by Noam Chomsky
Within Israel itself, reactions were mixed. As noted earlier, support for Begin and Sharon ran high by late August, when the successes of Peace for Galilee seemed considerable. An early September poll showed 82% satisfied with Begin’s performance, while 78% approved of Sharon’s, figures that dropped to 72% and 64%, respectively, after the Beirut massacres. As choice for Prime Minister, no other candidate even came close to Begin in popularity in a poll taken after the massacre; see p. 440*. The support for Sharon immediately after the massacre that he had engineered is particularly striking.
The huge anti-government demonstration called by the Labor Party, estimated by some as reaching 400,000 people, revealed the strength of anti-government feeling on the part of a significant sector of the population, but as historian Jonathan Frankel observed, “the protest movement represented not the exposed tip but almost the entire bulk of the iceberg—while another, separate, and larger iceberg remained intact, albeit submerged…the massacres made a far greater impact on the ‘formal’ political world—the government, the Knesset, the media— than on the mass of the people, the ‘silent majority’.” Others drew the same conclusion, observing that “Premier Begin’s supporters have not been shocked by the revelations of the Beirut massacre that have emerged so far—and they are unlikely to be shocked by future revelations.”145
After the reports of witnesses in the open sessions of the Commission of Inquiry began to appear, Yoel Marcus wrote a column entitled “The Commission will Finish—the Government will Remain,” giving his assessment
In the matter of Sabra and Shatila—a large part of the community, perhaps the majority, is not at all troubled by the massacre itself. Killing of Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular, is quite popular, or at least “doesn’t bother anyone, in the words of the youth these days. Ever since the massacre I have been surprised more than once to hear from educated, enlightened people, “the conscience of Tel Aviv,” the view that the massacre itself, as a step towards removing the remaining Palestinians from Lebanon, is not terrible. It is just too bad that we were in the neighborhood.146
The attitude towards Palestinians has taken on the form of race - hatred in significant circles in Israel. It is, I think, too facile to consider the cause to be simply Palestinian terrorism. The scale of Israeli terrorism over many years is one of many reasons to question this conclusion; no PLO terrorist act in Israel compares with Qibya, to mention only one example. I suspect that the roots are deeper. As long as any trace of an organized Palestinian presence remains anywhere nearby, the legitimacy of the Israeli national rebirth may somehow appear to be in question. “We cannot stand a symmetry of claims,” Meron Benvenisti remarks: “Israelis have a profound feeling that once they accept the symmetry that the other side is also a legitimate national movement, then their own feeling about their own right and legitimacy will be dimmed.”147 Benvenisti deplores this sentiment, which has often been voiced over the years.* Israelis know well that it is possible to cherish memories of one’s homeland for a long, long time, if an organized social existence remains somewhere. Therefore it must be extirpated, just as even the rubble of the hundreds of deserted Palestinian villages in Israel must be removed from sight, and from memory. Any manifestation of cultural life or independent political structures must be eliminated in the territories under Israeli occupation; and even beyond, nothing may remain, except insofar as this may serve Israel’s policy, to which we return, of intensifying communal strife within Lebanon—or, of course, insofar as the Arab labor force from Gaza, the West Bank, and perhaps later on the North Bank, is to be exploited as a cheap and unorganized labor force, in the manner already described.
Despite Marcus’s comment, there is no doubt that much of the population was appalled by the war and particularly the subsequent * Rabbi David Hartman rejects Benvenisti’s view that Israelis should accept the legitimacy of the claims of the indigenous population that they have displaced. He argues that there is no reason for him to feel “morally responsible to someone who denies my own existence,” and since the Palestinians refuse to concede that “the Jewish people are indigenous to this land, then don’t ask me to enter into a moral dialogue with them.” Every society has its ugly extreme, here exemplified in the case of Israel: the religious moral philosopher standing with his boot on someone’s neck and complaining that his victim does not recognize his legitimacy. In the New York Times, Hartman is highly regarded; he is identified as “a philosopher who has spoken of the need for morality in public policy” (see note 147). His thoughts on “integrating Judaic morality with national power” and the renewal of the “moral health” of Israeli society with the Kahan Report are spelled out further in his article “The Covenant in Israel,” and he is again featured on the same day in Shipler’s “Israel: voices of Moral Anguish,” New York Times Magazine, Feb. 27, 1983.
