by Noam Chomsky
The taste of victory was also sweet for most—not all—Israelis; and for the “supporters of Israel” here, who could look forward to the establishment of the anticipated “New Order” of their dreams in Lebanon and the imposition of Israeli control over the demoralized occupied territories, where Israel could now proceed to implement the “strong arm tactics” so admired by New Republic editor Martin Peretz, eliminating the danger of “a dagger poised at the heart of Israel” (see pp. 364*, 152*). The sweet taste was not, however, to linger long. We return to the aftermath in the next chapter.
6.2 The Liberated There are, of course, Lebanese other than those whom Ze’ev Schiff and the New Republic editors described in their differing ways. What was the taste of Israel’s victory to them? This question was rarely asked, perhaps because the answer was obvious. After all, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg had pronounced that “Lebanese hail Israel’s action as liberation” while the editors of the New York Times explained early on that they were being granted their “liberation from the Syrians and the P.L.O.,” anticipating by several weeks the announcement by Ariel Sharon that “Israel’s troops entering Lebanon were greeted as liberators for driving out the terrorists who had raped and pillaged and plundered.” And surely the Lebanese were grateful for the fact that “no army in the history of modern warfare ever took such pains to prevent civilian casualties as did the Israel Defense Forces,” as Sharon explained (echoing Begin’s words after Deir Yassin; see chapter 4, section 2), observing the “Jewish doctrine” of tohar haneshek (purity of arms) “scrupulously” while “attacking only predetermined P.L.O. positions and in bombing and shelling buildings only when they served as P.L.O. strongholds”*—the mental hospital in West Beirut, the school shelter in Sidon, and so on.174
Despite these assurances, let us nevertheless, if only out of idle curiosity, inquire further into the attitudes of Lebanese towards their liberation, beyond those who were freely expressing their opinions to visiting Americans guided by an Israeli army escort in occupied Lebanon. An obvious place to start would be the statements of the official representative of the Government of Lebanon at the United Nations, Mr. Ghassan Tueni, a Christian, the owner of the highly-respected Beirut journal An-nahar, later the Lebanese government’s coordinator of negotiations with the liberators. In fact, he had a good deal to say on behalf of the government of Lebanon, though one has to search a little to discover what it was; his name does not appear in the New York
* Sharon also cited the figure of 1392 civilians killed by PLO terrorist raids, a fabrication that set off the inquiries by Israeli journalists that elicited the actual official figures, cited above; see chapter 3, section 2.4.2.
Times index for this period, for example. Mr. Tueni gave a major address at the highly-publicized United Nations conference on disarmament on June 22, a few blocks away from the editorial offices of the Times, just two weeks after the liberation began. He asked to be excused if the representative of Lebanon had “no words on universal disarmament, save the pious prayers that it should happen soon enough for his country to survive,” a country that was then being “martyred and crucified.” “The atomic holocaust of tomorrow,” he said, “becomes a problematic danger, remote and almost unreal, to those who are living an actual holocaust: the holocaust of their mother earth, of men, women, and children physically destroyed along with the cities they built and loved.” The choice for the Lebanese is “between today and tomorrow,” “between surviving immediate death, and thinking—but only thinking—of preventing ultimate destruction.” Recall that he was speaking well before the siege of Beirut and the indiscriminate bombing of heavily-populated civilian areas that reached its peak in late July and August. He asked that the General Assembly not “be diverted by abstract testimonies for peace... Concerned as we all are with the necessity of halting the race towards the atomic holocaust of tomorrow, let us remember the no less apocalyptic realities of today.”
The official (Christian) spokesman for the country that was then being liberated by Israel may, perhaps, be excused for lapsing into hyperbole.
