by Noam Chomsky
Gur was the strongest opponent of the war among the top leadership. He issued a public denunciation of the Labor leadership and the entire operation on August 20, in Ha’aretz. The attack on Beirut, he said, would prove to be an ineradicable stain, and the entire war, as it was conducted, was unjustified. The presence of the IDF, he wrote, was the “primary factor in the election of Bashir Gemayel” to the presidency of Lebanon, “and whoever activates the IDF to such aims is capable of doing the same tomorrow in Israel as well,” a concern about Defense Minister Sharon that had been voiced frequently before, even by Begin, it has been alleged. Yossi Sarid, along with Shulamith Aloni and parts of Mapam, opposed the “large plan” strenuously and called for withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from all positions that had no direct connection with the security of the Galilee. But the leadership in general remained silent, apart from its general opposition to the conquest of Beirut. When things began to go wrong later, after the Sabra-Shatila massacres, the Labor leadership changed its tune, as we shall see.
All of this will again evoke memories among opponents of American aggression in Indochina. It is difficult to conjure up a picture of Labor as constituting a meaningful opposition, though one might reasonably argue that support for Labor is nevertheless justified when one considers what Begin and his cohorts are likely to do in the future.
Cohen writes that “if anyone thinks in error that from Abba Eban there will come salvation for the doves—disappointment awaits him.” True, Eban’s views are “extremely dovish.” But he will not use his international prestige to express them in public. In fact, in his article in Socialist Affairs cited above (see note 135), Eban writes that Begin “solemnly promised the Knesset on June 8 that when we reach the 40km. limit, ‘the fighting will cease’,” a sign of his duplicity. Surely Eban knew that the “small plan” had never been seriously entertained and that the Labor leadership was well aware of this fact from the start.
6.4 The American Scene We have sampled the “taste of victory” among Lebanese and Israelis—it is superfluous to discuss further the reaction of the Palestinians. What of the United States? As noted earlier, Israel’s direct aggression evoked only limited criticism within the U.S., though when the true objectives and the costs of the war became clear, the situation began to change. Some went so far as to claim that Syria and the PLO “were the aggressors” in Lebanon, not Israel, which simply “uprooted them from where they had no right to be,”211 though this commentator—Henry Fairlie—does not tell us where the Palestinians had a “right to be.”* Others did, for example, historian Barbara Tuchman, who explained that although “the invasion of Lebanon seems to me out of proportion” and may not be “the wisest course,” nevertheless: “Let us put the responsibility for a solution where it lies... Let the Arabs solve the problem of the Palestinians,” not those who occupy their former homes.212 Since the Palestinians were the “aggressors” when Israel invaded Lebanon, it must be that Israel was acting in a “peaceproducing role”—and so we are informed by ex-Senator Jacob Javits, who also points out that once before Israel had “serve[d] in this peaceproducing role” in Lebanon, namely, in 1958, when Israel provided logistical support at the Haifa port for the landing of U.S. marines in Lebanon.213
Michael Walzer, the noted social democratic theorist of “just wars,” explained that “I certainly welcome the political defeat of the PLO, and I believe that the limited military operation required to inflict that defeat can be defended under the theory of just war.” Under his concept of “just war,” with its special provisions for the State of Israel discussed above (see pp. 100-1), his conclusion is surely correct. Walzer also assures us that Israel’s military practice in the south “was a good example of proportionate warfare”—the proof is that Israeli soldiers so informed him—and if later operations in Beirut put civilians “at risk,” we must understand that “the responsibility for the risks lies with the PLO,”214 the official position of the Begin government and yet another notable contribution to contemporary moral doctrine by this highly
* He also avoids mention of the fact that Syria was present under an Arab League mandate that was to expire in July 1982, and that the U.S. and Israel at least tacitly supported the original Syrian intervention in opposition to the Palestinians and their Muslim allies.