massacre, and expressed this sentiment in many ways: in demonstrations, press conferences, public statements, refusal to serve in a war of aggression. Examples have already been cited, and there were many more. References to the early days of Hitler Germany were not uncommon. Among the many statements of protest, one was a letter describing the war in Lebanon as a moral “disaster,” written by 35 members of the elite military unit that carried out the Entebbe rescue. In an interview along with Uri Avneri in Paris, Gen. Mattityahu Peled stated that “the Israelis have become the Mongols of the Middle East, who sow destruction and misery,” while condemning the Labor opposition for supporting Sharon. Avneri’s newspaper ran without comment diary excerpts based on a book by a German officer on the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. Later Peled and Avneri, along with PLO spokesman Issam Sartawi, called on American and European Jews to pressure Begin and Reagan to lift the siege of Beirut and withdraw Israeli forces from Lebanon, citing Arafat’s endorsement of the principle of mutual recognition by Israel and the PLO.148 A number of Israel’s leading intellectual figures, including the philosopher Asa Kasher, novelist Yizhar Smilansky, and many others, spoke out strongly against the war. Soldiers, including many officers returning from the front, were among the most outspoken and influential in conveying a picture that had been withheld by censorship and distortion.
Just prior to the news of the Beirut massacres, A. B. Yehoshua, the well-known Jerusalem-born novelist, wrote that “now there are no more complaints against Begin in connection with Deir Yassin. He succeeded in involving all of us in a different kind of Deir Yassin,” Yehoshua also comments that “it is possible to say many harsh things about this government, but one thing it is impossible to say about it: that it is an innovative government.” In fact, it was following the traditional Labor policy from the years when Golda [Meir] was in power: ‘do not move, do not speak, do not change anything’.” Israeli rejectionism does not derive from Begin and Sharon. As for Israel’s claim “to be a light unto the nations,” they have “felt our light in Beirut, the light of the bombings and the flares dropped by the planes.” Like other Israeli doves, Yehoshua had some harsh words for the Jews of the diaspora, “who sit and wail about anti-Semitism when anyone says a word of criticism” about Israel, which for them is “like a second home, against which it is forbidden to say a single critical word,” no contribution to the health of Israel, he believes.
As for the “politically motivated” Lebanon war, its “deeper purpose” was “to return the Palestinians in the West Bank in political terms to their status in the days of the Turks.”149 He was far from alone in these feelings, and after the massacres, they received still more articulate expression, some already quoted.
Other views were also expressed, for example, those of a long list of Israeli Rabbis for whom what had happened was “the true sanctification of G-d’s name in the world” while “the latest wave of anti-Semitism, in the guise of moral indignation directed at us for an act of vengeance committed by one Gentile community against another, is but one link in the centuries old chain of anti-Semitic expression,” the source of which, as Maimonides
explained, “is jealousy of our unique sanctity and true ethical superiority, a sanctity and superiority that find special expression in the wars we have waged, wars whose essence has been the demand for fairness and righteousness and the eradication of evil and injustice.”150 A group of more than 1000 American Rabbis chimed in, urging Begin, Sharon and Eitan to be faithful to their task and “continue to save Israel”, dismissing the “traitors” of the Peace Now movement (mocked with a childish distortion of their name) and the Labor Alignment who cooperate with “the worst among the enemies of Israel” and are attempting to destroy Israel with their “poisonous propaganda,” etc.151 It is not at all impossible that they really do speak for the “silent majority,” as they allege.
Which of these voices will prove to have a significant impact on policy in Israel will depend, in large measure, on the response in the United States, as always.
