2 The Next Round .....................................................754 3. The Threat to the United States and the World...................757 3.1 The Risk of Superpower Confrontation ....................757 3.2 The Evasions of the Peace Movement .....................760 4. Prospects ......................................................................762 4.1 Assuming U.S. Rejectionism...................................763 4.1.1 The Spectrum of Israeli Political Thinking..................763 4.1.2 “From Coexistence to Hegemony”.............................766 4.2 Assuming an Abandonment of U.S. Rejectionism....779 4.2.1 The Effect on Israeli Policy ......................................779 4.2.2 Israel’s Secret Weapon............................................780 Notes—Chapter 7 ..............................................................788 8. The Palestinian Uprising ....................................................... 792 1. “Let Us Cry” ..................................................................795 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 8: 11 2. The Reality of the Occupation ..........................................804 3. Scenes from the Uprising ................................................810 3.1 Repression and Resistance .....................................811 3.2 Some Personal Observations...................................818 3.3 Elsewhere under Occupation ..................................834 3.4 Israel’s Peace Movement ........................................837 Notes—Chapter 8 ..............................................................848 9. “Limited War” in Lebanon .................................................... 855 1. The Rules of the Game ...................................................856 2. The Logic of Terror .........................................................862 3. Safeguarding the Occupation ...........................................872 4. Post-Oslo Lebanon .........................................................877 Notes—Chapter 9 ..............................................................880 10. Washington’s “Peace Process” ............................................ 884 1. Oslo I .......................................................................884 2. Oslo II ..........................................................................895 3. “Another Crushed Nation”? ..............................................923 Notes—Chapter 10 ............................................................933 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 9: Foreword 12 Foreword ateful Triangle may be the most ambitious book ever attempted on the conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians viewed as centrally involving the United States. It is a dogged exposé of human corruption, greed, and intellectual dishonesty. It is also a great and important book, which must be read by anyone concerned with public affairs. The facts are there to be recognized for Chomsky, although no one else has ever recognized them so systematically. His mainly Israeli and U.S. sources are staggeringly complete, and he is capable of registering contradictions, distinctions, and lapses which occur between them. There is something profoundly moving about a mind of such noble ideals repeatedly stirred on behalf of human suffering and injustice. One thinks here of Voltaire, of Benda, or Russell, although more than any one of them, Chomsky commands what he calls “reality”—facts—over a breathtaking range. Fateful Triangle can be read as a protracted war between fact and a series of myths—Israeli democracy, Israeli purity of arms, the benign occupation, no racism against Arabs in Israel, Palestinian terrorism, peace for Galilee. Having rehearsed the “official” narrative, he then blows it away with vast amounts of counter-evidence. Chomsky’s major claim is that Israel and the United States—especially the latter—are rejectionists opposed to peace, whereas the Arabs, including the PLO, have for years been trying to accommodate themselves to the reality of Israel. Chomsky supports his case by comparing the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict—so profoundly F
Slide 10: Foreword 13 inhuman, cynical, and deliberately cruel to the Palestinian people—with its systematically rewritten record as kept by those whom Chomsky calls “the supporters of Israel.” It is Chomsky’s contention that the liberal intelligentsia (Irving Howe, Arthur Goldberg, Alan Dershowitz, Michael Walzer, Amos Oz, Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Shlomo Avineri, Martin Peretz) and even segments of the organized Left are more culpable, more given to lying, than conservatives are. Nor is Chomsky especially gentle to the PLO, whose “self-destructiveness” and “suicidal character” he criticizes. The Arab regimes, he says, are not “decent,” and, he might have added, not popular either. In the new edition, Chomsky includes invaluable material on the Oslo and Wye accords—an unnecessary line of Arab capitulation by which Israel has achieved all of its tactical and strategic objectives at the expense of every proclaimed principle of Arab and Palestinian nationalism and struggle. For the first time in the twentieth century, an anti-colonial liberation movement has not only discarded its own considerable achievements but has made an agreement to cooperate with a military occupation before that occupation has ended. Witnessing such a sorry state of affairs is by no means a monotonous, monochromatic activity. It involves what Foucault once called “a relentless erudition,” scouring alternative sources, exhuming buried documents, reviving forgotten (or abandoned) histories. It involves a sense of the dramatic and of the insurgent, making a great deal of one’s rare opportunities to speak. There is something profoundly unsettling about an intellectual such as Chomsky who has neither an office to protect nor territory to consolidate and guard. There is no dodging the inescapable reality that such representations by intellectuals will neither make them friends in high places nor win them official honors. It is a lonely condition, yes, but it is always a better one than a gregarious tolerance for the way things are. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 11: Foreword 14 Edward W. Said New York, New York January 1999 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 12: Preface 15 Preface to the Updated Edition F or some time, I’ve been compelled to arrange speaking engagements long in advance. Sometimes a title is requested for a talk scheduled several years ahead. There is, I’ve found, one title that always works: “The current crisis in the Middle East.” One can’t predict exactly what the crisis will be far down the road, but that there will be one is a fairly safe prediction. That will continue to be the case as long as basic problems of the region are not addressed. Furthermore, the crises will be serious in what President Eisenhower called “the most strategically important area in the world.” In the early post-War years, the United States in effect extended the Monroe Doctrine to the Middle East, barring any interference apart from Britain, assumed to be a loyal dependency and quickly punished when it occasionally got out of hand (as in 1956). The strategic importance of the region lies primarily in its immense petroleum reserves and the global power accorded by control over them; and, crucially, from the huge profits that flow to the Anglo-American rulers, which have been of critical importance for their economies. It has been necessary to ensure that this enormous wealth flows primarily to the West, not to the people of the region. That is one fundamental problem that will continue to cause unrest and disorder. Another is the Israel-Arab conflict with its many ramifications, which have been closely related to the major U.S. strategic goal of dominating the region’s resources and wealth.
Slide 13: Preface 16 For many years, it was claimed the core problem was Soviet subversion and expansionism, the reflexive justification for virtually all policies since the Bolshevik takeover in Russia in 1917. That pretext having vanished, it is now quietly conceded by the White House (March 1990) that in past years, the “threats to our interests” in the Middle East “could not be laid at the Kremlin’s door”; the doctrinal system has yet to adjust fully to the new requirements. “In the future, we expect that nonSoviet threats to [our interests will command even greater attention,” the White House continued in its annual plea to Congress for a huge military budget. In reality, the “threats to our interests,” in the Middle East as elsewhere, had always been indigenous nationalism, a fact stressed in internal documents and sometimes publicly.1 A “worst case” prediction for the crisis a few years ahead would be a war between the U.S. and Iran; unlikely, but not impossible. Israel is pressing very hard for such a confrontation, recognizing Iran to be the most serious military threat that it faces. So far, the U.S. is playing a somewhat different game in its relations to Iran; accordingly, a potential war, and the necessity for it, is not a major topic in the media and journals of opinion here.2 The U.S. is, of course, concerned over Iranian power. That is one reason why the U.S. turned to active support for Iraq in the late stages of the Iraq-Iran war, with a decisive effect on the outcome, and why Washington continued its active courtship of Saddam Hussein until he interfered with U.S. plans for the region in August 1990. U.S. concerns over Iranian power were also reflected in the decision to support Saddam’s murderous assault against the Shiite population of southern Iraq in March 1991, immediately after the fighting stopped. A narrow reason was fear that Iran, a Shiite state, might exert influence over Iraqi Shiites. A more general reason was the threat to “stability” that a successful popular revolution might pose: to translate into English, the Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 14: Preface 17 threat that it might inspire democratizing tendencies that would undermine the array of dictatorships that the U.S. relies on to control the people of the region. Recall that Washington’s support for its former friend was more than tacit; the U.S. military command even denied rebelling Iraqi officers access to captured Iraqi equipment as the slaughter of the Shiite population proceeded under Stormin’ Norman’s steely gaze. Similar concerns arose as Saddam turned to crushing the Kurdish rebellion in the North. In Israel, commentators from the Chief of Staff to political analysts and Knesset members, across a very broad political spectrum, openly advocated support for Saddam’s atrocities, on the grounds that an independent Kurdistan might create a Syria-Kurd-Iran territorial link that would be a serious threat to Israel. When U.S. records are released in the distant future, we might discover that the White House harbored similar thoughts, which delayed even token gestures to block the crushing of Kurdish resistance until Washington was compelled to act by a public that had been aroused by media coverage of the suffering of the Kurds, recognizably Aryan and portrayed quite differently from the southern Shiites, who suffered a far worse fate but were only dirty Arabs. In passing, we may note that the character of U.S.-U.K. concern for the Kurds is readily determined not only by the timing of the support, and the earlier cynical treatment of Iraqi Kurds, but also by the reaction to Turkey’s massive atrocities against its Kurdish population right through the Gulf crisis. These were scarcely reported here in the mainstream, in virtue of the need to support the President, who had lauded his Turkish colleague as “a protector of peace” joining those who “stand up for civilized values around the world” against Saddam Hussein. But Europe was less disciplined. We therefore read, in the London Financial Times, that “Turkey’s western allies were rarely Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 15: Preface 18 comfortable explaining to their public why they condoned Ankara’s heavy-handed repression of its own Kurdish minority while the west offered support to the Kurds in Iraq,” not a serious PR problem here. “Diplomats now say that, more than any other issue, the sight of Kurds fighting Kurds [in Fall 1992] has served to change the way that western public opinion views the Kurdish cause.” In short, we can breathe a sigh of relief: cynicism triumphs, and the Western powers can continue to condone the harsh repression of Kurds by the “protector of peace,” while shedding crocodile tears over their treatment by the (current) enemy.3 Israel’s reasons for trying to stir up a U.S. confrontation with Iran, and “Islamic fundamentalism” generally, are easy to understand. The Israeli military recognizes that, apart from resort to nuclear weapons, there is little it can do to confront Iranian power, and is concerned that after the (anticipated) collapse of the U.S.-run “peace process,” a SyriaIran axis may be a significant threat. The U.S., in contrast, appears to be seeking a long-term accommodation with “moderate” (that is, proU.S.) elements in Iran and a return to something like the arrangements that prevailed under the Shah. How these tendencies may evolve is unclear. The propaganda campaign about “Islamic fundamentalism” has its farcical elements—even putting aside the fact that U.S. culture compares with Iran in its religious fundamentalism. The most extreme Islamic fundamentalist state in the world is the loyal U.S. ally Saudi Arabia—or, to be more precise, the family dictatorship that serves as the “Arab facade” behind which the U.S. effectively controls the Arabian peninsula, to borrow the terms of British colonial rule. The West has no problems with Islamic fundamentalism there. Probably one of the most fanatic Islamic fundamentalist groups in the world in recent years was led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the terrorist extremist who had been a CIA favorite and prime recipient of the $3.3 billion in (official) U.S. aid given Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 16: Preface 19 to the Afghan rebels (with roughly the same amount reported from Saudi Arabia), the man who shelled Kabul with thousands killed, driving hundreds of thousands of people out of the city (including all Western embassies), in an effort to shoot his way into power; not quite the same as Pol Pot emptying Phnom Penh, since the U.S. client was far more bloody in that particular operation. Similarly, it is not at all concealed in Israel that its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was undertaken in part to destroy the secular nationalism of the PLO, becoming a real nuisance with its persistent call for a peaceful diplomatic settlement, which was undermining the U.S.-Israeli strategy of gradual integration of the occupied territories within Israel. One result was the creation of Hizbollah, an Iranian-backed fundamentalist group that drove Israel out of most of Lebanon. For similar reasons, Israel supported fundamentalist elements as a rival to the accommodationist PLO in the occupied territories. The results are similar to Lebanon, as Hamas attacks against the Israeli military become increasingly difficult to contain. The examples illustrate the typical brilliance of intelligence operations when they have to deal with populations, not simply various gangsters. The basic reasoning goes back to the early days of Zionism: Palestinian moderates pose the most dangerous threat to the goal of avoiding any political settlement until facts are established to which it will have to conform. In brief, Islamic fundamentalism is an enemy only when it is “out of control.” In that case, it falls into the category of “radical nationalism” or “ultranationalism,” more generally, of independence whether religious or secular, right or left, military or civilian; priests who preach the “preferential option for the poor” in Central America, to mention a recent case. The historically unique U.S.-Israel alliance has been based on the Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 17: Preface 20 perception that Israel is a “strategic asset,” fulfilling U.S. goals in the region in tacit alliance with the Arab facade in the Gulf and other regional protectors of the family dictatorships, and performing services elsewhere. Those who see Israel’s future as an efficient Sparta, at permanent war with its enemies and surviving at the whim of the U.S., naturally want that relationship to continue—including, it seems, much of the organized American Jewish community, a fact that has long outraged Israeli doves. The doctrine is explained by General (ret.) Shlomo Gazit, former head of Israeli military intelligence and a senior official of the military administration of the occupied territories. After the collapse of the USSR, he writes, Israel’s main task has not changed at all, and it remains of crucial importance. Its location at the center of the Arab Muslim Middle East predestines Israel to be a devoted guardian of stability in all the countries surrounding it. Its [role] is to protect the existing regimes: to prevent or halt the processes of radicalization and to block the expansion of fundamentalist religious zealotry.4 To which we may add: performing dirty work that the U.S. is unable to undertake itself because of popular opposition or other costs. The conception has its grim logic. What is remarkable is that advocacy of it should be identified as “support for Israel.” With some translation, Gazit’s analysis seems plausible. We have to understand “stability” to mean maintenance of specific forms of domination and control, and easy access to resources and profits. And the phrase “fundamentalist religious zealotry,” as noted, is a code word for a particular form of “radical nationalism” that threatens “stability.” Despite shifting alliances in a highly volatile region, Israel’s role as a Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 18: Preface 21 U.S. strategic asset seems stable in the foreseeable future. Its advanced economy, like that of its patron, relies very heavily on the creativity and funding of the enormous state sector. The two countries are linked in joint research and development projects, mostly military and spin-offs, and Israel provides basing and storage facilities for the vast U.S. system of intervention forces targeting the oil-producing regions. Though effectively an extension of the U.S. military and economic interests, Israel is not entirely under control—client states commonly pursue their own paths, to the chagrin of the masters. Contradictions abound, at least contrary strains, as they do in U.S. policy as well. The Israeli Air Force is very visibly carrying out maneuvers in Eastern Turkey aimed at Iran, using advanced U.S. 15-E jets that can attack Iran and return without refueling. At the same time. headlines in the Israeli press report, “Israel and Iran have been conducting direct trade relations—from 1994.” Unlike the U.S., Israel does not officially list Iran as an enemy state, and there are no official barriers to trade, which is small but growing.5 Israel’s development and deployment of weapons of mass destruction continues under U.S. aegis, as it has since the Kennedy years. The wellinformed military analyst Uzi Mahanaimi reports that “Israeli assault aircraft have been equipped to carry chemical and biological weapons manufactured at a top secret institute near Tel Aviv, military sources revealed yesterday”. Crews flying U.S. F-16 jets are trained to “fit an active chemical or biological weapon within minutes of receiving the command to attack.” The weapons are manufactured at a biological research institute in Nes Ziona, near Tel Aviv, which “attracted unwanted scrutiny” when Dutch authorities confirmed that it was the intended destination of an El Al airliner that crashed in Amsterdam, killing many people on the ground, and found to have been carrying nerve gas components. “There is hardly a single known or unknown Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 19: Preface 22 form of chemical or biological weapon…which is not manufactured at the institute,” according to a biologist who held a senior post in Israeli intelligence. Nes Ziona does not work on defensive and protective devices, but only biological weapons for attack, according to the British Foreign Report. The devices have already been used, the report continues, in the attempt by Mossad agents to kill Khaled Mishal in Jordan, which backfired.6 Once again, Israel is following in the footsteps of its patron. After World War II, the U.S. took over the hideous biological warfare operations of Japanese fascists, including the personnel, and protected them from war crimes prosecution—ridiculing Russian war crimes trials of these Class A war criminals as Communist-style show trials. The U.S. takeover of the programs was denied until it was exposed in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars in 1980. The achievements of the Japanese Mengeles became the core of U.S. biological warfare capabilities—one reason, along with nuclear bombs, why the U.S. official stand from 1950 was that it is “fallacious” to divide weapons “into moral and immoral types,” and that the concept of “weapons of mass destruction” does “not appear to have any significance.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff included biological warfare in war plans by 1949. Shortly after, the plans included a first-use option, along with nuclear weapons, a position formalized by the National Security Council in 1956 and in force until the 1972 treaty banning biological warfare. Recently released Chinese and U.S. archives raise questions about the actual use of these weapons in North Korea and China, previously assumed (by me as well) to have been Communist propaganda; China appears to have downplayed their use, so as not to provide information to the enemy. 7 The international framework in which these developments are proceeding is fraught with danger and uncertainty. The U.S. has been isolated for years in its policies on Israel and the Palestinians, and only Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 20: Preface 23 since its Gulf War victory has it been able to institute the program it had demanded in opposition to a very broad international consensus. The U.S. is now quite isolated in its policies towards Iran, which most of the world wants to reintegrate into the international system. In the case of Iraq, the U.S. and U.K. have lost much of the limited support they had in the past, and must now pursue military action in increasingly brazen violation of the UN Security Council and regional opinion. Secretary of Defense William Cohen “won no public support” when he “visited Saudi Arabia and five other friendly Persian Gulf countries” to explain the U.S. policy of punitive raids against Iraq in March 1999. A senior Saudi official stated: “We object to any nation taking matters into its own hands, and using bombing as an instrument of diplomacy.” Saudi Arabia has consistently refused to allow U.S. combat planes based there to join in operations against Iraq.8 The U.S. hope is that the region’s governments are sufficiently despotic so as to be able to suppress the growing popular opposition to the savage devastation of the civilian society of a neighboring Arab country—opposition that is growing elsewhere as well. Concerns over these developments must surely have become serious as the U.S. and its British client were seeking to prepare the ground for bombing of Iraq in late 1997. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was sent to Saudi Arabia, but treated with noticeable coolness. In sharp contrast, former Iranian president Rafsanjani, “still a pivotal figure in Tehran, was given an audience by the ailing King Fahd in Saudi Arabia,” and as his 10-day trip ended on March 2, Foreign Minister Prince Saud described it as “one more step in the right direction towards improving relations.” He also reiterated that “the greatest destabilising element in the Middle East and the cause of all other problems in the region” is Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians and U.S. support for it. These policies might activate popular forces that Saudi Arabia greatly fears, as Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 21: Preface 24 well as undermining its legitimacy as “guardian” of Islamic holy places, including the Dome of the Rock in East Jerusalem, now effectively annexed by U.S./Israeli “greater Jerusalem” programs. Shortly before, the Arab states had boycotted a U.S.-sponsored economic summit in Qatar that was intended to advance the “New Middle East” project of Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Instead, they attended an Islamic conference in Teheran in December 1997, joined even by Iraq.9 The increasingly prominent Turkish-Israel alliance is not welcome to other countries of the region, and there are signs that they may be considering Iranian initiatives to develop a regional system that would be more independent of U.S. control, including the Gulf oil producers, Egypt, and Syria. That is not a prospect that U.S. planners can lightly tolerate, particularly with the reasonable likelihood that not too far in the future the current oil glut will decline and the Middle East share in global oil production will substantially increase. It is against the background of such possible developments in the region that U.S. planning with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be assessed. Israel’s internal economy and social structure are coming to resemble that of its patron and paymaster, with growing inequality and the collapse of social support systems, along with a sense of social solidarity generally One grave internal problem is the cost—economic, social, and cultural—of sustaining a large and growing ultra-religious (“Haredi”) population, which draws heavily on educational and welfare programs but contributes little to the economy. In a 1997 study, economists from the Hebrew University and Boston University found that Israel’s workforce participation for men is well below that of Western Europe and the U.S., and declining as “ultra-Orthodox non-participation…is permanent and increasing at a geometric rate.” If the tendencies persist, they will “make Israel’s welfare system insolvent and bankrupt Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 22: Preface 25 municipalities with large ultra-Orthodox populations.” Refusal to work among the Orthodox is a specific Israeli phenomenon, not the case elsewhere or historically in anything like the manner of contemporary Israel. With the religious population doubling every 17 years, “economic bankruptcy is imminent,” the economists conclude, though the ultraOrthodox Rabbi who chairs the Knesset finance committee feels that all is under control because “this country is living with miracles.”10 Conflicts between the secular and religious populations are becoming more intense, exacerbated by class and ethnic correlations. Population growth is increasing among Palestinians and ultra-religious Jews, declining among secular and privileged sectors, as in Europe. Many Israelis find the looming “civil war” more ominous even than the dangerous international conflicts that are likely to persist. As in the U.S., the Israeli political system is converging in a narrow center-right spectrum with little differentiation, and the traditional parties (Likud, Labor) are virtually collapsing. Their current leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, have “two identical maps,” political commentator Yosef Harif observes: “from a political point of view there is no difference today between Netanyahu and Barak”—not that matters were very different before, apart from the differences of style that trace to the differing constituencies of the political blocs. Netanyahu’s plan is “Allon Plus,” an amplification of the traditional Labor Party Allon Plan that grants Israel effective control over desirable regions and resources of the occupied territories. Barak’s “alternative” is what he calls “the expanded Allon Plan,” which amounts to about the same thing. Barak demands that “we must not uproot settlements” or “abandon the Jewish settlement in Hebron,” and it is “forbidden for us to agree to a Palestinian state.” “One listens to the ideas of Barak and hears the voice of Netanyahu,” the reporter observes, paraphrasing the Biblical passage. Considering their records, commentator Avi Shavit, Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 23: Preface 26 speaking for the left, asks “why do we hate Benjamin Netanyahu so much,” particularly since he “bears responsibility for less bloodshed and less harm to human rights than the two patrons of peace who occupied the prime minister’s chair before him,” Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, the former “anointed as Messiah” in delusional fantasies of the left, Shavit comments.11 With regard to the Palestinians, the U.S. and Israel continue to implement the extreme rejectionist program they have maintained since the early 1970s, in international isolation until the Gulf war gave the U.S. free rein to institute its version of the “peace process”: keeping unilateral control, rejecting Palestinian rights, and moving to implement a variant of South Africa’s homeland policies, though without many of the advantages that South Africa conferred on the Bantustans. The steps are reviewed in the text that follows and the chapters that update the story from 1983 to the present. At the time of writing (March 1999), the most recent stage in the “peace process” is the Wye Memorandum signed at the White House on October 23, 1998, and approved by the Israeli Cabinet on November 11. In agreeing, the Cabinet declared that “The Government will continue to pursue its policy of strengthening and developing the communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district, on the basis of a multi-annual plan,” including “security roads” for Jews throughout the territories and preservation of Israel’s “national interests”: “security areas, the areas around Jerusalem, the areas of Jewish settlement, infrastructure interests, water sources, military and security locations, the areas around north-south and west-east transportation arteries, and historic sites of the Jewish people.” Immediately following the accord, settlers established more than 12 new settlements throughout the West Bank, heeding the call of Israel’s Foreign Minister, Ariel Sharon, to “grab” as much West Bank land as possible. By January 1999, the Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 24: Preface 27 “land grab” was accelerating, including isolated settlements that would be the first candidates for eventual evacuation under any settlement that is not a complete caricature. Standard practices are being followed, among them, razing Palestinian houses in the search for “Jewish archaeological remains” and establishing “nature reserves,” later to be converted to Jewish housing. Of particular significance is new post-Wye development in the Givat Ze’ev Bloc northwest of Jerusalem, in pursuance of the Bush-Clinton— Rabin-Peres programs of cutting off what will be left to the Palestinians from the region around Jerusalem (let alone Jerusalem itself, the center of their cultural, social, and economic existence) and from the territory to the south.12 The UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling on Israel to observe the Fourth Geneva Convention, which bans settlement in the occupied territories. The resolution was passed 115 to 2, the usual two.13 The Wye agreement changes territorial arrangements in trivial ways— which are not easy to determine, since it is the first redeployment accord without a map indicating areas to be transferred to Palestinian administration.14 But it is presumably a step towards something like the 50-50 split of the territories that was Rabin’s goal in the Oslo negotiations, at least if Israel is sensible enough to abandon useless lands where the population may rot in peace in scattered and isolated enclaves. The most significant and innovative aspect of the Memorandum is its barely concealed call for state terror to achieve the goals of the U.S.-Israel program. That breaks new ground for international agreements. The Memorandum emphasizes that the Palestinian security forces, which have a shocking record of torture and terror, must act to ensure the security of Israelis. The CIA will supervise them as they carry out arrests, hold mock trials, collect arms, and Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 25: Preface 28 “criminalize” incitement against the agreements. They must operate on the principle of “zero tolerance for terror” (against Israelis), a concept that is broadly construed, as anyone familiar with the record of the CIA will understand. The Memorandum does contain a sentence stating that “without derogating from the above, the Palestinian Police will…implement this Memorandum with due regard to internationally accepted norms of human rights and rule of law.” There is no reciprocity: the security of Palestinians is not an issue, and even the meaningless and shameful comment just quoted does not apply to Israel, despite its brutal record of terror, torture, and violation of elementary legal and human rights obligations, too well-documented to review. Included are hundreds of killings of Palestinians since Oslo, most of them “unlawful” according to Amnesty International (AI), and exceeding killings of Israelis by a considerable margin (though less than before, when the ratio was extreme). AI reports further that “there continues to be almost total impunity for unlawful killings of Palestinians,” not to speak of house demolitions, expulsion from Jerusalem and elsewhere, imprisonment without trial, systematic torture of prisoners, etc.