Fateful Triangle
Page 52
There is something farcical about a debate conducted in the U.S. or Europe as to whether or not the Lebanese welcomed their liberation. The assumption underlying the debate, presumably, is that if they were really glad that Israel invaded Lebanon,” as the New Republic would have us believe, then the invasion was justified. Let us assume that they did welcome the invasion, all of them: the orphans wandering in the streets of Tyre; the children at the Sidon school where hundreds were killed in a shelter who still shudder, 7 months later, when planes fly past; the people digging for bodies in Sidon two months after the fighting stopped; the members of the Amal Shiite militia who fought alongside the PLO; the Druze who were allied with the PLO in the civil war and turned to “passive resistance,” given the force of the Israeli attack; the impoverished Shiite refugees from the south who were driven out of their hovels by those presented with the victory in the civil war; the cripples searching the rubble of their homes in Beirut to try to discover who may have survived; the doctors whose homes were looted and vandalized after their hospitals were destroyed by bombing; the patients driven from the hospitals closed down by the liberators; the Lebanese prisoners being clubbed by Israeli guards in concentration camps; the children wandering in the bloodstained wreckage of the bombed mental hospital in Beirut. Let us suppose that all of them welcome the liberation, just like B. Michael’s Miracle Child. Does this justify the invasion? No one will claim that Israel was invited in by the government to accomplish this necessary task; on the contrary, the invasion was bitterly condemned from the start by the representatives of the government, including the Christian UN Ambassador who saw his country “martyred and crucified,” the Muslim Prime Minister who was reappointed after the liberation, the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, the Sunni leader Saeb Salam who called on Israel to provide reparations for its “savage aggression,” the spokesmen for the two major Muslim religious groupings. So we are therefore asked to believe that it was legitimate for Israel to invade Lebanon, in the face of outraged condemnation by those being liberated, on the grounds that passionate Western supporters of Israel later determine, to their own satisfaction, that the invasion was welcomed.
Still assuming that their judgment is correct, let us proceed with the argument. On these grounds, it is legitimate for Israel to demolish the society of the Palestinians, killing thousands of them and imprisoning the adult male population, dispersing the refugees and leaving them without homes, food, defense, social services or any prospects for an organized existence; even the most fanatic supporters of Israel do not claim that they welcomed their liberation.*
Let us put aside international law, which makes no provision for judgments by the conqueror (or his cheering section) concerning the attitudes of those he decides he is liberating. Then the military action is justified, on the assumptions just granted, if we add one further principle: the Palestinians are Untermenschen, with only superficial resemblance to human beings, not even deserving of the treatment accorded to animals. They sacrificed any possible right to be considered human by fleeing in terror from their homeland or being driven from it by a superior race, and therefore whatever is done to them is legitimate. On this assumption, perhaps the argument justifying the invasion goes through, but not otherwise, even if we grant everything to its proponents.
Whatever the facts may have been about the reception of Israeli soldiers in the areas to which the guided tours were taken, the situation a few months later was characteristically described by soldiers and Israeli journalists in a rather different way. “It is not pleasant today to be a soldier in Lebanon,” Yaakov Erez writes. Even in Tyre and Sidon, or the Christian town of Damour where Israel’s Chamounist allies were restored by the IDF,
a convoy of IDF soldiers is necessary, pointing their guns outwards during the journey to anticipate any possibility of an ambush or snipers. Israelis in the various sections of
* Unfortunately, the statement is not quite correct. Recall the assurances of David Pryce-Jones in the New Republic concerning the attitudes of Palestinians towards the PLO, the Israelis and the Christians. (See section 4.6.1).
Lebanon are subjected to much tension. The Lebanese inhabitants, Christians and Druze, Muslims and Palestinians, do not present smiling receptions. Our soldiers feel as if in an enemy country.285
Meanwhile, “the number of daring attacks on Israeli soldiers in Lebanon is increasing weekly, as are the casualties,” Trudy Rubin wrote in January 1983. Since Israeli troops pulled out of West Beirut at the end of September, 17 Israelis had been killed and more than 90 wounded (not considering the building collapse in Tyre in which 76 Israelis were killed, allegedly as a result of a gas leak). The incidents are increasing in intensity, with half of the casualties since December 1, and 13 incidents in the first week of January 1983. “The perpetrators are reportedly Palestinians infiltrating back into south Lebanon, Lebanese leftists, as well as, in one case, Lebanese Shiite Muslim adherents of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini.”286 Hirsh Goodman reports that “the IDF is conducting live fire patrols…to ensure that no terrorists are waiting in ruins or in orchards along the way”—that is, shooting randomly as they drive along Lebanese roads in what is called “defense against terrorism” by occupying armies.287 The U.S. marine commander in Lebanon criticized this “reconnaissance by fire” in the southern Beirut sector patrolled by his troops. He stated that for the last two months Israeli soldiers had “come down the Sidon highway and, without having been fired upon, they just fire great numbers of rounds,” endangering his troops. “We told them to cease and desist the indiscriminate fire,” he said, so they now fire only on the side of the highway away from U.S. marines. A Lebanese official “said at least five civilians had been killed by indiscriminate Israeli fire.”288 The number of Israelis killed in Lebanon in just over 3 months after the war’s end is approximately the same as the number of Jews killed in the course of terrorist operations in the two-year period 1980-81, according to Israeli figures (see chapter 3, section 2.4.2) and approaches the number killed from 1967, if we add to the account those killed in the Tyre explosion. We return to the immediate aftermath of the war in the next chapter.
