Fateful Triangle

by Noam Chomsky

  * See, e.g., Col. Harry G. Summers, New Republic, Feb. 7, I983, a review-article based on the Yale University press reissue, which typically regards the study as definitive, raising no questions about it. Summers claims that “Braestrup was widely attacked” both by supporters and opponents of the war and by “the journalistic profession,” citing no examples and giving no indication that there was any favorable reception prior to his own; he also, incidentally, expresses a point of view concerning the war and the U.S. involvement in it that merits attention. The review predictably ends with a comparison to the “media coverage of the recent war in Lebanon”: “As was true with Tet, the most damaging aspect of this reporting has been its effect on weakening the community of interest that is the bedrock of the American-Israeli alliance.”

  commentary and editorial analysis. When the shoddy and incompetent treatment of documentary evidence is corrected, nothing remains even of its remarkable charge: excessive pessimism.251

  What is interesting in the present context is that there was no exposure of any of this (apart from the reference of note 251, which was ignored). Rather, both the media and scholarship regarded the study as exemplary, even those who argued against its conclusions concerning the media; many agreed with the Freedom House sponsors that Braestrup’s impressive results provide cause for concern about the antiestablishment commitments of the media. Even the simple fact of falsification of evidence, easily demonstrated, was considered irrelevant. One can readily understand why conformist scholarship should take this position. As for the media, one may perhaps conclude in this case too that the criticism was in a way a welcome one.

  Why should this be so? Anyone who has attended a university commencement or similar event where a spokesperson for the press elaborates on its awesome tasks will understand why. Criticism of the press as “anti-establishment” and too critical of the government or of standard ideology (e.g., “anti-Israel,” “pro-PLO”) provides an occasion for orations on the duty of the Free Press courageously to examine and confront established power and doctrine, and if it sometimes goes too far, we must understand that this is a problem inherent in our system, which encourages the media to undertake this crucial challenge, etc. On the other hand, a more accurate critique of the media as tending to be subservient to external power and established doctrine is most unwelcome, and is certain to gain no hearing.

  There is an obvious further point. If the conformist media and intelligentsia can be represented as “anti-establishment” and fiercely critical, then any genuine critical discussion, any attempt to approach our own society and institutions and practice with the same rational standards that we are permitted to invoke in the case of others, is at once undercut. There is, then, good reason on all sides to maintain the pretense. As I have documented extensively elsewhere, the device of feigned dissent has made an impressive contribution to indoctrination in the democratic societies. See TNCW and references cited for discussion.

  There was, in fact, another study of the media and the Lebanon war by a different anti-defamation group, namely, the American-Arab AntiDiscrimination Committee (ADC), written by Eric Hooglund of the ADC Research Institute. Hooglund presents evidence of “a consistent proIsraeli bias” in press coverage of the Lebanon war, shown by such phenomena as reference to the invasion as a “reprisal” (New York Times, June 5; obviously false); emphasis on Israel’s right to protect its border towns from being “indiscriminately shelled” (Washington Post, June 7; recall the facts concerning the cease-fire and the violations of it); dehumanization of the Palestinians, including racist cartoons that would arouse charges of a revival of Nazism if the targets were Jews; and soon. I noticed no comment in the press apart from a column by Washington Post Ombudsman Robert J. McCloskey (Oct. 6, 1982), who referred to the study, ignoring its contents while noting the symmetry of the charges from the Jewish and Arab communities, from which the reader is to understand that “We must be doing our job,” in the words of “cynical editors.”

  Still another study, this time of both print and TV media coverage, was carried out by Roger Morris. His conclusion is that there is no evidence to establish the charges of a “double standard” levelled against the media—referring to the charges by Norman Podhoretz, Martin Peretz, the ADL, and the like. This conclusion he establishes with ease. The material he presents does, however, support the conclusion that there was a rather different double standard; namely, the overwhelming tendency, from the first day, to adopt the point of view and the general interpretations provided by the aggressor. Morris’s own assumptions are revealed by his conclusion that TV news “for the most part struck the balance carefully”—between the aggressor and the victim—though there were a few “lapses”, for example, an “emotional portrayal” on ABC news that left the impression “that the Israelis were dropping the brutal weapons on civilians.” But, Morris adds judiciously, “if noncombatants were now dying in the city, ABC at this early stage had an obligation to remind its viewers pointedly that the PLO had retreated into the heart of West Beirut, bringing the war with them like a plague”—just as British troops had retreated to Dunkirk, “bringing the war with them like a plague,” as any fair-minded reporter had an obligation to emphasize in depicting scenes of Nazi bombing.252 It would be a revealing exercise to take this defense of the media for their balance, replace a few names, and consider how it would read as applied to other wars.