Mr. Tueni called for the “immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon,” citing UN Security Council Resolution 509, “which clearly and unequivocally establishes the criteria of Israeli withdrawal: that it should be both immediate and unconditional.” He deplored the fact that the UN peace-keeping forces were unable “to defend [Lebanon] against aggression,” adding that “it is the very future of peacekeeping operations which is now at stake,” given the inability of the United Nations to stop the Israeli attack—and, though he was too polite to add this, the support for this aggression by the U.S. government, which rendered the UN impotent. Ungratefully, he offered Israel no thanks for his liberation.175
It is perhaps worthy of note that one has to go to Tel Aviv to discover from the press what the representative of Lebanon was saying in New York.*
The Lebanese Ambassador did reach an American audience—though not the press—at a later stage of the liberation. Writing in Foreign Affairs, he commented on the name given “to the Israeli invasion: ‘Peace for Galilee’.” “To occupy almost half of a country, destroy its capital, disrupt its economy, ferociously kill its civilian population by the thousands—for the sake of ‘Peace for Galilee’—is indeed a very strange notion of peace!” And of liberation. He also expressed some concern for the future:
Zionist literature has consistently maintained that the Jewish National Home, and later Israel, needed the water of the Litani and the land south of it. And Israel itself has dealt with the issue as if the population living there—which is Arab not Jewish, and in its majority, Muslim not Christian— were a negligible entity, eventually disposable, not significant, and almost nonexistent.”176
* There is a brief reference to Tueni’s speech at the end of an article on Lebanon in the Boston Globe, June 24, 1982. Tueni’s impassioned condemnations of the Israeli invasion were occasionally seen on television, which American supporters of Israel have denounced even more bitterly than the “pro-PLO” print media for its alleged anti-Israel attitudes, a matter to which we return.
Perhaps he had in mind some other areas that had been liberated before. Tueni reviews the problems that Israel would face if it attempted to “absorb” this new area.
The Lebanese Ambassador also expressed concern over the intentions of Syria, but we need not dwell on that in the present context, since in the United States there are no “opinion leaders”—or others—who extol Syria for its “liberation” of Lebanon, though more muted expressions of approval were heard when Syria entered Lebanon in 1976 to combat the Muslim-Palestinian National Front coalition in the civil war. On the contrary, what we are told by such luminaries as Arthur Goldberg, in his statement published by the American Friends of Israel (see note 134), is that after Hussein expelled the PLO from Jordan in 1970. “when Syria and the PLO invaded and occupied Lebanon later that year [1970], the killing, maiming and destruction was so wanton and the occupation so pervasive that Lebanon virtually ceased to exist as an independent country.” The actual facts of the matter have already been reviewed. The idea that Syria invaded and occupied Lebanon in 1970 is an original contribution by Mr. Goldberg and his sponsors, but apart from that, his sentiments are familiar. We return to his further thoughts on the matter, which do break some new ground.
Putting aside the observations of Lebanon’s representative to the United Nations, let us search elsewhere. Another obvious place to turn would be the Lebanese press, just as we naturally turn to the Israeli press if we are interested in the attitudes of Israelis. This possibility also seems not to have occurred to those who inform us with much confidence about what the Lebanese think and feel. Fortunately, the task is not too difficult, even without access to the Arabic or French press; it should be noted, incidentally, that daily translations from the Arabic press are readily available in Beirut (Middle East Reporter). There is an independent English-language weekly publish
ed in West Beirut: Monday Morning. It is open to a wide spectrum of opinion ranging from Phalangist to PLO, from Nahum Goldmann and U.S. Middle East specialist William Quandt to representatives of the Arab states and movements. In particular, its treatment of Israel’s Phalangist clients and of the Phalangist government elected under Israeli guns was sympathetic and free from rancor, so that it passes the basic test of acceptability for an American audience. It contains a regular and detailed factual review of the week’s events in Lebanon, along with analytic articles by local Western journalists and others, and broad coverage of the international (including Israeli) media. The tenor of its reporting did not change detectably as one military force replaced another, so it seems plausible to suppose that it was not published at gunpoint, as is obvious enough from the range and character of the material that appeared. Whatever they may have been in the past (about which I do not know), its standards were quite respectable through 1982. It certainly compares quite favorably to Western journals. It is likely that this journal offers as good a reflection of what many educated Lebanese were thinking during this period as any single journal could do, and this is a segment of the population that we do not ordinarily disregard in discussing other societies. Let us then consider what it has reported about Lebanese attitudes to the war, beginning with its first week.
