Fateful Triangle

by Noam Chomsky

  15. Leon Hadar, “Labour of Love,” Jerusalem Post, March 2, 1982.

  16. 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.

  17. Cited by Amnon Kapeliouk, Israel: lafin des mythes (Albin Michel, Paris, 1975, p. 219). This book by an outstanding Israeli journalist is the best 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.

  18. Cited by Zunes, “Strange Bedfellows.”

  19. 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.

  20. 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.

  21. 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.

  22. Jon Kimche, There Could Have Been Peace (Dial, 1973. pp. 310-11).

  23. 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.

  24. Christopher Sykes, Crossroads to Israel: 1917-1948 (Indiana, Bloomington, 1965), p. 247.

  25. 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.

  26. Safran, Israel, p. 571.

  27. Cited by Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power (Harper & Row, New York, 1972, p. 242).

  28. 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).

  29. 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.

  30. Wittner, American Intervention in Greece, pp. 119, 88.

  31. Ibid., pp. 1, 149, 154, 296; see the same source for an extensive review and documentation.

  32. Ibid., pp. 80, 232.

  33. For discussion, see TNCW, chapters 2, 11, and references cited there.

  34. New York Times, August 6, 1954; see TNCW, p. 99, for further quotes and comment.

  35. Cited inTNCW, 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.

  36. 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.

  37. “Issues Arising Out of the Situation in the Near East,” declassified 12/10/81, commenting on NSC 5801/1, Jan. 24, 1958.

  38. Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography (Delacorte, New York, 1978, pp. 261f.).

  39. 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.”

  40. 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.

  41. 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 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.

  42. 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).

  43. See Michael Klare, in Leila Meo, ed., U.S. Strategy in the Gulf (AAUG, Belmont, 1981).

  44. Michael Klare, Beyond the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ (Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, 1981).

  45. 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.

  46. Thomas L. Friedman, “After Lebanon: The Arab World in Crisis,” New York Times, Nov. 22, 1982.

  47. Tamar Golan, Ma’ariv, Dec. 1, 1982; Reuter, Boston Globe, Jan. 20, 1983; UPI, New York Times, Jan. 22, 1983.

  48. New York Times, Dec. 6, 1982.

  49. Susan Morgan, Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 14, 1982; “Guatemala: Rightists on the warpath,” Latin America Weekly Report, March 4, 1983.

  50. 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.

  51. Charles Maechling Jr., “The Murderous Mind of the Latin Military,” Los Angeles Times, March 18, 1982.

  52. See TNCW, p. 429 and chapter 13, and references cited.

  53. Yoav Karni, “The secret alliance of the ‘Fifth World’,” Yediot Ahronot, Nov. 22, 1981. See TNCW, pp. 292-3.

  54. Leslie H. Gelb, “Israel Said to Step Up Latin Role, Offering Arms Seized in Lebanon,” New York Times, Dec. 17, 1982.

  55. See my For Reasons of State (Pantheon, New York, 1973, p. 51), for citation and discussion.

  56. Adam Clymer, New York Times, June 27, 1982. Le Monde, June 11, for the full text; Christian Science Monitor, June 11, 1982.

  57. 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).

  58. 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.).

  59. Yediot Ahronot. July 26, 1973; see Peace in the Middle East?, p. 142.

  60. 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.

  61. 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.

  62. Jewish Post & Opinion, Nov. 5, 1982.

  63. 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).

  64. 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.

  65. 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).

  3. Rejectionism and Accommodation

  1. A Framework for Discussion

  W

  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.

  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 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.

  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