Fateful Triangle

by Noam Chomsky

  The logical conclusion from the episode is that Israel would be welladvised to arrange further massacres, then to produce a “cry of conscience” of the sort just reviewed, so that military and economic aid can be increased still further in recognition of its sublimity and salvation.

  One can learn a good deal more from the Report. The historical section is quite revealing. It describes the civil war that “began with clashes in Sidon between the Christians and Palestinian terrorists.” The reference is presumably to a Lebanese army operation against a strike of Lebanese fishermen in Sidon shortly before the event that actually initiated the civil war, an attack by the Phalange on a busload of Palestinians and Lebanese in a Beirut suburb in April 1975, which goes unmentioned.* The war “was waged primarily between the Christian organizations on the one hand, and Palestinian terrorists, Lebanese leftist organizations, and Muslim and Druze organizations of various

  *See chapter 5, section 3.3.1 and references cited; also James A. Reilly, “Israel in Lebanon, 1975-82,” MERIP Reports, September/October 1982. factions on the other.” Throughout, the participants are, on the one hand, people (Christians, Muslims, Lebanese leftists, Druze), and on the other hand, “terrorists,” i.e., Palestinians, as the quotes just given illustrate. This usage reflects again the race hatred and profound indoctrination already noted; to the Commission, Palestinians are not people, as distinct from Christians, Muslims, Lebanese, Druze. This passes unnoticed in the commentary on the Report, simply because the assumption is so widely shared. Israel breaks no new ground in this respect. Thus, Israel’s Guatemalan friends refer to the victims of the death squads and army terror operation as “subversives,” while the Russians in Afghanistan (like the Americans in Greece in the late 1940s) refer to the resistance simply as “bandits.” Jews have also been subjected to such usage in the past, with consequences that we recall.

  The history continues at an equally revealing level. It refers to the fact that there were massacres in the civil war, giving the example of Damour, where Christians were killed by Palestinians—but, in the typical Israeli propaganda style, omitting the fact that this massacre was in retaliation for Christian massacres in Karantina and elsewhere. It states that Bashir Gemayel’s forces “became the central element in the Christian forces,” not mentioning how this was done (by murdering the Maronite opposition) or who supported him (Israel). Haddad’s army is simply “a separate armed force” in south Lebanon; nothing about its auspices, origin, or command structure. The Israeli role throughout is ignored. Turning to the 1982 war, little is said though it is noted that during the weeks of negotiations on the “evacuation of the terrorists and the Syrian forces” from West Beirut, “various targets in West Beirut were occasionally shelled and bombed by the I.D.F.’s Air Force and artillery.” This stunning and shameful com-ment would suffice in itself to discredit this Report beyond repair among civilized people.

  The immediate postwar background to the massacres is also ignored. Thus, as noted earlier, the Commission makes no reference to the fact, reported at once in the press, that in early September Israeli forces violating the cease-fire agreements advanced on the camps, clearing mines and setting up observation posts, a fact that does not seem obviously irrelevant to what transpired next. See section 3.2.2. This is only a small sample of what might have been reported by a commission that took its announced mandate seriously.

  Also interesting is the statement by Israeli Intelligence, reported without comment by the Commission, that “the IDF’s entry into West Beirut was perceived as vital not only by the Christians but also by the Muslims, who regarded the I.D.F. as the only factor that could prevent bloodshed in the area and protect the Sunni Muslims from the Phalangists.” This is absurd. Recall the outraged denunciations of the Israeli attack on West Beirut from all segments of the Muslim population (sections 3.2.2, 4.2). But the Commission is willing to believe anything that reaches it on high authority, so it appears.