Immediately after the initial Israeli bombardments, the journal reports, Ambassador Tueni informed the Security Council on June 5 that Israeli commandos had landed on the coastal road between Sidon and Beirut and had opened machine gun fire on cars and buses in which civilian refugees were fleeing from the south—the first attack, after the initial bombings, on “predetermined P.L.O. positions” and “P.L.O. strongholds” in the terms pronounced appropriate by General Sharon (see above), and adopted by Israel’s American supporters, and an early example—in this war—of how the IDF never aims at civilian targets, as Begin explained while recalling the familiar military doctrine of punishing the civilian population (see p. 386). “This action is of the utmost gravity,” Ambassador Tueni said, “and my government earnestly hopes that the Council is not thus confronted with yet another preemptive act by Israel.” He requested that the Security Council act “to stop the aggression against Lebanon” “the wanton bombardment of positions in Lebanon by Israel...” The Security Council responded by unanimously passing a Resolution calling for a cease-fire at 6AM on June 6, to which Israel responded in turn by launching the invasion on June 6. Perhaps mindful of the warning by the representative of Lebanon that Israeli aggression was a “catastrophe” for Lebanon and perhaps for international peace and security as well, the Security Council unanimously passed a further resolution on June 6 that “Demands that Israel withdraw its military forces forthwith and unconditionally to the internationally recognized borders of Lebanon.” This too was disregarded by the liberators. On June 8, the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution that “Condemns the noncompliance” of Israel with the earlier resolutions, calling for immediate cessation of hostilities and withdrawal of Israeli forces.177By this act, the U.S. gave its official blessing to the liberation, a stance that it then maintained, with the general approbation of the media, while stoutly denying the fact.
In an article entitled “Different Lebanese React Differently,” the journal reported that “With the exception of the rightist Lebanese Front, officials, politicians and party leaders unreservedly condemned Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and vowed to resist it, accusing the United States of responsibility for the savage aggression and denouncing the Arabs’ failure to throw their full weight behind Lebanon and the Palestinians.” Among those joining in the condemnation was Prime Minister Shafik Wazzan, speaking in the name of the Council of Ministers. Wazzan was again chosen to head the new government by Phalangist President Amin Gemayel after the liberation was completed in September and thus should qualify as a legitimate spokesman for the liberated population, by the standards of the New York Times and others.178 Also joining in the condemnation were Christian Foreign Minister Fuad Butros; Shiite House Speaker Kamel Asaad; a number of former Prime Ministers; Nabih Berri, head of the Shiite militia (Amal) that fought alongside the Palestinians*; spokesmen for both the Sunni Islamic Grouping and the Higher Shiite Council (that is, the two major Muslim religious groups); Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, son of the assassinated leader of the Lebanese National Movement (the Muslim-Palestinian coalition); former President Suleiman Franjieh, a Maronite who condemned “the barbaric Israeli invasion”; and others. The invasion was supported only by “the Lebanese Front, which groups the main rightist Maronite parties,” specifically, by Front leader Camille Chamoun (who had requested the U.S. marines to land in 1958) and Phalangist Party Chief Pierre Gemayel and his son Bashir Gemayel, who headed the Phalange militia.179
* In mid-June, Robert Fisk reported, Nabih Berri, “the leader of the Amal Shia movement, which fought so bravely with the Palestinians against the Israelis south of Beirut, ordered his men to lay down their guns.” further resistance being hopeless. He and Walid Jumblatt, who also regarded further resistance as hopeless, joined the new “Committee of National Salvation” formed by President Sarkis as an executive in the emergency. Jumblatt counselled “passive resistance,” given the overwhelming force of the invaders. Berri later stated that “An Israeli attack on West Beirut will not be the end of the war but the beginning of another one which will spread to the entire country,” accusing the U.S. and some Arab states “of having encouraged the Israeli aggression on Lebanon.”