regarded social democratic humanist.*
Morris Abram, formerly U.S. representative at the UN Commission on
Human Rights, explained that “the moral culpability for the loss of
innocent lives in Lebanon, as in Dresden, Germany, and Normandy, in
France, during World War II, rests primarily on those who initiated the
terror rather than on those who ended it”—that is, on the PLO, whose
terrorism, surely to be condemned, hardly matched that of Israel. “The
pain of west Beirut was caused by the grip of the guerrillas who held it
hostage.” The war was “regrettable,” but it “would never have occurred”
if the Arab states had resettled the Palestinians—who, in fact, insisted
on their right to return to their homes, always failing to comprehend the
point, so clear to American Zionists, that they had forfeited this right by
their flight and expulsion, and must put the past behind them, while the
Jewish people returns to the homeland from which it was exiled 2000
years ago.215
Just at the point when the siege and bombing of Beirut were reaching
their peak of savagery, the well-known liberal columnist William Shannon expressed “some distress” over the “terrifying violence” while noting
that “something positive” may yet come out of it; namely, the PLO and
* A review of his latest book (Boston Globe, March 20, 1983) describes Walzer as “something of a national treasure”: “No reader [of these essays], even one profoundly opposed to his democratic socialist politics, could fail to appreciate his humanism.” In his previously-cited Just and Unjust Wars, Walzer also relies on the testimony of Israeli soldiers to demonstrate the high moral level of the IDF—perhaps not the most objective source. It should be unnecessary to stress that evidence from the combatants of some military force is highly relevant when it is critical of its practices, of limited significance otherwise. No one would credit reports by Russian soldiers on their ‘purity of arms” in Afghanistan, though critical comment offered freely should be taken quite seriously.
“their Syrian patrons” may be “forced to recognize reality.” “Reality” is that “the PLO has sabotaged every effort to make some diplomatic or political headway on the problems of the Palestinian people” and that “the PLO has murdered or intimidated into silence independent-minded Palestinians who wanted to explore different political possibilities,” “tolerat[ing] no divergence from its political line, tiresomely reiterated, that Israel is unacceptable and must be destroyed”:
But it is not Israel’s fault that a defeated PLO chose to hole up in West Beirut and use women and children as shields. For a generation, the PLO has been the aggressor against Israel, using every tactic from terrorist bombings to diplomatic stonewalling. Any nation placed in Israel’s predicament would put an end to this aggression if it were within its power to do so.216
As we have seen, reality is rather different from Shannon’s “reality.” In the real world it is the U.S. and its Israeli client that have rejected every effort—including PLO efforts—to reach a peaceful political settlement in accord with the international consensus, and it is hardly accurate to say that the PLO “chose to hole up in West Beirut,” to which it was driven by Israeli violence. These lies are particularly ugly ones, coming at the time they did and thus providing a justification for Israel’s terrorist attack on the defenseless civilian population then held within its grip*.
* Shannon’s gross errors of fact were immediately brought to his attention, with extensive documentation, but he had no interest in correctin
g them. As for the “Syrian patrons” of the PLO, who had entered the Lebanese civil war to attack the PLO, it was hardly necessary to provide Shannon with evidence; the same issue of the Globe contained a report by Michael Kennedy of the Los Angeles
Soldiers who had participated in the attack on Beirut had a rather different picture of what was happening. We may, for example, compare Shannon’s version with this one, from the scene:
One Friday we stood on a high hill overlooking the Beirut airport. We had hundreds of cannons that we used according to plan, to bombard the refugee camps of south Beirut. Everything was calculated. Each unit received a definite area to bombard. For four hours we bombarded the refugee camps which at the same time were being bombarded from the air and the sea. It is difficult for me to return to those four hours and to recount what I felt. From our position we could see our artillery strikes with the naked eye. We could see the sparks of fire every second. It was a terrible scene.217
Evidently, things looked a little different from Boston. Once again, we should recognize the familiarity of the practice of Fairlie, Walzer, Abram and the rest throughout the history of the modern state-worshipping intellectuals, the annals of Stalinism being only the most obvious example. Recall Elmer Winter’s admonition in the Jerusalem Post that “American Jews have their work cut out for them”; it is perhaps unfair to fault them—and others—for performing their tasks; see end section 2.6.1 and chapter 2, section 2.1.
