Fateful Triangle

by Noam Chomsky

  TRIUMPHANT The guerillas now spreading out across that Arab did what all the combined Arab armies have never been able to do: they denied Israel its victory. For the first time after an Israeli-Arab war, the ending is not recorded in pictures of long lines of Arab troops marching off to captivity and humiliation with their arms over their heads. The world is seeing triumphant soldiers carrying their arms and their flags to new battles. For the first time an Arab-Israeli war has produced a cadre of veterans who know what it is like to face the full strength of the Israeli army, navy and air force—and to stop them dead in their tracks.301

  Earlier, Chris Drake of the BBC, describing the ferocious bombing of August 1, referred to “The PLO—which can rightfully claim to have fought a tremendous battle against overwhelming military opposition…”302 An Israeli journalist, a reserve sergeant in the paratroops, wrote that “the PLO fighters fought bravely in Beirut confronted with the Israeli machine of destruction. They continued to fight, in spite of the fact that they had no military chance, just as was the case for the Jewish fighters 40 years ago in the Warsaw ghetto,* in 1943.”303 When Israeli troops overran the Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp after 5 days of fighting, they are reported to have “found many of the defenders had committed -suicide, a grisly Palestinian replay of the fate of the ancient Jewish warriors of Massada.”304

  Courageous American editors deride the PLO for its “theatrical flourishes” and “guerrilla theater”: “Egged on by the camera crews in Beirut...the PLO now playacts the rituals of victory because it has little else to show for its defeat and its expulsion from Lebanon.”305 Nothing is easier, of course, than to march in step behind the big battalions, singing their praises. Much of the world, including the people of the occupied territories and many Israeli soldiers at the front, appear to have seen a war that barely resembles the one concocted by the editors of the New Republic and the like.

  Whether the PLO will be able to maintain the image of heroism with which it left Beirut is another question. It may be that dispersed and controlled by various Arab states, it will become discredited, just as it was in a sense discredited by the massacres in Beirut after it departed in the naive belief that U.S. promises were to be trusted: it had failed to

  * The Warsaw Ghetto and similar images were repeatedly invoked in Israel during the war. Critics objected bitterly that the analogy is inaccurate, as it is, in many respects. Israel evidently cannot be compared to Nazi Germany; its armies are, furthermore, in a sense mercenary armies, since they are supplied and financed by a foreign power that funds their military operations generously. There are also points of similarity, to which those who invoke the analogies want to draw attention.

  protect its people from the murderous gangs organized by the conqueror and sent into the camps as soon as they were left undefended. Furthermore the often sordid and politically stupid behavior of the PLO in southern Lebanon, and the failures of its diplomacy (for which it bears only partial responsibility), may in the long run discredit it further. Or, as Israel and its partisans desperately hope, the PLO, under conditions of dispersal and disarray, may return to random terrorism and abandon its dangerous posture of political accommodation. About these matters, we can now only speculate.

  If the PLO is eventually discredited and nullified by the vastly superior military forces ranged against it, we can safely predict that in some circles this consequence will be taken to have demonstrated the validity of the new Arthur Goldberg theory of political legitimacy: a crushing defeat by superior military force demonstrates that the vanquished had no political standing. See section 6.4.

  8.3.2 The IDF Putting aside until later the Syrian phase of the war and longer-term consequences, consider finally just the military aspects of the attack on the Palestinians. Israeli assessments indicate that even in these narrow terms the war was less of a triumph than it appeared to be at first. Military historian Martin van Creveld of the Hebrew University presented a detailed and rather pessimistic analysis in the Jerusalem Post Magazine.