—all well-documented by major human rights organizations, including Israeli organizations, but of no concern to the framers of the latest stage of the rejectionist program. No less striking is the praise of the Clinton-Gore Administration for the harsh and illegal measures employed by the Palestinian security forces to suppress opposition to the accords and ensure security for Israelis.15 Amnesty International published an assessment of the human rights situation since Oslo as the Wye Memorandum was signed.16 AI estimates 1600 Palestinians routinely arrested by Israeli military forces every year, half “systematically tortured.” AI notes once again, as other major human rights organizations regularly have, that Israel is alone in Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 26: Preface 29 having “effectively legalized the use of torture” (with Supreme Court approval), determining that in pursuit of Israel’s perceived security needs “all international rules of conduct could be broken.” AI reports similar practices on the part of the Palestinian Authority, including execution of two Palestinians for “incitement against the peace process.” The State Security Courts that conduct such abuses have been endorsed by the U.S. State Department as demonstrating Arafat’s “commitment to the security concerns of Israel,” with the support of Vice-President Al Gore. Clinton’s achievement in bringing the two parties together to agree on the Wye Memorandum was hailed with the usual awe. He proved himself to be the “Indispensable Man,” the New York Times headline read, praising him for the “Crucial Salvage Mission.” Clinton is “staking out the moral high ground” by insisting on the terms of the Wye Memorandum. He “preached accommodation to immutable realities”— “immutable” because they are demanded by U.S. power. He crowned his moral achievement with “an uplifting, optimistically American speech,” while “tethering the vaunted U.S. idealism, which some Israelis and some Palestinians believe to be diplomatic naiveté, is the promise of a fat new American purse.” Nevertheless, the idealism and moral high ground cast a radiant glow over the proceedings.17 Particular cases illustrate the reality of U.S. policy. When some atrocity occurs, Palestinians are placed under harsh curfew, no matter who is responsible. A striking illustration was the massacre of 29 Arabs praying in a Mosque by the right-wing American religious settler Baruch Goldstein in February 1994, followed by severe curfew of Palestinians and killing of many more Palestinians. Visitors to the Kiryat Arba suburb where Goldstein settled can walk to the shrine established for him, where they can worship in praise of the “martyr” who died “clean of hands and pure of heart,” as the words on the gravestone read. In one of the innumerable other curfews, in September 1998, a day-old infant Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 27: Preface 30 died in Hebron and another, three months old, died in her mother’s arms, both on their way to the hospital, when Israeli soldiers refused to let them pass through security barriers that had been set up to ensure that Jewish settlers could observe ritually prescribed seven days of mourning without disturbance. The soldiers made “a mistake in judgment” the military spokesperson stated, ending the matter18 A few days later, Osama Barham, who now holds the record for imprisonment without charge by Israeli military authorities, reached the end of five years of administrative detention, then extended by the military without any court decision. A secular journalist, Barham is suspected of membership in Islamic Jihad, without evidence—or concern from the overseers. Barham can consider himself lucky by comparison to those sent to the Israel-run torture chamber Al-Khiam in Lebanon, administered by the mercenary army Israel established in the “security zone” it occupies in violation of a unanimous UN Security Council resolution of March 1978 ordering it to withdraw immediately and unconditionally; U.S. tolerance renders the decision moot. The first news in nine months from Al-Khiam was brought by Hassan, released after 12 years of regular torture, he reports, confirming ample evidence since 1982. Hassan may have been lucky too, as compared with the 71 Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails as hostages for future negotiations after having been kidnapped in Lebanon, with the authorization of Israel’s courts.19 Israeli military operations in Lebanon continue, while its occupying forces come under more successful attack by the increasingly sophisticated Hizbollah resistance (called “terror” in the U.S., sometimes in Israel). Israeli military operations are not confined to the “security zone.” In February 1999, three Israeli officers from an elite command unit operating north of the zone were killed in a Hizbollah ambush. Israel warned that it would attack Lebanese civilian targets in Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 28: Preface 31 retaliation, as, in fact, it has regularly done in the past. Since the end of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. some 25,000 Lebanese and Palestinians have been killed, according to Lebanese officials and international relief agencies, along with 900 Israeli soldiers.20 The achievement of imposing its rejectionist program in near international isolation is impressive enough. But U.S. power won an ideological victory that is in some ways even more dramatic. By now, its rejectionist “peace process” is adopted as the framework of a just settlement worldwide, even among those who only a few years ago were calling for recognition of Palestinian rights and Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories (in accord with UN 242 of November 1967, as interpreted throughout the world, including the U.S. until 1971). So far, U.S. and Israeli leaders have been unwilling to move as far towards accommodating Palestinian rights as South African advocates of Apartheid did towards Blacks 35 years ago. Their solution was “Black states,” to which the unwanted populations could be confined, to serve as a cheap labor force when needed. Presumably, the U.S. and Israel will sooner or later realize that they can gain by adopting a more progressive stand of the South African variety. If so, they will agree to call the Palestinian enclaves a “state” and perhaps even allow them a degree of industrial development (as South Africa did), so that U.S.- and Israeli-owned manufacturers, joining with rich Palestinians, can exploit cheap and easily exploitable labor, subdued by repression. Calls for a Palestinian state are being heard, though it is instructive to look at them closely At the extreme pro-Palestinian end of mainstream discourse, Anthony Lewis, joining in the standard denunciations of Netanyahu, contrasted him with “the unsentimental old soldier” Yitzhak Rabin, who, with his “sheer intellectual honesty,” was willing to sign the Oslo agreements. But unlike Rabin, Netanyahu “opposes any solution that would give the Palestinians a viable state—tiny, disarmed, poor, Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 29: Preface 32 dominated by Israel, but their own.” That is “the heart of the matter,” the crucial distinction between the saintly Rabin and the bad Netanyahu. And because of Netanyahu’s recalcitrance, “Oslo is dying.”21 In fact, Rabin, and his successor Shimon Peres while in office, forcefully rejected any idea of a Palestinian state, while the Netanyahu government has been more ambivalent on the matter (see below). But no doubt Rabin would sooner or later have come to grant the Palestinians a state that is “tiny, disarmed, poor, dominated by Israel, but their own.” There is no more reason to doubt that Netanyahu would also agree to that, as his Minister of Information has already stated. Similarly all but the most extreme fanatics in the Arab and Islamic world would probably be willing to grant the Jews a state that is “tiny disarmed, poor, dominated by Palestine, but their own.” And they might even take “the heart of the matter” to be the unwillingness of some ultra-extremist to adopt this forthcoming stand. A thought experiment suggests itself. One might ask what the reaction would be to a presentation of “the heart of the matter” in the terms just stated. The answer tells us a good deal about the ideological victory of U.S. power. Recently Hillary Clinton indicated her interest in running for the Senate in New York. In an article headlined “New York’s Palestinian State,” James Dao of the New York Times asked whether she had made a “monumental political gaffe” in advocating a Palestinian state. What she had said to a group of young Israelis and Arabs a year earlier is that “I think that the territory that the Palestinians currently inhabit, and whatever additional territory they will obtain through the peace negotiations,” should “evolve into a functioning modern state”—a state that would, surely, be “tiny disarmed, poor, dominated by Israel.” White House aides had immediately “disowned comments by Hillary Rodham Clinton about the need for a Palestinian state and insisted that Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 30: Preface 33 she was speaking only for herself,” and she came under considerable attack. But when announcing her candidacy, she received some support as well. A political science professor was quoted as saying that “supporting a Palestinian state used to be the peacenik position, an extreme left-wing position.” But perhaps now no more. Perhaps adopting the stand of South African racists 35 years ago can no longer be condemned so easily as “the peacenik position, an extreme left-wing position.”22 Struggles for freedom and rights are never over, and this one is not either. All of the contesting parties in the region face very serious and possibly lethal threats. It cannot be said that the dominant outside power has helped to smooth the way towards a meaningful solution of their problems, or even towards reduction of the dangers. But that story has not come to an end either, and there are many options open to concerned people who hope to seek and pursue a far more constructive and honorable course. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 31: Preface 34 Notes—Preface 1. Sections of this Preface are based on “No Longer Safe,” Z Magazine, August 1993. See my Deterring Democracy (Verso, 1991; updated edition, Hill & Wang, 1992), chapter 1, and sources cited. See David Hoffman, “Making Iran Public Enemy No. 1,” Washington Post Weekly, Mar. 22-28, 1993, reporting from Jerusalem on Israel’s efforts and those of two of its US. propaganda agencies, the AntiDefamation League and the American Jewish Committee. Also Israel Shahak, “How Israel’s strategy favours Iraq over Iran,” Middle East International, Mar. 19, 1993. John Murray Brown, Financial Times, Mar. 23,1993. Gazit, Yediot Ahronot, April 1992, cited by Israel Shahak, Middle East International, Mar. 19, 1993. Eli Kamir, Ma’ariv, Nov. 12; Dorit Gabai, Ma’ariv, Dec. 21, 1997. Uzi Mahanaimi, Ha’aretz, Oct. 4; Eli Kamir. Ma’ariv, Feb. 5, 1998. Gordon Cramb, “Air crash shakes faith in Dutch politics,” FT, Feb. 21, 1999. Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, The United States and Biological Warfare (Bloomington: Indiana, 1998). For misleading articles on the topic, see Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, Mar. 7, 1999, Judith Miller and Blumenthal, NYT, Mar. 4; see also my ZNet Commentary, “On Staying Informed and Intellectual Self-Defense,” ZNet, Mar. 8, 1999 Douglas Jehl, “Saudis Admit Restricting U.S. Warplanes in Iraq,” NYT, Mar. 22, 1999. David Gardner, FT. Feb. 28; Robin Allen, FT. Mar. 3 1998. Avi Machlis, FT. Mar. 17,1999. Harif, Ma’ariv, Dec. 3; Shavit, Ha’aretz, Dec. 26, 1997. Report on Israeli Settlements 9.1, January-February 1999, Foundation for Middle East Peace. For excellent analysis of the agreements, see Norman Finkelstein, “Security Occupation: The Real Meaning of the Wye River Memorandum,” New Left Review (November/December 1998), Noam Chomsky 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle
Slide 32: Preface 35 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. revised February 1999; Nasser Aruri, “The Wye Memorandum: Netanyahu’s Oslo and Unreciprocal Reciprocity,” J. of Palestine Studies 28.2 (Winter 1999); documents appear here as well. David Sharrock, Guardian Weekly, Jan. 17, 1999. Reuters, Boston Globe, Feb. 10, 1999, 50 words. Report on Israeli Settlements, November-December 1998. Human Rights Watch, Palestinian Self-Rule Areas: Human Rights Under the Palestinian Authority (1988), cited by Finkelstein, op cit. AI, Five Years after the Oslo Agreement (September 1998). See Graham Usher Middle East International, Oct. 16, 1998; Finkelstein, op cit. Deborah Sontag, “Indispensable Man,” NYT, Dec. 14, 1998. Gidon Levi, “The Dead Children of Hebron,” Musaf Ha’aretz, Sept. 4, 1998. Gidon Levi, “Letters from the Israeli Prison,” Musaf Ha’aretz, Sept. 11, 1998; David Sharrock, Guardian, May 25, 1997. Aliza Marcus, Boston Globe, Mar. 1,1999. Lewis, “Solving the Insoluble,” NYT, Apr. 13, 1998. Dao, NYT, Feb. 28, 1999; Agence France-Presse, NYT, May 7; James Bennet, “Aides Disavow Mrs. Clinton on Mideast,” NYT, May 8,1998. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 33: 1. Fanning the Flames I * n the war of words that has been waged since Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982, critics of Israeli actions have frequently been accused of hypocrisy.1 While the reasons advanced are spurious,* the charge itself has some merit. It is surely hypocritical to condemn Israel for establishing settlements in the occupied territories while we pay for establishing and expanding them. Or to condemn Israel Through the summer of 1982, the media were flooded with letters of a strikingly similar format, typically asking of critics: Where were you when…?,” where the gap is filled by the writer’s favorite Palestinian atrocity, often invented. Another typical format was the accusation that it is hypocritical to criticize Israeli atrocities unless one goes on to condemn the Russians in Afghanistan, the Syrians for the terrible massacre in Hama, etc. No similar requirements were imposed when the PLO was bitterly condemned for terrorist atrocities. In fact, it has been a common pretense that the media and others had not condemned PLO atrocities or even that the media have been “pro-PLO” (e.g., Leon Wieseltier: “There is a scandal, and it is the moral and political prestige of the PLO [in media] coverage of the Middle East”). Entering still further into the world of fantasy, we even find the charge (Robert Tucker) that “numerous public figures in the West, even a number of Western governments” (all unnamed) have “encouraged the PLO in its maximalist course” of “winnertake-all,” i.e., destruction of Israel. When the intellectual history of this period is someday written, it will scarcely be believable.
Slide 34: Fanning the Flames 37 for attacking civilian targets with cluster and phosphorus bombs “to get the maximum kill per hit,”2 when we provide them gratis or at bargain rates, knowing that they will be used for just this purpose.3 Or to criticize Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombardment of heavily-settled civilian areas or its other military adventures,4 while we not only provide the means in abundance but welcome Israel’s assistance in testing the latest weaponry under live battlefield conditions—to be sure, against a vastly outmatched enemy, including completely undefended targets, always the safest way to carry out experiments of this sort. In general, it is pure hypocrisy to criticize the exercise of Israeli power while welcoming Israel’s contributions towards realizing the U.S. aim of eliminating possible threats, largely indigenous, to American domination of the Middle East region. Clearly, as long as the United States provides the wherewithal, Israel will use it for its purposes. These purposes are clear enough today, and have been clear to those who chose to understand for many years: to integrate the bulk of the occupied territories within Israel in some fashion while finding a way to reduce the Arab population; to disperse the scattered refugees and crush any manifestation of Palestinian nationalism or Palestinian culture;5 to gain control over southern Lebanon. Since these goals have long been obvious and have been shared in fundamental respects by the two major political groupings in Israel, there is little basis for condemning Israel when it exploits the position of regional power afforded it by the phenomenal quantities of U.S. aid in exactly the ways that would be anticipated by any person whose head is not buried in the sand. Complaints and accusations are indeed hypocritical as long as material assistance is provided in an unending and ever-expanding flow, along with diplomatic and ideological support, the latter, by shaping the facts of history in a convenient form. Even if the occasional tempered criticisms from Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 35: Fanning the Flames 38 Washington or in editorial commentary are seriously intended, there is little reason for any Israeli government to pay any attention to them. The historical practice over many years has trained Israeli leaders to assume that U.S. “opinion makers” and political elites will stand behind them whatever they do, and that even if direct reporting is accurate, as it generally is, its import will gradually be lost as the custodians of history carry out their tasks. The basic point seems simple enough, and is well-understood outside the United States, including Israel. A dissident Israeli journalist observes that “All this delusion of imperial power would stop if the United States turned off the tap…in anger at some excessive lunacy.”6 The London Economist comments: Holding up the supply of shiny new weapons is America’s traditional slap on Israel’s wrist. But an embargo is ineffective unless it is certain to last… Much more effective would be the belief in Israel that this time an American president will stick with his policy, including if need be a lasting embargo on arms and a rethink of the extent of America’s aid.7 The point, as noted, seems simple enough. Some years ago it was in fact as simple as it seems. It would then have been possible to influence Israel to join in the international consensus—which has long included the major Arab states, the population of the occupied territories, and the mainstream of the PLO—in support of a two-state political settlement that would include recognized borders, security guarantees, and reasonable prospects for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The precondition, of course, was for the U.S. itself to join this consensus and cease its support for the adamant rejectionism of the Labor Party and then Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 36: Fanning the Flames 39 Menachem Begin’s Likud coalition. Though this picture of recent history is remote from the standard version here, it is familiar abroad, and has the additional merit of accuracy.8 What seemed simple several years ago, however, has become considerably more complex today. By now it is not at all clear what the effect would be if U.S. policy were to shift towards the international consensus, abandoning the commitment to a Greater Israel that will dominate the region in the interests of American power—a commitment that is expressed in deeds, whatever the accompanying words may be— and terminating its immense material, diplomatic and ideological contributions towards ensuring that the quite reasonable international consensus will not be realized. The question is of no small significance. I will return to the background, the issues, and the current prospects. What follows is not intended as a comprehensive review or analysis of the network of relations among the United States, Israel and the Palestinians. Rather, its more modest aims are to bring out certain elements of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel, and of their relationships to the original inhabitants of the land, which I think have been insufficiently appreciated or addressed and often seriously misrepresented, with the consequence that we have pursued policies that are both disgraceful and extremely dangerous, increasingly so. These remarks will be critical of Israel’s policies: its consistent rejection of any political settlement that accommodates the national rights of the indigenous population; its repression and state terrorism over many years; its propaganda efforts, which have been remarkably successful—much to Israel’s detriment in my view—in the United States. But this presentation may be misleading, in two respects. In the first place, this is not an attempt at a general history; the focus is on what I think is and has been wrong and what should be changed, not on Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 37: Fanning the Flames 40 what I think has been right.* Secondly, the focus on Israeli actions and initiatives may obscure the fact that my real concern is the policies that have been pursued by the U.S. government and our responsibility in shaping or tolerating these policies. To a remarkable extent, articulate opinion and attitudes in the U.S. have been dominated by people who describe themselves as “supporters of Israel,” a term that I will also adopt, though with much reluctance, since I think they should more properly be called “supporters of the moral degeneration and ultimate destruction of Israel,” and not Israel alone. Given this ideological climate and the concrete U.S. actions that it has helped to engender, it is natural enough that Israeli policies have evolved in their predictable way. Perpetuation of these tendencies within the U.S. and in U.S.-Israel relations portends a rather gloomy future, in my view, for reasons that I hope will become clearer as we proceed. If so, a large measure of responsibility lies right here, as in the recent past. The essential features of the U.S. contribution towards the creation of a Greater Israel were revealed in a stark and brutal form in the September 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Beirut, which finally did elicit widespread outrage, temporarily at least. I will return to the events and their background later. For now, it suffices to observe that the * One of the things that is right is the Hebrew-language press, or at least, significant segments of it. I have relied extensively on the work of thoughtful and courageous Israeli journalists who have set—and met—quite unusual standards in exposing unpleasant facts about their own government and society. There is nothing comparable elsewhere, in my experience. See also TNCW, p. 450 (see note 5); Robert Friedman, “The West Bank’s brave reporters,” Middle East International, March 4, 1983. I am indebted to several Israeli friends, primary among them Israel Shahak, for having provided me with a great deal of material from these sources, as well as much insightful comment. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 38: Fanning the Flames 41 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was supported by the U.S. and by editorial comment generally, though qualms were raised when it seemed to be going too far (perhaps threatening U.S. interests) or to involve too many civilian casualties. All of this is reminiscent of the U.S. attack on South Vietnam in 1962, then most of Indochina a few years later, to mention an event that did not take place according to standard U.S. journalism and scholarship, just as official Party history recognizes no such event as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The Israeli occupation of West Beirut on September 15 also elicited no official U.S. criticism, though the Sabra and Shatila massacres that followed aroused angry condemnation. The condemnation was directed in the first place at the Christian Phalange, which was accused of the actual massacre, and in the second place at the Government of Israel, for failing in its responsibility to protect the inhabitants of the camps. A flood of letters and articles in the press contrasted Begin’s reliance on force and violence, his deception, his high-handed rejection (at first) of an official inquiry, and his efforts to evade responsibility, with the stand of the opposition Labor Party both now and when it had held power. The “beautiful Israel” of earlier years was disappearing, because of Begin and Sharon. Col. Eli Geva, who had been dismissed from the IDF* after refusing to lead his troops against West Beirut, was quoted as saying: The feeling is that the house is on fire. I am referring to a country which is in a type of deterioration, or landslide, and everyone who believes in this country, has to contribute to stopping the landslide.9 * Israel Defense Forces; the army of the State of Israel. Noam Chomsky Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle
Slide 39: Fanning the Flames 42 Many agreed, specifically, many long-time supporters of Israel (in the special sense of the term mentioned earlier), who dated the deterioration from the invasion of West Beirut, or of Lebanon, or perhaps somewhat earlier, though surely after Begin took power. Within Israel, the Beirut massacre evoked much anguish and an unprecedented wave of protest against the government, including an immense popular demonstration, backed, for the first time, by the opposition Labor Party. There was, however, little evidence of any significant loss of support for Begin and his governing Likud coalition. The strong and often passionate support for the military operation in Lebanon on the part of the majority of the population also appears to have been unaffected by the massacre, though opposition grew in the following months as the costs began to mount. The response in the U.S. was interesting. After initial sharp condemnation, the general reaction, across quite a broad spectrum, was that the events and the reaction to them highlighted the uniquely high moral standards of Israel. A New York Times editorial commented that Israel’s anguish “is only appropriate for a society in which moral sensitivity is a principle of political life.” Even in journals that are often regarded as taking a critical stance towards Israel, similar sentiments were voiced. Time, for example, commenting on protests within the IDF, wrote that it “has from the start been animated by the same righteous anger and high moral purpose that has guided Israel through its tumultuous history.”10 When the Report of the Israeli Commission of Inquiry into the massacres appeared a few months later, commentary was rhapsodic: Israel had sought and attained “salvation”; its achievement was “sublime” (see chapter 6, section 6.8). No state in history merits such accolades; such comments would be dismissed with contempt with reference to any other state (apart from one’s own, in patriotic speeches or the more dismal segments of Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 40: Fanning the Flames 43 scholarship). But with reference to Israel such references are so commonplace as to pass without notice, quite across the board in American journalism and scholarship, with rare exceptions. In contrast, the Palestinians and their organizations, and the Arabs more generally, have been portrayed in terms of violence, terrorism, irrationality, and uncompromising refusal to come to terms with the existence of Israel or to accept the norms of decent behavior. The contrast is clear enough in journalism and scholarship, and it is also familiar in standard media fare, where the Arab terrorist is routinely contrasted with the heroic Israeli. It would, for example, be inconceivable for a TV drama to portray an Israeli or Jewish character in the manner of the standard Arab villain, despite the ample record of Israeli terrorism over many years, effectively concealed in the United States. Colonel Geva’s comment, cited above, may well be accurate, but the question of timing is of some significance, as is the stance—both current and historical—of the Labor Party that dominated the pre-state Zionist movement and ruled from the establishment of the state to 1977. This is a question that will be addressed below. The record shows quite clearly, I believe, that it is a serious error to attribute the deterioration to Begin’s Likud coalition. The house was on fire long before, and supporters of Israel have been fanning the flames, a fact long deplored by many true Israeli doves. Those who have watched the “landslide” in silence, or have helped it along, or have successfully concealed it by often vulgar apologetics, or have blamed the Palestinians when they are persecuted or killed in alleged “retaliations,” have laid the groundwork for the current conflagration, and for the atrocities in Beirut that finally evoked some temporary protest. The reasons for this judgment will appear as we proceed. It would be salutary, then, to abandon hypocrisy. Either we provide the support for the establishment of a Greater Israel with all that it Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 41: Fanning the Flames 44 entails and refrain from condemning the grim consequences of this decision, or we withdraw the means and the license for the pursuit of these programs and act to ensure that the valid demands of Israelis and Palestinians be satisfied. This can, perhaps, still be accomplished, though the possibilities recede with each passing year as the Greater Israel that we are creating becomes more firmly implanted, and as its military power—now estimated to be surpassed only by the U.S., the USSR and China11—continues to grow. A point of no return may soon be reached, with consequences that may be appalling for Israel and the Palestinians, for the region, and perhaps for the entire world. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 42: Fanning the Flames 45 Notes—Chapter 1 Fanning the Flames 1. 2. Leon Wieseltier, New Republic, Sept. 23, 1981; Robert W. Tucker, “Lebanon: The Case for the War,” Commentary, October 1982. Richard Ben Cramer, Philadelphia Inquirer, June 30, 1982. Reprinted in The Israeli Invasion of Lebanon (Claremont Research and Publications, New York, 1982), a useful collection of press clippings for June/July 1982. On the extensive scale of Israeli use of cluster bombs in heavily populated areas, see Warren Richey, Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 2, 1982, reporting the findings of munitions experts from the multinational peacekeeping force. Doctors in Beirut reported that other anti-personnel weapons, such as phosphorus bombs, were no less devastating in their impact upon civilians, though the major effect was from the massive air, sea and artillery bombardment itself. It could not be known, of course, that an American marine (Cpl. David L. Reagan) would also be killed by a cluster bomb of the type supplied to Israel by the U.S.; J. Michael Kennedy, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 2; Time, Oct. 11, 1982. On August 5, 1982, New York Times correspondent Thomas Friedman reported “indiscriminate” shelling of West Beirut by Israeli planes, gunboats and artillery. The editors deleted the word “indiscriminate” as inconsistent with the approved image of our Israeli ally. Washington Post editors, in contrast, felt that it was permissible to report “indiscriminate” Israeli bombardment on the same day. See Alexander Cockburn, Village Voice, Sept. 21, 1982, for discussion and details, including Friedman’s protest to the editors for their lack of “courage - guts,” for being “afraid to tell our readers and those who might complain to you that the Israelis are capable of indiscriminately shelling an entire city.” The solicitude of Times editors for Israel during this period—as before—has been remarkable, as we shall have occasion to observe below. Amos Perlmutter describes “the destruction of Palestinian nationalism in any form” as one of “Begin’s most extreme and cherished ambitions” Noam Chomsky 3. 4. 5. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle
Slide 43: Fanning the Flames 46 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. (Foreign Affairs, Fall 1982). The same was true of his predecessors, who typically denied that it existed and sought to destroy its manifestations. On the measures taken under the occupation to prevent even cultural expression, see my Towards a New Cold War (henceforth, TNCW; Pantheon, New York, 1982, pp. 277-8). Haim Baram of Haolam Haze; cited in the Manchester Guardian Weekly, Sept. 12, 1982. Economist, Sept. 11, 1982. For ample though only partial evidence, see TNCW, chapters 9-12. We return to this matter, and other questions touched on here. UPI, Boston Globe, Sept. 26, 1982. Editorial, New York Times, Nov. 6, 1982; Time, Oct. 11, 1982. The estimate is that of the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies; Time, Oct. 11, 1982. Israelis tend to rank their power one notch higher, describing themselves as the third most powerful military force in the world. See, for example, Dov Yirmiah, Yoman Hamilchama Sheli (My War Diary; privately printed, Tel Aviv, 1983, to be published in English translation by South End Press), an important record of the Lebanon war to which we return. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 44: 2. The Origins of the “Special Relationship”
Slide 45: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 48 1. Levels of Support: Diplomatic, Material, Ideological he relationship between the United States and Israel has been a curious one in world affairs and in American culture. Its unique character is symbolized by recent votes at the United Nations. For example, on June 26, 1982 the United States stood alone in vetoing a UN Security Council resolution calling for simultaneous withdrawal of Israeli and Palestinian armed forces from Beirut, on the grounds that this plan “was a transparent attempt to preserve the P.L.O. as a viable political force,” evidently an intolerable prospect for the U.S. government.1 A few hours later, the U.S. and Israel voted against a General Assembly resolution calling for an end to hostilities in Lebanon and on the Israel-Lebanon border, passed with two “nays” and no abstentions. Earlier, the U.S. had vetoed an otherwise unanimous Security Council resolution condemning Israel for ignoring the earlier demand for withdrawal of Israeli troops.2 The pattern has, in fact, been a persistent one. More concretely, the special relationship is expressed in the level of U.S. military and economic aid to Israel over many years. Its exact scale is unknown, since much is concealed in various ways. Prior to 1967, before the “special relationship” had matured, Israel received the highest per capita aid from the U.S. of any country. Commenting on the fact, Harvard Middle East specialist Nadav Safran also notes that this amounts to a substantial part of the unprecedented capital transfer to Israel from abroad that constitutes virtually the whole of Israel’s investment—one reason why Israel’s economic progress offers no meaningful model for underdeveloped countries.3 It is possible that recent aid amounts to something like $1000 per year for each citizen of Israel when all factors are taken into account. Even the public figures Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky T