At least some notice should be taken of the protests among the Arab citizens of Israel in the wake of the Beirut massacres. In this case, the response of the authorities was somewhat different. “Scores of [Israeli] Palestinians who protested the Sabra and Shatila massacres, from Um al-Fahm, Taibeh, Acre, Arrabeh are still in jails and police detention centres, one month after the wave of protests swept the Galilee and Triangle areas. They face charges of demonstrating, inciting, stoning military vehicles and supporting the PLO.”152
6.8 The Commission of Inquiry (the Kahan Commission) The Report of the Israeli Commission of Inquiry into the Beirut massacres appeared on February 8, 1983 (see note 112). It evoked new raptures among the faithful. The New Republic wrote that this “great and grim document” set a “sublime standard of moral and political action” in “this extraordinary country,” this “brilliant democracy.” It was “a philosophical and political triumph,” with its “moral seriousness and intellectual scrupulousness.” Under the heading “Cry of Conscience,” the New York Times wrote: “Painfully and convincingly, Israel has raked through the horrors of Sabra and Shatila and judged itself, harshly, by ‘the fundamental principles of the civilized world’.” “How rare the nation that seeks salvation by revealing such shame.”153 Now that this “cry of conscience” has been expressed and salvation has been found, the U.S. can proceed with no qualms to pay the costs of the Lebanon invasion as the Times had recommended while the attack was reaching its peak of ferocity, meanwhile also funding the concentration camps and prisons, the settlements in the occupied territories, the oppression there, and whatever will come next.* The Times is incidentally quite correct in saying that Israel acquitted itself nobly by the standards of the “civilized world”—for example, the
* Columnists Jack W. Germond and Jules Witeover observe that “Israel’s supporters” hope that the Report “will help arrest ‘the waning of enthusiasm’ toward Israel” in Congress, and “make it easier for [friends of Israel in Congress] to give their support and encourage Americans to do the same.” Boston Globe, Feb. 15, 1983. It may, then, serve the same function as the demonstrations in Israel after the massacres, when filtered through the American ideological system.
standards adopted by the Times with regard to U.S. aggression in Indochina, the U.S. overthrow of the democratic government of Guatemala and its support for a series of neo-Nazi murderers since, and much else. By civilized standards, however, a rather different judgment may be in order.
The Kahan Commission stated that “The main purpose of the inquiry was to bring to light all the important facts relating to the perpetration of the atrocities; it therefore has importance from the perspective of Israel’s moral fortitude and its functioning as a democratic state that scrupulously maintains the fundamental principles of the civilized world.”
The central section of the Report, dealing with “The Direct Responsibility,” opens as follows: “According to the above description of events, all the evidence indicates that the massacre was perpetrated by the Phalangists…” The section goes on to state that “No other military force aside from the Phalangists was seen by any one of the witnesses in the area of the camps… It can be stated with certainty that no organized military force entered the camps at the aforementioned time beside the Phalangist forces.” “No basis was found” for the “rumors” that Haddad forces were involved; indeed, this is “inconceivable,” and there is no “hint” of their cooperation with the Phalangists in the venture. “We can therefore assert that no force under the command of Major Haddad took part in the Phalangists’ operation in the camps, or took part in the massacre.” As noted earlier, the participation of Haddad forces would be a considerable embarrassment for Israel since they are virtually a part of the Israeli army and are expected to play a central role in the New Order that Israel intends to establish in Lebanon.
The opening sentence, quoted above, is true but rather misleading. In the “above description of events,” and apparently in its deliberations as well, the Commission was scrupulous in avoiding the evidence that runs counter to Israeli government claims on this issue, apart from a few passing phrases dismissing it without inquiry.* As we have seen in what was only a partial review, there is extensive evidence of the participation of Haddad forces, and where the Commission did choose to investigate, it regularly found that the government’s claims were false, and indeed that its “incorrect and imprecise reports intensified the suspicions against Israel and caused it harm.” The Israeli witnesses also proved to be of limited credibility, as the Commission noted. The proper procedure, clearly, would have been to review the evidence of Haddad participation and inquire directly into the composition of the forces that entered the camp by interrogating the leadership and even the participants—a task that should not have been beyond feasibility, given that “we could give them orders,” as Chief of Staff Eitan stated with reference to the Phalange while explaining why they were chosen to enter the camps instead of the Lebanese army. The Commission simply
* One of the witnesses, British doctor Paul Morris who worked at the Gaza hospital, subsequently alleged that his testimony was ignored and distorted by the Commission. In an interview with the Beirut weekly Monday Morning, he stated that he had testified that IDF soldiers at the forward command post had “told us repeatedly that the armed irregulars were Haddad men.” He also claims to have provided evidence that Israeli soldiers were with the “irregulars” who entered the camp, and that the IDF soldiers “could see everything [in the camps] with the naked eye or with binoculars and night-sight devices.” The Commission, he charged, “selected words and phrases from my testimony for their report and avoided other parts that could possibly suggest that the IDF has a direct responsibility for the deaths of innocent people in the camps...[My testimony] was deliberately ignored, willfully left out in order not to implicate any Israeli national in any of the murders in the camps.” Israel & Palestine (Paris), March 1983.