  He concludes that “the IDF’s performance in Lebanon was not the unqualified success it first appeared to be,” despite the fact that from a military point of view, “the war in Lebanon was a relatively easy one.” Israeli forces “enjoyed overwhelming numerical superiority” throughout, both against the Syrians and, obviously, against the Palestinians. “The Israeli superiority in equipment was even more overwhelming” in both the Syrian and, again obviously, the Palestinian phases of the war. As for the latter, “the PLO (despite official Israeli attempts to prove the contrary) possessed very few of the heavy weapons crucial to the conduct of modern war and hardly any of the logistic and technical infrastructure required to maintain and deploy them,” the general conclusion of serious military analysts, as noted earlier. “Yet in spite of this, as the casualty figures show, the campaign was no walkover.” He states that the casualties “during the active phase of operations” were at about the same level as on the Egyptian front in 1967, where Israel was facing major armed forces. The IDF’s overwhelming military superiority dictated its tactics: “Wherever problems arose in the war, the IDF solved them by the application of overwhelming firepower—why waste men, or even thought, if you have a virtually unlimited supply of shells to fire and bombs to drop.” It was “possible to avoid any kind of military thought” while “spew[ing] forth vast amounts of ammunition to destroy the country which the IDF had allegedly come to save,” a familiar phrase from Vietnam days. In human terms, however, the results were “disappointing. ‘The traditional superiority of individual Israel troops and crews over their opponents took a nosedive.” One cannot prove this conclusively, he says, because “the Defence Ministry [is] naturally anxious to hide the shortcomings of Israel’s most unpopular war to date.” But it is “indisputable,” he believes, “that the IDF’s morale in Lebanon has been lower than during any other Israeli campaign,” a fact reflected in the very high number of psychiatric casualties already noted. “Some aspects of the IDF’s performance should serve as a warning rather than as an example,” he concludes.306

  This is the complementary side to the interpretation of the war that appeared to be current among the Palestinians, and others, as it came to an end, still considering only the narrowest aspect of the “Peace for Galilee” campaign. We return to broader aspects in the final chapter.

  Notes—Chapter 5 Peace for Galilee

  1. Al Hamishmar, May 10, 1978; Ha’aretz, May 15, 1978.

  2. Jerusalem Post, Aug. 16, 1981.

  3. David Kline, “Inside the Afghan Resistance,” Boston Globe Magazine, Nov. 7, 1982.

  4. John Fullerton, Far Eastern Economic Review, Oct. 29, 1982. See Jamal Rashid, “Unpopular refugees,” Middle East International, Nov. 12, 1982, for further discussion of conflicts between Afghan refugees and the local population, and the fear of “another Beirut.” See Robert G. Wirsing and James M. Roherty, International Affairs, Autumn 1982, on “the first violation of Pakistan territory by Afghan ground forces” in September 1981, and reports of strafing and rocket attacks in border areas by “Afghan helicopter gunships.” The reference is, of course, to the military forces of the Russian client government, carrying out what they call “retaliatory strikes.”

  5. Barry Rubin, The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, pp. 45, 138f.

  6. See Livia Rokach, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism, citing the diaries of Prime Minister Moshe Sharett. See TNCW, p. 285, for some quotes. This suggestion of Dayan’s has occasionally been quoted in the U.S. in the past year, but with no reference to Rokach’s important research, without which it (and much else) would be unknown. As noted earlier, it is one of the conventions of respectable journalism and scholarship that research that does not adhere to accepted doctrine must remain unmentioned, as if under a taboo, even when it is exploited.

  7. John Cooley, “The Palestinians,” in Haley and Snider, eds., Lebanon in Crisis, p. 33, a detailed discussion of the Palestinian involvement in the Lebanese civil war from which t
he following account and quotes are drawn unless otherwise indicated.

  8. Chaim Margalit, Hotam, Dec. 9, 1982. Both Margalit and his high-level informant repeat widespread myths about the Syrian involvement, claiming that the Rabin government in early 1976 armed the Maronites to enable them to defend themselves “against the joint attacks of the Syrians and the PLO,” and that the Syrians were invited in by the Christians “in fear of PLO retaliation after the Tel al-Zaatar massacre.” In fact, the Syrians were fighting with the Maronites against the MuslimPLO coalition, and were invited in by the Christians before the Tel alZaatar massacre. The actual history has been substantially rewritten within Israel, and far more so, by supporters of Israel here.

  9. Attallah Mansour, Ha’aretz, July 27, 1982.

  10. Benny Morris and David Bernstein, Jerusalem Post, July 23, 1982. See also David K. Shipler, New York Times, July 25, 1982.

  11. Ha’aretz, Davar, Nov. 2I: Davar. Nov. 22. 1982.

  12. Edward Said, Question of PalestineQuestion of Palestine 1. On the Ma’alot attack, see Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, pp. 329-30.