Slide 46: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 49 are astounding.* For fiscal years 1978 through 1982, Israel received 48% of all U.S. military aid and 35% of U.S. economic aid, worldwide. For FY 1983, the Reagan administration requested almost $2.5 billion for Israel out of a total aid budget of $8.1 billion, including $500 million in outright grants and $1.2 billion in low-interest loans.4 In addition, there is a regular pattern of forgiving loans, offering weapons at special discount prices, and a variety of other devices, not to mention the taxdeductible “charitable” contributions (in effect, an imposed tax), used in ways to which we return.5 Not content with this level of assistance from the American taxpayer, one of the Senate’s most prominent liberal Democrats, Alan Cranston of California, “proposed an amendment to the foreign aid bill to establish the principle that American economic assistance to Israel would not be less than the amount of debt Israel repays to the United States,” a commitment to cover “all Israeli debts and future debts,” as Senator Charles Percy commented.6 This was before the Lebanon war. The actual vote on foreign aid came after the invasion of Lebanon, after the destruction of much of southern Lebanon, the merciless siege and bombardment of Beirut, the September massacres, and Israel’s rapid expansion of settlement in the occupied territories in response to Reagan’s plea to suspend settlement in accord with his peace proposals, which Israel rejected. In the light of these events, the only issue arising in Congress was whether to “punish” Israel by accepting the President’s proposal for a substantial increase in * The General Accounting Office (GAO) has informed Congress that the actual level of U.S. aid may be as much as 60% higher than the publicly available figures. This is the preliminary result of a detailed study of U.S. aid to Israel by the GAO. “A major issue could develop next year [1983] over how much of the GAO study may be made public.” James McCartney. Philadelphia Inquirer, August 25, 1982. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 47: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 50 the already phenomenal level of aid—what is called taking “a get-tough approach with Israel”7—or to take a softer line by adding even more to the increases that the President requested, as the Senate and most liberals demanded. Fortunately, the press was sufficiently disciplined so that the comic aspects of this characteristic performance were suppressed. The consequences of this message of approval to Israel for its recent actions on the part of the President and Congress are not at all comic, needless to say. It should be noted that in theory there are restrictions on the use of American aid (e.g., cluster bombs can be used only in self-defense; development funds cannot be spent beyond Israel’s recognized—i.e., pre-June 1967—borders). But care has been taken to ensure that these restrictions will not be invoked, though the illegal use of weapons occasionally elicits a reprimand or temporary cut-off of shipments when the consequences receive too much publicity. As for the ban on use of U.S. funds for the settlement and development programs that the U.S. has officially regarded as illegal and as a barrier to peace (i.e., beyond the pre-June 1967 borders), this has never been enforced, and the aid program is designed so that it cannot be enforced: “in contrast to most other aid relationships, the projects we fund in Israel are not specified,” Ian Lustick observes, and no official of the State Department or the aid program has “ever been assigned to supervise the use of our funds by the Israeli government.” For comparison, one may consider the U.S. aid program to Egypt (the largest recipient of non-military U.S. aid since Camp David), which is run by an office of 125 people who supervise it in meticulous detail. Many knowledgeable Egyptians have been highly critical of the aid program, alleging that it reflects American rather than Egyptian priorities, financing U.S. imports which must be brought on American ships and U.S. consultants, when trained personnel are available in Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 48: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 51 Egypt for a fraction of the cost. They also note the emphasis on the private sector, “pay[ing] Mid-west farmers for wheat which could be grown at half the price in Egypt” (according to a former AID director), and in general the infiltration of Egyptian society to the extent that some perceive a threat to Egyptian national security.8 These examples illustrate the diplomatic and material support that the U.S. provides for Israel.9 A concomitant, at the ideological level, is the persistence of considerable illusion about the nature of Israeli society and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since 1967, discussion of these issues has been difficult or impossible in the United States as a result of a remarkably effective campaign of vilification, abuse, and sometimes outright lying directed against those who dared to question received doctrine.* This fact has regularly been deplored by Israeli doves, who have been subjected to similar treatment here. They observe that their own position within Israel suffers because of lack of support within the U.S., where, as General (Res.) Mattityahu Peled observed, the “state of near hysteria” and the “blindly chauvinistic and narrow-minded” support for the most reactionary policies within Israel poses “the danger of prodding Israel once more toward a posture of calloused intransigence.”10 The well-known Israeli journalist and Zionist historian * Israeli intelligence apparently contributes to these efforts. According to a CIA study, one of its functions is to acquire “data for use in silencing anti-Israel factions in the West,” along with “sabotage, paramilitary and psychological warfare projects, such as character assassination and black propaganda.” “Within Jewish communities in almost every country of the world, there are Zionists and other sympathizers, who render strong support to the Israeli intelligence effort. Such contacts are carefully nurtured and serve as channels for information, deception material, propaganda and other purposes.” “They also attempt to penetrate anti-Zionist elements in order to neutralize the opposition.” Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 49: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 52 Simha Flapan describes “the prejudice of American Jewry” as now “the major obstacle to an American-Palestinian and Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, without which there is little chance to move forward in the difficult and involved peace process.”11 In concentrating on the role of American Jewry, these Israeli writers focus much too narrowly, I believe. To cite one last example, an article in the American Jewish press quotes a staff writer for Ha’aretz (essentially, the Israeli New York Times) who says that “you American Jews, you liberals, you lovers of democracy are supporting its destruction here by not speaking out against the government’s actions,” referring to the wave of repression in the occupied territories under the “civilian administration” of Professor Menachem Milson and General Ariel Sharon introduced in November 1981 (see chapter 5, sections 5-8). He goes on to explain the plans of Begin and Sharon: to drive a large number of Arabs out of the West Bank, specifically, the leaders and those with a potential for leadership, “by every illegal means.” How? You activate terrorists to plant bombs in the cars of their elected mayors, you arm the settlers and a few Arab quislings to run rampages through Arab towns, pogroms against property, not against people. A few Arabs have been killed by settlers. The murderers are known, but the police are virtually helpless. They have their orders. What’s your excuse for not speaking out against these violations of Israeli law and Jewish morality? The settlers, he adds, are “Religious Jews who follow a higher law and do whatever their rabbis tell them. At least one of the Gush Emunim rabbis has written that it is a mitzvah [religious duty] to destroy Amalek [meaning, the non-Jewish inhabitants], including women and Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 50: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 53 children.”12 The Ha’aretz journalist adds that his journal has “a file of horror stories reported to us by soldiers returning from occupation duty in the West Bank. We can refer to them in general terms—we can rail against the occupation that destroys the moral fibre and self-respect of our youth—but we can’t print the details because military censorship covers actions by soldiers on active duty.”13 One can imagine what the file contains, given what has been printed in the Israeli press. It should be noted, in this connection, that many crucial issues that are freely discussed in the Hebrew press in Israel and much that is documented there are virtually excluded from the American press, so that the people who are expected to pay the bills are kept largely in the dark about what they are financing or about the debates within Israel concerning these matters. Many examples will be given below. The dangers posed to Israel by its American supporters have consistently been realized, leading to much suffering in the region and repeated threat of a larger, perhaps global war. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 51: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 54 2. Causal Factors 2.1 Domestic Pressure Groups and their Interests he “special relationship” is often attributed to domestic political pressures, in particular, the effectiveness of the American Jewish community in political life and in influencing opinion.14 While there is some truth to this, it is far from the whole story, in two major respects: first, it underestimates the scope of the “support for Israel,” and second, it overestimates the role of political pressure groups in decision-making. Let us consider these factors in turn.15 In the first place, what Seth Tillman calls the “Israeli lobby” (see note 14) is far broader than the American Jewish community, embracing the major segments of liberal opinion, the leadership of the labor unions,* T * Leon Hadar writes: “Along with the organized American-Jewish community, the labour movement has been a major source of support for Israel”; true with regard to the labor union bureaucracy, whatever the membership may think. Hadar quotes ILGWU president Sol Chaikin who condemns Reagan for his willingness “to ‘sell’ both Israel and the Solidarity movement in Poland…to appease his big business friends.” Victor Gotbaum discusses the problems posed for Israel’s supporters by the Begin government and its “antagonizing” foreign policy decisions: “We couldn’t justify [the Golan annexation], so we preferred to remain silent”; many labor leaders find themselves “divorcing their love for Israel from their relations with Begin” (Gotbaum). Such rhetoric has not been heard since the peak days of American Stalinism and Trotskyite “critical support.” It is, however, rather common among Western intellectuals with regard to Israel. See TNCW, chap. 10, for some examples. More will appear Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 52: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 55 religious fundamentalists,16 “conservatives” of the type who support a powerful state apparatus geared to state-induced production of high technology waste (i.e., military production) at home and military threats and adventurism abroad, and—cutting across these categories—fervent cold warriors of all stripes. These connections are appreciated in Israel, not only by the right wing. Thus Yitzhak Rabin, reputedly a dove and soon to become the Labor Prime Minister, argued against moves towards political settlement after the 1973 war. Israel should try to “gain time,” he urged, in the hope that “we will later find ourselves in a better situation: the U.S. may adopt more aggressive positions vis-a-vis the USSR…”17 Many American Zionist leaders recognize these factors. In December 1980, several of them argued in the American Jewish press that “there is far greater potential commonality of interests among Jews and the Moral Majority than there is among Jews and the National Council of Churches” (Jewish Week). Jacques Torczyner, former President of the Zionist Organization of America and an executive of the World Zionist Organization, wrote that “We have, first of all, to come to a conclusion that the right-wing reactionaries are the natural allies of Zionism and not the liberals”18—he is wrong about the latter, mistakenly assuming that they do not join in the cold war consensus whereas in fact they have consistently promoted and helped to maintain it. It should furthermore be noted that the American left and pacifist groups, apart from fringe elements, have quite generally been extremely supportive of Israel (contrary to many baseless allegations), some passionately so, and have turned a blind eye to practices that they would be quick to denounce elsewhere. Again, examples will, appear below. There is an interesting expression of views akin to Rabin’s in a recent below. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 53: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 56 study of “the real anti-Semitism in America” by Nathan and Ruth Perlmutter, respectively, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith and his wife, also an active Zionist leader. In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League is regarded as a civil libertarian organization, at one time, a deserved reputation. Now, it specializes in trying to prevent critical discussion of policies of Israel by such techniques as maligning critics, including Israelis who do not pass its test of loyalty, distributing alleged “information” that is often circulated in unsigned pamphlets, and so on.19 In Israel, it is casually described as “one of the main pillars” of Israeli propaganda in the United States. Seth Tillman refers to it as part of “the Israeli lobby.” We return to some of its public performances (see chapter 5, section 7.1). The well-known Israeli military historian Meir Pail, formerly head of the Officers Training School of the IDF and an Israeli dove, might well have had the League in mind when he described the ways in which “Golda Meir and the Labor Party destroyed pluralism and debate within the old Zionist framework,” mimicking “Joseph Stalin’s tendency towards communist parties all over the world,” whose interests were to be “subjugated…to the power interests of the Soviet Union”; “And the Israeli regime’s tendency has been similar” as it has “destroyed the very process of dissent and inquiry,” beginning (he says) with the Golda Meir labor government.20 The League has proven a more than willing instrument. The Perlmutters cite studies showing that whereas anti-Semitism “was once virulent” in the U.S., today there is little support for discrimination against Jews; there may be dislike of Jews, anti-Jewish attitudes, etc., but then much the same is true with regard to ethnic and religious groups quite generally. What then is “the real anti-semitism,” which is still rampant, in fact perhaps more dangerous than before? The real anti-Semitism, it turns out, lies in the actions of “peacemakers of Vietnam vintage, transmuters of swords into plowshares, championing Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 54: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 57 the terrorist PLO…”* The Perlmutters fear that “nowadays war is getting a bad name and peace too favorable a press…” They are concerned by “the defamations by the Left of the promptings for our warring in Vietnam and latterly…their sniping at American defense budgets…” “Beyond oil it is the very ideology of the liberals in which peace, even if it is pockmarked by injustice, is preferable to the prospect of confrontation that today imperils Jews.” Similarly, Jewish interests are threatened “by this decade’s Leftists, here and abroad, as they demonstrate against and scold the United States for its involvement in Nicaragua and El Salvador.” Jewish interests are threatened because the Central American dictators have been friends of Israel—friendship which has been and is being reciprocated with much enthusiasm, though the Perlmutters do not discuss these facts, which help explain why victims of Somoza and the Salvadoran and Guatemalan generals are not friends of Israel, not because of anti-Semitism, but for quite understandable reasons; peasants being massacred with Israeli arms or tortured by military forces who boast of their Israeli training and support are not likely to be friends of Israel. According to the Perlmutters, such groups as the National Council of Churches also threaten Jewish interests by calling on Israel “to include the PLO in its Middle East peace negotiations.” “Apologists for the Left—like those for the Right—have frequently rationalized anti-Semitism or indifference to Jewish interests as being merely a transitory phase,” but Jews should know better. Throughout, the argument is that Israel’s interests—understood * It is a common claim, perhaps believed by its proponents, that there are many “champions of the PLO” in the U.S., even that the press is “pro-PLO” (see first*). When examples are given, it regularly turns out that these “champions” are critics (often harsh critics) of the PLO who, however, believe that Palestinians have the same human and national rights as Jews. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 55: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 58 implicitly as the interests of a rejectionist Greater Israel that denies Palestinian rights—are the “Jewish interests,” so that anyone who recognizes Palestinian rights or in other ways advocates policies that threaten “Israel’s interests” as the authors conceive them is, to paraphrase Stalinist rhetoric of earlier years, “objectively” anti-Semitic. Those who are “innocent of bigotry” are now placing Jews in “greater jeopardy” than traditional anti-Semites, with their advocacy of peace, criticism of U.S. interventionism, opposition to bloodthirsty tyrants and torturers, etc. This is the “real anti-Semitism,” and it is exceedingly dangerous. So the Anti-Defamation League has its work cut out for it.21 It might be noted that the resort to charges of “anti-Semitism” (or in the case of Jews, “Jewish self-hatred”) to silence critics of Israel has been quite a general and often effective device. Even Abba Eban, the highly-regarded Israeli diplomat of the Labor Party (considered a leading dove), is capable of writing that “One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between antiSemitism and anti-Zionism [generally understood as criticism of policies of the Israeli state] is not a distinction at all,” and that Jewish critics (I.F. Stone and I are specifically mentioned) have a “basic complex…of guilt about Jewish survival.” Similarly Irving Howe, typically without argument, simply attributes Israel’s dangerous international isolation to “skillful manipulation of oil”22 and that “sour apothegm: In the warmest of hearts there’s a cold spot for the Jews”—so that it is quite unnecessary to consider the impact of the policies of the Labor government that he supported, for example, the brutality of the occupation,* already fully apparent and sharply condemned in Israel * It might be noted that to people concerned with the facts, “skillful manipulation of oil” also seems too easy an excuse (while the “sour apothegm” hardly merits comment). See, for example, the discussion by Zionist historian Jon Kimche of Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 56: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 59 when he wrote.23 The Perlmutters deride those who voice “criticism of Israel while fantasizing countercharges of anti-Semitism,” but their comment is surely disingenuous. The tactic is standard. Christopher Sykes, in his excellent study of the pre-state period, traces the origins of this device (“a new phase in Zionist propaganda”) to a “violent counterattack” by David Ben-Gurion against a British court that had implicated Zionist leaders in arms-trafficking in 1943: “henceforth to be anti-Zionist was to be anti-Semitic.”24 It is, however, primarily in the post-1967 period that the tactic has been honed to a high art, increasingly so, as the policies defended became less and less defensible. Within the Jewish community, the unity in “support for Israel” that has been demanded, and generally achieved, is remarkable—as noted, to the chagrin of Israeli doves who plausibly argue that this kind of “support” has seriously weakened their efforts to modify harsh and ultimately self-destructive government policies. There is even a lively debate within the American Jewish community as to whether it is legitimate to criticize Israel’s policies at all, and perhaps even more amazing, the existence of such a debate is not recognized to be the amazing phenomenon it surely is. The position that criticism is illegitimate is defended, for example, by Elie Wiesel, who says: I support Israel—period. I identify with Israel—period. I never attack, never criticize Israel when I am not in Israel. As for Israel’s policies in the occupied territories, Wiesel is unable to how the Labor government’s apparent duplicity and rejection of possible peaceful settlement alienated friendly African countries well before the use of the “oil weapon.” Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 57: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 60 offer a comment: What to do and how to do it, I really don’t know because I lack the elements of information and knowledge… You must be in a position of power to possess all the information… I don’t have that information, so I don’t know…25 A similar stance of state-worship would be difficult to find, apart from the annals of Stalinism and fascism. Wiesel is regarded in the United States as a critic of fascism, and much revered as a secular saint. The reason generally offered in defense of the doctrine that Israel may not be criticized outside its borders is that only those who face the dangers and problems have a right to express such criticism, not those who observe in safety from afar. By similar logic, it is illegitimate for Americans to criticize the PLO, or the Arab states, or the USSR. This argument actually extends a bit more broadly: it is legitimate—in fact, a duty—to provide Israel with massive subsidies and to praise it to the skies while vilifying its adversaries, particularly those it has conquered, but it is illegitimate to voice any critical comment concerning the use of the bounty we provide. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 58: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 61 2.2 U.S. Strategic Interests Returning to the main theme, reference to Jewish influence over politics and opinion seriously underestimates the scope of the so-called “support for Israel.” Turning to the second point, the argument much overestimates the pluralism of American politics and ideology. No pressure group will dominate access to public opinion or maintain consistent influence over policy-making unless its aims are close to those of elite elements with real power. These elements are not uniform in interests or (in the case of shared interests) in tactical judgments; and on some issues, such as this one, they have often been divided. Nevertheless, a closer look will illustrate the correctness of the assessment that the evolution of America’s relationship to Israel “has been determined primarily by the changing role that Israel occupied in the context of America’s changing conceptions of its political-strategic interests in the Middle East.”26 Let us consider some of the relevant historical background, in an attempt to clarify this issue. Despite the remarkable level of U.S. support for Israel, it would be an error to assume that Israel represents the major U.S. interest in the Middle East. Rather, the major interest lies in the energy reserves of the region, primarily in the Arabian peninsula. A State Department analysis of 1945 described Saudi Arabia as “…a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”27 The U.S. was committed to win and keep this prize. Since World War II, it has been virtually an axiom of U.S. foreign policy that these energy reserves should remain under U.S. control. A more recent variant of the same theme is that the flow of petrodollars should be largely funneled to the U.S. through military purchases, construction projects, bank deposits, investment in Treasury securities, etc. It has been necessary to Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 59: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 62 defend this primary interest against various threats. 2.2.1 Threats to U.S. Control of Middle East Oil At the rhetorical level, the threat from which the Middle East must be “defended” is generally pictured to be the USSR. While it is true that the U.S. would not tolerate Soviet moves that threatened to provide the USSR with a significant role in Middle East oil production or distribution, this has rarely been a realistic concern—which is not to say that ideologists have not come to believe the fantasies they conjure up to serve other needs.28 In fact, the USSR has been hesitant to intrude on what is recognized to be American turf. The pattern was set early on in the Cold War, when the U.S. organized its first major postwar counterinsurgency campaign, in Greece in 1947. Entering Greece after the Nazis had withdrawn, Britain had imposed the rule of royalist elements and former Nazi collaborators, suppressing the anti-Nazi resistance—in Athens, under Churchill’s order to British forces “to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress.”29 The repression and corruption of the Britishimposed regime revived the resistance. Severely weakened by the war, Britain was unable to cope with the problem and the U.S. took over the task of destroying the Communist-led peasant and worker-based nationalist movement that had fought the Nazis, while maintaining in power its own favorites, such as King Paul and Queen Frederika, whose background was in the fascist youth movements, and Minister of the Interior Mavromichalis, described by U.S. intelligence as a former Nazi collaborator and given responsibility for internal security. Some Senators found all of this difficult to reconcile with Truman Doctrine rhetoric about supporting “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures,” under which the counterClassics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 60: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 63 insurgency campaign was mounted. To them, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge explained that “this fascist government through which we have to work is incidental.”30 The counterinsurgency effort was no small enterprise: in the war that ensued, 160,000 Greeks were killed and 800,000 became refugees. The American Mission set itself the task of eliminating those to whom Ambassador Lincoln MacVeagh referred as “subversive social forces,” rooted in the insidious “new growth of class-consciousness and proletarianism”—“an alien and subversive influence,” as American chargé Karl Rankin described them, to which “no leniency” should be shown until “the state has successfully reasserted its dominance” and the “bandit uprising has been quelled” (the Ambassador’s phrase, standard usage in U.S. documents as in Soviet documents concerning Afghanistan). It was the American Mission and its fascist clients (and, of course, the wealthy and, later, American corporations, who were the real beneficiaries) who represented the “native” element in Greece, as distinct from the “alien” influence of Greek peasants and workers subverted by class- consciousness. The dedicated savagery with which the U.S. Mission set about the task of liquidating the class enemy was a bit too much even for the British, who are not known for their gentlemanly decorum in such procedures; they were also not too happy about being displaced from yet another outpost of British influence and power. With the enthusiastic approval and direct participation of the U.S. Mission, tens of thousands were exiled, tens of thousands more were sent to prison islands where many were tortured or executed (or if lucky, only “re-educated”), the unions were broken, and even mild anti-Communist socialists were suppressed, while the U.S. shamelessly manipulated the electoral process to ensure that the right men won. The social and economic consequences were grim. A decade later, “between 1959 and 1963, Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 61: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 64 almost a third of the Greek labor force emigrated in search of satisfactory employment.”31 The fascist coup of 1967, again with apparent U.S. backing, had its roots in the same events. A major motivation for this counterinsurgency campaign was concern over Middle East oil. In his March 12, 1947 speech announcing the Truman Doctrine, the President observed that “It is necessary only to glance at a map” to see that if Greece should fall to the rebels “confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East.” A February 1948 CIA study warned that in the event of a rebel victory, the U.S. would face “the possible loss of the petroleum resources of the Middle East (comprising 40 per cent of world reserves).”32 A Russian threat was fabricated to justify U.S. intervention, but without factual basis; Stalin was trying to rein in the Greek guerrillas, knowing that the U.S. would not tolerate the loss of this Middle East outpost, as Greece was regarded, and not at all pleased at the prospect of a possible Balkan Communist confederation under Titoist influence. Again, it does not follow from the fact that the threat was fabricated that it was not believed in some planning circles; in public as in personal life, it is easy to come to believe what it is convenient to believe. The exaggeration of the Russian threat should be understood as an early example of the functioning of the Cold War system by which each superpower exploits the threat of the great enemy (its “Great Satan,” to borrow Ayatollah Khomeini’s term) to mobilize support for actions it intends to undertake in its own domains. The success of the Greek counterinsurgency campaign, both at the military and ideological level, left its stamp on future U.S. policymaking. Since that time there has been recurrent talk about Russia’s attempts to gain control of Middle East oil, the Soviet drive to the Gulf, etc. But no serious case has been made that the USSR would risk nuclear war—for that would be the likely consequence—by pursuing any Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 62: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 65 such objective. A more realistic threat to U.S. dominance of the region has been posed by Europe.* In the 1940s, the U.S. succeeded in displacing France, and to a large extent Britain, in part by design, in part simply as a reflection of the power balance.33 One consequence of the CIA-backed coup that restored the Shah in Iran in 1953 was to transfer 40% of Iranian oil from British to American hands, a fact that led the New York Times editors to express concern that some misguided British circles might believe that “American ‘imperialism’…has once again elbowed Britain from a historic stronghold.” At the same time, the editors exulted that “underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.”34 The costs of the object lesson were indeed heavy, as events were to show, and are still being paid; and many others have been compelled to learn the same lesson since. Concern over European involvement in the region persisted. The U.S. strongly opposed the attempt by Britain and France to reassert their influence in the area with the 1956 Suez invasion (in conjunction with Israel); the U.S. was instrumental in expelling all three powers from Egyptian territory, though Soviet threats may also have played their part. Henry Kissinger, in his 1973 “Year of Europe” address, warned of the dangers of a Europe-dominated trading bloc including the Middle East and North Africa from which the U.S. might be excluded. Later, he confided in a private meeting that one basic element in his post-1973 * And more recently, Japan, which in 1982 replaced the U.S. as Saudi Arabia’s number one trading partner and is also first or second as supplier for most other Gulf oil producers. Still, the Middle East is “the only U.S. foreign market that has experienced any significant growth in the past few years.” William 0. Beeman, Christian Science Monitor, March 30, 1983. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 63: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 66 diplomacy was “to ensure that the Europeans and Japanese did not get involved in the diplomacy” concerning the Middle East.35 Subsequent U.S. opposition to the “Euro-Arab dialogue” stems from the same concerns. Today, competition among the state capitalist societies (including now some lesser powers such as South Korea) for a share in the wealth generated by oil production is a matter of growing significance. 2.2.2 The Indigenous Threat: Israel as a Strategic Asset A third threat from which the region must be “defended” is the indigenous one: the threat of radical nationalism. It is in this context that the U.S.-Israel “special relationship” has matured. In the early 1950s, the U.S.-Israel relationship was decidedly uneasy, and it appeared for a time that Washington might cement closer relations with Egyptian President Nasser, who had some CIA support. These prospects appeared sufficiently worrisome so that Israel organized terrorist cells within Egypt to carry out attacks on U.S. installations (also on Egyptian public facilities) in an effort to drive a wedge between Egypt and the U.S.,36 intending that these acts would be attributed to ultranationalist Egyptian fanatics.