  The reaction in the U.S., indeed the West quite generally, to this dismal performance should be carefully noted.* It reveals, once again, * I have omitted the critical commentary on the report, for example, by Samson Krupnick, Jerusalem correspondent for the liberal Jewish Post & Opinion. The report was extremely unfair, he concludes, since “it ignored completely the totally immoral tactics of the PLO terrorists within the camps wherein ‘civilians,’ if any, including women and children may be armed and working closely with the terrorists.” “The Commission appears not to have a sufficient appreciation of the house-to-house fighting necessitated in these ‘camps’ with everyone there either a PLO terrorist or a collaborator and potential combatant.” Furthermore, the Commission failed to consider that Friday was “a short working day for staff. and was also the eve of Rosh Hashonah, and obviously a day difficult to reach all parties quickly.” The Commission “has blown this minor battle of the

  how easy it is to believe what it is convenient to believe. In the U.S., it is crucial to believe that Israel is one of us, a western democracy (though not all would consider it so “brilliant” as the New Republic acolytes), therefore capable of no wrong, only error. The Palestinians are an irritant to be removed. The reaction to the Kahan Commission Report is entirely predictable, given these facts, just as from comparable facts one can deduce the reaction in the West to the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on the U.S. in Vietnam. It should, incidentally, be noted that in the more honest world of Israeli journalism, the obvious absurdity of the conclusions drawn by the Commission from its evidence did not go unnoticed. An excellent analysis by Uri Avneri (see note 153), reviewing the evidence surveyed above, reaches the only plausible conclusion: no one believed the “fable of the ‘2000 terrorists”’; The Phalangist units were organized and sent into the camps with the expectation that they would commit murderous acts in order to cause a mass flight of Palestinians (recall that the international response was surely unanticipated); the IDF, intelligence, and the political echelons cooperated in the massacre throughout, at the command post and elsewhere. Repeating Amos Elon’s image, Avneri observes: “When someone places a poisonous snake in the bed of a child, and the child dies after it is bitten—there is no need to prove that whoever put the snake there wanted the child to die. The burden of proof is on someone who denies this intention.” The Commission did not accept this burden of proof, but simply adopted unquestioningly the hypothesis that those

  Phalangists versus the PLO terrorists far out of proportion”—it was “minor in character.” The correct conclusion is “that reasonable care was exercised by all concerned.” Those so inclined might want to determine whether any of the Czar’s apologists sank to this level of degradation at the time of the Kishinev massacre during the Easter holiday.

  who put the snake in the child’s bed were “insensitive” and failed to give adequate attention to what they should have known. Those who accept this reasoning, or regard it as “sublime,” reveal a good deal about themselves.

  One additional point should be made, however. Despite the fact that the Kahan Commission Report is disgraceful from an intellectual and moral standpoint, still it is rare for any country to produce even a document of this sort in connection with atrocities for which it bears responsibility, or which it conducts outright. In the United States, for example, only the Mylai massacre, which was merely a footnote to the record of American atrocities, merited a governmental inquiry in the course of the Vietnam war, and even that is more than one could expect from most states, including those that are “civilized” by their own account.

  7. Elsewhere in Lebanon

  O

  ne aspect of the propaganda that has accompanied the Commission of Inquiry is the contrast regularly drawn between Israel’s seeking (then attaining) salvation through critical selfanalysis and the complete failure of the Phalangist government

  that had been placed in power by the Israeli conquest to do the same. This is supposed to illustrate the sublime moral qualities of Israel as contrasted with the evil A
rab nature. A few points are missed in this comparison. For Israel to resist an inquiry would have been impossible, given its reliance on material and ideological support from the U.S., and the inquiry was sure to carry little cost, indeed, to serve to restore some of the prestige that had been lost by the much too visible massacre in September—exactly what ensued. For the Phalange government to conduct an inquiry into the atrocities conducted by the Phalange militia, which now dominates the sectors of Lebanon under central government control as a result of the Israeli conquest, would have been a task of a rather different order, quite evidently. In fact, it would have destroyed what minimal possibilities may exist for the restoration of a Lebanese state.* Perhaps one can draw some conclusions from the fact that the

  * Other questions too come to mind. The forces sent into the camp were under Israeli, not Phalangist orders, if we can believe the testimony of Chief of Staff Eitan and others, so it should be the responsibility of Israel to judge those who killed with their own hands—at least, if Israel wished to rise to the level of the Czar’s judicial inquiry. Certainly Israel knows who were the officers in charge, and according to former intelligence chief Shlomo Gazit, it also knows the names of 10-20 of the direct murderers (Ma’ariv, April 10, 1983). It would of course, be difficult to subject any of these men to judicial proceedings while

  forces to whom Israel turned over effective control of Beirut will not permit an inquiry into their bestial acts, but these will not quite be the usual ones drawn in American commentary that contrasts the behavior of the Israeli and Lebanese governments.