  13. See p 139; James M. Markham, New York Times, Dec. 3; Paul Hofmann, New York Times, Dec. 1, 1975.

  14. See James M. Markham, New York Times, Aug. 17, 1975, reporting shelling, abduction and killing by Israeli forces.

  15. Milan Kubic, Newsweek, June 8, 1970. See p. 121 for the background.

  16. Philip Bowring, Far Eastern Economic Review, Aug. 9, 1974.

  17. Walid Khalidi, Conflict and Violence in Lebanon (Center for International Affairs, Harvard, Cambridge, 1979, pp. 125f.); Edward Mortimer, New Statesman, June 11, 1982; David Hirst, Manchester Guardian Weekly, Nov. 7, 1982.

  18. Judith Coburn, New Times, March 7, 1975 (a short-lived mid-70s journal).

  19. For extensive quotes from her article in AJME News (Americans for Justice in the Middle East, Beirut, April 1981), see TNCW, pp. 396-7. There is, incidentally, an error in her citation from Newsweek, June 8, 1970, included in the quote in TNCW. Her figure of 150,000 refugees driven out by 1970 should be “one-fifth of the 150,000 Lebanese Moslems in the area” driven out, “by conservative estimate.” See above, p. 189.

  20. Moshe Hazani, Yediot Ahronot, Sept. 30. 1982.

  21. Khalidi, Conflict and Violence, pp. 115, 124(citing the New York Times, Oct. 2, 1977).

  22. Economist, Nov. 19, 1977. While the facts were partially reported here, the interchange was generally described as (unfortunate) Israeli retaliation.

  23. For some references and details, see TNCW, pp. 295-6.

  24. John K. Cooley, “Israel’s U.S. arms kill many civilians, Lebanon charges,” Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 24, 1979. See TNCW, p. 296, for further comments and references.

  25. Kevin Danaher, J. of Palestine Studies, Summer/Fall 1982. Danaher is identified as a professor of Government at American University in Washington.

  26. Pranay B. Gupte, New York Times. April 11, 1981.

  27. TNCW, p. 297, sent to press in July 1981.

  28. For extensive and often sardonic discussion in the Israeli press of what Ha’aretz (April 27, 1982) called “Operation National Trauma ’82,” see Israleft News Service, May 20, 1982.

  29. Amnon Kapeliouk, “Conjuring up a trauma,” New Statesman, May 7, 1982.

  30. Palestine/Israel Bulletin, February 1982, citing reports by Amnon Kapeliouk in Le Monde (May 15, 1975), Clive Robson in Middle East International, New York Times, Jan. 11, 1978, and other sources. See pp. 105-7f., and my articles in New Politics, Winter 1975-6, Winter 1978-9, for more extensive quotes anddiscussion.

  31. See TNCW on this and a number of other examples. See Lesley Hazelton, New York Review of Books, May 29, 1980, for some discussion of the treatment of Bedouin citizens of Israel, restricted, however, to the Begin period. See Shulamit Aloni, New Outlook, Dec. 1976 for a report of a conference of Israeli Bedouins demanding an end to discrimination, land expropriation. etc. A number of Israeli civil rights groups have taken up the issue in recent years.

  32. Cited by Kapeliouk (see note 29).

  33. David Shaham, New Outlook, June 1982. Shaham’s final phrase is now commonly used in Israel. See, for example, Amos Oz, “Where shall we hide the shame,” Davar, June 22, 1982, decrying the failure of the Labor opposition to oppose the Lebanon invasion (and meanwhile, repeating the familiar falsehood: “For the first time in our wars we have gone to war not in order to fight for our existence”).

  34. Neff, Warriors at Suez, p. 435.

  35. Robin Wright, “Israeli ‘provocations’ in southern Lebanon fail to goad PLO—so far,” Christian Science Monitor, March 18, 1982; Alexander Cockburn & James Ridgeway, Village Voice, June 22, 1982, citing UN records.

  36. Time, Feb. 15, 1982; reprinted in The Israeli Invasion of Lebanon (Claremont Research and Publications, New York, August 1982), a collection of press clippings primarily from June and July, containing a number of the documents cited below.

  37. Editorial, Washington Post, April 22, 1982.

  38. See Joseph C. Harsch, “An Arab-Israel chronology,” Christian Science Monitor, June 10, 1982. For eyewitness reports of the bombings, see AJME News, May 1982, which alleges that at least 25 people were killed in the April raid and 36 in the May raid, Palestinians and Lebanese.

  39. Ze’ev Schiff, Ha’aretz, May 12, 1982; cited by Jonathan Frankel, Dissent, Winter 1983.

  40. Washington Post, June 7, 1982; cited by Eric Hooglund, U.S. Press Coverage of the Israeli Invasion of Lebanon, ADC Issue No. 10, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Washington, 1982.