8.2.3 “The Biggest Hijacking in History” Perhaps the most elegant device designed to deal with the hasbara problem was the image of the PLO holding Beirut “hostage” and hiding behind its civilian population, a popular one among American commentators on the war, as we have seen. New York Times columnist Flora Lewis even went so far as to allege that “Yasser Arafat, never quite direct, almost admits he is holding the people of West Beirut hostage to win points for his cause; the P.L.O’s familiar tactics but on an unimaginable scale.”289
This intriguing notion illustrates a familiar technique of the manufacture of consent, employed in a rather clumsy way by Goebbels and Stalin and refined to a more subtle art in the democratic societies: when you have absolutely no case at all, accuse your enemies of the crimes you carry out or support; to put it a shade more crudely, if you are caught with your hand in someone’s pocket, cry “Thief!, Thief!” This may at least shift the terms of the debate. Thus when the U.S. attacks the peasant society of South Vietnam, debate rages over the profound question of whether it is wise and proper to defend South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression; and we solemnly debate the question of whether the American defense of South Vietnam is justified under the right of collective self-defense against armed attack, established by international law. It is a matter of minor consequence of concern only to “emotional extremists,” those who indulge in “moral preference” rather than “hard political analysis” in Robert Tucker’s contemptuous words, that there were no North Vietnamese troops engaged in this aggression when the U.S. air force began extensive bombardment and defoliation in South Vietnam in 1962, or, so far as was known, when the U.S. initiated the bombardment of North Vietnam and (at three times the level) the regular bombardment and then direct invasion of South Vietnam in early 1965. There are many other examples, no less noteworthy.
We would be falling into the usual trap by discussing the merits of the case that it was the PLO that was holding the city and its population hostage, but, exactly as one was compelled to do in the comparable case of aggression in South Vietnam, and many others where power sets the rules of the game, let us proceed to do so.
To establish the argument, it would be necessary to show that the PLO, having elected to concentrate its forces within West Beirut, refused to let the population escape, so that it could hold them hostage for its nefarious design of preserving itself as a political force (what U.S. spokesmen said they could not tolerate, as we have seen). Unfortunately for this thesis, there is no evidence that the PLO blocked the escape of the population. On the contrary, the reports of Western journalists in Beirut and others indicate that people could freely leave—if the besiegers would permit it—and that they did not consider themselves PLO hostages.290 There is, however, evidence that Israel blocked their exit by means of the forces it armed and controlled. At the same time, it claimed to want civilians out of West Beirut so that “the area can be attacked with less hesitation.” But, Trudy Rubin continues, “a large number of west Beirut residents have proven resistant to departure. While thousands have fled, others have stayed to protect their homes and businesses or simply because they have nowhere else to go.” “Almost all Palestinians trying to exit west Beirut are being turned back or detained by authorities in east Beirut,” John Yemma reported.291 Phalangists were regularly observed “turning back Palestinian civilians, although in any case most Palestinians here vividly remembering the bitter civil war, would be afraid to venture into territory controlled by the Christians.” “Israeli officers were standing off to one side of the checkpoint” where Palestinians were refused exit and “Phalangist militiamen [threw] out bottled water, fresh fruit and bread that people were attempting to take back into the besieged section of the city.”292 Marvine Howe reported that the Phalangists refused exit to anyone “without friends or relatives in [Christian] east Beirut,” and that “no Palestinians, either civilians or Palestinians with Lebanese passports, were being allowed out of west Beirut.”* “When asked why Palestinian women and children were not allowed to leave, Amin Gemayel [now President], whose car was the only one allowed through the crossing, shortly before noon, said with bitterness: ‘Ask the Israelis; they are the ones who command here,’ deciding when and if to open the crossing point and for how long.” UNICEF left, however, because the lack of food, electricity and water were intolerable and they were prevented
* Recall that while the Israel-backed Christian forces virtually eliminated Palestinians and Muslims from the areas they controlled, in the PLO-controlled areas Christian villages remained in sometimes uneasy coexistence (see section 3.3).
from bringing in food or other relief by the liberators.293 But it was the PLO who were holding West Beirut hostage, according to the official version.
