by Noam Chomsky
163. Special correspondent, Middle East International, Sept. 17, 1982.
164. Danny Rubinstein, Davar, Sept. 3, 1982, report from Lebanon.
165. James Feron, “Israeli Troops Dig In for Tough Winter in Lebanon,” New York Times, Oct. 3, 1982. See Shimon Weiss, Davar, Oct. 18, 1982, on the measures taken to ensure proper housing and heat for IDF soldiers.
166. Dov Yirmiah, letter, Ha’aretz, Aug. 30, 1982.
167. Moshe Kol, Davar, Aug. 29, 1982 (Israel Press Briefs).
168. James Feron, New York Times, Oct. 14; Economist, Oct. 30; David Hirst, Guardian (London), Oct. 30; John Yemma, Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 3, 1982; Trudy Rubin, Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 10, 1983.
169. Ibid; special correspondent, Beirut, Middle East International, Feb. 4, 1983; Robert Fisk, London Times, March 4, 1983; see also David Hirst, Manchester Guardian Weekly, Feb. 13, Washington Post. March 11, and others for similar reports. David K. Shipler, New York Times, Feb. 6, 13; special, New York Times, Feb. 14; Economist. April 16, 1983.
170. Ha’aretz, March 11; for the AP report, see the Los Angeles Times, March 14, 1983. Shmuel Mittelman, Ha’aretz, “The Government in a declaration to the High Court of Justice: the IDF is finishing off the foundations of the PLO economy in Lebanon,” March 14, 1983.
171. Francis Cornu, Le Monde, Dec. 3 I, 1982; William E. Farrell, New York Times, Jan. 17, 1983; Charles Glass, “Victors and Vanquished: Baedecker to the Three Lebanons,” (manuscript, January 1983); Samir Kassir, Le Monde diplomatique, February 1983; UPI, Boston Globe, Feb. 17; New York Times, Feb. 13; Economist, February 12; Ha’aretz. Jan. 26, 1983 (Israeli Mirror).
172. Yediot Ahronot, Sept. 12, 1982; Yoman Hashavua (Likud), Jan. 21, 1983; J. Michael Kennedy, Los Angeles Times. Dec. 12. 1982; Boston Globe, Jan. 23, 1983; Monday Morning, Nov. 1-7, Nov. 22-28, 1982; Israel Shahak, report on Israeli trade regulations concerning occupied Lebanon, Nov. I, 1982, reprinted in Palestine/Israel Bulletin, December 1982; AJME News, March 1983; Robin Wright, Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 8, 1983. See also the references of notes 169, 171.
173. See, for example, “Give Normalization a Chance,” New Republic, Jan. 31, 1983, an analysis that refutes a series of irrelevant arguments against “normalization” and a “peace treaty,” omitting crucial factors that are actually operative.
174. “Blood in the Chouf,” Economist. Nov. 13. 1982. See also G. H. Jansen, Middle East International. Dec. 23, 1982.
175. See, for example, p. 253; Yosef Tsuriel. “Law and Order in the Chouf,” Ma’ariv, Nov. 12, 1982 (Israeli Mirror); Rafik Halabi, Koteret Rashit, Dec. 29, 1982.
176. Shmuel Segev, “The Tragedy in the Chouf Mountains,” Ma’ariv, Jan. 4, 1983; Ma’ariv, Oct. 17, 1982 (Israeli Mirror).
177. Monday Morning, Nov. 15-21, 22-28, 1982; Los Angeles Times, Nov. 15, Dec.12, 1982.
178. Aharon Bachar, Yediot Ahronot, Dec. 31, 1982.
179. AP, Boston Globe, Feb. 1; wire services, Boston Globe, Feb. 7; Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, Feb. 8, 1983.
180. Jim Muir, “Challenge to Gemayel,” Middle East International, Dec. 10, 1982.
181. J. Michael Kennedy, “Captured Guns Given to Falangists, Israeli Says,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 23, 1982.
182. J. Michael Kennedy, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 6,9; William E. Farrell, New York Times, Oct. 6, 7, 9; AP, Boston Globe, Oct. 9, 11, New York Times, Oct. 10; UPI, Boston Globe, Oct. 10; David B. Ottaway, Washington Post—Boston Globe, Oct. 12; Economist, Oct. 9; Ihsan A. Hijazi, New York Times, Feb. 16; Robin Wright, Christian Science Monitor, March 9; Helena Cobban, Boston Globe, Jan. 24, 1983.