Reuters correspondent Patrick Worsnip described the “PhalangistIsraeli cooperation” as “a nightmare come true for Lebanese leftists and Palestinians,” noting that the Phalangists had opposed the Palestinians because “they feared the new arrivals could tilt the confessional balance in favor of their Moslem rivals and threaten their own political supremacy in a country in which they were the minority, and noting also that “many Lebanese Christians, especially non-Maronite sects, reject Phalangist policies.” Meanwhile, Israel’s main ally in Lebanon, Pierre Gemayel, expressed his reservations concerning the liberation in an interview. He described it as “a catastrophe for Lebanon, the Palestinians and the Arab world,” which might even lead to “an international war.” The “Israeli presence is going to ruin this Lebanese formula, much to Israel’s joy”—where the “Lebanese formula” is the “association between two civilizations,” Christian and Muslim; and it will lead to the division of Lebanon into “who knows what [sectarian] states.” In short, something less than unreserved pleasure, even from this quarter.180
Protests mounted as the invasion-liberation ground on. By late June, Prime Minister Wazzan and Walid Jumblatt stated that they could not continue the negotiations to remove the PLO from Beirut because of the unremitting Israeli attacks. Wazzan stated:
Every time we reach some kind of understanding, we run into a new escalation as if designed to pressure us. You can quote me: this is an international conspiracy against Lebanon and the Lebanese. You want me to remain silent while Philip Habib watches the bombardment of residential areas? As if we were rats in this country! Shafik Wazzan cannot accept this... Therefore, I have informed President Sarkis that I cannot continue shouldering my responsibility under this blackmail and escalation.181
His continuing protests in this vein were occasionally reported in the U.S. On July 27, the government of Lebanon once again protested the continuing invasion “in the strongest possible terms” and called upon the Security Council “to seek practical ways and means under the charter to ensure the implementation” of the earlier resolutions, an option that was regularly blocked by U.S. veto.
On July 30, Camille Chamoun issued a statement demanding that “this cruel and unjustifiable treatment of innocent civilians should stop,” referring to Israel’s blockade of West Beirut. On August 11 he condemned Israel for sending its forces into the Christian hinterland, including areas north of Beirut, saying that “There is no explanation for this.”182 By the end of July, then,
condemnation of the liberation was unanimous among Lebanese political elites, including even Pierre Gemayel and Camille Chamoun—who, nevertheless, continued to support the invasion for the reasons already explained by Ze’ev Schiff: they were pleased to have Israeli mercenaries win the civil war for them and reestablish their supremacy over the Muslim majority of the population.
Muslim leaders were far harsher in their condemnations throughout, including Shafik Wazzan, former Prime Minister Saeb Salam, and others. Apart from condemning the merciless attacks on the civilian population, as he did throughout, Salam expressed his outrage over “the phosphorus bombing that gutted the 1,000-year-old mid-city pine woods in and around the now-destroyed horse race track.” “The pine forest, the pride of Beirut, the whole forest was burned with phosphorus bombs,”183 he told reporters on August 2.* Subsequently, he demanded
*The destruction of the forest, “a children’s park,” “the pride of Beirut,” was that Israel pay reparations, which is “the practice in war.” “With the savage way the Israelis have acted, I think it’s the least of things to demand of the aggressor,” he told a news conference in which he also blamed the U.S. for “backing Israel blindly.”184 Salam and Wazzan lived in West Beirut, where they endured the terror; Chamoun and Gemayel watched from East Beirut.
On August 30, Yasser Arafat departed from Beirut, effectively terminating an organized Palestinian presence in Lebanon. The day began with an emotional farewell meeting with Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. Arafat was then accompanied to Prime Minister Wazzan’s office by Jumblatt, Shiite Amal militia commander Nabih Berri and Lebanese Communist Leader Mohsen Ibrahim. “Brother Arafat,” as Prime Minister Wazzan referred to him, was seen off from Beirut by Wazzan, four former Prime Ministers, religious leaders, and representatives of President Sarkis, many of whom “were in tears as the single smokestack Atlantis, gleaming white in the sunlight, pulled out of the port.”185