A number of Israeli commentators observed that this was a strange sort of hijacking. B. Michael remarked that the concept, invented by an American journalist (presumably referring to Martin Peretz), is “very pleasant for my government.” But, he said, there is something “extremely strange” about it. “The rescuers inform the hijackers that if they do not yield at once, they, the rescuers, will massacre the hostages…a remarkable innovation in the theory of hijacking.” Meanwhile the rescuers kill and starve the hostages, warning the hijackers that still worse is to come “if you continue to be stubborn”; we will continue until “none will be left, and we will be freed of concern for the lives of the miserable victims, the innocents whom you have captured and we have killed.” “And then—we will kill you too, miserable and evil creatures that you are, without any fear that, God forbid, the hostages will be harmed in the course of the operation.”294 Nothing similar disgraced the American press, to my knowledge.
There was still worse infamy, though again, the American reader was thoughtfully spared. In an interview on the siege of Beirut in early August, military historian Meir Pail compared it with the Arab siege of Jerusalem in 1948 in which 2000 Jews were killed, about a third of all those killed in the war. He estimated—fairly accurately, as it turned out—that about 5000 must have been killed by then in Beirut by the vastly heavier firepower used by the IDF, including 10,000 artillery shells in one day (not to speak of bombing, naval and tank shelling). During the Jerusalem siege in 1948, “the Israeli Army also prevented civilians from leaving the town, and there too military centers were situated in the midst of the civilian population”—a response to another familiar canard.* Note that the word “also” is out of place in this statement, according to the eyewitness reports of western journalists, quoted above.295 Pail pointed out that “Naturally military headquarters are at the center,” i.e., in populated areas, something that was “especially true” of the Haganah under the British mandate, “when the Israeli military network…was pushed under the cover of the legal civilian center, such as the Jewish Agency and the Histadrut [labor union].” Military orders were “that everyone should remain in the city.” The army prevented civilians from escaping, because “civilians are an organic part of the city just as its buildings are.” Haganah posts were placed on the roofs of houses, and drew hostile fire. Most of the residents of Jerusalem were from “the old community,” people who “fought very little and caused much trouble” (in fact, many were anti-Zionist; recall that the first recorded terrorist act of the Haganah was the murder of a religious Jew organizing among them in 1924—see chapter 4, section 9.3). Out of 100,000 inhabitants, “the Haganah managed to organize only two battalions of 800 men each.” Israel’s tactics in Beirut, he observes, are the standard ones, those used by the Red Army in World War II, for example: surround the city and pound it, hoping for surrender, because urban fighting leads to too many casualties for the attacking troops. See section 5.1. Jerusalem was a “disappointment” to the Arab besiegers because the city did not surrender. “Beirut is a disappointment similar to the Arab disappointment with us in 1948 in Jerusalem.”296
The resistance during the siege of Jerusalem is one of the heroic stories of the founding of Israel. The resistance during the siege of Beirut reveals the miserable cowardice of the PLO, whose “gunmen hold a
* In this connection, G. H. Jansen states that the PLO “first moved anti-aircraft guns into the camps because in the late 60s, when the PLO had little relative strength, these camps had become particular targets for the Israeli air force.”
civilian population hostage” in “the biggest hijacked plane in history” while the cowardly PLO hides behind women and children.297 So is history designed by its architects, sitting in safety, far away, laboring in the service of their favored state.
8.3 The Image of the Fighters 8.3.1 The Palestinians
From close by, things looked different. Israeli soldiers described their
admiration for the Palestinians as “brave fighters.”298 In a June 26 entry of his War Diary (see note 164), Colonel Yirmiah writes that “the terrorists fought with a stubbornness that is unlike anything that preceded in Israel’s wars with the Arabs… In this war a new generation was born and a new era opened that will be remembered in the history of the Palestinian world as a heroic era, in the
light of which the coming generations will be taught.” Mordechai Bar-On, former IDF chief education officer and no admirer of the PLO (see p. 455*), observed that “the PLO’s desperate and heroic fight has, in addition to its other accomplishments, brought it glory in the eyes of the Palestinians…it is already clear that even those moderate leaders who had been somewhat reserved towards the PLO leadership and methods, today feel impelled to express their admiration for the heroism of their brothers in Lebanon.”299 As we have seen, reactions in the occupied territories after the war tend to confirm this judgment. Israeli journalist Victor Ciegelman drew the same conclusion from his survey of opinion in the occupied territories.300 The London Bureau chief of Newsweek gave his impressions from Beirut at the war’s end as follows:
The Palestinians leave here as victors in their own minds and in the eyes of the Arab world. As all of their leaders have said, they fought off one of the most powerful armies in the world. I have no doubt, having seen the intensity of the bombing and shelling of West Beirut, that the Israelis wanted to get into West Beirut to kill or drag the PLO fighters off into captivity. Despite what Ariel Sharon the Israeli defense minister might say, I do not think Israel spent billions of dollars, sacrificed hundreds of its young men and blackened its name in the civilized world just so that Yaser Arafat and George Habash and their men could fly off as heroes to the capitals of the Arab world.