183. Livia Rokach, The Dawn (Al Fajr), Jan. 7, 1983; see also her article of Jan. 21; Report of the Information Center for the Defense of the Palestinian and Lebanese Civil Population, Prisoners, Deportees and Disappeared (Rome, L. Basso Foundation), Jan. 17, 1983.
184. Trudy Rubin, Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 10, 1983. See also Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, Feb. 6, 1983.
185. Testimony of Paola Crociani in Rome, May 4. 1983. Information Center (see note 139).
186. Richard Halloran, New York Times, March 18; David K. Shipler, New York Times, March 19; AP, New York Times, March 19, 1983.
187. AP, Boston Globe, March 19, 1983; also Jonathan Randal, National Public Radio, March 17, 1983.
188. See Glass, “Victors and Vanquished.”
189. Asher Maniv, “Blaming the U.S.,” Jerusalem Post, Feb. 4, 1983.
190. Steven R. Weisman, “Reagan Accuses Israelis of Delay On Withdrawal,” New York Times, Feb. 8, 1983.
191. Official translation of Amin Gemayel’s address to the UN Security Council, Monday Morning. Oct. 25-31, 1982.
192. Editorial, Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 7, 1983.
193. Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, May 10, 1983. For the text of the agreement, see New York Times, May 17, 1983. Parts remain secret.
194. David K. Shipler, New York Times, May 11; Bernard Gwertzman, with David K. Shipler and Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, May 10, 1983. The agreement was opposed by the Progressive Socialist Party of Walid Jumblatt and by Amal, along with pro-Syrian groupings. Economist, May 21, 1983. Jumblatt’s party is “the dominant group in the Druze community,” and Amal, headed by Nabih Beri. is “the mainstream organization of the Shiite community,” the largest religious group in Lebanon. Middle East Reporter, April 30, 1983.
195. Shipler, “Israelis Call Pact a Virtual Treaty,” New York Times, May 11, 1983; also Shipler, May 10,18; and text. May 17, 1983. General Benjamin Ben-Eliezer (Fuad), former commander of the southern Lebanon region who established the original relations with Haddad, “said that to the best of his knowledge there is a great difference between the published paragraphs [of the accords] and what was decided, and that in any event Haddad will remain in his command position as before for a long time.” Shimon Weiss, Davar, May 8, 1983. Nahum Barnea reports that Israel has informed Haddad “to disregard what he had heard on the radio and television or read in the newspapers. There is, in fact, no connection between the reports about the agreement, which provides for the dismantling of Haddad’s independent force, and the reality in the field. Out there, Israel is continuing to build up Haddad as the commander of the southern region.” Koteret Rashit. May 11, 1983; Middle East International, May 27, 1983. Barnea’s report is particularly plausible in the light of the historical record. discussed earlier: the capture of Eilat after the 1949 cease-fire; the immediate encroachments into the demilitarized zones driving out the inhabitants in the south and subsequently along the border with Syria, setting off conflict in both regions; the capture of the Golan Heights after the cease-fire; the immediate violation of the Habib agreement under which the PLO had left and the subsequent invasion of West Beirut in violation of these agreements; etc. More generally, recall the explicit position of Weizmann, Ben-Gurion and others that agreements are only tactical maneuvers, to be overturned by force if necessary when it becomes convenient to do so. There is little reason to expect any modification of this traditional pattern.
196. Editorial, New York Times, May 10, 1983.
197. AP, Boston Globe, May 20, 1983.
198. John F. Burns, Sam Roberts, New York Times, May 14; Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, May 17, 1983.
199. For discussion, see TNCW, introduction and chapters 7, 8.
200. Ha’aretz reports (March 30. 1983) that in the past year “terrorist attacks” increased 50% over the preceding year in the “central police region.” from Rehovoth to Natanya. On the same day, it reported that IDF and Haddad troops increased their surveillance over villages in Lebanon (particularly, “Shiite villages”), “where incitement against the IDF and the Haddad forces is being carried out.”