  The charge that the American media were “pro-PLO” or “anti-Israel” during the Lebanon war—or before—is easily unmasked, and is in fact absurd. It suffices to compare their coverage of the occupied territories, the war, the treatment of prisoners, and other topics, with what we find in the Hebrew press in Israel, a comparison always avoided by those who produce these ridiculous charges. Again, the annals of Stalinism come to mind, with the outrage over Trotskyite “critical support” for the “workers’ state.” Any deviation from total obedience is intolerable to the totalitarian mentality, and is interpreted as reflecting a “double standard,” or worse.

  7.2 The “Broad-scale Mass Psychological War” against Israel In Israel too there was concern and surprise over the way the war was depicted. Reporting from Jerusalem, Norman Kempster observes that “Israelis, almost universally [a considerable exaggeration], were shocked to learn that large segments of world public opinion considered the nation’s war effort to be highhanded, aggressive bullying and excessive.” Blame was placed on journalists, whom Begin accused of “hatred for Israel and anti-Semitism” (his words in a Knesset speech). “Critics say Israel’s version of the war was not told effectively because of a failure of hasbara, the Hebrew word that means literally ‘explanation’ but in usage comes out somewhere between ‘publicity’ and ‘propaganda’.”253 Among others, former chief of military intelligence Aharon Yariv commented that he could not understand “why so much ground in the hasbara battle was lost so quickly to the other side.”254

  The head of the Hasbara department of the Foreign Ministry, Moshe Yegar, wrote a spirited defense against the charge of “hasbara failure,” which was voiced early on, accusing correspondents of violating “the most elementary norms of fairness and professional ethics in their reports and commentary. Some of them were busy spreading propaganda instead of writing fair, objective reports.” The international media, he charged, “suppressed information about the unparalleled IDF efforts to avoid or minimize…civilian losses, even at the expense of its own soldiers” (note that this was written after the terror bombings of Beirut). And “Most foreign correspondents ignored what they were shown about the return of normal life in Southern Lebanon and the warm reception given the IDF.”

  Furthermore: Unfortunately, international relief organizations helped disseminate these malicious anti-Israel reports, sometimes in order to stimulate contributions in their home countries. Communist and leftist elements played a conspicuous role in stirring up hostility.

  The behavior of the international media amounted to a “media pogrom,” th
ough in certain Latin American countries “there was understanding, even sympathy and support.” Presumably this was true in Chile, the recipient of much Israeli military aid; and in Guatemala, where the army Chief of Staff under the Nazi-like Lucas Garcia regime thanked Israel for the military aid it was providing, adding that “The Israeli soldier is a model and an example to us,”* while the new Rios Montt regime, which is estimated to have murdered at least 5000 Indians during the period of the Lebanon war while forcing over 200,000 to leave their homes, stated that we succeeded [in the military coup that brought them to power] because our soldiers were trained by the Israelis.”255 Yegar

  * Among Israel’s gifts to the people of Guatemala under Lucas Garcia was a computerized system designed to monitor the use of water and electricity in private homes so as to detect the possible presence of anti-government elements, who could then be dispatched to their proper fate (Aharon Abromovitz, Ma’ariv, Dec. 10, 1982). Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi observes that “The Peace Now movement would not dream of protesting Israeli involvement in Guatemala, Haiti or the Philippines,” because “what others regard as ‘dirty work’”—aiding the Chilean junta or South Africa in Namibia, for example— “Israelis regard as a defensible duty and even, in some cases, an exalted calling”; “the role of regional and global policeman is something that many Israelis find attractive, and they are ready to go on with the job—for which they expect to be handsomely rewarded,” not unreasonably, considering that Washington is “severely limited by world public opinion” in such cases and therefore has every reason to appreciate Israel’s contributions, which it sees as given with “aplomb, enthusiasm and grace.” Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Op-Ed, New York Times, Jan. 6, 1983. See also chapter 2, notes 41, 42, 50; section 4.2.2.

  singles out Martin Peretz for his “deeper analysis of the phenomenon of distorted reporting,” namely the one discussed above, which, as noted, was still too critical by the standards of the government.256 Even Peretz was unable to resist Communist influence completely, it appears.

  The director-general of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization, Yochanan Manor, agreed with the head of the Hasbara department of the Foreign Ministry about the Communist hand in this “media pogrom.” Manor comments on a symposium in December 1982 on “War and the Media” organized by the Jerusalem Post. The symposium had its good points, for example, in bringing out the “strong inclination” of TV “towards fabrication.” But it missed a central fact. It concentrated on the shortcomings of professional journalists, but failed to understand that “the difficulties journalists encounter in covering a war as professionally as possible—and this was especially true of the war in Lebanon and Israel Television—are a direct result of the machinations of other professionals,” namely, those “involved in psychological and propaganda warfare,” organized by the Kremlin. “One participant hinted at this when he stated that the world press often falls victim to well-oiled systems of disinformation,” but this hint was not taken up properly. In fact, the Soviet leadership immediately launched “an extensive worldwide effort of psychological warfare” using “a classical strategy”: “First, to disqualify the Israeli military operation (‘bloody war,’ etc.); second, to provoke a vast reaction of disgust, triggering a peripheral pacifist reaction; and third, to search for ways of disseminating this pacifist reaction to vital Israeli centres, leading to a general paralysis and a closing of the options supposedly opened up by the operation itself.” “These ‘active measures’ (a code word used by the Soviet leaders) were carried out through the vast network of organizations operated by the international section of the party and the International News Services of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,” abetted by an alliance with the powerful and nefarious organization Wafa (the official PLO news agency). “The outburst last summer of a campaign which is not simply one of intimidation or of disinformation, but which has steadily assumed the dimension of an actual broad-scale mass psychological war, gives rise to serious concern,” the director-general explains.257 The phrase “media pogrom” thus understates the scale of the aggression against Israel in the summer of 1982; it was a “psychological war.”*