Times on battles between the PLO and Syria just prior to the Israeli invasion. Naturally, this and much similar evidence was also dismissed as irrelevant to Higher Truths. For another no less amazing example of the ruminations of this distinguished liberal columnist, see TNCW, p. 87, this one in the New York Times and concerned with the righteousness of another Holy State.
Editorials in the nation’s press took a similar stance. Echoing the wording of the Israeli Embassy, cited above, the Washington Post argued that “The PLO made [West Beirut] an involuntary battleground; Israeli guns did most of the damage to it: a deadly ‘partnership’.” Employing similar logic (putting aside differences in the circumstances irrelevant to the point at issue), one might argue—perhaps some Nazis did—that the British made Calais and Dunkirk an involuntary battleground, in a “deadly partnership” with Hitler’s armies. The Post continues: the PLO must now “find a political course that is reasonable and realistic”—in contrast to its former proposals for a peaceful twostate settlement in accordance with the international consensus.218
In the eyes of the New York Times editors, “American weapons were justly used to break the P.L.O.” The Lebanese must understand that their “liberation from the Syrians and the P.L.O. is no license to resume civil -war,” and Israel must understand that though “America will extricate them from Lebanon, and let its aid cover the costs,” they must have “respect for American interests in the Middle East...and yield something to America’s view of the ‘full autonomy’ jointly promised at Camp David.” The Israeli invasion “opened some promising political paths” (as did the Argentine invasion of the Falklands at the same time, though for some reason this fact was not adduced here in support for it), but the U.S. should not “reward [the PLO for] the biggest hijacking in history—half of Beirut is the hostage—in a coin they do not possess, the Israeli-held West Bank” (the Gaza Strip seems to have been tacitly consigned to Israel). “The civilians [the PLO] are using for cover are Moslem innocents; the P.L.O.’s final bet is on Israel’s humanity and the sensibilities of civilized nations,” and they must respect their “enemy’s restraint.” “When the P.L.O. holds half a city hostage and shouts ‘Pay my ransom or shoot your way past these innocents,’ there is no special virtue in cease-fires that let the talks drag indefinitely.” The U.S. recognition that the PLO demands as its “ransom” should be denied, since it “would strengthen the P.L.O’s extremists” and “would destroy the chances of negotiating true autonomy with fairly elected Palestinians in the West Bank” (though the dismissed elected mayors and even Israel’s chosen quislings reject this “true autonomy” and insist upon an independent Palestinian state along with 98% of the population, who furthermore overwhelmingly advocate that this state be run by the PLO). With the final cease-fire, “the P.L.O. fighters who have held west Beirut hostage will finally evacuate without goading the Israeli attackers into ferocious house-to-house fighting that would have vastly increased the carnage.”219 Etc., etc.
Particularly of note—since the remainder is fairly routine in this style of journalism—is the notion that of course the U.S. taxpayer must willingly pay Israel for its achievements in Lebanon.
Not everyone approved. Nathan Glazer and Seymour Martin Lipset described the war as “ill-advised” and urged that Israel grant the Palestinians “real self-determination” in the West Bank and Gaza.220 Some used stronger terms, though they remained a distinct minority. In fact, across a broad spectrum of articulate opinion, Israel’s aggression received strong support. Crucially, it received the direct material and diplomatic support of the U.S. government. The Democratic Party expressed its sympathetic support still more forcefully. The Administration stood by its recommendation for an increase in aid to Israel, and Congress, under the prodding of liberal Democrats, demanded still further increases. The Labor Union bureaucracies strongly supported the war, as did most conservative columnists. The national press did too, though with some reservations. The familiar principles of official doctrine concerning Israel and the PLO were continually reiterated as in the few examples just cited, truth being dismissed as the usual irrelevance.