7. The Road to Armageddon
1. The Fateful Triangle
T
he United States, Israel and the Palestinians—three national entities so disparate in power that it seems absurd to link them in a single phrase. The United State
s is the world’s most powerful state. Israel is ranked as the world’s fourth greatest
military power, a status that it can maintain as long as the United States adopts it as a “strategic asset” and preserves it as such. The Palestinians, in contrast, have scant hope even of national survival. Nevertheless, these three parties have become locked into a fateful triangular relationship, and within it they are drifting towards disaster.
2. The Threat to the Local Parties
W
ith regard to the Palestinians, the fact is too obvious for further comment to be necessary. For Israel and the United States, the threats are of different sorts, but they are real
enough.
2.1 The Logic of Occupation Since shortly after the 1967 war, Israel has set itself on a course of endless oppression and military conflict. As was obvious at once, and predicted at once, this course entailed international isolation, alliance with pariah states, and service to the interests of its sole protector. The U.S. has been more than pleased to acquire a militarized dependency, technologically advanced and ready to undertake tasks that few are willing to endure—support for Guatemalan genocide, for example— while helping to contain threats to American dominance in the most critical region in the world, where “one of the greatest material prizes in world history” (in the words of the State Department) must be firmly held. A partnership has evolved in which Israel takes on such tasks while the United States maintains it in an artificial state of dependency. Increasingly, the values implicit in these tasks become internalized, reinforcing values that are ever more firmly implanted in a state controlling a conquered population by force in territories it intends to take for its own use, and founded on the principle of discrimination against “the minorities.” The problems of dealing with the inherent contradiction in the concept of a democratic Jewish state with nonJewish citizens were taxing enough; they become insurmountable under these conditions of moral decay and constant threat to survival, by now in large part self-generated.
Sooner or later Israel will face military defeat—it came close in 1973—or the need to resort to a nuclear threat, with consequences that one hesitates to imagine. Short of that, it will drift towards internal social, moral, and political degeneration. While Israel has chosen this course since 1967, it has done so under pressures that have strongly influenced the choice, particularly the pressures imposed by its supporters—more precisely, the supporters of Israel’s moral degeneration and ultimate destruction. Repeatedly, alternative paths have been blocked by the “support” that has been the despair of Israelis who had a different vision of what their society might become.
We have seen some examples of what this “support” has meant for the society and culture of Israel. Some of the consequences are captured, often movingly, by soldiers returning from the occupied territories and the latest conquest, as in this “soldier’s lament” by a reservist returning on leave to his kibbutz:
They arrive home on leave miserable and depressed, young in years but old in spirit, tired and battle-weary. They smile, say “everything is fine,” but when you catch them off guard you find bitterness and what are almost guilt feelings. As one soldier puts it: “You are asking me how I feel? If I tell you I feel shitty, will you understand? You here in the kibbutz, can you understand what we, the soldiers, are undergoing out there”?
“Take me as an example,” he says. “I was called up, sent to a training camp and then straight on to patrol Nablus, to chase demonstrating school girls. Then I was transferred to Beit Sahur [also in the West Bank], where we watched the beatings and the other ways in which the Arabs were maltreated. Then on to Yamit, into the war of Jews against Jews, against the opponents of the withdrawal. So you get hardened, and just as you have come to terms with it all you are sent off to Lebanon. Let me just throw a few names at you. Names like Beaufort castle, Ain el-Hilweh, Damour. Do they mean anything to you? After that came al-Uzai, West Beirut. All the time there is shelling and shooting, there are dead and wounded. So you look in at your mates, you attend the funerals, and you feel increasingly empty inside. Everything passes you by. I have become totally insensitive, I am an emotional cripple, though not a physical one…
“Do you really believe there is any hope of ending this war? Arik [Sharon] claims that the Fatah has withdrawn from Lebanon. Do you believe it? Come and observe our alert there and the fear in our eyes. Even the Lebanese girls long ago stopped smiling at us. Every carrier bag in Lebanon looks like a time bomb to me…
“When I am on leave I try to have fun, to relax so that I can return to Lebanon without that tension, but it never works out. Meanwhile, yet another bus is attacked here and another one over there, and Arik tells us that we have ‘destroyed the terror. Tell me, you civilians, can’t you do anything about it? One demonstration of 400,000 and that’s it? Is that all you are going to do? Are you waiting for us to return in our coffins?”1