  7.1 The South In West Beirut, there were many reporters present when the massacres took place, and they also witnessed and reported the considerably more brutal massacres carried out by the IDF in the preceding months. But few reporters ventured to southern Lebanon, and few international aid officials were present either. Conditions there were not very different from West Beirut after Israel had eliminated the PLO and its Lebanese Muslim allies. As noted earlier, the few reports indicate that virtually no males of ages 16-60 are to be found. The Palestinian camps had been destroyed by the advancing Israeli army, though many refugees had drifted back to the ruins, having nowhere else to go. At least temporary control over the area had been handed over to Haddad’s forces, supervised by the regular Israeli army to the extent that they chose to exercise their control. Early in the war, the Israeli press reported that Haddad’s soldiers “pass from house to house in the villages which were conquered

  avoiding the responsibility of the “political and military echelons” within Israel. They might plead that they were simply following orders, like the officers on the West Bank who were charged with brutal treatment of civilians. In general, no state is in the habit of charging its own war criminals. It might be noted, incidentally, that the majority of Israelis regard the Kahan commission’s conclusions as too harsh, specifically with regard to Sharon and Eitan (Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, April 1, 1983).

  by the Israeli army and exterminate the last nests of terrorists.” Haddad’s soldiers were reported to be “very busy” since they were “awakened to life with the beginning of the ‘Peace for Galilee’ war... And do not ask in what they are busy.”154 Since few have asked, one can only speculate. Israel Shahak offers one speculation:

  A killing of the Palestinians in Lebanon, specially of males, has begun and is being carried on. There is very little doubt that many of the Palestinians who were “arrested” or who “disappeared” will not be seen again, and their very existence will be denied.155

  Shahak recalls the fate of the Lebanese village of Khiyam, subjected to Israeli bombing from 1968, its population finally reduced to a few dozen people who were massacred by Haddad forces in 1978 after the IDF swept through the area.156 There were no reporters in Khiyam, so all of this passed in silence, as would have happened in Sabra and Shatila too had they been better placed.

  Shahak’s speculation does not appear to be too far-fetched; we know very little, nine months after the war’s official end, about the Palestinians in the south or the thousands of Palestinians and others “brought in” by the IDF, and the little that is known is hardly very reassuring. On August 7, 1982, Phalangist gunmen had set fire to the homes of Palestinians, mostly Christians, in the Miya Miya refugee camp near Sidon; several thousand fled. The camp had put up no resistance to the Israeli onslaught and was undamaged. Israeli troops nearby “made no effort to prevent the Phalangists’ assault.” “The Red Cross and UNRWA know about the attack, but are staying quiet. They already face severe harassment from the Israelis, who want as few independent observers as possible in the region and have therefore done all they can to limit international relief operations. The aid agencies fear that if they speak out, they will be ejected.”157 Reporting the same event, Marvine Howe states that the IDF sent soldiers, but too late (another case of unexplained inefficiency), and quotes a foreign human rights worker who said: “It seems the militias are deliberately trying to drive the Palestinian refugees out of the Sidon area.”* The refugees fled to the ruins of the Ain el-Hilweh camp near Sidon, “which was practically obliterated during the Israeli attack on the city last June,” with 8000 killed according to a representative of a religious aid organization (citing refugee reports), 1500 killed according to the Red Cross. One of the women who fled, showing bruises still visible from beatings in the August 7 attack, asks: “Where can we go? Who will protect us now that we don’t have our menfolk?”158

  “In a clear case of Israeli-inspired lawlessness at 2am on the night of 2 September, two armed men forced their way into the home of an elderly Palestinian woman in Sidon’s Ain al Hilweh refugee camp,” beating the woman with a rifle butt, dragging her off to the home of one of the gunmen for further beatings, then taking her to the IDF military