* From the late 1950s, however, the U.S. government increasingly * The official in charge of these operations, Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon, became Secretary-General of the Histadrut (the socialist labor union). According to the respected Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, Lavon gave orders that were “much more severe” than those leading to the terrorist operations in Egypt, including an attempt “to poison the water sources in the Gaza Strip and the demilitarized zones” (Davar, Jan. 26, 1979). He does not indicate whether these alleged orders were executed.36 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 64: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 67 came to accept the Israeli thesis that a powerful Israel is a “strategic asset” for the United States, serving as a barrier against indigenous radical nationalist threats to American interests, which might gain support from the USSR. A recently declassified National Security Council memorandum of 1958 noted that a “logical corollary” of opposition to radical Arab nationalism “would be to support Israel as the only strong pro-West power left in the Near East.”37 Meanwhile, Israel concluded a secret pact with Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia. According to David BenGurion’s biographer, this “periphery pact” was encouraged by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and was “long-lasting.”38 Through the 1960s, American intelligence regarded Israel as a barrier to Nasserite pressure on the Gulf oil-producing states, a serious matter at the time, and to Russian influence. This conclusion was reinforced by Israel’s smashing victory in 1967, when Israel quickly conquered the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, the last, after violating the cease-fire in an operation ordered by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan without notifying the Prime Minister or Chief of Staff.39 The Israeli thesis that Israel is a “strategic asset” was again confirmed by Israel’s moves to block Syrian efforts to support Palestinians being massacred by Jordan in September 1970, at a time when the U.S. was unable to intervene directly against what was perceived as a threat to U.S. clients in the Arab world. This contribution led to a substantial increase in U.S. aid. In the 1970s, U.S. analysts argued that Israel and Iran under the Shah served to protect U.S. control over the oil-producing regions of the Gulf. After the fall of the Shah, Israel’s role as a Middle East Sparta in the service of American power has evoked increasing American support. At the same time, Israel aided the U.S. in penetrating Black Africa with substantial secret CIA subsidies—supporting Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, Idi Amin in Uganda, Mobutu in Zaire, Bokassa in the Central Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 65: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 68 African Republic, and others at various times40—as well as in circumventing the ban on aid to Rhodesia and South Africa, * and more recently, in providing military and technological aid, as well as many advisers, for U.S. clients in Central America.41 An increasingly visible alliance between Israel, South Africa, Taiwan and the military dictatorships of the southern cone in South America has also proven an attractive prospect for major segments of American power.42 Now, Israel is surely regarded as a crucial part of the elaborate U.S. base and backup system for the Rapid Deployment Force ringing the Middle East oil producing regions.43 These are highly important matters that deserve much more attention than I can give them here. * UPI, Boston Globe, May 16, 1982: the item reads, in toto, “American-made helicopters and spare parts went from Israel to Rhodesia—now Zimbabwe— despite a trade embargo during the bitter war against guerrillas, the Commerce Department has disclosed.” The Labor Party journal quotes the head of South Africa’s military industry as saying that Israeli “technological assistance permits South Africa to evade the arms embargo imposed upon it because of its racial policies” (Davar, Dec. 17, 1982). Yediot Ahronot, citing the London Times, reports that “Israeli technicians are helping South Africa evade the French military embargo” by transferring and repairing French armaments in Israeli hands (Oct. 29, 1981). Close relations with South Africa were established by the Rabin Labor government in the mid-1970s and remain warm, because, as Minister of Industry and Commerce Gidon Pat recently stated in Pretoria, “Israel and South Africa are two of the only 30 democracies in the world.” Similarly, Gad Yaakovi of the Labor Party “praised the economic and ‘other’ [i.e., military] relations with South Africa in a television interview” in Israel, Yoav Karni reports, adding that if he had said similar things in Britain, Holland or Sweden he would have lost his membership in the Social Democratic party, though his remarks caused no distress in the Israeli Labor Party. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 66: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 69 Had it not been for Israel’s perceived geopolitical role—primarily in the Middle East, but elsewhere as well—it is doubtful that the various pro-Israeli lobbies in the U.S. would have had much influence in policy formation, or that the climate of opinion deplored by Peled and other Israeli doves could have been constructed and maintained. Correspondingly, it will very likely erode if Israel comes to be seen as a threat rather than a support to the primary U.S. interest in the Middle East region, which is to maintain control over its energy reserves and the flow of petrodollars. Support for the concept of Israel as a “strategic asset” has, then, been considerable among those who exercise real power in the U.S., and this position has regularly won out in internal policy debate, assisted, to some extent, by domestic political pressures. But the position has not been unchallenged. There have also been powerful forces in favor of the kind of peaceful political settlement that has long been possible, a matter to which we turn in the next chapter. Michael Klare has suggested that a useful distinction can be drawn between the “Prussians,” who advocate the threat or use of violence to attain desired policy ends, and the “Traders,” who share the same goals but believe that peaceful means will be more effective.44 These are tactical assessments, and positions may therefore shift. It is, to first approximation, accurate to say that the “Prussians” have supported Israel as a “strategic asset,” while the “Traders” have sought a political accommodation of some sort. The point is implicitly recognized in much pro-Israeli propaganda, for example, a full-page New York Times advertisement signed by many luminaries (including some who are doves in other contexts), which calls for establishment of a pro-Israel political pressure group (NAT PAC) under the heading “Faith in Israel strengthens America.” To support their case, they write: “…if U.S. interests in the Middle East were threatened, it would take months to Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 67: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 70 mount a significant presence there. With Israel as an ally, it would take only a few days.” Similarly, Joseph Churba, Director of the Center for International Security, complains that “the left in Israel” lacks appreciation of U.S. and Israeli interests and “many in their ranks, as in the ranks of the American left, are working for the same purpose, i.e., that neither country should function as an international policeman, be it in El Salvador or in Lebanon”—the left in Israel and the U.S., then, are contributing to anti-Semitism, “threatening the interests of Jews,” according to the doctrine of “the real anti-Semitism” developed by the Anti-Defamation League, discussed above. Those who understand U.S. and Israeli interests believe, as Churba does, that “Western power” should be “effectively used to moderate Soviet and radical adventurism,”45 and that the U.S. and Israel should function as international policemen in El Salvador, Lebanon and elsewhere. The authentic voice of the “Prussians,” in both cases. The same distinction is implicit in the argument as to whether Israel’s “Peace for Galilee” invasion of Lebanon strengthened the American position in the Middle East and, in general, served U.S. ends. The New Republic argues that this is so; hence the operation was justified. Others believe that American interests in the region have been harmed. Thus Thomas Friedman, after an extensive investigation of opinion in the Arab world, concludes that “not only did respect for many Arab leaders die in Lebanon [because they did not come to the defense of the victims of the Israeli attack, even when a besieged Arab capital was being defended by “a popular movement,” as a Lebanese political scientist explained], but so too much of America’s respect in the Middle East,” because of the perception that “America cannot be trusted” (the director of the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development) and that the U.S. supports Israel “as an instrument of its own policy.” A senior Kuwaiti official, echoing widely expressed opinions, stated: “You have lost where Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 68: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 71 it matters most—on the humanitarian level. Whatever respect there was in the Arab world for the United States as a moral authority has been lost.”46 Who is right in this debate? Both sides are, in their own terms. Those who deride “the humanitarian level” and the concept of “moral authority” can argue, with some plausibility, that Israel’s military might enhances the capacity of the United States to rule the region by force and violence, and that the invasion of Lebanon contributed to this end, at least in the short term. Those who have a different conception of what the U.S. role should be in world affairs will draw different conclusions from the same evidence. 2.2.3 Subsidiary Services After the Lebanon invasion, Israel moved at once to underscore its status as a “strategic asset” and to reinforce its own position by improving relations with its allies (which, not by accident, are U.S. allies) in Africa and Latin America. Renewing relations established under CIA auspices in the 1960s (see above), Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir visited General Mobutu in Zaire, informing him that apart from direct military and technical support, “Israel will aid Zaire through its influence over Jewish organizations in the United States, which will help in improving [Zaire’s] image.”* This is a rather serious matter, since the * Mobutu is not the only brutal dictator to whom this idea occurred, or was suggested. In an interview with the left-wing journal AI-Hamishmar (Mapam), Dec. 29, 1981, Imelda Marcos, acting as an “international advocate” for her husband, explained their intention of exploiting improved relations with Israel and the influence of American Jews “to improve the tainted image [of the Philippine dictatorship] in the American media, and to combat its unpopularity Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 69: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 72 image of this corrupt and brutal dictatorship is not of the highest, and as Mobutu complained, “the main antagonists [of Zaire] in the U.S. are Jewish members of Congress.” Shamir’s comforting response was: “Jews criticize us too.” He went on to explain that “with the cooperation of Israeli groups and with the money that American Jews will contribute, it will be possible to aid Zaire,” militarily and materially and in improving its image. General Mobutu expressed his pleasure that Israeli officers are providing military training (specifically, for his Presidential Guard) along with French and Chinese advisers. In January 1983, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon visited Zaire and an agreement was reached that Israeli military advisers would restructure Zaire’s armed forces. Sharon “defended Israel’s new arms and military aid agreement with Zaire today as a step towards increasing Israeli influence in Africa,” UPI reported. Sharon added that the program (which must be secret) would be “a contribution to Israeli exports in arms and equipment” and that it would lead other African countries to turn to Israel for military aid.47 A few weeks earlier, Sharon had visited Honduras “to cement relations with a friendly country which has shown interest in connection with our defense establishment.” Israeli radio reported that Israel had helped Honduras acquire what is regarded as the strongest air force in Central America, and noted that “the Sharon trip raised the question of whether Israel might act as an American proxy in Honduras.” “It has also been reported that Israeli advisers have assisted in training in the American Congress.” Commenting, journalist Leon Hadar reports the opinion of Israeli officials that other third world dictatorships with a “negative image” are also interested in using this device to obtain greater political, economic and military aid from the U.S., and that strengthening of Israel’s role in the Third World is one of the “advantages” that Israel will gain from strategic cooperation with the U.S. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 70: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 73 Honduran pilots.”48 A “top-level military source” in Honduras stated that the new Israel-Honduras agreement involved sophisticated jet fighters, tanks, Galil assault rifles (standard issue for state terrorists in Central America), training for officers, troops and pilots, and perhaps missiles. Sharon’s entourage included the head of the Israeli Air Force and the director-general of the Defense Ministry; they “were accorded the full measure of honors usually accorded to a visiting head of state.” A government functionary stated that Sharon’s visit was “more positive” than Reagan’s shortly before, since Sharon “sold us arms” while “Reagan only uttered platitudes, explaining that Congress was preventing him from doing more.” There is no significant domestic force to prevent Israel from “doing more,” a fact deplored by Israeli doves. “The unannounced visit and military accord underline Israel’s growing role as U.S. arms broker and proxy in crisis-ridden Central America.” Meanwhile in Guatemala, Chief of Staff Mario Lopez Fuentes, who regards President Rios Montt as insufficiently violent, complained about U.S. meddling concerning human rights; “What we want is to be left at liberty,” he said; “It would be preferable if the U.S. were to take an attitude similar to that of other allies such as Israel, he indicated.”49 Israel’s services in Central America have been considerable, including Nicaragua (under Somoza), Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and now apparently Costa Rica since it began to draw closer to U.S. policy in the region after the election of Luis Alberto Monge in February 1982. The Israeli contributions to Guatemalan and Honduran military forces are particularly significant: in the former case, because the military regimes placed in power through U.S. intervention were finding it difficult to resist a growing insurrection while congressional human rights restrictions were impeding direct U.S. military aid to these mass murderers; and in the case of Honduras, because of Reagan’s increasingly visible efforts to foment disorder and strife by supporting the Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 71: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 74 Somozist National Guard based in Honduras in their forays into Nicaragua, where they torture and destroy in the manner in which they were trained by the United States for many years.50 Before the Falklands war, it had been hoped that Argentine neo-Nazis could be employed for this purpose, as well as for improving the efficiency of state terrorism in El Salvador and Guatemala. A more reliable client-ally may be needed to perform this proxy role, however. Charles Maechling, who led counterinsurgency and internal-defense planning for Presidents Johnson and Kennedy from 1961-66 and is now an associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described U.S. trainees in Latin America as “indistinguishable from the war criminals hanged at Nuremberg after World War II,”* adding that “for the United States, which led the crusade against the Nazi evil, to support the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads is an outrage.”51 Apart from being an outrage, it has become difficult, because of congressional legislation. Hence the importance of Israel’s contributions through the 1970s and increasingly today, in support of those who employ the methods of Himmler’s extermination squads. The congressional human rights campaign (often misleadingly attributed to the American presidency) was a reflection of the “Vietnam syndrome,” a dread malady that afflicted much of the population in the wake of the Vietnam war, with such terrifying symptoms as insight into * The extensive direct U.S. involvement in state terrorism in Latin America, as Maechling notes, began under the Kennedy Administration, when the mission of the Latin American military was shifted from “hemispheric defense” to “internal security,” i.e., war against their own populations. The effects were catastrophic, throughout Latin America. In terms of its impact, this 1961 decision of the Kennedy liberals was one of the most significant ones of recent history. It is little known here. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 72: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 75 the ways in which American power is used in the world and concern over torture, murder, aggression, and oppression. It had been hoped that the disease had been cured, but the popular reaction to Reagan’s revival of Kennedy-style counterinsurgency showed that the optimism was premature, so Israel’s contributions are perhaps even more welcome than before. It has, incidentally, been alleged that the U.S. has been opposed to Israel’s Latin American ventures (e.g., that Carter opposed Israel’s aid to Somoza), but this is hardly likely. There is little doubt that the U.S. could have prevented any intervention of which it did not approve, and it sometimes did so, though not in Nicaragua, where the Human Rights Administration in fact supported Somoza to the end of his bloody rule, even after the natural allies of the U.S., the Nicaraguan business community, had turned against him. Israel’s services have extended beyond the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, to Asia as well. Thus on one occasion Israel supplied American jets to Indonesia when its arms were depleted in the course of the massacre of Timorese, and the Human Rights Administration, while doing its best to provide the armaments required to consummate this mission, was still reluctant to do so too openly, perhaps fearing that the press might depart from its complicity in this slaughter.52 Taiwan has been a particularly close ally. The Israeli press speaks of “the Fifth World”—Israel, South Africa, Taiwan—a new alliance of technologically advanced states that is engaged in advanced weapons development, including nuclear weapons, missiles, and so on. 53 We return in chapter 7 to these developments, which may by now be causing some alarm in Washington. With Reagan’s efforts to enflame the Nicaragua-Honduras border and Sharon’s trip to Honduras, the Israeli connection became so visible as to call forth some official denials, duly reported as fact in the New York Times. Noting that Israel is “enlarging its military training missions and Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 73: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 76 role as a principal supplier of arms to Central America,” Leslie GeIb writes that “from every indication, the Israelis are not there, as are most of the others [Americans, PLO, Cubans, East Germans], as participants in a form of East-West confrontation or to engage in revolutionary or counterrevolutionary intrigue.” These “indications” turn out to be statements to this effect by Israeli and American officials, none of whom “said that Israel was in Central America to do Washington’s bidding or to help out in countries such as Guatemala where the Administration is barred from providing military aid because of civil rights abuses.” Naturally, one would expect Israeli and American officials to proclaim any such arrangements openly, so their failure to do so suffices to prove that there is nothing to this canard. A State Department official comments that “we’ve indicated we’re not unhappy they are helping out” in places like Guatemala and Honduras, “but I wouldn’t say we and the Israelis have figured out together what to do.”54 Elaborate “figuring out” would seem to be superfluous, given the shared perceptions and interests, not to speak of the extremely close relations at all levels, including the military itself, military industry, intelligence, diplomatic, etc. It is striking that Gelb assumes as a matter of course that while Israel might be pursuing its own interests (as it no doubt is, one of these being to render services to U.S. power), this could not be true of, say, Cuba, which surely has no reason to feel threatened and therefore could not be trying to break out of its “isolation” (as Israel is, he reports) by supporting friendly governments. One might have expected Gelb, perhaps, to be sensitive to this issue. He was the director of the Pentagon Papers study, which contained the astonishing revelation that U.S. intelligence, over the 20-year period surveyed, was so completely indoctrinated by Cold War propaganda that it was unable to conceive of the possibility that the North Vietnamese might have been motivated by Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 74: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 77 their own perceived interests, instead of simply acting as lackeys of the USSR or China.55 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 75: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 78 3. American Liberalism and Ideological Support for Israel s noted, the view of the “Prussians” has generally won out in internal policy debate. But the story is more complex. American liberalism has led the way in constructing the “blindly chauvinistic and narrow-minded” support for Israeli policy that General Peled deplores. On the same day that the U.S. and Israel stood alone against the world at the United Nations (see chapter 2, section 1), the national conference of the Democratic Party “adopted a statement highly sympathetic to Israel’s recent attacks in Lebanon, qualifying it only with an expression of regret over ‘all loss of life on both sides in Lebanon’.” In contrast, the Foreign Ministers of the European Community “vigorously condemned the new Israeli invasion of Lebanon” as a “flagrant violation of international law as well as of the most elementary humanitarian principles,” adding that this “unjustifiable action” posed the risk of “leading to a generalized war.”56 This is by no means an isolated case. In fact, the front page of the New York Times on that day (June 27) encapsulates the U.S.-Israel “special relationship” rather neatly. There are three adjacent columns. One is a report by William Farrell from Beirut, describing the effects of Israel’s latest bombardments: cemeteries jammed, people buried in mass graves, hospitals in desperate need of supplies, garbage heaped everywhere in stinking piles, bodies decomposing under tons of rubble, buildings little more than shattered hulks, morgue refrigerators full, bodies piled on the floors of hospitals, the few doctors desperately trying to treat victims of cluster and phosphorus bombs, Israel blocking Red Cross medical supplies, hospitals bombed, surgery interrupted by Israeli shelling, etc. The A Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 76: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 79 second is a report by Bernard Nossiter from New York, reporting how the U.S. blocked UN action to stop the slaughter on the grounds that the PLO might be preserved as “a viable political force.” The third is a report by Adam Clymer from Philadelphia on the sympathetic support of the Democratic national conference for Israel’s war in Lebanon. The three front-page reports, side-by-side, capture the nature of the “special relationship” with some accuracy—as does the lack of editorial comment. American liberalism had always been highly sympathetic to Israel, but there was a noticeable positive shift in attitudes in 1967 with the demonstration of Israel’s military might. Top Israeli military commanders made it clear not long after that Israel had faced no serious military threat and that a quick victory was anticipated with confidence—that the alleged threat to Israel’s existence was “a bluff.”57 But this fact was suppressed here in favor of the image of an Israeli David confronting a brutal Arab Goliath,58 enabling liberal humanitarians to offer their sympathy and support to the major military power of the region as it turned from crushing its enemies to suppressing those who fell under its control, while leading Generals explained that Israel could conquer everything from Khartoum to Baghdad to Algeria within a week, if necessary (Ariel Sharon).59 The rise in Israel’s stock among liberal intellectuals with this demonstration of its military prowess is a fact of some interest. It is reasonable to attribute it in large part to domestic American concerns, in particular, to the inability of the U.S. to crush indigenous resistance in Indochina. That Israel’s lightning victory should have been an inspiration to open advocates of the use of violence to attain national goals is not surprising, but there are many illusions about the stance of the liberal intelligentsia on this matter. It is now sometimes forgotten that in 1967 they overwhelmingly supported U.S. intervention (more accurately, Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 77: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 80 aggression) in Indochina and continued to do so, though many came to oppose this venture for the reasons that impelled business circles to the same judgment: the costs became too high, out of proportion to the benefits that might be gained—a “pragmatic” rather than principled opposition, quite different from the stance adopted towards depredations of official enemies, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, for example. (In contrast, the central elements of the peace movement opposed aggression in both cases on principled grounds; these facts have been much obscured in the subsequent rewriting of history). Thus the appeal of Israel’s efficient and successful use of force was, in fact, quite broad. It was only half-jokingly that people spoke of sending Moshe Dayan to Vietnam to show how to do the job right. At the same time, the challenge to authority at home was regarded with much distress. A dread image was conjured up of Vietcong, Maoist fanatics, bearded Cuban revolutionaries, rampaging students, Black Panthers, Arab terrorists and other forces—perhaps on the Russian leash—conspiring to shake the foundations of our world of privilege and domination. Israel showed how to treat Third World upstarts properly, winning the allegiance of many frightened advocates of the virtues of knowing one’s place. For some, the military might that Israel displayed induced open admiration and respect, while others disguised these feelings, appealing to the alleged vulnerability of Israel before the forces it had so decisively crushed, and still others were deluded by the effective “‘David and Goliath’ legend” (see note 58). Individuals have their own reasons, but tendencies of this nature are readily detectable and go a long way towards explaining the outpouring of “support for Israel” as it demonstrated its capacity to wield the mailed fist. It is since 1967 that questioning of Israel policies has largely been silenced, with effective use of the moral weapons of anti-Semitism and “Jewish self-hatred.” Topics that were widely discussed and debated in Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 78: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 81 Europe or in Israel itself were effectively removed from the agenda here, and a picture was established of Israel, its enemies and victims, and the U.S. role in the region, that bore only a limited resemblance to reality. The situation slowly began to change in the late 1970s, markedly so, after the increasingly visible repression under the Milson-Sharon regime in the occupied territories (only partially reported here) and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which offered a serious challenge to the talents of propagandists. The immense popularity that Israel won by demonstrating its military efficiency also offered a weapon that could be usefully employed against domestic dissidents. Considerable effort was devoted to showing that the New Left supported Arab terrorism and the destruction of Israel, a task largely accomplished in defiance of the facts (the New Left, as the documentary record clearly shows, quite generally tended to support the position of Israeli doves).60 It is interesting that one of the devices currently used to meet the new challenge is to extend to the press in general the deceptive critique applied to the New Left in earlier years. Now, the insistent complaint is that the media are antagonistic to Israel and subject to the baleful influence of the PLO, motivated by their reflex sympathy for Third World revolutionary struggles against Western power. While this may appear ludicrous given the evident facts, neither the effort (see p 36* and further examples below) nor its not insignificant success in containing deviations towards a minimal degree of even-handedness will come as any surprise to students of twentieth century propaganda systems, just as there was no surprise in the earlier successes of those who were fabricating a picture of New Left support for PLO terrorism and contempt for Israel precisely because it is a democracy advancing towards socialism, one of Irving Howe’s insights.61 We are, after all, living in the age of Orwell. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 79: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 82 One can, perhaps, offer a more sympathetic psychological interpretation. Those who are accustomed to near total dominance of articulate opinion may feel that the world is coming to an end if their control is threatened or weakened ever so slightly, reacting in the manner of an over-indulged child who is chided for the first time. Hence the wailing about the reflex sympathy of the press for the PLO and its immutable hatred of Israel when, say, there is an occasional report of the bombing of hospitals or beating of defenseless prisoners. Or the phenomenon may simply be an expression of a totalitarian mentality: any deviation from the orthodox spectrum of “support for Israel” (which includes a variety of permissible “critical support”) is an intolerable affront, and it is therefore barely an exaggeration to describe slight deviation as if it were near total. As an illustration (there are many), consider a March 1983 newsletter of the American Professors for Peace in the Middle East—a well-funded organization that is concerned about peace in the Middle East in the same sense in which the Communist Party is concerned about peace in Afghanistan—sent to its 15 Regional Chairmen and its many Campus Representatives. It warns of an “organized, centrally controlled, information plan” on the “Arab side” which is not matched by anything representing “the Israeli position.” Their concern is aroused by “a list of speakers who are being toured through the university circuit…to present the Arab point of view,” giving presentations that “smack more of propaganda than of education.” “In order of frequency and virulence the speakers are: Hatem Hussaini, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Fawaz Turki, Stokely Carmichael, James Zogby, Hassan Rahman, Chris Giannou, M.D., Israel Shahak, and Gail Pressberg.” As any observer of the American scene will be aware, these nefarious figures almost completely dominate discussion of the Middle East in the United States, and “the Israeli point of view” virtually never obtains a Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 80: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 83 hearing, though, the newsletter adds, “there are doubtless many speakers who espouse the Israeli position” and would speak if only there were an opportunity for them to do so. Even if there were some truth to the paranoid concept of “an organized, centrally controlled, information plan,” or the belief that these speakers are part of it, or that they “present the Arab point of view,” * it should be obvious that this would be a phenomenon of marginal significance in the United States and could not begin to compare with the massive pro-Israel propaganda system, of which this organization—which alone surely dwarfs anything on the “Arab side”—is a tiny element. But the frightened little men of the APPME probably believe all of this. Perhaps they are aware that this “information plan” and its agents have virtually no access to the mass media or journals of opinion, but they are right in noting that no way has yet been found to prevent them from responding to invitations at one or another college, a flaw in the American system that still remains to be addressed. As the invasion of Lebanon proceeded, the list of those who were deliberately falsifying the facts to place Israel in a less than favorable light grew quite long, including the European press and much of the American press and television, the International Red Cross and other * Among them are people who have always been harsh critics of all the Arab states and the PLO, for example, the third in order of virulence and others as well, but it is true that no one on the list meets the approved standards of servility to the Israeli government propaganda system, so they might be considered “pro-Arab” by someone who takes this to be the criterion for distinguishing “education” from “propaganda.” For the record, virtually every talk I have given on this topic has been arranged by some tiny student or faculty group, as any sane person familiar with the United States would of course know without being told. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 81: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 84 relief agencies, American diplomats, and in fact virtually everyone except spokesmen for the Israeli government and selected Americans returning from guided tours. The general tone is conveyed by Eliahu Ben-Elissar, chairman of the Knesset’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, who received “the most applause” at the convention of B’nai Brith when he said: “We have been attacked, criticized, dirtied, besmirched… I wouldn’t want to accuse the whole world of anti-Semitism, but how to explain this violent outburst.”62 A similar perception, widely shared, was expressed by Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon: Today we are in the arena opposite the entire world. It is the people of Israel, a small and isolated people, against the entire world.63 This “horrible thing that is now taking place around us in the world” is “no doubt” the result of anti-Semitism, not the Lebanon war or the Beirut massacres a few days before. We return to some details of this intriguing story. The truth of the matter is that Israel has been granted a unique immunity from criticism in mainstream journalism and scholarship, consistent with its unique role as a beneficiary of other forms of American support. We have already seen a number of examples and many more will appear below. Two examples noted earlier in this chapter offer a clear enough indication of this immunity: the Israeli terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities and other public places in Egypt (the Lavon affair), and the attack on the unmistakeably identified U.S. Liberty with rockets, aircraft cannon, napalm, torpedoes and machine guns, clearly premeditated, leaving 34 crewmen dead and 75 wounded in “the Navy’s bloodiest ‘peacetime’ international incident of the 20th Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 82: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 85 century”* (see notes 36, 39). In both cases, the general reaction of the press and scholarship has been silence or misrepresentation. Neither has entered history as a deplorable act of terrorism and violence, either at the time or in retrospect. In the case of the bombings in Egypt, the Israeli novelist Amos Oz, writing in the New York Times, refers to the terrorist acts obliquely as “certain adventurist Israeli intelligence operations”—the standard formulation—in a highly regarded article on the “beautiful Israel” of pre-Begin days.64 The nature of the attack on the Liberty was also evaded not only by the press fairly generally but by the government and by a U.S. Naval Board of Inquiry, though high-ranking figures had no doubt that the official report was a whitewash; former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, for example, states that the attack “could not possibly have been a case of mistaken identity,” as officially claimed.65 Can one imagine that any other country could carry out terrorist bombings of U.S. installations or attack a U.S. ship killing or wounding 100 men with complete impunity, without even critical comment for many years? That is about as likely as that across the spectrum of mainstream opinion, some country (other than our own) should be depicted as guided by a “high moral purpose” through the years (see chapter 1, citing Time, a journal regarded as critical of Israel), while its * Richard Smith (see note 39). He notes that the only comparable incident in recent years was the Japanese attack upon the U.S. gunboat Panay in 1937 in which 3 were killed, and contrasts the “strangely callous” Israeli attitude with the far more forthcoming Japanese reaction, both at the personal and governmental levels. His conclusion is that nations have no friends, only interests; but he overlooks the fact that Japan could not count upon the American intelligentsia to cover up the incident, a privilege that Israel correctly took for granted. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 83: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 86 enemies are dehumanized and despised, and history is reconstructed to preserve the desired illusions, a topic to which we turn directly. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 84: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 87 Notes—Chapter 2 The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 1. 2. 3. Bernard D. Nossiter, New York Times, June 27, 1982. Boston Globe, June 27; June 9, 1982. Nadav Safran, Israel: the Embattled Ally (Harvard, Cambridge, 1978, pp. 576, 110), a study that bends over backwards to provide an interpretation sympathetic to Israel; see TNCW, chapter 13, for discussion. G. Neal Lendenmann, “The Struggle in Congress over Aid Levels to Israel,” American-Arab Affairs, Winter 1982-3 (see chapter 4, note 60); Boston Globe, Sept. 26, 1982. For an attempt to assess the actual level of U.S. aid, see Thomas Stauffer, Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 29, 1981. For the specific details of the official record, see Yosef Priel, Davar, Dec. 10, 1982; Ignacio Klich, South, February 1983. Bernard Weinraub, New York Times, May 26, 1982. “Senate OK’s foreign aid plan with $2.6b for Israel,” Washington Post— Boston Globe, Dec. 18, 1982. Ian S. Lustick, “Israeli Politics and American Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1982/83; Amanda Mitchison, “Gift horses,” New Statesman, Feb. 4, 1983. “Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services,” reprinted in Counterspy, May-June 1982; one of the documents brought by American journalists from Iran, where they were released after the takeover of the American Embassy. Given the circumstances, one cannot be certain of the authenticity of the document, though this tends to be confirmed both by its character and the subsequent discussion concerning it. A former chief of the Israeli Mossad (essentially, the Israeli CIA), Isser Harel, accepted the authenticity of the document but condemned it as “antiSemitic, one-sided and malicious,” “dilletantish,” reflecting a tendency in the CIA to “rewrite history” at the time the report was written in 1979; Yuval Elizur, Boston Globe, Feb. 5, 1982, citing an interview in Ma’ariv. Noam Chomsky 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle
Slide 85: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 10. 11. 88 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. General (Res.) Mattityahu Peled, New Outlook (Tel Aviv), May/June 1975, reporting on a visit to the United States. New Outlook editor Simha Flapan, speaking at an October 1979 conference in Washington; cited by Merle Thorpe, Jr., President, Foundation for Middle East Peace, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 97th Congress, First Session, Dec. 16, 1981 (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1982, p. 143). See chapter 4, below. Jessie Lurie, Jewish Post & Opinion, May 28, 1982. On the political influence of what he calls “the Israeli lobby,” see Seth Tillman, The United States in the Middle East (Indiana, Bloomington, 1982). Tillman was on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with special concern for the Middle East. Leon Hadar, “Labour of Love,” Jerusalem Post, March 2, 1982. See Stephen Zunes, “Strange Bedfellows,” Progressive, Nov. 1981. He notes that passionate support for Israel combines readily with fervent anti-Semitism. See also Richard Bernstein, “Evangelicals Strengthening Bonds With Jews,” New York Times, Feb. 6, 1983, and J. A. James, “Friends in need,” Jerusalem Post, Jan. 20, 1983, discussing the “potential importance of Evangelical support” in American politics and the “immense infra-structure” of media at their command, and also the vast wealth that can be tapped. Davar reports that the Temple Mount Fund, “established in Israel and the U.S. and financed by Christian extremists,” intends to donate tens of millions of dollars to Jewish settlements in the West Bank; Jan. 23, 1983 (Israleft News Service). It is a reasonable surmise—now sometimes voiced in Israel—that an Israeli-Evangelical Protestant alliance may become more prominent in Latin America, following the model of Guatemala, where the Rios Montt regime (which has succeeded even in surpassing its predecessors in its murderous barbarity) is supported by Evangelical Protestant movements and advised and supplied by Israel. See note 42. Cited by Amnon Kapeliouk, Israel: lafin des mythes (Albin Michel, Paris, 1975, p. 219). This book by an outstanding Israeli journalist is the best Noam Chomsky Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle
Slide 86: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 89 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. account of Israeli government (Labor Party) policies from 1967-1973. Many U.S. publishers were approached for an English edition, but none was willing to undertake it. Cited by Zunes, “Strange Bedfellows.” See, for example, Pro-Arab Propaganda in America: Vehicles and Voices; a Handbook (Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith, 1983); Thomas Mountain, “Campus anti-Zionism,” Focus (Brandeis University), February 1983 (thanking the League for what passes as “fact”); and many handouts and pamphlets circulated in colleges around the country, typically without identification, which students distributing them often attribute to the League. Benny Landau, Ha’aretz, July 28, 1981; Tillman, The United States in the Middle East, p.65; Jolanta Benal, Interview with Meir Pail, Win, March 1, 1983. Nathan and Ruth Ann Perlmutter, The Real Anti-Semitism in America (Arbor House, New York, 1982, pp. 72, 111, 116, 136, 133f., 159, 125, 231). The book also contains the kinds of defamation of critics of Israeli policies and distortion of their views that one has come to expect in such circles and that merit no more comment than similar exercises in Communist Party literature. Jon Kimche, There Could Have Been Peace (Dial, 1973. pp. 310-11). Abba Eban, Congress Bi-Weekly, March 30, 1973; speech delivered July 31, 1972; Irving Howe, “Thinking the Unthinkable About Israel: A Personal Statement,” New York magazine, Dec. 24, 1973. Christopher Sykes, Crossroads to Israel: 1917-1948 (Indiana, Bloomington, 1965), p. 247. Interview, Jewish Post & Opinion, Nov. 19, 1982. The interviewer, Dale V. Miller, interprets him, quite accurately and it seems approvingly, as holding that the “province” of criticism is “the sole right of the Israelis themselves.” On Wiesel’s attitudes concerning the September Beirut massacre, see chapter 6, section 6.4. Safran, Israel, p. 571. Cited by Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power (Harper & Row, New York, 1972, p. 242). Noam Chomsky Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle
Slide 87: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 28. 90 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. For some discussion of this point, see my chapter “What directions for the disarmament movement?,” in Michael Albert and David Dellinger, eds., Beyond Survival: New Directions for the Disarmament Movement, (South End, Boston, 1983). Cited in Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War (Random House, New York, 1968, p. 188), from Winston Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, 1953, p. 249). For more recent discussion, see Lawrence S. Wittner, American Intervention in Greece (Columbia, New York, 1982). The two volumes of the Kolkos’ (see note 27) remain invaluable for understanding the general wartime and postwar period, though much useful work has appeared since, including much documentation that basically supports their analyses, in my view, though the fact is rarely acknowledged; since they do not adhere to approved orthodoxies, it is considered a violation of scholarly ethics to refer to their contributions. Wittner, American Intervention in Greece, pp. 119, 88. Ibid., pp. 1, 149, 154, 296; see the same source for an extensive review and documentation. Ibid., pp. 80, 232. For discussion, see TNCW, chapters 2, 11, and references cited there. New York Times, August 6, 1954; see TNCW, p. 99, for further quotes and comment. Cited in TNCW, p. 457, from MERIP Reports, May 1981; also, J. of Palestine Studies, Spring 1981. The source is a memorandum obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The man in direct charge of these operations, Avri el-Ad, describes them in his Decline of Honor (Regnery, Chicago, 1976). See Livia Rokach, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism (AAUG, Belmont, 1981), for excerpts from the diaries of Prime Minister Moshe Sharett concerning these events and how they were viewed at the time, at the highest level. On the ensuing political-military crisis (the “Lavon affair”), see Yoram Peri, Between Battles and Ballots: Israeli Military in Politics (Cambridge, 1983), an important study that undermines many illusions. “Issues Arising Out of the Situation in the Near East,” declassified Noam Chomsky Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle
Slide 88: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 91 38. 39. 40. 41. 12/10/81, commenting on NSC 5801/1, Jan. 24, 1958. Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography (Delacorte, New York, 1978, pp. 261f.). Ibid., pp. 315-6; Pen, Between Battles and Ballots, p. 80. It has been suggested that the Israeli attack on the U.S. spy ship Liberty was motivated by concern that the U.S. might detect the plans for this attack. See James Ennes, Assault on the Liberty (Random House, New York, 1979). See also Richard K. Smith, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, June 1978, who describes how “with the greatest ease…the Israeli pilots [and later torpedo boats] butchered the large, slow-moving, and defenseless Liberty,” which was clearly and unmistakeably identified, in accordance with “a vital part of Israel’s war plan,” namely, “to keep foreign powers in the dark” so as to avoid “superpower pressures for a cease-fire before they could seize the territory which they considered necessary for Israel’s future security”—a rather charitable interpretation, given the facts about the cease-fire and some questions that might be raised about “security.” See TNCW, p. 315 and references cited. See also the CIA study cited in note 9, which states that “The Israelis also have undertaken widescale covert political, economic and paramilitary action programs—particularly in Africa.” In his report on U.S. labor leaders, Leon Hadar notes that they have been particularly “impressed with Israel’s success in establishing links with the Third World, especially in Africa, to resist Soviet influence”—the latter phrase being the usual code word for resistance to unwanted forms of nationalism. That American labor bureaucrats should be pleased by support for Mobutu and the like no longer comes as any surprise. See note 15. Yoav Karni, “Dr. Shekel and Mr. Apartheid,” Yediot Ahronot, March 13, 1983. On the extensive Israeli relations, military and other, with South Africa, see TNCW, pp. 293f. and references cited; Israel Shahak, Israel’s Global Role (AAUG, Belmont, 1982); Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “South Africa and Israel’s Strategy of Survival,” New Outlook (Tel Aviv), April/May 1977; Beit-Hallahmi, “Israel and South Africa 1977-1982: Business As Usual—And More,” New Outlook, March 1983, with further Noam Chomsky Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle
Slide 89: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 92 42. 43. 44. details on the enthusiasm shown by both Labor and Likud for South Africa though Labor prefers to keep the matter hidden, on the arrangements to use Israel for transshipment of South African goods to Europe and the U.S. to evade boycotts, etc.; Uri Dan, “The Angolan Battlefield,” Monitin, January 1982; Carole Collins, National Catholic Reporter, Jan. 22, 1982; and many other sources. See TNCW, pp. 290f. and references cited; Shahak, Israel’s Global Role; Ignacio Klich, Le Monde diplomatique, October 1982, February 1983; Washington Report on the Hemisphere (Council on Hemispheric Affairs), June 29, 1982; Latin America Weekly Report, Aug. 6, Sept. 24, Dec. 17, 24, 1982; El Pais (Spain), March 8-10, 1983; Steve Goldfield, Jane Hunter and Paul Glickman, In These Times, April 13, 1983; and many other sources. It was reported recently that Kibbutz Beit Alpha (Mapam) has been providing equipment to the Chilean army (Ha’aretz, Jan. 7, 1983). In particular, Israel is now Guatemala’s biggest arms supplier (Economist, April 3, 1982), helping the U.S. government evade the congressional ban on arms, and Israeli military advisers are active. The new regime in Guatemala, which has been responsible for horrible massacres, credits its success in obtaining power to its many Israeli advisers; its predecessor, the murderous Lucas Garcia regime, openly expressed its admiration for Israel as a “model” (see chapter 5, section 7.2). On the new levels of barbarism achieved by the Rios Montt regime, see Allan Nairn, “The Guns of Guatemala,” New Republic, April 11, 1983 (ignoring the Israeli connection, which could hardly be discussed in this journal). See references cited, and an unpublished paper by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Israel’s support for Guatemala’s military regimes,” with information from the Israeli press. We return to further details. On Israel’s arms sales as a “U.S. proxy supplier of arms to various ‘hot spots’ in the Third World,” see SOUTH, April 1982. Arms sales now constitute a third of Israel’s industrial exports (Dvar Hashavua, Aug. 27, 1982). See Michael Klare, in Leila Meo, ed., U.S. Strategy in the Gulf (AAUG, Belmont, 1981). Michael Klare, Beyond the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ (Institute for Policy Noam Chomsky Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle
Slide 90: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 93 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. Studies, Washington, 1981). Advertisement, New York Times, Oct. 13, 1982; Joseph Churba, letter, New York Times, Nov. 21, 1982. See also Steven J. Rosen, The Strategic Value of Israel, AIPAC Papers on U.S.-Israel Relations, 1982; AIPAC is the officially-registered pro-Israel lobbying organization in Washington. Thomas L. Friedman, “After Lebanon: The Arab World in Crisis,” New York Times, Nov. 22, 1982. Tamar Golan, Ma’ariv, Dec. 1, 1982; Reuter, Boston Globe, Jan. 20, 1983; UPI, New York Times, Jan. 22, 1983. New York Times, Dec. 6, 1982. Susan Morgan, Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 14, 1982; “Guatemala: Rightists on the warpath,” Latin America Weekly Report, March 4, 1983. For one of many recent examples, see Marlise Simons, New York Times, Dec. 14, 1982, citing American Roman Catholic missionaries who report that “the raiders had lately been torturing and mutilating captured peasants or Sandinist sympathizers, creating the same terror as in the past,” giving examples. The Somozist National Guard was trained in the U.S. Army School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone. Charles Maechling Jr., “The Murderous Mind of the Latin Military,” Los Angeles Times, March 18, 1982. See TNCW, p. 429 and chapter 13, and references cited. Yoav Karni, “The secret alliance of the ‘Fifth World’,” Yediot Ahronot, Nov. 22, 1981. See TNCW, pp. 292-3. Leslie H. Gelb, “Israel Said to Step Up Latin Role, Offering Arms Seized in Lebanon,” New York Times, Dec. 17, 1982. See my For Reasons of State (Pantheon, New York, 1973, p. 51), for citation and discussion. Adam Clymer, New York Times, June 27, 1982. Le Monde, June 11, for the full text; Christian Science Monitor, June 11, 1982. For references, see John Cooley, Green March, Black September (Frank Cass, London, 1973, pp. 161-2); my Peace in the Middle East? (Pantheon. New York, p. 140). Noam Chomsky Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle
Slide 91: The Origins of the “Special Relationship” 58. 94 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. The U.S. press appears to have ignored this important discussion among Israeli military commanders, apart from a report by John Cooley. Christian Science Monitor, July 17, 1972. For some discussion of what he refers to as “the ‘David and Goliath’ legend surrounding the birth of Israel,” see Simha Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians (Barnes & Noble, New York, 1979, pp. 317f.). Yediot Ahronot. July 26, 1973; see Peace in the Middle East?, p. 142. See my “Israel and the New Left,” in Mordecai S. Chertoff, ed., The New Left and the Jews (Pitman, New York, 1971); and Peace in the Middle East?, chapter 5, including a discussion of some of the remarkable contributions of Irving Howe, Seymour Martin Lipset, and others. See chapter 5, below, for further discussion. See the references of the preceding note on this and other examples, all presented without a pretense of evidence or rational argument, a stance always available when the targets are outside the approved consensus. Jewish Post & Opinion, Nov. 5, 1982. Jerusalem Domestic Television Service, Sept. 24, 1982. Reprinted in The Beirut Massacre (Claremont Research and Publications, New York, 1982), from the U.S. government Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). Amos Oz, “Has Israel Altered its Visions?” New York Times Magazine, July 11, 1982. On misrepresentation of these events in scholarship, referring to Safran, Israel, see TNCW, p. 331. For a rare recording of the facts in the press, see the article by staff correspondents of the Christian Science Monitor, June 4, 1982; also Cecilia Blalock, ibid., June 22, 1982 and Philip Geyelin, Washington Post (Manchester Guardian Weekly, June 20, 1982). On the events and the cover-up, see references of note 39; also Anthony Pearson, Conspiracy of Silence (Quartet, New York, 1978) and James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1982). Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 92: 3. Rejectionism and Accommodation
Slide 93: Rejectionism and Accomodation 96 1. A Framework for Discussion hat have been the attitudes and policies of the major participants in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and those concerned with it, during the period since 1967, when the U.S.-Israel relationship became established in something like its present form? To approach this question sensibly, we should begin by clarifying what we take to be the valid claims of those who regard the former Palestine as their home. Attitudes towards this question vary widely. I will simply state certain assumptions that I will adopt as a framework for discussion. The first of these is the principle that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are human beings with human rights, equal rights; more specifically, they have essentially equal rights within the territory of the former Palestine. Each group has a valid right to national selfdetermination in this territory. Furthermore, I will assume that the State of Israel within its pre-June 1967 borders had, and retains, whatever one regards as the valid rights of any state within the existing international system. One may formulate these principles in various ways, but let us take them to be clear enough to serve at least as a point of departure. W 1.1 The Concept of Rejectionism The term “rejectionism” is standardly used in the United States to refer to the position of those who deny the right of existence of the State of Israel, or who deny that Jews have the right of national selfdetermination within the former Palestine; the two positions are not exactly the same because of the question of the status of Israeli Arabs Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 94: Rejectionism and Accomodation 97 and of Jews outside of Israel, but let us put these questions aside temporarily. Unless we adopt the racist assumption that Jews have certain intrinsic rights that Arabs lack, the term “rejectionism” should be extended beyond its standard usage, to include also the position of those who deny the right of national self-determination to Palestinian Arabs, the community that constituted 9/10 of the population at the time of the first World War, when Great Britain committed itself to the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.* I will use the term “rejectionism” in this non-racist sense. By “accommodation,” I will mean the position that accepts the basic assumptions of the preceding paragraph. Each position can take various forms, as regards the manner in which national rights are realized, boundaries, etc. The doctrine of self-styled “supporters of Israel,” which has largely dominated discussion here, holds that the PLO and the Arab states have been undeviatingly rejectionist (apart from Egypt since 1977), while the U.S. and Israel have sought a peaceful settlement that will recognize the valid claims of all. A more recent version is that the “beautiful Israel” of earlier years, which was realizing the dream of democratic socialism and becoming “a light unto the nations,” has been betrayed by Begin and his cohorts, a consequence of the refusal of the Arabs to accept the existence of Israel and the unwavering commitment of the PLO—a collection of thugs and gangsters—to the destruction of Israel, the murder of innocents, and the intimidation of all “moderate” opinion in * See the next chapter for discussion of the historical backgrounds of the current conflict. Note that there was a pre-Zionist Jewish community in Palestine, consisting largely of anti-Zionist orthodox Jews whose leadership in later years supported the PLO in its call for a democratic secular state in Palestine. Thus virtually all of the indigenous population was anti-Zionist. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 95: Rejectionism and Accomodation 98 the occupied territories.1 Like virtually all propaganda systems, this one contains elements of truth. But the real world is rather different, as will quickly be discovered if the historical record is rescued from the oblivion to which it has been consigned. 1.2 The International Consensus Since 1967, a broad international consensus has taken shape, including Europe, the USSR and most of the nonaligned nations. This consensus initially advocated a political settlement along approximately the preJune 1967 borders, with security guarantees, recognized borders, and various devices to help assure peace and tranquillity; it envisioned the gradual integration of Israel into the region while it would remain, in essence, a Western European society. This is the way the basic international document, UN Security Council Resolution 242, has been understood throughout most of the world, though its actual wording was left vague so that agreement on it could be achieved. As Jon Kimche comments: “Everybody subscribed to it and no one believed in it, since neither Arabs nor Israelis, Russians or Americans could agree on what the Resolution meant.”2 This is not quite accurate3, since in fact there was substantial agreement along the lines of the consensus just described.* The official position of the United States, for example, was that only “insubstantial alterations” of the pre-June 1967 borders would be allowed.4 Note that this consensus was rejectionist, in that it denied the national rights of Palestinian Arabs, referring to them solely in the * The resolution was accepted by Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, and in Noam Chomsky 1972 by Syria, with the condition that Palestinian “rights” must be recognized. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle
Slide 96: Rejectionism and Accomodation 99 context of a refugee problem. For this reason, the PLO has refused to accept the resolution. This refusal may be a tactical error, but it is easy to understand its motivation. One would hardly have expected the World Zionist Organization, in 1947, to have accepted a UN resolution concerning Palestine that referred to Jewish interests only in terms of a refugee problem, denying any claim to national rights and any status to the Zionist movement or its organizations. The U.S. has refused any direct contacts with the PLO on the grounds of its unwillingness to accept UN 242 and to recognize the existence of the State of Israel, basing this refusal on a “Memorandum of Agreement” concluded with Israel by Secretary of State Kissinger in September 1975. This policy raises two questions. The narrower one is that the status of the Memorandum is dubious. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kissinger specified that its terms are not “binding commitments” of the United States and warned against creating such commitments. Furthermore, “Congress specifically dissociated itself from the related memoranda of agreement,” including this one.5 More broadly, whatever one thinks about the attitude of the PLO towards UN 242, it is quite clear, as we shall see, that it has been far more forthcoming than either Israel or the U.S. with regard to an accommodationist settlement. Nevertheless, the refusal of Israel to recognize the PLO, or to accept Palestinian national rights in any meaningful form, is not invoked as a reason to refuse contacts with Israel. Unless we adopt rejectionist assumptions, then, the argument supporting the American refusal to enter into direct contacts with the PLO has no force. From the mid-1970s, the terms of the international consensus have been modified in one significant respect: the right of the Palestinians to national self-determination has been recognized, and the consensus now includes the concept of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 97: Rejectionism and Accomodation 100 Strip, with perhaps some minor border rectifications. The newer form of the international consensus overcomes the earlier rejectionism and falls under the rubric of “accommodation” in the sense of this term described above. Within the international consensus, there has been little discussion of whether such a settlement—henceforth, a “two-state settlement”—reflects higher demands of abstract justice; rather, it has been taken to be a politically realistic solution that would maximize the chances for peace and security for the inhabitants of the former Palestine, for the region, and for the world, and that satisfies the valid claims of the two major parties as well as is possible under existing conditions. One can imagine various subsequent developments through peaceful means and mutual consent towards a form of federation or other arrangements. The existence of this international consensus, and the nature of the rejectionist forces that block its realization, are well-understood outside of the U.S., and are also recognized by knowledgeable observers here. For example, Seth Tillman (see note 5) concludes his recent study of U.S. policies in the Middle East by noting “the emergence of a consensus among moderates in the Arab world, the United States, and Europe—with some minority support in Israel as well—on the approximate terms of a viable and equitable comprehensive settlement in the Middle East,” namely, along the lines just sketched. He notes that “the essentials of the consensus of moderates are well known, approximating in most respects the official policy of the United States” since 1967. “Outside of Israel, the United States, a few ‘rejectionist’ Arab states, and certain groups within the PLO, support for a settlement along these lines approaches worldwide unanimity,” he observes.6 A simpler but quite accurate formulation would be that U.S.-Israeli rejectionism has consistently blocked the achievement of “a viable and equitable comprehensive settlement.” Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 98: Rejectionism and Accomodation 101 I will assume the international consensus, as just sketched, to be reasonable in essence. Let us consider, then, three basic positions as points of reference: the international consensus in its more recent form, and the two varieties of rejectionism. Note that I do not mean to imply that these are the only possible solutions that merit consideration. In fact, in my view, they are not optimal. Furthermore, from 1967 to the October 1973 war, there were realistic alternatives that would have been far preferable for all concerned, I believe. These were rejected at the time, and after the 1973 war the short-term possibilities narrowed to essentially those sketched, within the framework of accommodation.7 Perhaps I should qualify these remarks, saying rather that I will assume the international consensus to have been reasonable in essence during the period under review here. It might be argued that as a result of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism, a peaceful political settlement is no longer possible, that the U.S.-financed program of Israeli settlement in the occupied territories has “created facts” that cannot be changed short of war. If persistent U.S. rejectionism brings about this state of affairs, as sooner or later it will if U.S. policy does not change course, the primary objective for Americans concerned with peace and justice will no longer be to try to bring the U.S. in line with the international consensus, now irrelevant, but to block American support for the next step: expulsion of a substantial part of the Arab population on some pretext, and conversion of Israel into a society on the South African model with some form of Bantustans, committed to regional disruption, etc. I will put these questions aside until the final chapter. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 99: Rejectionism and Accomodation 102 2. The Stands of the Major Actors dopting this as the basic framework for discussion, we can turn to consideration of the attitudes and policies of the major actors since 1967, considering in turn the U.S., Israel, the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, and the Arab states and the PLO. I will intersperse this historical account with some comment on the ways in which the history has been interpreted in the U.S., an important matter bearing on the ideological support for Israel discussed earlier, and thus bearing crucially on the development of policy and the prospects for the future. A 2.1 The United States As far as the U.S. is concerned, there has been internal conflict over the issue throughout the period. At one extreme, the Rogers Plan, announced by Secretary of State William Rogers in December 1969, reflected the international consensus of the time. At the other extreme, Henry Kissinger advocated the rejectionist position: a “Greater Israel” should refuse any accommodation, and should maintain control over the occupied territories. This position was never explicitly formulated, at least in publicly available documents, but the policies pursued conform to it quite closely and it even emerges with relative clarity from the murky rhetoric of Kissinger’s memoirs, as we shall see directly. Kissinger succeeded in taking control over Middle East affairs by 1970, and the rejectionist “Greater Israel” position became U.S. policy in practice. It has remained so in essence ever since, with post-1973 modifications to which we return. Echoes of these conflicting positions remain today. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 100: Rejectionism and Accomodation 103 As noted in the preceding chapter, major sectors of American corporate capitalism, including powerful elements with interests in the Middle East, have supported the international consensus, as have others. But this position has lost out in the internal policy debate in favor of the concept of an Israeli Sparta serving as a “strategic asset.” The persistent policy debate concerns the question of whether the fundamental U.S. interests are better served by this rejectionism, or by a move towards the international consensus, with a peaceful resolution of the conflict. In the latter view, the radical nationalist tendencies that are enflamed by the unsettled Palestinian problem would be reduced by the establishment of a Palestinian mini-state that would be contained within a JordanianIsraeli military alliance (perhaps tacit), surviving at the pleasure of its far more powerful neighbors and subsidized by the most conservative and pro-American forces in the Arab world, in the oil-producing monarchies, which have been pressing for such a settlement for some years. This would, in fact, be the likely outcome of a two-state settlement. The internal policy debate has certainly been influenced, at the congressional level substantially so, by the highly effective pressure groups described above. A number of prominent supporters of Israel, particularly in left-liberal circles, have adduced the fact that oil companies tend to favor the international consensus as support for their own rejectionism.8 This makes about as much sense as the fringe right-wing argument that if Soviet leaders happen to advocate some proposal for their own purposes (say, ratification of Salt II), then we should oppose it. The further claim that Israel is being “sold out” for oil is hardly consistent with the plain facts. The levels of U.S. aid to Israel, apart from all else, tell us just to what extent Israel has been “sold out.” In fact, it is the Palestinians who have consistently been “sold out” in the U.S., with no objection from left-liberal proponents of such arguments, in favor of a militarized Israel Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 101: Rejectionism and Accomodation 104 that will serve the U.S. interest of controlling the petroleum reserves of the Middle East and will provide the subsidiary services noted above. The policy debate in elite circles takes for granted, on all sides, the goal of maintaining U.S. control over Middle East petroleum resources and the flow of petrodollars. The question is a tactical one: how best to realize this goal. U.S. policy, then, has in practice been consistently rejectionist, and still is, despite continuing internal conflict that is barely reflected in public discourse, with its overwhelmingly rejectionist commitments and assumptions. 2.2 Israel Within Israel, the policy debate has been much narrower in scope. There are two major political groupings in Israel, the coalition dominated by the Labor Party (the Labor Alignment, Ma’arach), and the Likud coalition dominated by Menachem Begin’s Herut Party. The Labor Party governed with various partners until 1977, the Likud coalition since then. 2.2.1 The Rejectionist Stands of Labor and Likud Contrary to illusions fostered here, the two major political groupings in Israel do not differ in a fundamental way with regard to the occupied territories. Both agree that Israel should effectively control them; both insistently reject any expression of Palestinian national rights west of the Jordan, though the Labor Alignment contains a margin of dissidents. Thus, both groupings have been consistently rejectionist. Furthermore, both have departed from the accommodationist assumptions sketched Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 102: Rejectionism and Accomodation 105 above in another respect as well. The State of Israel, as the courts have determined, is not the state of its citizens. Rather, it is “the sovereign State of the Jewish people,” where “the Jewish people consists not only of the people residing in Israel but also of the Jews in the Diaspora.” Thus, “there is no Israeli nation apart from the Jewish people,” in this sense.9 Almost 1/6 of the citizens of the State of Israel are not Jews. But let us put this matter aside for now. The professed reason for the rejectionism of the two major political groupings is security, but from this fact we learn nothing, since every action of every state is justified in these terms. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Israel faces a serious security problem. As the matter is posed and discussed in the United States, Israel’s security problem is the paramount issue. This presupposed framework of discussion again reflects the profound racism of the American approach to the topic. Evidently, the indigenous population also has a “security problem”; in fact, the Palestinians have already suffered the catastrophe that Israelis justly fear. The familiar rhetoric concerning the issue only reveals more clearly the underlying racism. Thus it is argued that the Arabs already have 22 states, so the Palestinians have no valid claim to selfdetermination, no claim comparable to that of the European Jews who established the State of Israel in 1948; at a similar moral level, a fanatic anti-Semite could have argued in 1947 that there are, after all, many European states, and Palestinians of the Mosaic persuasion could settle there if they were not satisfied with minority status in an Arab region. Another argument is that there are numerous Palestinians in Jordan, even in the government, so that should be the Palestinian state—and by similar logic, the problem could be solved by settling Israeli Jews in New York, where there are many Jews, even the Mayor and city officials, not to speak of their role in economic and cultural life. Or it is argued against the Palestinians that the Arab states have not supported their Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 103: Rejectionism and Accomodation 106 nationalist efforts, a stand that contrasts so markedly with the loving attitude that Europeans have shown towards one another during the centuries of state-formation there. Other familiar arguments are at about the same moral and intellectual level. Dropping racist assumptions, there are two security problems to be dealt with. The international consensus in fact provides the most satisfactory, if quite imperfect, response to this dual problem in the contemporary period. In the unlikely event that it is realized, a major security problem will remain—namely, for the Palestinian state, confronted with one of the world’s major military powers and dependent on the most conservative elements in the Arab world for survival. Whatever security problems Israel would then face do not compare with those it has been in the process of creating for itself by its commitment to expansionism and confrontation, which guarantees endless turmoil and war, and sooner or later, probable destruction. Though Israel’s security concerns—by now, in large part selfgenerated—are not to be dismissed, they do not provide an impressive basis for U.S.-Israeli rejectionism, even if we were to accept the familiar tacit assumption that the security of the Palestinians is of null import. In fact, there are other motives for Israel’s rejectionism that appear to be more compelling. The territories provide Israel with a substantial unorganized labor force, similar to the “guest workers” in Europe or migrant workers in the U.S. They now play a significant role in the Israeli economy, performing its “dirty work” at low pay and without rights (it might be noted that child labor among Arabs, particularly those from the occupied territories, has caused something of a scandal in Israel, though without affecting the practice, but not here). The process of proletarianization of Arab labor in the territories, in part through land restrictions, mimics what happened in Israel itself. Shai Feldman of the Center for Strategic Studies of Tel Aviv University comments accurately that “at Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 104: Rejectionism and Accomodation 107 present, important sectors of Israel’s economy cannot function without manpower provided by the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” including tourism, construction, and to some extent, agriculture.10 The territories are also a controlled market for Israeli goods, with export sales of about $600 million per year according to the military government. These sales are paid for in hard currency, since the territories in turn export about $100 million a year in agricultural products to Jordan and the Gulf states and receive hard currencies from them from various payments and remittances. Income to Israel from West Bank tourism may amount to about $500 million, so that the potential loss to Israel of abandoning the territories may come to over $1 billion per year. Noting these facts, Thomas Stauffer of the Harvard Center of Middle East Studies observed that there is a crucial difference between Israel’s interest in these territories and in the Sinai, which had little economic value once the oil fields had been returned.11 In addition, there was of course a major gain for Israel in the Sinai settlement, in that the most powerful state in the Arab world was removed from the Arab-Israeli conflict, so that Israel could pursue its programs in the occupied territories and Lebanon without undue concern over any military deterrence. It is, then, extremely misleading to think of the withdrawal from occupied Sinai as providing any sort of precedent for the West Bank; as for the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, they have been virtually excluded from the discussion of potential political settlement, within Israel or the United States. Furthermore, Israel is now heavily dependent on the West Bank for water, a more significant commodity than oil in the Middle East. Its own water supplies are exploited to the maximum limit, and it is now estimated that about 1/3 of Israel’s water is from West Bank sources.12 An Israeli technical expert writes that “cutting Judea and Samaria [the West Bank, in Israeli parlance] off from the rest of the country” will lead Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 105: Rejectionism and Accomodation 108 to serious consequences with regard to water management; “There is no solution in sight for the water deficiency problem from the natural water resources of the area,” he writes, so that “the eventual solution must be sought in the import of water from external, still unutilized resources, and in brackish and seawater desalination on a large scale” (which to date, has not proven feasible). The only unexploited source nearby is the Litani river in southern Lebanon, which Israel has long coveted and will sooner or later place under its control, quite probably, if the U.S. supports Israel’s steps to impose the political arrangements of its choice in southern Lebanon.13 One consequence of the Lebanon war was that Israel’s national water company took over “total control of the scarce and disputed water resources in the West Bank,” an important move towards further integration of the territories. Zvi Barel comments that the decision contradicts the Camp David principle that control over water should fall under the autonomy provisions, and that knowledgeable sources attributed the decision to political factors, not technical considerations as was claimed.14 It may be that this step was taken in defiance after the announcement of an unwelcome U.S. “peace plan” on September 1, 1982, to which we return. It is, incidentally, noteworthy that the U.S. September 1982 peace plan makes special mention of Israel’s rights to “fair safeguards” with regard to West Bank water, the only exception specifically noted to the “real authority” that is to be granted the Palestinian inhabitants.15 In the past, there has been considerable conflict over utilization of the waters of the Jordan and its tributaries, and it is likely that this will continue. One potential point of conflict has to do with the Yarmuk River, a tributary of the Jordan. The Israeli press reports that current Jordanian projects will decrease the flow of Yarmuk waters to the Jordan, where they are utilized by the Israeli water system. Chief of Staff Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 106: Rejectionism and Accomodation 109 Rafael Eitan “travelled yesterday along the border with Jordan near the Yarmuk, opposite the Jordanian water project. It was not possible to learn his reaction to the Jordanian project.”16 It is unlikely that Israel will permit such a project within Jordan on any significant scale. While the two major political groupings, Labor and Likud, agree in their overall rejectionism, they do differ in the arrangements they prefer for the occupied territories. The Labor governments pursued what has been called the “Allon Plan,” proposed by Minister Yigal Allon. Its basic principles were that Israel should maintain control of the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, parts of the Eastern Sinai, and much of the West Bank including the Jordan valley, a considerably expanded area around Jerusalem (Arab East Jerusalem was annexed outright by the Labor government over virtually unanimous international protest, including in this case the U.S.), and various corridors that would break up the Arab West Bank and ensure Israeli control over it. In his study of this period, Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk writes that the Allon Plan was “rendered operational” in 1970, and envisioned the annexation of about 1/3 of the West Bank—actually about 40%; see chapter 4, section 4.1. The centers of dense Arab settlement, however, would be excluded, with the population remaining under Jordanian control or stateless so as to avoid what is called “the demographic problem,” that is, the problem of absorbing too many non-Jews within the Jewish State. To the present, this remains essentially the position of the Labor Party, as we shall see. Thus former Prime Minister Rabin, interviewed in the Trilateral Commission journal in January 1983, states that “speaking for myself, I say now that we are ready to give back roughly 65% of the territory of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip where over 80% of the population now resides,”17 a formulation that is less extreme than most. We return to other expressions of this unchanging commitment. The Allon Plan was designed to enable Israel to maintain the advanClassics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 107: Rejectionism and Accomodation 110 tages of the occupation while avoiding the problem of dealing with the domestic population. It was felt that there would be no major problem of administrative control or support by Western liberal opinion (an important matter for a state that survives largely on gifts and grants from the West) as long as the second-class Arab citizens remained a minority, though such problems might arise if their numbers approached half the population. As Anthony Lewis writes, actual annexation “will change the very nature of the Jewish state, incorporating within it a large, subservient and resentful Arab population”18—in contrast to the 15% minority of today, to which the same terms apply. In contrast, Begin’s Likud coalition has been moving towards extension of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza and has virtually annexed the Golan Heights, though it was willing to return the Sinai in full to Egypt—over strong objections from leading segments of the Labor Party—in the context of the Camp David accords.* Like Labor19, Likud also apparently intends to keep the Gaza Strip. Contrary to what is often assumed, Likud has not called for annexation of the West Bank and does not appear to be aiming for this, at least in the short run. Extension of Israeli sovereignty—the actual announced intent—is a more subtle device, which will allow Israel to take what it wants while confining the Arab population to ever-narrower ghettoes, seeking ways to remove at * Former Prime Minister Golda Meir “assailed Prime Minister Begin’s government yesterday, calling his peace plan ‘a concrete, terrible danger’ for Israel,” and “accused” Begin of “agreeing to concessions she would never stand for”; “Labor Knesset Member [former Chief of Staff] Mordechai Gur today sharply opposed the continuation of the peace process with Egypt” on the grounds that Sadat would demand return to the 1967 borders. Many Labor leaders were particularly opposed to the return of the northeast Sinai settlements that they had established.19 See also chapter 4, section 4.2.2, below. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 108: Rejectionism and Accomodation 111 least the leadership and possibly much of the population, apart from those needed as the beasts of burden for Israeli society. Outright annexation would raise the problem of citizenship for the Arabs, while extension of sovereignty, while achieving the purposes of annexation, will not, as long as liberal opinion in the West is willing to tolerate the fraud. The logic of the Likud position does, however, appear to be that the Arab population must somehow be reduced, and it has been alleged that then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon “hopes to evict all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and drive them into Jordan.”20 Sharon is not entirely alone in this view, though his position, if correctly reported, is extreme. The idea that the solution to the problem is for the Palestinians to leave—far away—has deep roots in liberal and socialist Zionism, and has recently been reiterated by American “democratic socialists” as well as by Israeli leaders sometimes regarded as doves. We return to various expressions of such ideas, in virtually all shades of Zionist thought, and to current policies in the occupied territories. While the two major political groupings do differ in the ways in which they formulate their rejectionist positions, neither has been explicit about the matter—which is easy enough to understand, given Israel’s dependence on liberal opinion in the West—and it is therefore not easy to formulate this difference clearly. Thus as noted, while the policies of the Likud government have regularly been interpreted as leading to annexation by the Labor opposition and others, in fact, Begin calls for the establishment of Israeli “sovereignty” over the currently occupied territories. Under this Israeli sovereignty, those Arabs who remain would have some form of local autonomy. Presumably, they and their descendants would not receive Israeli citizenship under this arrangement, so that the “demographic problem” would not arise. Or, perhaps, if their numbers are sufficiently restricted they might opt for Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 109: Rejectionism and Accomodation 112 either Israeli or Jordanian citizenship, while Israeli sovereignty remains in force over the entire territory in question. Surely it is intended by both Labor and Likud that the Jewish settlers will retain Israeli citizenship. Under the Labor Alignment plan, the inhabitants would be Jordanian citizens or stateless, but effectively under Israeli control. In essence, then, the two programs are not very different. Their difference lies primarily in style. Labor is, basically, the party of the educated Europe-oriented elite—managers, bureaucrats, intellectuals, etc. Its historical practice has been to “build facts” while maintaining a low-keyed rhetoric with conciliatory tones, at least in public. In private, the position has been that “it does not matter what the Gentiles say, what matters is what the Jews do” (Ben-Gurion) and that “the borders [of Israel] are where Jews live, not where there is a line on a map” (Golda Meir).21 This has been an effective method for obtaining the ends sought without alienating Western opinion—indeed, while mobilizing Western (particularly American) support. In contrast, the mass base of the Likud coalition is largely the underclass, the lower middle class, and the workforce, the Sephardic population of Arab origin, along with religious-chauvinist elements, including many recent immigrants from the U.S. and the USSR; it also includes industrialists and many professionals. Its leadership is not so attuned to Western styles of discourse and has frequently been willing to flaunt its disregard for the hypocritical Gentile world, often in a manner regarded as openly insulting in the West, including the U.S. For example, in response to Reagan’s September 1982 call for a settlement freeze, the Likud leadership simply announced plans for 10 new settlements while Begin sent a “Dear Ron” letter with a lesson on “simple historic truth.”22 Under somewhat similar circumstances in the past, Labor responded not by establishing new settlements but by “thickening” existing ones or by establishing military outposts which Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 110: Rejectionism and Accomodation 113 soon became settlements, meanwhile keeping to conciliatory rhetoric. The more devious Labor approach is much more welcome to the West, and raises fewer problems for “supporters of Israel.” In the case of the Reagan September 1982 proposals, Labor’s response was one of qualified interest. In part, the reason was the traditional difference in style; in part, it reflected the fact that Reagan’s proposals, while vague in essentials, could be interpreted as compatible with Labor’s ideas in part, though they certainly were not consistent with the Likud demand for total “sovereignty.” Furthermore, Labor’s show of statesmanlike interest might, it was hoped, strengthen its dismal electoral prospects by discrediting the government. Labor speaks of “territorial compromise” or “trading peace for territory,” terms that have a pleasant sound to American ears, though the reality they disguise is not very different from Likud’s “sovereignty.” In fact, the “compromise” and “trade” are explicitly rejectionist positions. There have already been two “territorial compromises” in Mandatory Palestine: the 1947 UN General Assembly resolution that recommended partitioning Palestine into a Palestinian and a Jewish State, and the 1949 armistice agreement that divided the Palestinian State, with about half annexed by Israel and the rest annexed by Jordan or administered by Egypt (see chapter 4). A further “compromise,” in terms of some version of the Allon Plan, simply eliminates the right of Palestinian selfdetermination. It is often alleged that there was, in fact, an earlier “territorial compromise,” namely, in 1922, when Transjordan was excised from the promised “national home for the Jewish people.” In fact, in 1922 “the Council of the League of Nations accepted a British proposal that Transjordan should be exempted from all clauses in the mandate providing for…the development of a Jewish National Home in Palestine,” a decision that is difficult to criticize in the light of the fact that “the number Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 111: Rejectionism and Accomodation 114 of Jews living there permanently in 1921 has been reliably estimated at two, or according to some authorities, three persons.” 23 2.2.2 The Legacy of the Founding Fathers Both political groupings, then, have been consistently rejectionist, willing to grant no national rights to the indigenous Arab population. Israel’s consistent rejectionism is founded on the attitudes expressed by the long-time leader of the Labor Party, David Ben-Gurion, when he stated that the Palestinian Arab shows no “emotional involvement” in this country: Why should he? He is equally at ease whether in Jordan, Lebanon or a variety of places. They are as much his country as this is. And as little.24 Elsewhere, “Ben-Gurion followed Weizmann’s line when he stated that: ‘there is no conflict between Jewish and Palestinian nationalism because the Jewish Nation is not in Palestine and the Palestinians are not a nation’.”25 Essentially the same view was expressed by Moshe Dayan at a time when he was a principal spokesman for the Labor Party. The cause of the Palestinians (which he professed to understand and appreciate) is “hopeless,” he intimated, so they should establish themselves “in one of the Arab countries.” “I do not think,” he added, “that a Palestinian should have difficulties in regarding Jordan, Syria or Iraq as his homeland.”26 Like Ben-Gurion, Dayan was asserting that the Palestinians, including the peasantry, had no particular attachment to their homes, to the land where they had lived and worked for many generations, surely nothing like the attachment to the land of the Jews who had been exiled from it 2000 years ago. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 112: Rejectionism and Accomodation 115 Similar views were expressed by Prime Minister Golda Meir of the Labor Party, much admired here as a grandmotherly humanitarian figure, in her remark that: It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.27 Elsewhere, she describes the Palestinian problem as merely an “invention of some Jews with distorted minds.”28 In accordance with these dominant views concerning the Palestinians, an Israeli court ruled in 1969 that the Palestinians “are not a party to the conflict between Israel and the Arab States,” and Foreign Minister Abba Eban of the Labor Party (a well-known dove) insisted that the Palestinians “have no role to play” in any peace settlement,29 a position that received no major challenge within the Labor Party when it governed or in opposition. Simha Flapan concludes his study of this question with the observation that “The Palestinians were never regarded as an integral part of the country for whom long-term plans had to be made, either in the Mandatory period or since the establishment of the state.” This was the most “lasting impact” of “Weizmann’s legacy.”30 This appears to be quite a realistic judgment, as far as the mainstream of the Zionist movement was concerned. We return to further discussion in the next chapter. These positions, which have been consistently maintained, amount to rejectionism in its clearest form, though the matter is rarely seen in this light in the U.S. Both major political groupings in Israel have taken the position that Jordan is a Palestinian state, and that Israel will accept no third state between Israel and Jordan—the “Jordanian-Palestinian Arab Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 113: Rejectionism and Accomodation 116 State” in the official words of the Labor Party,31 the “Palestinian State” in Likud rhetoric. This is not, of course, the position of what might reasonably be called the “peace movement,” a small but significant minority that adheres to the international consensus. On its actual scale, see chapter 7, section 4.1.1. 2.2.3 The Disguise The consistent rejectionism of both major political groupings in Israel is disguised in the United States by two main devices. First, as already noted, the concept of “rejectionism” is restricted to the denial of Jewish national rights, on the implicit racist assumption that the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine do not have the human rights that we naturally accord to Jews. Second, it is observed—quite accurately—that Israel has always been more than willing to negotiate with the Arab states, while they have not reciprocated this willingness. It requires barely a moment’s thought to perceive that Israel’s willingness in this regard is strictly rejectionist, since the Palestinians are excluded. When a framework for negotiations has been proposed that includes the Palestinians, Israel has always refused to participate. Thus Israel’s apparently forthcoming position with regard to negotiations, much heralded in the U.S., is simply part and parcel of its commitment to the rejection of Palestinian rights, an elementary point that is regularly suppressed in discussion of the issue in the U.S. Like the term “territorial compromise,” so also the appealing phrase “negotiated settlement” has become a disguise for outright rejectionism in American discourse. When these simple points are understood, we can interpret properly the pronouncements of Israel’s American propagandists. For example, the general counsel to the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith (see Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 114: Rejectionism and Accomodation 117 chapter 2, section 2.1), Arnold Forster, condemns current U.S. government policy because he sees the U.S. as insisting that an IsraelLebanon peace must be part of a more “comprehensive” settlement: Absurdly, the Israelis are made to appear dreadful simply because they ask of Lebanon open borders, tourism both ways, trade relations, negotiations in their respective capitals32 and regular political contacts—all the stuff of a healthy, peaceful relationship between countries. Our Government argues that if genuine peace is achieved only between Israel and Lebanon, the pressure would then be off the Jewish state to resolve the West Bank Palestinian problem along the lines of President Reagan’s fading peace plan. Secretary Shultz’s clever tactic is therefore to deny Israel the peace with Lebanon it hungers for—unless Israel simultaneously withdraws from the West Bank.33 This argument will no doubt seem impressive to those who share the assumptions of this well-known civil rights group, specifically, the assumption that Palestinians do not have the same rights as Jews. Dropping these assumptions, we see at once that Israel’s proposals, which Forster advocates, would simply take another long step towards the extension of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied territories. In short, Forster is simply presenting a brief for a “Greater Israel” and for the denial of elementary human rights to the Arabs of Palestine. Furthermore, the “healthy, peaceful relationship” that Israel seeks to impose on Lebanon by force would be one that subordinates Lebanon—at the very least, southern Lebanon—to Israeli interests, as a market for Israeli goods, a potential source of cheap labor and water, etc., a fact that is plain when we consider the relations of economic and military power Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 115: Rejectionism and Accomodation 118 and that was well on its way towards realization as Forster wrote (see chapter 6, section 7.1). This “healthy, peaceful relationship,” then, would be of the sort imposed by many other “peace-loving states” during the colonial era, for example, the relationship imposed on India by benevolent Britain (after the destruction of native Indian enterprise) or on China at the time of the Opium Wars, to mention two of many classic examples. All of this is so transparent that it might be surprising that the general counsel of an alleged human rights organization would be willing to make such statements publicly—until one recalls that this is the New York Times, with an audience of educated readers for whom the underlying racist assumptions are so firmly implanted that the obvious conclusions will generally not be drawn. As to whether Forster is correct in his belief that the U.S. government is really dropping its rejectionist stance, that is another matter; the increase in aid to Israel, passed by Congress at exactly that time, surely belies this assumption, as already noted. 2.3 The Population of the Occupied Territories The third party to be considered is the population of the occupied territories, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—the latter, called “Judea and Samaria” by both the Labor government and Likud, though the U.S. press regularly attributes this usage, which is taken to imply a biblicallyendorsed right of possession, to Menachem Begin.* In fact, reference to * The same error is made by commentators who should know better, for example, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, who describes the terms “Judea” and “Samaria” as those that “the Likud and its sympathizers prefer,” in an interchange that exhausts the usual range of tolerable opinion: Hertzberg (with the assent of Irving Howe) representing the position of “Jewish moderates, headed by the Labor Party,” and Ivan Novick, President of the Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 116: Rejectionism and Accomodation 119 biblical rights is common in both political groupings.34 Thus Shimon Peres, the socialist leader of the Labor Party, accepted Begin’s rationale for retaining the West Bank, writing: “There is no argument in Israel about our historic rights in the land of Israel. The past is immutable and the Bible is the decisive document in determining the fate of our land.” This doctrine apparently causes few raised eyebrows in the Socialist International, in which Peres and his Labor Party are honored members.35 Nevertheless, Peres advocates “territorial compromise” in accordance with the Allon Plan, to free Israel of an unwanted Arab population which “would eventually endanger the Jewish character of Israel…36 2.3.1 Attitudes under Occupation The attitudes of the indigenous population are generally ignored in the U.S., on the assumption—racist in essence—that they simply do not count. In the early years of the occupation, the Labor government refused to permit any independent political expression on the part of the population, even rejecting the request of pro-Jordanian “notables” to form an anti-PLO grouping, a fact revealed in 1974 by the former military commander of the West Bank, General (now President) Chaim Herzog (breaking government censorship), and arousing no concern among American liberals and democratic socialists, firm supporters of the Labor Alignment.37 In 1976, relatively free elections were permitted for municipalities in the West Bank. The elected candidates soon made it clear that they regarded the PLO as their sole legitimate representative. In recent years, the Begin government and others have attributed this outcome to PLO Zionist Organization of America, representing the Likud position. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 117: Rejectionism and Accomodation 120 pressure and intimidation. No such claims were made at the time. On the contrary, the elections were regarded as a crowning achievement of the “benign occupation.” There was, in fact, interference in the electoral process, namely, by Israel, in favor of more conservative elements. Two nationalist candidates were expelled in violation of the governing military regulations, to ensure the election of more acceptable opponents. The PLO took no position with regard to the elections, Amnon Kapeliouk observes in a detailed commentary on them.38 He also points out that a significant political structure arose in the territories at the time, regarding the PLO as its representative and prepared to reach a political settlement with Israel. Instead of recognizing the Palestinian right to self-determination alongside of Israel, however, “the Rabin [Labor] government opened the door to Gush Emunim,” the fanatic religiouschauvinist settlers in the occupied territories. Since that time the inhabitants of the occupied territories have made known their support for the PLO, and for an independent Palestinian state, on every possible occasion. To cite only two of many examples, the mayors of West Bank towns sent a letter to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance when he toured the area in 1977, stating that the Palestinian people had chosen as “its sole legal representative, irrespective of the place…the PLO under the leadership of Mr. Arafat,”39 an act of no small courage given the nature of the occupation—people generally regarded as moderates had been expelled for much less. Turning to the present, after the PLO had been evacuated from Beirut in September 1982 (so that alleged PLO intimidation was now a thing of the past), a group of “Palestinian personalities” in the occupied territories were asked for their evaluation of the outlook, among them Elias Freij (the last remaining mayor of a major town, the others having been dismissed by Israel) and Rashad Shawa (the conservative and pro-Jordanian dismissed mayor of Gaza); Freij and Shawa are represented here as leading figures of the Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 118: Rejectionism and Accomodation 121 “moderate” nationalist alternative to the PLO. They were uniform, including Freij and Shawa, in their support for the PLO, some holding that support for the PLO had in fact increased as a result of the Lebanon invasion (Shawa).40 An indication of current opinion in the West Bank (no one doubts that the results would be similar in the Gaza Strip) is given by the results of a poll undertaken by the PORI Institute, a leading public opinion research organization in Israel, in March 1982.41 The results will come as no surprise to people who have been following developments in the occupied territories since 1967.* 98% were in favor of an independent Palestinian state, and 86% said that they wanted this state to be run solely by the PLO. Of other figures, the most popular (68% support) was Nablus Mayor Bassam Shak’a, dismissed shortly before by West Bank “Civilian Administrator” Menachem Milson as part of his general attack on free political expression. Other pro-PLO figures on the West Bank received various degrees of support. At the very bottom was Mustafa Dudin, who received the support of 0.2% of the population. Among Arab * The actual wording of the questions is not given. Therefore one does not know exactly how to interpret the Time paraphrase: “As might be expected, 98% of the respondents said that they favored the creation of a Palestinian state. Yet only 59% agree with the P.L.O. that such a state should encompass ‘all of Palestine’ (i.e., including Israel); 27% seem ready to accept a Palestinian state made up only of the West Bank and Gaza Strip” (the actual PLO position, for several years). Surely, however, no sensible person can have much doubt that whatever the preferences of the population, as expressed in the Israeli poll, they would be more than willing to be relieved of Israeli or Jordanian occupation and to exercise their right of self-determination in an independent state—for the large majority of them, a state organized by the PLO—set up alongside of Israel and coexisting with it. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 119: Rejectionism and Accomodation 122 leaders, King Hussein of Jordan ranked low, admired by 4%. King Hussein is the U.S. choice for representative of the inhabitants of the West Bank, while Dudin is the choice of the government of Israel and its supporters here. He is the head of the “Village Leagues” created by Israel in an effort to replace the elected leadership, and is claimed to represent the rural majority of the population—the “silent majority.” He is regularly described in the U.S. press as a “moderate,” and it is claimed that only PLO terror prevents the population from supporting him openly; evidently, fear of the PLO is so great that close to 100% of the population were afraid to state their support for Dudin secretly and anonymously in an Israeli-run poll. Perhaps we might pause for a moment to consider the two personalities who are, respectively, the most popular (apart from the PLO) and the least popular in the West Bank: dismissed Mayor Bassam Shak’a and Mustafa Dudin. Shak’a was the victim of a terrorist attack in June 1980 in which both of his legs were blown off by an IDF bomb. No progress has been made towards discovering the identity of the assailants, though it seemed a relatively straightforward matter as several Israeli journalists pointed out, if only because the army had records of people who had access to the sophisticated type of explosives used. It is generally assumed that the terrorists were Jewish settlers in the area (see, for example, the comments of the Ha’aretz journalist cited above, chapter 2, section 1). When violent acts are carried out against Jewish settlers, houses of families of suspects are demolished, curfews imposed, subjects interrogated (and, they allege, often tortured), etc., while U.S. journals fulminate about Arab terrorism. In fact, even stone throwing can lead to curfews and other punishments, as, for example, the Times casually observes in reporting an incident in which yet Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 120: Rejectionism and Accomodation 123 another Arab youth was killed by Israeli soldiers42 firing at his feet.* But in the case of the attack on Mayor Shak’a and others, it was difficult to detect even signs of an investigation, and obvious clues were not pursued.43 Ze’ev Schiff wrote at the time in Ha’aretz that it would be politically impossible for the government to arrest and convict the guilty parties because these West Bank settlers had too much political support.44 Ha’aretz also reported that the suspects were believed to be Jewish extremists who used sophisticated IDF equipment, citing intelligence sources. The bombings (Mayor Karim Khalef of Ramallah was also seriously injured; both were subsequently dismissed by the Milson administration) were praised in the journal Nekudah of the religious West Bank settlers, and the spokesman for American Rabbi Kahane’s Kach Party announced at a press conference that they were in retaliation for the murder of Israeli settlers in Hebron a few weeks earlier. Six Jewish suspects were under investigation by the Israeli secret police (Shin Bet), but according to Knesset Member Shulamith Aloni, they said that “the Jews responsible are part of a close-knit group that has been impenetrable.” Stories about the affair are routinely censored in the Israeli press. Many journalists following the case, including Danny * The report states that Samir Ghazal Taflak, 19 years old, was killed by a bullet in the chest (another youth was seriously injured) when, according to an army spokesman, Israeli soldiers “had fired at the feet of youths who had hurled rocks at an Israeli bus, smashing one window.” Hundreds of students were protesting a curfew imposed on a camp of 12,000 people “after youths threw rocks at Israeli vehicles in the area,” one of a series of curfews in the past two months. “The students waved the flag of the Palestine Liberation Organization and photos of its leader, Yasir Arafat, the sources said.” “About seven weeks ago a 14-year-old Nablus youth was shot and killed by a [Jewish] settler of nearby Elon Moreh after he had stoned the settler’s car.” Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 121: Rejectionism and Accomodation 124 Rubinstein of Davar, suspect that a high-ranking government official was involved and that the Shin Bet is part of a cover-up. “Most Israelis were indifferent to the mayors’ fates after the attacks anyway,” and “there was no public outcry or pressure on the government to conduct a fullscale inquiry.”45 After the terrorist attack and his subsequent dismissal, Shak’a was subjected to considerable government harassment. He was refused permission to travel to Holland on the grounds that “he will use the visit for the dissemination of false information about Israel and will present Israel as oppressing public figures in the [occupied] territories,” according to representatives of the security forces. There have been many other examples, another recent one being the denial of an exit visa to his daughter to enable her to resume her studies at North Carolina State University in October 1982.46 At the same time, Shak’a’s Israeli guards refused to permit journalists from Ha’aretz and the Jerusalem Post to interview him. A week later, there had been no action by the newspapers or the Press Association, leading one outraged Israeli citizen to compare this “shocking incident” to what happens in the USSR. 47 2.3.2 The Carrot and the Stick Let us turn now to the least popular personality in the West Bank, Menachem Milson’s protegé Mustafa Dudin, head of the Village Leagues. It should be noted at once that journalists who cover the West Bank for the Hebrew press have no illusions about the support for Milson’s Village Leagues. Danny Rubinstein of Davar writes that “The vast majority of the Arab population, led by city mayors, leaders of unions and other public figures in the West Bank, recognized the Israeli attempt to undermine the P.L.O.’s authority [by establishing the Leagues], and denounced it in the East Jerusalem newspapers, in Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 122: Rejectionism and Accomodation 125 conferences and in declarations.” He describes the measures adopted by the Sharon-Milson administration to impose the rule of the Leagues by giving them “vast financial support” and compelling inhabitants to turn to them for the needs of daily life.48 Exploiting its military success in Lebanon, Israel expanded the Village Leagues and formed them into a regional organization, assigning them the role of representative of the Palestinians in the occupied territories for dealings with Israel. On the invitation of the Israeli authorities in charge, Danny Rubinstein attended the meeting in Hebron where this “political task” was announced publicly for the first time. The representatives came armed and substantial Israeli military forces surrounded the area. Dozens of villagers outside stood up to cheer on command. The speakers praised former Civilian Administrator Menachem Milson, who was responsible for the worst atrocities in the West Bank, for “his service to the inhabitants of the West Bank…his outstanding personality and warm compassion, all in eloquent rhetoric,” some so effusive that the audience burst out in laughter. It was, Rubinstein writes, “a sad and oppressive day in Hebron.”49 Meanwhile in the Boston Globe, we read only that Milson “received thunderous ovations at the first conference of the West Bank ‘Village Leagues’ he helped foster,” referring to the same meeting, a sure sign of his great popularity and the support for the Leagues on the West Bank— the immense popularity shown by the PORI Institute poll for the head of the Leagues, Mustafa Dudin, is still another sign. Milson is referred to in the Globe as a “Mideast Maverick,” who “calls for a Palestinian role in the West Bank,” a leading partisan of the oppressed Palestinians, evidently.50 This is surely the appropriate characterization, as 1984 approaches, for the man who along with General Sharon initiated the most brutal period of repression in the West Bank, “a reign of terror,” in the words of Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 123: Rejectionism and Accomodation 126 the Israeli dove Uri Avneri, who describes Milson as a poor copy of “his former master, Ariel Sharon”: “So far as compulsive lying, boasting and impudence are concerned, he is merely Sharon’s pocket edition,” Avneri continues, going on to recall the measures he instituted in an effort to break the will of the Palestinians, including formation of “the hated ‘Leagues,’ which became the representatives of the Israeli conquest for the public,” “armed gangs of quislings” largely constituted of “the human refuse of the villages, known hooligans and criminals, who received weapons from the military government in order to create an atmosphere of terror.”51 In short, a true “Mideast Maverick,” much to be admired for his defense of Palestinian rights. To illustrate Avneri’s description, Professor Milson, in his Globe interview, states that “partly due to my influence, the fact is that no house was demolished in the West Bank.” In fact, two weeks after his November 1, 1981 takeover, on November 16, four houses were destroyed in Beit Sahur in a collective punishment, and one house was destroyed in Bethlehem, the home of a man suspected of throwing a molotov cocktail at a bus.52 Milson assumed, correctly no doubt, that his statement would pass unchallenged in the United States, where he is presented as an advocate of peace and conciliation. He might, however, have argued correctly that the Labor Party resorted to this technique of collective punishment in the case of people suspected of some act of violence (or resistance, depending on one’s point of view) far more extensively than he did. The West Bank correspondent of Ha’aretz, Zvi Barel, reports General Sharon’s statement that the League members “are not collaborators in the usual sense of the word.” Barel agrees, on the grounds that “no past collaborators had enjoyed such wide government support as these people receive.” He describes how they are not only provided with arms to terrorize the population, but are even given “the privilege of making Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 124: Rejectionism and Accomodation 127 the [Israeli] civil administration commit illegal acts to praise the name of the Village Leagues,” describing how the administration acts to serve “their desire for revenge.” Barel also illustrates how West Bank inhabitants are compelled to submit to the rule of the Milson-Dudin Leagues in order to survive, citing the case of Abu Adnan of the West Bank town of Halhul, whose mayor, Muhammed Milhem (who had called for a peaceful two-state political settlement), was also dismissed by the Milson administration. Adnan had sent his son (born and educated in the West Bank) to Greece for medical studies. His son was not permitted to return on the pretext that he was away when a census was taken; removal of the educated population has been a standard procedure of the occupation since the beginning. Requests to permit his son at least to visit were denied by the Milson administration. Finally, Adnan turned to the Village Leagues, signing a form stating his request to become a member, and offering a “donation” of 500 Israeli shekels. He at once received permission for his son to visit.53 The Hebrew press contains many similar examples illustrating how the Leagues gain their popularity. In testimony before Congress, a member of an American study group returning from a Middle East tour reported that “the vast majority” of the population “dislike the Unions” (the Village Leagues) but “feel forced to deal with them” because of the arrangements imposed by the Military Government. The Leagues are “widely feared and are dealt with only as individuals and groups feel pressured to do so.” “The greatest fear of West Bankers is that these Union of Villages officials will be selected by the Israelis as the ‘moderate’ Palestinians who will ‘negotiate’ autonomy under the Camp David accords, and thus give the appearance of legitimacy to an autonomy agreement.” It is this fear that was realized in the subsequent meeting that Rubinstein reported. “Shlomo Gazit, former Chief of Israeli Intelligence, has stated that the setting up of the Village Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 125: Rejectionism and Accomodation 128 Leagues established a network of quislings to serve the purposes of the government and was not in the interest of Israeli security. He has called for the dissolution of the Village League program.”54 It is good to know that Congress was well-informed when it increased the enormous subsidy to Israel to still higher levels to pay for these admirable measures. The civilian administration of “Mideast Maverick” Menachem Milson, which gave Dudin a position of power in the occupied territories and a position of prominence as a noted moderate in the United States, began on November 1, 1981. The “reign of terror” that began at once received considerable press coverage in the United States at the time, but, memories being short and prejudices strong, the facts were quickly forgotten. The Israeli Black Book (see note 52) gives a detailed account of the first six months, along with testimony by Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. “The civil administration orchestrated by Professor Milson,” it reports, “is nothing but another attempt to revive an old, well-known colonial method in a new ‘original’ Israeli form,” laying the basis for “an Israeli Bantustan, which imposes on the Palestinians the role of hewers of wood and drawers of water for Israeli society.” It “intends to destroy every social institution in the occupied territories in two ways: first, by harassing municipal councils, labor unions, and universities which mold national-political culture, and second, by constructing what seems to be an alternative power center in the shape of the Village Leagues,” basing itself on the assumption that the Palestinians are “primitive ‘natives’ who are easily pacified when the occupier buys off a few notables in their villages.” Its techniques are these: “leaders and activists are arrested, inhabitants are expelled, meetings are banned, demonstrators are detained, and the demonstrations themselves are brutally dispersed; curfews and confinements are imposed, houses are blown up, and quislings from the Village Leagues are used in a terror campaign against Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 126: Rejectionism and Accomodation 129 the population; universities and newspapers are shut down, journalists are detained or prevented from interviewing leaders, who, in turn, are not allowed to be interviewed anyway; censorship is applied to both newspapers and books, and humiliation, harassment, and terror are inflicted on the population by the Jewish settlers in towns and villages alike.” The Black Book then presents extensive evidence, in a virtually day-by-day account. These practices, in fact, go back to the earliest days of the occupation, but there is no doubt that they escalated to new levels of violence under the regime of the “Mideast Maverick” and his chosen instrument. Small wonder that Dudin’s support in the West Bank amounted to 0.2% by March 1982, after six months of Milson’s beneficence. We return to the historical context, and some specific illustrations, in the next chapter. The conception of the Palestinians as primitive “natives” who can easily be bought off has deep roots in Zionist history, and is a natural concomitant to “Weizmann’s legacy,” as expressed by Ben-Gurion and others (see chapter 3, section 2.2.2, and for more detail, the next chapter). It was observed long ago by visitors to Palestine. The American journalist Vincent Sheean, for example, arrived in Palestine in 1929 as an avid Zionist sympathizer, and left a few months later as a harsh critic of the Zionist enterprise. He found that the Jewish settlers “had contempt [for the Arabs] as an ‘uncivilized race,’ to whom some of them referred as ‘Red Indians’ and others as ‘savages’,” and felt that “We don’t have to worry about the Arabs” who “will do anything for money.” They looked upon the indigenous population as “mere squatters for thirteen centuries” so that it should “be feasible for the Zionists, by purchase, persuasion and pressure, to get the Arabs out sooner or later and convert Palestine into a Jewish national home,” an attitude which he thought was “from their own point of view…perilous in the extreme.” Sheean “could not believe that the Arabs of Palestine were so different Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 127: Rejectionism and Accomodation 130 from other Arabs that they would welcome the attempt to create a Jewish nation in their country.”55 These attitudes remain alive today, expressed in the actions of the Milson administration and its predecessors in the occupied territories, in the common view of Israeli leaders and others that the Palestinians can readily find a place in some other Arab land, and in the general disregard in the West—particularly the United States—for Palestinian rights. It might also be noted that even Mustafa Dudin—the archetypal quisling—has called for total Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and the evacuation of all Jewish settlements established there since 1967. How this stand results from PLO intimidation has not yet been explained. Furthermore, well after the expulsion of the PLO from Beirut and southern Lebanon, Palestinian demands for an independent state and rejection of Israeli-imposed “autonomy” remained unchanged, and “with the notable exception of Mustafa Dudin,…very few Palestinians think they can reach their objectives by negotiating with Israeli officials.” In January 1983, the leader of the Ramallah League, Riyad el-Hatib, called for an independent Palestinian state, and the chairman of the Hebron area Village Leagues, Muhammad Nasser, called upon Israel to freeze settlements, describing them as “an obstacle to peace” between Israel and the Palestinians.56 In the meeting that Rubinstein attended, representatives of the Leagues called for measures to prevent migration of Palestinians from the West Bank (“a clear antigovernment goal,” Rubinstein observes), while Dudin and others urged the Israeli military authorities to facilitate the return of Palestinian refugees, primarily from Lebanon, to the West Bank, a position with only the most marginal support within Israel. Again, it seems that the PLO must have a long arm. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 128: Rejectionism and Accomodation 131 2.3.3 The “Peace Process” Returning to the PORI Institute survey of West Bank opinion, also of interest were the attitudes expressed towards the two Israeli political groupings. 0.9% preferred to see Begin’s Likud in power, while 2% preferred the Labor Party. 93% registered complete indifference. As for Camp David, 2% felt it helped the Palestinian cause, while 88% regarded it as a hindrance. In news reporting as in editorial commentary in the United States, the arrangements set in motion by the Camp David accords are known simply as “the peace process.” Evidently, those whose lives are at stake do not share the assumptions that underlie this usage, which simply reflects a tacit acceptance of the U.S. propaganda system by the media and scholarship. It is also quite likely that the inhabitants of the occupied territories understand some facts about “the peace process” that are little noted here. Specifically, it is plain, on the ground, that the government of Israel never had the slightest intention of joining “the peace process” in anything other than a rhetorical sense, beyond the Sinai agreements, which had the merit of giving Israel a free hand elsewhere by effectively excluding Egypt from the conflict. Not only is this obvious from the settlement program and the internal repression, but it is even clear from the official record, a fact that Abba Eban has pointed out. He cites the official “Government policy guidelines” adopted by the Knesset (by a single vote), which state that “After the transition period laid down in the Camp David accords, Israel will raise its claim and will act to fulfill its rights to sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district” (Eban’s emphasis). “There is no resource of language,” he notes, “that can possibly bridge the gulf” between this decision and the Camp David Agreement, which leaves the status of the territories to be determined Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 129: Rejectionism and Accomodation 132 after the transition period by negotiations between Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and elected representatives of the inhabitants of the territories, not by Israeli actions. Eban states that he is unable to find any precedent “in the jurisprudence of any government for such a total contradiction between an international engagement and a national statement of policy.” Surely an exaggeration,* but nevertheless an understandable reaction to the immediate announcement by the government of Israel that it intended to disregard the Camp David Agreement, to which it pledges (and demands of others) total fidelity. 57 The poll results reflect the attitudes of those who have learned about the occupation, as conducted by the Labor Party and then Likud, from their own lives. They are deprived of New York Times editorials, and therefore—as their low regard for the Labor Party indicates—they are unaware that under the Labor Party the occupation was a “model of future cooperation” and a “nine-year experiment in Arab-Israeli coexistence,” or that the Labor Party in 1980 “has taken a giant step toward compromise with the West Bank Palestinians and thus challenged the Arab world to reciprocate with acts of restraint and conciliation”58 the “giant step” was a reiteration, once again, of the rejectionist Allon plan put into effect by the Labor Party ten years earlier. 2.3.4 The United States and the Conquered Population * To mention only one obvious case, consider the statement of U.S. government policy by Kissinger and Nixon in January 1973 as they announced the signing of the Paris peace agreements concerning Vietnam, adding in the clearest and most explicit terms that the U.S. intended to violate every obligation to which it had just committed itself. For details concerning the facts, the consequences, and the U.S. reactions, see TNCW, chapter 3. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 130: Rejectionism and Accomodation 133 The hopes and aspirations of the indigenous population are generally ignored in the United States, not because the facts are unknown—the poll just cited, for example, appeared prominently in Time magazine— but because the Palestinians are not accorded the human rights that are properly and automatically recognized in the case of Israeli Jews, so that their attitudes are of no account, just as one would not ask the donkeys in the West Bank what their preferences might be. Those who have backed or tolerated U.S policy towards the region, or who support either of the two major political groupings in Israel, simply announce thereby their complete contempt for the indigenous inhabitants of the former Palestine. Of course, such attitudes cannot be openly expressed. We therefore read in the New Republic that “No means exist of discovering what public opinion may be today [in] the occupied territories, which are the eye of the storm”—although the same author, who simply exudes sympathy for the Palestinians suffering under PLO terror, informs us confidently that Arafat’s “extraordinary public relations success has no popular base,” and that the “Palestinians en masse leave the PLO alone.”59 Evidently, polls carried out by Israel give us no insight into public opinion, just as we learn nothing from the elected leadership and others, even from Israel’s favorite collaborator Mustafa Dudin. The same authority explains that there are genuine “moderates” who might “agree to whatever is left of the concept of partition” (presumably he has in mind “territorial compromise” in the sense of the Labor Party). He even tells us who they are: Mayor Freij and dismissed Mayor Shawa (both of whom continue to support the PLO; see section 2.3.1 above), and Mustafa Dudin who, he informs us, “has met with the disdain of selfappointed Western tribunes for the Palestinians”—though not this tribune, who is unconcerned by the fact that his candidate for “responsible leadership” insists upon a Palestinian state contrary to his Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 131: Rejectionism and Accomodation 134 claims, and is supported by a rousing 0.2% of the population. Again, the age of Orwell, nowhere better exemplified than in the semi-official journal of American liberalism, as we shall have ample occasion to see below. It might be added that the sentiments of the Palestinians in the occupied territories regarding an independent state and the legitimacy of the PLO appear to be widely shared among Arab citizens of Israel as well. One of the Arab leaders who has been most closely integrated into Israeli political life, Saif ad-din Zuabi, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Begin protesting the expansion of the “Peace for Galilee” invasion of Lebanon beyond the originally-announced 40km limit. Zuabi, “who is known for his moderate opinions, indicated in his letter that he has never been an admirer of Yasser Arafat, but after the war it became clear to everyone that Yasser Arafat is the most fitting representative of the Palestinian people.”60 Similar conclusions have often been expressed within the Israeli Arab community. We return to more detailed studies of Israeli Arab opinion on these matters in chapter 7, section 4. 1.1. 2.4 The Arab States and the PLO We have reviewed the international consensus and the positions of the U.S., Israel, and the Palestinians in the occupied territories. What about the Arab states and the PLO? The historical record is rather different from what is generally believed in the United States. 2.4.1 The Erosion of Rejectionism and the U.S.-Israeli Response In the immediate post-1967 period, the Arab states and the PLO took a rejectionist position comparable to the stand that has been Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 132: Rejectionism and Accomodation 135 consistently maintained by Israel and the U.S. Not long after, this rejectionism began to erode. In February 1970, President Nasser of Egypt declared that “it will be possible to institute a durable peace between Israel and the Arab states, not excluding economic and diplomatic relations, if Israel evacuates the occupied territories and accepts a settlement of the problem of the Palestinian refugees.” Amnon Kapeliouk observes that “this declaration received no response at the time in Israel.”61 Note that settlement of the refugee problem within the context of a negotiated peace has been the official position of the U.S., along with virtually the entire world apart from Israel, since 1949, and is regularly endorsed in UN resolutions. Note also that Nasser made no reference to a Palestinian state, in accordance with the international consensus of the time. Nasser also “accepted the [Secretary of State William] Rogers [June 1970] proposals for a cease-fire and subsequent negotiations,” a “brave and constructive step” in the words of Zionist historian Jon Kimche.62 After Nasser’s death, the new President, Anwar Sadat, moved at once to implement two policies: peace with Israel and conversion of Egypt to an American client state. In February 1971, he offered Israel a full peace treaty on the pre-June 1967 borders, with security guarantees, recognized borders, and so on. This offer caused much distress in Israel (it caused “panic,” in the words of the well-known Israeli writer Amos Elon),63 and was promptly rejected with the statement that Israel would not return to the internationally recognized pre-1967 borders. Note that Sadat’s offer of February 1971 was more favorable to Israel than what he proposed in November 1977 on the trip to Jerusalem that officially established him as “a man of peace,” since he made no mention of Palestinian rights, allegedly the stumbling block in the Camp David “peace process.” Sadat’s offer was in line with the international consensus of the period, in particular, with the Rogers Plan, which had Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 133: Rejectionism and Accomodation 136 been angrily rejected by Israel.64 In internal discussion in Israel, Labor Party doves recognized that a peace settlement was within reach, but recommended against it on the grounds that territorial gains would be possible if they held out.65 Israel’s only reaction to Sadat’s offer, apart from the immediate flat rejection, was to increase settlement in the occupied territories. On the same day that Sadat’s offer was officially rejected, the Labor government authorized plans for settlement in the hills surrounding the Arab portion of Jerusalem, well beyond the earlier borders of the city, as part of the process of “thickening Jerusalem.” Noting this fact, Edward Witten comments on the similarity to Begin’s response to the Reagan plan in 1982: new settlements in response to a request for a settlement freeze (see section 2.2.1 above; we return to the facts). Witten also points out that Sadat clearly expressed his desire for “coexistence” with Israel at the same time in a Newsweek interview, and that Foreign Minister Abdullah Salah of Jordan announced that Jordan too was ready to recognize Israel, if it returned to the internationally-recognized pre-June 1967 borders (February 23, 1971). There appears to have been no Israeli response.66 In 1972, Israel’s Labor government angrily rejected the proposal of King Hussein of Jordan to establish a confederation of Jordan and the West Bank (again, a rejectionist position, denying Palestinian national rights). In response, the Israeli Knesset “determined,” for the first time officially, “that the historic right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel [including the West Bank] is beyond challenge,” while Prime Minister Golda Meir stated that “Israel will continue to pursue her enlightened policy in Judea and Samaria…” Her political adviser Israel Galili, who was in charge of settlement in the occupied territories, stated that the Jordan River should become Israel’s “agreed border—a frontier, not just a security border,” the latter term implying the possibility of some form of self-government, however Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 134: Rejectionism and Accomodation 137 limited, for the indigenous population.67 Returning to Sadat’s February 1971 offer of a full peace treaty, Israel was backed in its rejection by the United States. Unfortunately for Sadat, his efforts came just at the time when Israel had established in Washington its thesis that it was a “strategic asset” for the U.S. (see chapter 2). Kissinger assumed that Israel’s power was unchallengeable, and takes considerable pride, in his memoirs, in his steadfastness in blocking the efforts of his primary enemy—the State Department— towards some peaceful resolution of the conflict. His aim, he writes, “was to produce a stalemate until Moscow urged compromise or until, even better, some moderate Arab regime decided that the route to progress was through Washington... Until some Arab state showed a willingness to separate from the Soviets, or the Soviets were prepared to dissociate from the maximum Arab program, we had no reason to modify our policy” of stalemate, in opposition to the State Department. 