  41. Hooglund, citing the New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune. On the outright racist reaction of the tabloid press, see my “Reflections on Israel in Lebanon,” Middle East International, July 16, 1982, Inquiry, August 1982.

  42. Cheryl Rubenberg, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Florida International University, J. of Palestine Studies, Summer/Fall 1982.

  43. Dr. David Zemach, letter, Ha’aretz, June 16, 1982.

  44. New York Times, Boston Globe, June 18, 1982.

  45. Henry Kamm, New York Times, July 17, 1982.

  46. Bernard D. Nossiter, New York Times, June 27, 1982, my emphasis. See chapter 2, note 1.

  47. Ze’ev Schiff, Ha’aretz, May 23, 1982. Sharon’s further view, according to this well-informed correspondent, is that destruction of the PLO in Lebanon will lead the way to “the conversion of Jordan to Palestine,” thus eliminating the Palestinian issue. This is one of the many articles discussing Sharon’s invasion plans, before the fact.

  48. Benny Landau, interview with Martin Peretz, Ha’aretz, June 4, 1982.

  49. Voel Marcus, “The War is Inevitable,” Ha’aretz, March 26, 1982. See also Schiff’s remarks, section 4.4.

  50. See p. 364*.

  51. My emphasis. It is interesting that even an outstanding historian of Palestinian nationalism cannot bring himself to recall the actual PLO efforts to reach a more far-reaching arrangement, though the facts are familiar in Israel and are often discussed, not only by doves, as we have seen in chapter 3.

  52. Yehoshua Porath, Ha’aretz, June 25, 1982. See preceding note.

  53. Danny Rubinstein, “A political PLO is more dangerous than a powerful PLO,” Davar, Sept. 6, 1982. A version of the same article appeared as an Op-Ed in the New York Times, Sept. 14, 1982.

  54. Yediot Ahronot, June 18, 1982; cited by Amnon Kapeliouk, “The liquidation of the Palestinian obstacle,” Le Monde diplomatique, July 1982.

  55. Yediot Ahronot, Oct. 17, 1982; Israeli Mirror.

  56. Amnon Kapeliouk, New Outlook, August/September 1982.

  57. See p. 164; Shimon Peres, “Why Israel’s Labor Party Accepts the Reagan Plan,” Washington Post (Manchester Guardian Weekly, Sept. 26, 1982). The title of Peres’s article is misleading, though it is true that Labor hopes to convert the rather vague Reagan plan into something resembling its own rejectionist position.

  58. Mordechai Bar-On, “The Palest
inian Aspects of the War in Lebanon”; Ze’ev Schiff, “Who Decided, Who Informed” (New Outlook, October 1982); see note 39. We return to Bar-On’s views on the PLO, p. 455*.

  59. Los Angeles Times, Jan. 4, 5, 1983; David Shipler, New York Times, Jan. 12, 1983; Eric Rouleau, Le Monde (Manchester Guardian Weekly,

  Jan. 23, 1983).

  60. New York Times, July 6-11; Boston Globe, July 7, 9, 10, 11; Christian

  Science Monitor, July 12; Le Monde, June 13-4, July 7; The Dawn (Al

  Fajr), July 2; Kapeliouk, Le Monde diplomatique, July; K. Amnon

  (Amnon Kapeliouk), Al Hamishmar, June 25; Al Hamishmar, July 12;

  Kapeliouk, Al Hamishmar, July 12.

  61. David K. Shipler, New York Times, July 11, 1982.

  62. The Dawn (Al Fajr), Sept. 10; Los Angeles Times, Oct. 27; Boston Globe,

  Oct. 27, 1982.

  63. David Pryce-Jones. New Republic. Nov. 8, 1982. See chapter 3, section

  2.3.4 for his further ruminations on this subject.

  64. Danny Rubinstein, Davar, May 16, 1980.

  65. William E. Farrell, New York Times, Nov. 24, 1982. The anti-Jordanian

  actions aroused some concern in Washington, because of the conflict

  with American diplomacy.

  66. Jerusalem Post, July 14, 1982.

  67. See William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Simon &

  Schuster, New York, 1959, p. 417).

  68. Robert W. Tucker, “A Reply to Critics: Morality and the War,” New York