  * For more information on what he calls the “Phalangist murder and harassment campaign against the Palestinians,” see Charles Hoffman, Jerusalem Post, Feb. 2, 17, 1983. See also Robert Fisk, London Times, March 1, 1983, reporting from the Miya Miya camp, which “almost oozes fear.” He describes the killings of Palestinians in the vicinity and the threats by the Christian terrorists who run the area under IDF auspices, which “make an average skin creep.” “The record of murder and intimidation this past month does not do much credit to the occupying authorities whose duty it is to protect civilians in Sidon” and the nearby camps, he concludes, with a certain understatement. It also does not do much credit to the paymasters and their media, which provide little information about the matter.

  headquarters for further “interrogation,” and finally leaving her barefoot and far from home, at dawn. “The fact that she was taken to the Israeli headquarters leaves little doubt that the plain-clothed gunmen were acting with Israeli support.” The story is familiar from the West Bank, as we have seen. A few days later Haddad militia seized two teenaged Palestinian boys near the Miya Miya camp, beating and torturing them. Others abducted a 25-year-old Lebanese “with leftist connections”; he has not been seen since. Two other Lebanese leftists were seized the same night. One has disappeared. The body of the other was recovered from an East Beirut (Phalange) hospital. “An official government doctor confirmed that he had died by strangulation, that his genitals had been bleeding, and that he had been tortured with a hot kebab skewer.”159 All of this was well before the Phalange and Haddad militiamen were sent in to “purify” Sabra and Shatila, where the Israeli command professed to be shocked at their behavior, having anticipated only the most gentlemanly conduct.

  The Lebanon Project Officer for Oxfam, Dan Connell, stated a few weeks later that reports of abduction, torture, murder and rape had been increasing through August and September in southern Lebanon—though again, little is known, since foreign observers are few. At the same time, David McDowell, Oxfam field director in Lebanon, issued a statement calling on international bodies to monitor human rights violations in the south. The statement “cited examples of intimidation, torture, forcible expulsion
and appropriation of charitable foundation property by the militia forces,” alleging that the IDF was allowing Phalange and Haddad militias “to act without restraint, especially against Palestinian civilians.”160

  Haddad, of course, denies that there are any atrocities under his rule, which he claims includes 100,000 Palestinians: “I defy anyone to tell me that a Palestinian (civilian) was killed by one of our soldiers.”161 In the same issue of the Los Angeles Times where Haddad’s assurances are reported, a social scientist teaching at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, who worked in southern Lebanon in 1980-1, tells a rather different story. In addition to well-publicized PLO atrocities, he writes, “Israeli hands were also involved in a series of outrages that have escaped public notice” before the June invasion, with Haddad serving “as a useful facade behind which Israeli agents could direct and control events.” The press was absent and “the urbane Lebanese of Beirut” were unconcerned, so “houses could be demolished, political opponents murdered and tribute exacted by the Israeli-supplied, directed and trained militia of Haddad.” Israel blamed “the excitability and uncontrollability of their Lebanese clients,” but “for anyone who cared to check, the involvement of Israeli agents was easy to detect.” “Israeli complicity with earlier Christian excesses” is consistent with the early reports of “Israeli involvement in the terror-killings in Chatilla and Sabra.”162

  Just prior to the Sabra-Shatila massacres, the Beirut correspondent for a British journal observed that the Palestinians left behind by the PLO fighters now “face the prospect of being victims of [Bashir Gemayel’s] Phalangist militia out for revenge.” He reports that “Misery is greatest in the south where, after destroying their homes and imprisoning their men, the Israelis have unleashed Haddad and the Phalangists upon them... A tacit division of labour allocates the daily dirty work of population control to the Phalangists or Haddad’s men, allowing the Israelis to seem uninvolved, even arbiters.” He reports, specifically, the murder of a Palestinian family on August 31 by Phalangist militiamen; the mutilated bodies of three women were “dumped near the Museum crossing between east and west Beirut as a grim advertisement.” “Half the cases of human rights violations [in south Lebanon] recorded recently involve Lebanese.” For the Palestinians, the situation is worse than 1948, when most of them arrived after fleeing from Palestine, “with much of the Maronite community itching to hit the Palestinians now that the fighters have gone,” either sent to Israeli concentration camps or driven to Beirut, then sent away, and the economy and social structure demolished.163 As the report appeared, the IDF was offering the militias under their control a chance to demonstrate their bravery in the camps in Beirut.