avoided the topic, apart from hearing the testimony of Haddad, who, like everyone else, denied participation. Perhaps an honest inquiry into these facts would have led to the conclusion that although there is extensive circumstantial evidence based on a wide variety of eyewitness reports that Haddad forces were involved, nevertheless the conclusion is incorrect. Instead of inquiring into the matter, the Commission chose to renounce any intent to “bring to light all the important facts,” and to make it clear from the outset that it was abandoning its mandate.
The Commission was careful to lay out the ground rules for its investigation. With admirable caution, it refrained from concluding that “from a legal perspective” the territory occupied by the IDF in West Beirut was “occupied territory.” Thus the IDF is absolved from any of the legal obligations of occupying armies.
The Commission also states that there is no basis for the accusation that the IDF had “prior knowledge” that a massacre would take place. There is “no doubt” that no individuals from the “Israeli political echelon or from the military echelon” were engaged in any “conspiracy or plot” with the Phalangists “with the aim of perpetrating
atrocities in the camps.” On the basis of assurances provided by these “echelons,” the Commission determined that what they said was true: “We assert that in having the Phalangists enter the camps, no intention existed on the part of anyone who acted on behalf of Israel to harm the non-combatant population, and that the events that followed did not have the concurrence or assent of anyone from the political or civilian echelon who was active regarding the Phalangists’ entry into the camps.” It need hardly be observed that to “assert” this on the basis of the evidence they review—testimony from the people involved—-simply serves as a further indication that the Report is not intended to be taken seriously among rational people.
To underscore the latter point, the Commission provides a fair amount of evidence that higher authorities did indeed expect a massacre. The intelligence unit in closest contact with the Phalange, the Mossad, “heard things from [Bashir Gemayel] that left no room for doubt that the intention of this Phalangist leader was to eliminate the Palestinian problem in Lebanon when he came to power—even if that meant resorting to aberrant methods against the Palestinians in Lebanon… Similar remarks were heard from other Phalangist leaders.” There were also “reports of Phalangist massacres of women and children in Druze villages, as well as the liquidation of Palestinians carried out by the intelligence unit of Elie Hobeika” (who was assigned the task of entering the camps by the IDF). “These reports reinforced the feeling among certain people—and especially among experienced intelligence officers—that in the event that the Phalangists had an opportunity to massacre Palestinians, they would take advantage of it.” Chief of Staff Eitan expected “an eruption of revenge and thought there might be “rivers of blood.” If the IDF was not present, “it will be an eruption the likes of which has never been seen; I can already see in [the Phalangists’] eyes what they are waiting for…they have just one thing left to do, and that is revenge; and it will be terrible…the whole establishment is already sharpening knives…” The Commission also cites reports in the Israeli military journal that the refugee camps “were liable to undergo events exceeding what had happened” at Tel al-Zaatar, the worst massacre of the civil war. The Commission itself observes that “no prophetic powers were required to know that concrete danger of acts of slaughter existed when the Phalangists were moved into the camps without the IDF’s being with them in that operation... The sense of such a danger should have been in the consciousness of every knowledgeable person who was close to the subject.” They also cite Prime Minister Begin’s official statement that the IDF entered West Beirut “in order to protect the Moslems from the vengeance of the Phalangists,” a statement that simply leaves no doubt that at the highest level, it was clearly understood what would happen if Phalangists were sent into a Palestinian camp.