At the extreme left of mainstream politics, support for the invasion was no less fervent. The Santa Monica City Council, regarded as virtually a socialist enclave, passed a resolution “in essence, to support the right of Israel to defend its borders by invading Lebanon.” The same resolution “questions the Reagan Administration’s ‘drifting away from commitment to the Camp David process,’ challenges the appointment of George P. Shultz as secretary of state ‘at such a grave time in Israel’s existence’ and calls upon Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif) ‘to carefully examine at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings Mr. Shultz’s ties to the Bechtel Corporation and his ties and Bechtel’s ties to Saudi Arabia* and Saudi Arabian support for the PLO’.”221 The idea that it is Israel’s existence, not the national (or simply human) existence of the Palestinians, that is threatened as Israeli military forces are systematically demolishing Palestinian society with U.S. support should be carefully noted, not merely dismissed on the grounds of patent absurdity; it reflects, in the clearest possible form, the deep-seated racist assumptions that extend across a broad spectrum of U.S. opinion, including much of the left.
Others too felt that Shultz might be a problem. Seymour Martin Lipset, speaking at the Hebrew University, warned that “Israel’s biggest problem is likely to be that Shultz is a ‘do-good Christian’ with sympathy for the underdog and the oppressed. Israel’s policies in Lebanon and in the territories are likely to arouse his ‘moral indignation’.”222 One can understand the concern over these possible character flaws.
Few surpassed Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda in their support for the * The demand to examine Mr. Shultz’s various ties would be fair enough, were it coupled with a demand to investigate the ties of others to Israel or to countries that support Israel, a meaningless demand given the U.S. role, thus highlighting the true significance of the concern over Mr. Shultz.
invasion. Well before, Fonda had announced that “I identify with Israel unequivocally.” This was on the occasion of her “special prize” from the Hebrew University “for her contribution to freeing the prisoners of Zion in the USSR and for the freedom of immigration for Jews there.” Fonda announced on this occasion that she is “making every effort…to explain to the government and the general population” in the U.S. that “world peace and certainly the security and future of Israel” are threatened by moves in the U.S. “to establish friendly relations with a state such as
Saudi Arabia.” “I operate according to my conscience, and am attempting to convince President Reagan that the U.S. interest is bound up with friendship with democratic Israel, and not with feudal Saudi Arabia.” This is one aspect of her commitment “to continue with my work for human rights.”223 The ceremony took place just at the moment when the Sharon-Milson oppression had reached its peak of violence; see chapter 4, section 5. If her “work for human rights” extended to those then being shot, beaten, humiliated a few miles from where she was speaking, the fact remained unrecorded.
In July 1982, Fonda and Hayden toured Israel and Lebanon as guests of the Israeli Organization for the Soldier (in effect, the Israeli USO), reaching as far as Beirut, where they “watched the shelling” from Israeli positions. Fonda “expressed her identification with Israel’s struggle against Palestinian terror, and her understanding for the Israeli invasion in Lebanon, which would remove the terror, and her support for Israel’s struggles for its existence and independence”—all feelings that naturally come to the fore as one travels past (probably not seeing) the rubble of Ain el-Hilweh and witnesses the bombardment of Beirut. “Israel has the right to defend herself from anyone who threatens to destroy her,” she said, “and not only when they are attacking her.” “Tom Hayden blamed the PLO for causing the ‘Peace for Galilee’ operation,” presumably, by its regular and unprovoked shelling of the Galilee in the preceding year and its adamant refusal to consider a political settlement, despite Israel’s enthusiastic efforts in this regard. “The couple FondaHayden expressed their hope that the PLO would indeed leave Beirut; that further bloodshed would be avoided there and that the affair will lead to a solution of the Palestinian problem in the spirit of Camp David,” thereby taking their stand in explicit opposition to virtually all the inhabitants of the occupied territories.224