The consequences are revealed in other ways as well; for example, when a Peace Now demonstration calling upon Ariel Sharon to resign as the Kahan Commission recommended is “taunted, heckled, shoved and occasionally attacked with fists by young men chanting ‘Begin! Begin!’ and singing ‘Begin, King of Israel!’,” and when Emil Grunzweig, a mathematics teacher from Kibbutz Revivim, is killed by an Israeli Army assault grenade while angry men wearing yarmulkes shout at a group of women demonstrators:2 “You are Arab women! You should have been in Sabra and Shatila,” and others shout: “They shouldn’t have rescued you from Hitler in 1945!”*
The consequences are revealed in a different though complementary way in the pages of the Jerusalem Post, where Mordechai Nisan, a political scientist at the Hebrew University who has elsewhere expressed his approval for Jewish terrorism, writes the following lines,3 which are treated with respect and proudly exhibited to the international audience of “supporters of Israel”:
At the very dawn of Jewish history, contact with the Land of Israel established the principle that the presence of non* New York Times, Feb. 11, 1983. There is more detailed reporting in the Hebrew press. The demonstration was violently attacked with many injured even before the grenade blast that killed Emil Grunzweig and wounded others nearby. When Grunzweig, already dead, and the wounded arrived at the hospital they were again attacked and beaten, as were doctors on the scene, by men screaming “Next time we will finish you off,” “Arik [Sharon] King of Israel,” “A shame only one was killed,” and so on. Marchers—some of them from elite fighting units, including one who took part in the Entebbe raid and other secret operations “not openly discussed”—were beaten and denounced as traitors, “Arafat’s children,” who should be sent to crematoria. Journalists who participated wrote of the early days of Hitler Germany and warned of impending civil war, condemning Begin—the “King” of the hordes—for making no move to restrain them.
Jews in the country is morally and politically irrelevant to the national right of the Jews to settle and possess the Land… The Bible states the Jewish right regardless of nonJewish presence. Much later, the Rabbinic sages expounded on the patriarchal promise and articulated the following principle:… Dwelling in the Land is the Jewish priority and it is in no way restricted, let alone nullified, by a non-Jewish majority population in any given part of the Land. This principle was later codified by Maimonides in his legal work, thus lending his outstanding halachic [religious legal] authority to this Abrahamic national imperative... [The view that rejects the legitimacy of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria] is a direct denunciation of Abraham, the first Jew, the Father of the Jewish people [who] set the precedent and model for settling there in spite of the fact that “the Canaanite was then in the Land.” The Jewish presence in the Land has always had to contend with, and at least partially overcome, an indigenous non-Jewish element in the Land.
As we read in the genocidal texts of the Bible, an implicit reference that his Israeli readers will understand. He continues: In the democratic age we live in, it is a difficult task
to openly adopt what seems like a non-democratic position. But it is nowhere provided that non-Jews will enjoy full equal rights as a national community. After all, the Land is the eternal possession of the Jewish people alone… The tasks of politics, often involving the use of violence, can at times only be achieved by sacrificing the purity of the soul. It is this reality which Zionism raised to the plane of modern Jewish historical experience in the State of Israel, and it is clear that some people have yet to understand this, or have yet to accept it.
Yet, this inexorable reality will move on and impress itself more deeply on the Israeli consciousness. This would become a smoother process if people realized that pouring Western liberal ideas into Jewish vessels, and serving them up as Jewish, is dishonest and dangerous.
It is not my contention that such people err in their humanity, but rather in their claim that their personal views are an authentic reflection of Tora teaching, Jewish morality and Israeli interests. Even our era of intellectual and ethical relativism cannot sanction this forgery.
Western Enlightenment is, in effect, a heresy that should be put aside in favor of “Tora teaching.”* The sense that the age of the Enlightenment is over and that it was based on fundamental misconceptions of human nature and needs has significant roots in Zionist thinking, even among liberal Zionists. One of the most noted of these, long a spokesman for a liberal humanist perspective, wrote in 1934, in Berlin, that the coming to power of the Nazis (the “German revolution”) signifies the end of the liberal era: “The development from the unity of man of the Enlightenment to the unity of
* The author of these lines is a lecturer at the Hebrew University school for overseas students, where he teaches the moral foundations of Zionism to American Jewish students coming to Jerusalem to discover their heritage. On his support for terrorism, see the American Zionist, May/June 1976, cited in TNCW, p. 304.