  Now we can understand why the American and world press and television gave such an incredibly distorted picture of the war, one so unfair to Israel. How could one expect simple western journalists to resist the skillfully coordinated machinations of Wafa and the CP news services, or even to be aware of the dark forces that were controlling and manipulating them. Recall the New Republic exposé of how UPI was “snookered by a pro” (the Soviet news agency) when it gave a watered down version of the vacuum bomb story that was presented in detail in the mainstream Israeli press, sure proof of the anti-Israel bias of the U.S. media, as editor Martin Peretz triumphantly proclaimed (see section 4.7).

  The director-general of the Department of Information relies heavily on an amusing book by Annie Kriegel, which appeared in Paris in the fall of 1982. He identifies Kriegel (whom he mistakes to be a man) as “a professor of sociology and an internationally known specialist on Communist affairs.” He does not add that she is a long-time functionary

  * Compare the discussion of the alleged success of North Vietnamese propaganda in “exploiting” the “vulnerability” of American opinion in the New Republic review of Braestrup’s study (see p. 486*), an interpretation favored by a number of people who were seriously frightened by the partial breakdown of ideological controls in the 1960s.

  of the French Communist Party who recently took the familiar, and quite short step to the extreme right. Manor was cautious enough not to refer in the English-language Post to her theory of the Sabra-Shatila massacres, to which we return, fearing perhaps that this would be taken as some bizarre form of Parisian parody by an American audience (the Hebrew press has, as usual, been less circumspect). Reading Manor’s commentary and the book on which it is based, one who shares Manor’s conception of the power of the International Communist Psy-War System (especially when allied with Wafa) might be tempted to conclude that Kriegel is still working as an underground Party agent, with the task of making the enemies of the Kremlin appear to be utter fools.

  There were, however, those who felt that even Manor understated the case, among them, Professor Moshe Sharon, chairman of the Department of History of Islamic Countries of the Hebrew University. Manor assumed that it was the Wafa-CP alliance that was responsible for the pogrom, or war, to which Israel was subjected in the summer of 1982, but Sharon points to a still more powerful agency: the U.S. government (presumably nothing is left but God). He suggests that it was “the American delegation in Beirut” that was “responsible for the exaggerated news reports that emerged” from the Sabra-Shatila massacres in September. “One may also ask if the same delegation was not responsible for sending to the camps representatives of the American and world media who were already pumped-up against Israel. Who, one may ask, was responsible for spreading like wildfire through the world press the exaggerated and imaginative claim that thousands of women and children were killed in the camps?” (no references are given to these stories that flooded the world press; perhaps they were written in invisible ink, a still more insidious psy-war device).

  Sharon explains that it is entirely natural for the U.S. government to engage in such anti-Israel operations. After all, “If one examines American attitudes towards Israel from 1948 until now, one finds that the Americans have almost constantly acted against the Jewish state, forsaking it in times of need and following what may be termed a ‘Saudi policy,’ which goes back to 1945,” though this “Saudi foreign policy” is “very well disguised so as to appear evenhanded.” To add to the list of Sharon’s rhetorical questions, we may ask why the U.S. gives such phenomenal quantities of aid to Israel. Could it not be that this is part of the “disguise,” a devious attempt to cover up its consistent opposition to the Jewish state?

  We may recall, in this connection, the accusation by Defense Minister
Ariel Sharon in early August 1982 that U.S. special envoy Philip Habib and Robert Dillon, U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, “had misled the State Department and Reagan with false and exaggerated reports of Israeli military actions during the past few days,” another demonstration of Professor Moshe Sharon’s thesis concerning the unremitting efforts of the U.S. to undermine Israel.258

  It should be observed that the articles by Yegar, Manor and Moshe Sharon appear in the Jerusalem Post, a journal directed to an international audience, and that the writers are people of some standing in the government, Zionist institutions, and academic community; Yegar and Manor are, respectively, the chief officials in charge of information for the State of Israel and the World Zionist Organization. This fact reveals something about current developments in Israel that might cause a little concern among people who really have its welfare at heart.