68 Kissinger’s account is remarkable for its ignorance and geopolitical fantasies, even by Kissingerian standards.* Sadat had explicitly decided that “the route to progress was through Washington,” joining Saudi Arabia and others (even when Sadat expelled Soviet advisers in 1972 * Kissinger’s inability to comprehend what was happening in the Middle East was almost monumental in its proportions. The second volume of his memoirs extends the story. See the review by James E. Akins (U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1973 to 1976), who argues that “the truly tragic consequence of Watergate is that President Nixon was not in a strong enough position to dominate his secretary of state. Weakened and distracted by domestic issues, he allowed Kissinger to frustrate his own Middle East design. Had it not been for Watergate, it is possible, even probable, that Nixon would have achieved a just and lasting peace in the area and that the world would be much safer today.” See note 68. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 135: Rejectionism and Accomodation 138 Kissinger did not see the light). Saudi Arabia was not only willing “to separate from the Soviets” but in fact did not even have diplomatic relations with them. The USSR backed the international consensus including the existence of Israel within recognized (pre-June 1967) borders and with security guarantees.69 Apparently under Kissinger’s influence, the Nixon Administration decided to suspend State Department efforts aimed at a peaceful settlement in accordance with the international consensus and the explicit proposals of Egypt. An envoy was sent to a conference of U.S. ambassadors in the Mideast to announce the suspension of these efforts. “To a man, the U.S. ambassadors replied that if the countries in the Mideast concluded that the process itself had ended, there would be a disastrous war.”70 Sadat also repeatedly warned that he would be forced to resort to war if his efforts at a peaceful settlement were rebuffed, but he was dismissed with contempt, apparently because of the widespread belief in Israel’s military supremacy. Warnings from American oil companies operating in the Arabian peninsula concerning threats to U.S. interests were also disregarded.71 Nahum Goldmann, long a leading figure in the Zionist movement, observed that Sadat had conducted a “daring” policy by “declaring himself ready to recognize Israel, despite the opposition,” and that “if he cannot show that he can obtain results, the army will be compelled to launch a war.” Israel listened no more than Kissinger did, and on the same assumptions. After Israel shot down 13 Syrian planes with one Israeli plane lost in September 1973. the editor of one major Israeli journal wrote: “This battle will remind our Arab neighbors that they cannot manage their affairs without taking into consideration who is the true master of this region.”72 In October 1973, Sadat made good his threat. As a group of Israeli and American-Israeli scholars observe, “After the Egyptian Ra’is [Sadat] had realized that all diplomatic efforts would lead to a dead end, he Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 136: Rejectionism and Accomodation 139 decided to try a limited military option which, combined with an oil embargo, would lead to a significant Israeli withdrawal from Arab territories.”73 To the great surprise of Israel, the U.S., and virtually everyone else, Egypt and Syria were remarkably successful in the early stages of the war and Saudi Arabia was compelled (reluctantly, it seems) to join in an oil boycott, the first major use of the “oil weapon,” a move with considerable long-term implications in international affairs. Primary responsibility for these developments is attributable to Henry Kissinger’s ignorance and blind reliance on force. At that point, U.S. policy shifted, reflecting the understanding that Egypt and the oil-producing states could not be so easily dismissed or controlled. Kissinger undertook his shuttle diplomacy and other diplomatic efforts. Concealed behind the razzle-dazzle was the easily discernible intent, now surely clear in retrospect even to those who could not perceive it at the time, to accept Egypt as a U.S. client state while effectively removing it from the Middle East conflict with a Sinai agreement. Then Israel would be free to continue its policies of integrating the occupied territories—and to concentrate its forces for war on the northern border without concern for the major Arab military force, as when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982. Egypt continued to press for a full-scale peace settlement, now joined by other Arab states. In January 1976, the U.S. was compelled to veto a UN Security Council Resolution calling for a settlement in terms of the international consensus, which now included a Palestinian state alongside of Israel. The resolution called for a settlement on the 1967 borders, with “appropriate arrangements…to guarantee…the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries,” including Israel and a new Palestinian state in the occupied territories. The resolution was backed by the “confrontation states” Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 137: Rejectionism and Accomodation 140 (Egypt, Syria, Jordan), the PLO, and the USSR. President Chaim Herzog, who was Israel’s UN Ambassador at the time, writes that the PLO not only backed this peace plan but in fact “prepared” it; the PLO then condemned “the tyranny of the veto” (in the words of the PLO representative) by which the U.S. blocked this important effort to bring about a peaceful two-state settlement. The occasion for Herzog’s remarks was the Saudi Arabian peace proposal that had just been announced, which Israel was right to reject, Herzog asserts, just as it correctly rejected the “more moderate” PLO plan of January 1976. According to Herzog, the “real author” of the 1981 Saudi Arabian (Fahd) peace plan was also the PLO, who never seem to cease their machinations.74 Israel refused to attend the January 1976 Security Council session, which had been called at Syrian initiative. The Rabin government—a Labor Party government regarded as dovish—announced that it would not negotiate with any Palestinians on any political issue and would not negotiate with the PLO even if the latter were to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel, thus adopting a position comparable to that of the minority Rejection Front within the PLO. 75 The main elements of the PLO had been moving towards acceptance of a two-state settlement, and continued to do so, at times with various ambiguities, at times quite clearly, as in this case. The Arab states and the PLO continued to press for a two-state settlement, and Israel continued to react with alarm and rejection. In November 1976, the Jerusalem Post noted that Egyptian Prime Minister Ismail Fahmy had offered four conditions for a Middle East peace settlement: “Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 war frontiers; the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; the ban on nuclear weapons in the region; and the inspection of nuclear installations in the area.” It noted further President Sadat’s Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 138: Rejectionism and Accomodation 141 statement to a group of U.S. Senators “that he was prepared to sign a peace treaty with Israel if it withdrew from all Arab territories captured in the 1967 war, and if a Palestinian state was created on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.” The Labor Party journal Davar quoted Prime Minister Rabin’s response to this disturbing “peace offensive”: But there is nothing new in all of this, in the objectives that the Arabs wish to obtain, stressed the Prime Minister when recalling that back in 1971 Sadat told Dr. Jarring of his willingness to reach a peace settlement as he understood it. On the contrary, he has even made the conditions harder, since then, as opposed to now, he did not link an IsraeliEgyptian agreement with agreements with other Arab countries and did not raise, in such a pronounced manner [in fact, at all], his demand for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.76 Thus no Israeli reaction was in order. The following year, Egypt, Syria and Jordan “informed the United States that they would sign peace treaties with Israel as part of an overall Middle East settlement.”77 The Palestinian National Council, the governing body of the PLO, issued a declaration on March 20, 1977 calling for the establishment of “an independent national state” in Palestine—rather than a secular democratic state of Palestine—and authorizing Palestinian attendance at an Arab-Israeli peace conference. Prime Minister Rabin of Israel responded “that the only place the Israelis could meet the Palestinian guerrillas was on the field of battle.”78 The same session of the National Council elected a new PLO Executive Committee excluding representatives of the Rejection Front.79 Shortly after, the PLO leaked a “peace plan” in Beirut which stated Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 139: Rejectionism and Accomodation 142 that the famous Palestinian National Covenant would not serve as the basis for relations between Israel and a Palestinian state, just as the founding principles of the World Zionist Organization were not understood as the basis for interstate relations, and that any evolution beyond a two-state settlement “would be achieved by peaceful means.”80 Supporters of Israel have long treasured the Covenant as the last line of defense for their rejectionism when all else fails. Israeli doves, in contrast, have always dismissed this last-ditch effort. For example, Elie Eliachar, former president of the Council of the Sephardic Community in Israel and the first person from Jerusalem to represent it at the Zionist Congresses, made the following statement in a lecture at the Hebrew University in 1980: On the basis of personal contacts I have had with leaders of the PLO, in London and elsewhere [in] meetings that were held openly, and that interested people know all about, I can say categorically that the idea that the PLO covenant is an obstacle to negotiations is utter nonsense... There is no Arab organization in existence today which can bring about a durable peace in our region, except the PLO, including its extremist factions. Mattityahu Peled, asked why the PLO does not abandon the Covenant, responded: For the same reason that the Government of Israel has never renounced the decisions of the Basle Zionist Congress, which supported the establishment of a Jewish state in the historic land of Israel—including Transjordan. No political Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 140: Rejectionism and Accomodation 143 body would do this. Similarly Herut and the Irgun [its terrorist forerunner] never abandoned their map [which includes Transjordan, contemporary Jordan; the official slogan of Begin’s Herut Party still calls for an Israel on both banks of the Jordan]. We demand a ritual abandonment of the Covenant—a kind of ceremony of humiliation—instead of concerning ourselves with the decisions that were accepted by the PLO from 1974, which support the establishment of a Palestinian state in the territories evacuated by Israel. It is, in fact, interesting to see how Israeli propaganda has focused on the Covenant with increasing intensity as it is deemphasized by the PLO in favor of subsequent resolutions which drastically modify its terms, for reasons that are hardly obscure.81 We should note that the Convenant holds a rejectionist view comparable to that of the Labor Party and Likud. A few months after releasing the 1977 peace plan, the PLO endorsed the Soviet-American statement of October 1977, which called for the “termination of the state of war and establishment of normal peaceful relations” between Israel and its neighbors, as well as for internationally guaranteed borders and demilitarized zones to enhance security. “The United States had, however, quickly backed away from the joint statement under Israeli protest,” Seth Tillman observes, adding that “without exception,” proposals for superpower collaboration to bring about a settlement and to guarantee it “have been shot down by Israeli leaders and supporters of Israel in the United States, who have perceived in them the bugbear of an ‘imposed’ settlement”—that is to say, a settlement that is unacceptable (otherwise, no sane person would care whether it was “imposed” or not) because it departs from their Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 141: Rejectionism and Accomodation 144 rejectionist principles. There were “a few dissenters from the prevailing consensus,” Tillman points out, among them Nahum Goldmann, who described the Soviet-American agreement of October 1977 as “a piece of real statesmanship,” adding that “it is regrettable that Israel’s opposition and that of the pro-Israel lobby in America rendered the agreement ineffective” (Goldmann’s words), another piece in the familiar pattern.82 2.4.2 Sadat’s Trip to Jerusalem and the Rewriting of History The failure of many such efforts as these led Sadat to undertake his November 1977 trip to Jerusalem, motivated by a desire to convene a Geneva conference of major powers to settle the conflict, according to Hermann Eilts, who was U.S. Ambassador to Egypt at the time. 83 It is also likely that Sadat was motivated by concern over the escalating conflict across the Israel-Lebanon border, initiated by Israeli-Maronite bombing of Nabatiya and culminating in Israeli air raids that killed some 70 people, mostly Lebanese. 84 The United States has generally been opposed to a Geneva conference, which would include the USSR and the European powers. As Kissinger had explained, his diplomatic efforts were designed “to keep the Soviets out of the diplomatic arena” and “to ensure that the Europeans and Japanese did not get involved in the diplomacy” concerning the Middle East, where the U.S. role is to remain predominant.85 Israel has also consistently opposed the idea, adamantly so if the PLO participates. The reason was explained by Prime Minister Rabin of the Labor Party after the Knesset had approved a resolution to this effect. If Israel agrees to negotiate “with any Palestinian element,” he stated, this will provide “a basis for the possibility of creating a third state between Israel and Jordan.” But Israel will never accept such a Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 142: Rejectionism and Accomodation 145 state: “I repeat firmly, clearly, categorically: it will not be created.”86 The Labor Party’s rejection of the right of the Palestinians to any meaningful form of self-determination has been consistent and exceptionless. Sadat’s dramatic visit to Jerusalem did not open the way to negotiations for a comprehensive political settlement involving true accommodation in the sense of the earlier discussion and the international consensus. Rather, the resulting Camp David “peace process,” as the U.S. government and the press designate it, consummated Kissinger’s earlier efforts. Egypt has, temporarily at least, been incorporated within the U.S. system and excluded from the ArabIsraeli conflict, allowing Israel to continue its creeping takeover of the occupied territories, apart from the Sinai, now returned to Egypt and serving as a buffer zone. Diplomatic efforts remain largely in the hands of the U.S., excluding both the USSR and the rivals/allies of Europe and Japan. From 1977, the Begin government rapidly extended land expropriation and settlement in the occupied territories while instituting a considerably more brutal repression there, particularly from the fall of 1981, with the Milson-Sharon administration. The U.S. government signalled its approval by increasing the massive aid which, in effect, funded these projects—while also emitting occasional peeps of protest. As noted earlier (see section 2.3.3 above), the Begin government indicated from the start its rejection of the “peace process,” so it is not surprising that it moved at once to “fulfill its rights to sovereignty” by large-scale development projects designed to ensure that the West Bank could not be separated from Israel. Evidently, the actual historical record—here briefly reviewed up to Sadat’s November 1977 trip to Jerusalem—is not exactly in accord with the familiar picture of U.S.-Israel-Arab diplomatic interactions in this period. The preferred story is one of Arab intransigence and U.S.-Israeli Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 143: Rejectionism and Accomodation 146 efforts at accommodation. Sadat, for example, is regularly portrayed as a typical Arab warmonger who tried to destroy Israel by force in 1973, then learned the error of his ways and became a man of peace under the kindly tutelage of Henry Kissinger and Jimmy Carter. As the New Republic puts the matter, Sadat’s “decision to make peace” came after the 1973 war: “Finally, after the enormous destructiveness of the 1973 war, Anwar Sadat realized that the time had come to replace the conflict of war with law and rights.”87 The other Arabs—particularly the PLO— persist in their evil ways.* Endless references can be cited from the press to illustrate this version of history.88 To reconcile the actual history with the preferred picture has been a relatively simple matter; It has only been necessary to resort to Orwell’s useful memory hole. The historical record has been so effectively sanitized that even as well-informed a person as Harold Saunders (former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs) can write that “As long as no Arab government but Egypt would make peace, Israel saw no alternative to maintaining its security by the force of its own arms.”89 Sadat’s pre-1977 peace efforts have been conveniently expunged from the record, like the January 1976 Security Council Resolution and much else. In Israel and Egypt, Sadat’s 1971 offer is described as his “famous” attempt to establish a genuine peace with Israel. 90 Similarly, * The New Republic goes on to explain that one of the great achievements of the Israeli war in Lebanon is that the destruction of the PLO and “its elimination as an independent political force [will] allow those on the Arab side who have no designs on Haifa or Tel Aviv to negotiate free from intimidation” (my emphasis). Prior to 1982, this leading journal of American liberalism would have us believe, no Arabs were “allowed” to consider a settlement that would include the existence of Israel. Compare the record sampled here. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 144: Rejectionism and Accomodation 147 Amnon Kapeliouk describes Sadat’s expression of willingness “to enter into a peace agreement with Israel” (the words of the official English text of Israel’s recognition of Sadat’s offer) as a “historic event in Israel-Arab relations.”91 Consider, in contrast, the two-page encomium to Sadat by Eric Pace, Middle East specialist of the New York Times, after Sadat’s assassination.92 There is no mention here of the real history, as briefly sketched above; indeed in the New York Times version, the well-documented facts are explicitly denied. Thus, referring to Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem in 1977, Pace writes: Reversing Egypt’s longstanding policy, he proclaimed his willingness to accept Israel’s existence as a sovereign state. Then, where so many Middle East negotiators had failed, he succeeded, along with Presidents Carter and Reagan and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, in keeping the improbable rapprochement alive. An elegant example of what has sometimes been called “historical engineering,”93 that is, redesigning the facts of history in the interests of established power and ideology, a crime of which we justly accuse our enemies. Such historical engineering is in fact quite widespread. To illustrate more closely how the system works, I will cite one final example, again from the New York Times, which is much more interesting in this connection than, say, the New Republic or Commentary, because of its image and pretensions as an independent journal. After the Lebanon war and the Beirut massacres of September, there was much debate about how Americans, and American Jews in particular, should relate to Israel. The contribution of the New York Times Magazine was a discussion by Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 145: Rejectionism and Accomodation 148 Mark Helprin,* who is identified as a Middle East specialist with service in the Israeli army.94 Helprin begins by setting up a framework for discussing the issue. There are two extreme positions: “Among Jews in the United States there are those who would see Israel fall, and those who care only for its aggrandizement.” These “two extremes,” he adds, “have been highlighted in the debate following the massacre of innocents in Beirut.” We must reject both of these extremes, he urges, and take the “middle ground,” which is described rather vaguely, but is intended to be understood as the position of the Labor Party, it appears. Now of course, every commentator sees himself as occupying the middle ground between the extremists. The question is: who stands at the two extremes? As the sole example of those “Jews in the United States who would see Israel fall,” Helprin cites George Habash, the leader of the rejectionist faction of the PLO. It is not surprising that he offers no other example; it would be difficult indeed to find real cases. What about the other “extreme,” i.e., those who support the policies of Likud. Helprin does not elaborate on the constituency of this group, * It would be misleading to describe this as just one man’s opinion, fully in place in an independent journal. That would indeed be true if the range of permitted opinion extended beyond the rejectionist spectrum, but it does not, contrary to much pretense (the reference of note 111 below being one example). The Times Magazine published an interesting letter critical of Helprin’s article, by Julius Berman, Chairman, Conference of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (Dec. 12). Berman held that Helprin rejected the “consensus” of American Jews: that the PLO is excluded as a negotiating partner and that “an independent Palestinian state would be a dagger poised at the heart of Israel.” The latter phrase is borrowed from Hitler, who used it with reference to Czechoslovakia. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 146: Rejectionism and Accomodation 149 but others do, for example, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, who describes the Zionist Organization of America as (in recent years) “the American wing of the Liberal Party in Israel which, together with Begin’s Revisionists, make up the Likud.95 Thus the two extremes that have been “highlighted” in recent debate among American Jews are not exactly equally represented: one consists of George Habash, and the other, the Zionist Organization of America, and in fact, most others in the organized Jewish community. Helprin then proceeds to give the version of history as perceived in the “middle ground.” Apart from the U.S., we find “the facile rejection of Israel and compassionate overembrace of its enemies by nearly all the world,” including Europe, which “hardly reacted” to PLO atrocities in the past, saving its condemnations for Israel—a ridiculous falsification, of course, but one that appears to be widely believed in the U.S. and is sometimes supported with serious misrepresentation; for one example, by Saul Bellow, see TNCW, pp. 303-4. As for Israel, while it is not perfect, its “campaign in Lebanon was both late in coming and restrained in character when compared with what any other state, civilized or uncivilized, would do in reaction to the continual shelling of its cities, the murder of its children and the massing of arms against it for years without abatement.” Omitted are a few possibly pertinent facts: e.g., that Israel occupies Arab territory from which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled in 1967 (not to speak of questions that might be raised about earlier years) and that the PLO had scrupulously adhered to the July 1981 cease-fire in the face of constant Israeli provocations, a matter to which we return. As for the PLO, it “is to the slaughter of men, women and children what France is to wine.” Assuming this to be a valid characterization, we may ask what analogy is appropriate for Israel with its far greater slaughters since the early 1950s, long before the PLO was founded, or Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 147: Rejectionism and Accomodation 150 for the pre-state Zionist terror organizations, which, Simha Flapan writes, “established the pattern of terrorism adopted 30 years later by AI-Fatah.”96 According to official Israeli army statistics, 106 people died in the course of all terrorist actions in the north since 1967, considerably fewer than the number of victims of a single Israeli bombing raid. 97 Or to take another comparison, the total number of Israeli victims is approximately the same as the number killed when Israel shot down a civilian Libyan airplane over the occupied Sinai in February 1973; the plane had become lost in bad weather and was one minute flight time from the Suez Canal, towards which it was heading, when shot down by the Israeli air force.98 The total number of Israelis killed in all acts of terror from 1967 is 282,99 less than the number killed by Israel’s air terrorists in Beirut on July 17-8 1981, in “retaliation” after a PLO response to Israeli bombing that broke the cease-fire. 100 What of recent years?* According to figures provided by Minister of the Interior Yosef Burg, in 1980 10 Jews were killed by terrorists and in 1981—8. In contrast, we have killed about a thousand terrorists in 1982, and caused the loss of life of thousands of inhabitants of an enemy country. If so, it results that for every 6-8 Jews sacrificed, we kill in return thousands of Gentiles. This is, undoubtedly, a spectacular situation, an uncommon success of Zionism. I might even dare to say— exaggerated.101 * Note that we are taking these Israeli figures at face value, not asking how the victims were killed, though a closer look at the terrorist incidents shows that the question is worth asking. Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 148: Rejectionism and Accomodation 151 Israeli terrorist acts over the years, beginning long before the PLO was formed, have undoubtedly claimed far more victims than those of the PLO, and while they are typically described as “retaliation” here, the facts make clear that this is a term of propaganda, not description.102 So much for Europe, Israel and the PLO. Next, Helprin turns to the Arab states apart from post-1977 Egypt: “Were the confrontation states and the rejection states to allow that the Jews, too, have a right to political existence, they would get serene open borders and peace treaties…Israel will not listen to the Arabs until they decide to put an end to their 30-year war against it.” He adds that “when Arab officials speak of liberating or regaining the occupied territories, they mean all of Israel,” although “the Western press has been remiss at sniffing out this verbal trick.” The entire history just described—only a small part of the story, which will be extended directly—is completely expunged from the record. Clearly, all of this is pure Agitprop. How can the New York Times and its writers expect to get away with it? The answer is simple enough; it is no trick at all, given overwhelming dominance of the means of articulate expression by one specific point of view. It is difficult to imagine, for example, that the New York Times Magazine would permit an article to appear reviewing the actual historical facts, at least, as long as the U.S. remains committed to its Greater Israel policies. This example, which is by no means unusual, illustrates very well what Walter Lippmann sixty years ago called “the manufacture of consent,” an art which “is capable of great refinements” and will lead to a “revolution” in “the practice of democracy.”103 Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 149: Rejectionism and Accomodation 152 3. The Continuing Threat of Peace he well-known Israeli writer Amos Elon has written of the “panic and unease among our political leadership” caused by Arab peace proposals (see 2.4.1 above). “The most extreme instance,” he adds, “though not the only one, was in early 1971, when Sadat threw Israel off balance with his announcement, for the first time, that he was willing to enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and to respect its independence and sovereignty in ‘secure and recognized borders’.”104 Elon describes the harshly negative reaction of the government, the silence of most of the press, and the convoluted efforts of most Orientalists to prove that Sadat’s offer did not mean what it said—rather like Helprin’s insight into the devious “verbal trick” of the Arabs when they speak of a settlement in which the occupied territories will be turned over to their inhabitants. The occasion for Elon’s article was the “emotional and angry” reaction of the government to the justannounced Saudi (Fahd) peace plan of August 1981,105 a response which he found “shocking, frightening, if not downright despair-producing.”* Elon had good reason for his despair. The Labor Party journal Davar T * Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir stated that “Even the suggestion of Saudi recognition of Israel is not new.” The Saudi plan called for a two-state settlement on the 1967 borders, with recognition of the right of all states in the region to exist in peace. It should be noted that many Labor leaders denounced the Saudi peace plan, e.g.. Chaim Herzog, who warned that it was prepared by the PLO (see section 2.4.1 and Party chairman Shimon Peres, who “remarked today that the Saudi peace proposal threatened Israel’s very existence” (Ha’aretz, Aug. 10, 1981; Israeli Mirror). Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky
Slide 150: Rejectionism and Accomodation 153 found Israel’s reaction—including military flights over Saudi Arabia—to be so “irrational” as to cause foreign intelligence services to be concerned over Israeli bombing of Saudi oil fields.106 Another wellknown journalist described “the frightened, almost hysterical response of the Israeli government to the Saudi plan” as “a grave mistake,” adding that if the PLO offered to negotiate with Israel, “the government would undoubtedly declare a national day of mourning.”107 In fact, the PLO had repeatedly expressed a willingness to accept a negotiated settlement and to participate in general peace negotiations, but no call for a day of mourning was necessary, since the denial of the facts was still effectively in force. A few months later, in February 1982, Uri Avneri criticized a similar Israeli reaction to a Syrian proposal calling for “termination of the state of war between the Arabs and Israel…” along with confirmation of the right of the Palestinians to an independent state alongside of Israel in the occupied territories.108 B. Michael made a similar observation in Ha’aretz. Noting the immediate efforts to dismiss the statement of the Syrian Minister of Information that a peace agreement would be possible if Israel were to withdraw to its 1967 borders, he commented sardonically that “We must therefore be careful not to underestimate the danger posed by the Syrian plot, and we must do our best to kill it while it is still small.”109 In the same month (February 1982), Saudi Arabia’s state radio twice “called for direct peace negotiations between the Arabs and Israel, on condition that Israel recognize the PLO as the negotiating partner.” These initiatives too were ignored,110 as was a subsequent Iraqi initiative (see p. 367*). Israeli propaganda beamed to an American audience, however, regularly speaks of the willingness of “socialist Zionism” to make peace if only some Arab leader would show some sign that Israel may exist in Classics in Politics: The Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky