Fateful Triangle

by Noam Chomsky

  During its struggle for independence, the Jewish community in Palestine could assume some degree of restraint on the part of the British forces. Palestinians know full well that they can expect no such restraint were they to follow the course of the Zionists. Even nonviolent actions— political efforts and merchant strikes, for example, even verbal and symbolic expression—have long been repressed by force, failing for lack of support from outside, not least among those who laud the virtues of such means. If the British had treated the Jews of Palestine in the manner of the Israeli repression over many years, there would have been an uproar in England and throughout the world. Imagine the reaction if the Soviet police were to deal with refuseniks in any way comparable to the Israeli practices that briefly reached the television screens. Israeli commentators have noted the sharp contrast between the restraint of British forces and Israeli brutality in response to Palestinian resistance that has remained remarkably disciplined, something that may not last forever. As I write, the press reports—in one single day—violent protests in Taiwan, France, South Korea, and Manila with firebombs and clubbing of police, and hundreds of injuries, very few among the demonstrators and rioters. These are not states known for their delicacy; still, the picture is remote from Israeli practices in less threatening circumstances.34

  There is a double standard, as commonly alleged by apologists for Israeli violence35; it is just the opposite of what is claimed, and has been so for many years.

  Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit compares the “ethos of restraint” of the South Korean police to the doctrine applied by Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin of the Labor Party: that brutal beatings are “necessary…to restore the soldier’s honor in the face of the challenge from Palestinians.”36 The difference, he argues, lies in cultural differences with regard to the concept of honor. Perhaps so, but the factor of racism should not be overlooked. As the uprising gathered force, Orthodox Jews protesting movies on Sabbath pelted cars and police with stones and metal frames hurled from houses; no killings or sadistic beatings were reported then, nor six months later, when hundreds of Jewish workers broke into the Finance Ministry, smashing windows and injuring police and officials in a labor protest.37

  Margalit comments that “the announced wish of the Israeli government…to restore ‘law and order’…has been accurately translated: ‘to erase the smile from the face of Palestinian youth’.” The phrase is apt. Soldiers beating Arabs on a main street in West Jerusalem shout that “they dare to raise their heads.” The lesson taught to the Arabs is “that you should not raise your head,” Israeli author Shulamith Hareven reports from Gaza where the hallmark of the occupation for 20 years has been “degradation’ and “constant harassment…for its own sake, evil for its own sake.” “A man walks in the street and [soldiers and settlers] call him: ‘come here, donkey’.” A Hebrew phrase that Arabs quickly learn is “you are all thieves and bastards.” A woman returning from study in the United States is insulted and mocked by soldiers at the border, who laugh at the “fine clothes this one has” as they display them to one another during baggage inspection; another is called out at midnight by a kick at her door and ordered by soldiers to read graffiti on a wall. Visiting Gaza shortly before the uprising, Prime Minister Shamir called city officials and notables to meet him, left them waiting outdoors before a locked door, and when they were finally allowed their say, abruptly informed them that Israel would never leave Gaza and departed; “humiliation from this source has a definite political significance,” Hareven adds, and did not pass unnoticed among people who have learned that “the Jews understand nothing but force.”38 These are the conditions of everyday life, more telling than the corpses and broken bones. The similarity to the deep South in its worst days is plain enough.

  The phenomenon is typical of European colonialism, for example George Washington, who referred to the “merciless Indian savages” of the Declaration of Independence as “beasts of prey, tho’ they differ in shape,” who must be treated accordingly39 Today, extraordinary comments pass virtually unnoticed. I will mention only one example, because of its relevance to the elite media here as well.

  While I was in Israel, Times correspondent Thomas Friedman had lengthy interviews in the Hebrew press in connection with his Pulitzer Prize award for “balanced and informed coverage,” including gross falsification in the service of Israeli rejectionism40 He repeated some of the fabrications he has helped establish, for example, that the Palestinians “refuse to come to terms with the existence of Israel, and prefer to offer themselves as sacrifices.” He went on to laud his brilliance for having “foreseen completely the uprising in the territories”—a surprise to his regular readers, perhaps—while writing “stories that no one else had ever sent” with unique “precision” and perception; prior to his insights, he explained, Israel was “the most fully reported country in the world, but the least understood in the media.” Friedman also offered his solution to the problem of the territories, already cited: the model should be south Lebanon, controlled by a terrorist mercenary army backed by Israeli might. The basic principle must be “security, not peace.” Nevertheless, the Palestinians should not be denied everything: “Only if you give the Palestinians something to lose is there a hope that they will agree to moderate their demands”— that is, beyond the “demand” for mutual recognition in a two-state settlement, the long-standing position that Friedman refuses to report, and consistently denies. He continues: ‘I believe that as soon as Ahmed has a seat in the bus, he will limit his demands.”

  It comes as little surprise that after the prize was announced on April 1, Friedman found it a much happier occasion than when he received the same prize for his reporting from Lebanon at “a moment very much bittersweet” because of the bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut shortly before. This time, however, the award was “unalloyed, untinged by any tragedy,” he said, nothing unpleasant having happened on his beat during the preceding months.41

  Current Israeli tactics break no new ground; it is only the scale of violence that has extended, as the resistance has swept over virtually the whole of Palestinian society. Years ago, “opening fire in response to throwing stones” had become “a casual matter.”42 Systematic torture has been documented since the earliest days of the occupation, a fact now conceded by the official Landau Commission, headed by a respected former Supreme Justice, which recommends “moderate physical pressure”—a euphemistic expression meaning that torture is allowed for a serious purpose, as distinct from torture for pleasure,” Margalit comments.

  Within Israel, workers from the territories can expect similar treatment. Under the heading “Uncle Ahmed’s Cabin,” Yigal Sarna, a few months before the uprising, tells the “story of slavery” of the tens of thousands of unorganized workers who come to Israel each day “They are slaves, sub-citizens suspected of everything, who dwell under the floor tiles of Tel Aviv, locked up overnight in a hut in the citrus grove of a farm, near sewage dumps, in shelters that…serve rats only” or in underground parking stations or grocery stands in the market, illegally, since they are not permitted to spend the night in Israel, including “slaving children” and others hired at “the slave markets of Ashkelon, Jerusalem, Ramat Gan and other places.” A few days later, Knesset Member Ran Cohen reported the treatment of Arab workers by Border Guards in a Tel Aviv hotel: “The Arab workers were cruelly beaten up, and were compelled to masturbate before the Border Guards, to lick the floor of their flat and to eat coffee mixed with sugar and tooth paste, and their money was stolen.” They brought complaints to the authorities, but after more than two months, there had been no investigation.43

  The key feature of the occupation has always been humiliation: they must not be allowed to raise their heads. The basic principle, often openly expressed, is that the “Araboushim”—a term that belongs with “nigger” or “kike”—must understand who rules this land and who walks in it with head lowered and eyes averted. If shopkeepers try to open their st
ores in the afternoon as a gesture of independence, the army compels them to close in the afternoon and open in the morning. If a remote village declares itself “liberated,” meaning that it will run its own internal affairs, the army attacks, and if stones are thrown as villagers try to keep the soldiers out, the result will be killings, beatings, destruction of property, mass arrests, torture.

  Israeli Arabs, too, must be constantly wary. An Arab friend, a philosopher born in Nazareth who is well-known in Israel, drove me one evening from Ramallah to Jerusalem, but asked me to take a taxi to my hotel from his current home in East Jerusalem (annexed by Israel in defiance of the UN, while more than doubling the city’s area44) because he might be stopped at a roadblock on returning home, with consequences that might be severe. On a walk in the old city with an Arab friend, he reached up and touched a black flag—many were hung in mourning after the assassination of PLO leader Khalil Al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) in Tunis by Israeli commandos. A Border Guard standing nearby whipped out a camera and photographed him, following him with the camera trained on him as we walked on, adding a menacing comment. This man does not frighten easily; he spent years in an Israeli prison, and after his release has been outspoken in advocacy of Palestinian rights. But he requested that we go at once to the nearby Border Guard headquarters to explain what had occurred to an officer he knew; otherwise, he feared, he might be picked up by the police, charged with responsibility for hanging the flags, taken for “interrogation,” and dispatched into oblivion. An Israeli friend and I went to the headquarters, where the words “Bruchim Haba’im” (“blessed are those who enter”) appear over the doorway; in the light of the (well-deserved) reputation of the Border Guards, one can only imagine the fate of Arabs so blessed. The officer we sought could not be reached at once (he was engaged in wiretapping, we were casually informed), but when he arrived, we explained what had happened and he called the patrol and ordered them to drop the matter. Luckily, there was “protection” in this case.

  The pattern is common. Israeli journalist Tom Segev reports what happened when an Arab lawyer told him that a random walk through Jerusalem would yield ample evidence of intimidation and humiliation of Arabs. Skeptical, Segev walked with him through Jerusalem, where he was stopped repeatedly by Border Guards to check his identification papers. One ordered him: “Come here, jump.” Laughing, he dropped the papers on the road and ordered the lawyer to pick them up. “These people will do whatever you tell them to do,” the Border Guards explained to Segev: “If I tell him to jump, he will jump. Run, he will run. Take your clothes off, he will take them off. If I tell him to kiss the wall, he will kiss it. If I tell him to crawl on the road, won’t he crawl? Everything. Tell him to curse his mother and he will curse her too.” They are “not human beings.” The Guards then searched the lawyer, slapped him, and ordered him to remove his shoes, warning that they could order him to remove his clothes as well. “My Arab,” Segev continues, “kept silent and sat down on the ground” as the Border Guards laughed, saying again “Really, not humans,” then walked away. “People were passing by and didn’t look at the Arab, as if he were transparent. ‘Here you have your story’, said my Arab.” Others are not so fortunate, and may be beaten and taken away for “interrogation” and detention without charge. Complaints to the police evoke still further brutality, as amply documented.45

  These are the conditions of daily life for Ahmed, and the background for the uprising.

  3.2 Some Personal Observations I visited in April at the time of the assassination of Abu Jihad, an act generally applauded in Israel, and widely condoned here, on the grounds that he had been involved in planning terrorist acts; on the same grounds, there could be no objection to the assassination of the Israeli and American political leadership.

  The Gaza Strip was entirely sealed off because of protests that led to large-scale killings by the army, and was impossible to enter. But with very helpful Arab contacts, I was able to visit Arab areas of the West Bank. Even before the assassination, the region was coming to resemble a concentration camp. The response is determination and quiet defiance, an impressive level of popular organization, the firm intent to develop a self-sustaining subsistence economy at a mere survival level if necessary, and astonishingly high morale. From leading Palestinian activists, to organizers of popular committees, to people in villages under military control, to victims of army and settler terror, the answers are the same: we will endure, we will suffer, and we will win our independence by making it impossible for the Israelis to maintain their rule.

  In the Ramallah hospital, there were many severely injured patients but no doctors to be seen, and few nurses, when I visited. A confrontation with soldiers had taken place a few hours earlier outside the hospital, and the medical staff risk detention if they attempt to assist the wounded.46 Patients and families were at first reluctant to speak to us, wary that we might be Israeli agents masquerading as journalists. After our guide had established his credentials, they were willing to do so, describing the circumstances in which they were beaten and shot. One man, paralyzed from the waist down, with tubes coming out of his body and five bullet wounds, told us softly as we left his bedside that “If you have need of a homeland, you must sacrifice.” A 13-year-old boy, hit by a “rubber bullet” (a rubber-encased steel bullet), told us that he had been shot while returning home from a mosque and trying to leave the scene of a demonstration nearby. Asked how he felt, he replied that his mood was “higher than the wind.” The sentiments are common, expressed without rhetoric or anger; people lacking means of selfdefense, having endured much suffering and facing more, have stars in their eyes, and a sense of inevitable victory. In contrast, in Israel, at least among those segments of the population that are aware of what is happening, there is a sense of foreboding. One very close friend of 40 years asked me, after I had given a talk at Tel Aviv University on the current situation, whether I thought Israeli Jews would still be there in 20 years. The mood in the territories, and the sense that they can survive the mounting repression until the occupation ends and independence is achieved, may or may not be realistic, but it was readily apparent.

  On Friday morning, with businesses closed, the city of Nablus was quiet, though Israeli troops were patrolling, in preparation for an expected demonstration after prayers at the mosque. At the outskirts of the city, a group of men and boys were clearing a field by hand for subsistence crops. The United National Leadership had designated this day for preparing a self-sustaining economy, not reliant on Israel, which has converted the territories into a market for Israeli products and a source of cheap labor. No serious effort has been made to organize mass refusals to work in Israel, because the dependence of the territories on this work for survival has not yet been overcome. One of the organizers, a municipal clerk, guided us to an apartment in the old city of Nablus, where we were joined by another local activist, a taxi driver. With its maze of narrow, winding paths, the old city cannot be patrolled by the army, which has erected heavy steel doors at the gates so that the population can be locked in if need be. The two men described the network of popular committees, organized by neighborhood and function (health, production, municipal services, women’s groups, etc.), that run the affairs of the city and social life, receiving regular directives from the United Leadership on general policy matters, with specific days designated for particular kinds of activities, to be carried out as the local communities determine.

  Such popular organizations have been developing for years through the initiative of the (illegal) Communist Party, which has long emphasized popular organization rather than “armed struggle” and may have gained considerable credibility by the now-evident success of this strategy, and the various factions of the PLO, particularly its dominant element, Fatah. Their emergence and development in the past few months is the most striking feature of the popular uprising, with longterm significance. Shulamith Hareven observes that the uprising is “not merely a protest against Israeli power, though this i
s the basic and most obvious component.” It is “a revolt of women and youth against traditional patriarchal authority,” against “women’s work” and the “prosperous elders, with their connections to Israel and foreign countries,” in “a society where something very important is proceeding and changing before our eyes, and even if the current disturbances will be quelled, the process will continue.” Reporting from West Bank villages, Zvi Gilat describes the “socialist autonomy,” with mutual aid, provisions distributed to those in need, and popular organization despite Israeli terror, always at hand, as in Ya’bed, where villagers listen all night to “the prisoners crying out and asking for food” from the local school, converted (as many schools have been) to a “prison camp.”47 One sees the signs everywhere.

  Though Arab police have resigned under orders of the United Leadership, there is, local inhabitants say, virtually no crime or disorder, apart from confrontations with the occupying forces. In Nablus, plans are underway to raise chickens and rabbits, and to farm on the outskirts. The party structure emerges at the level of the United Leadership (Fatah, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, the Communist Party, and in Gaza, the Islamic Jihad). It appears to be less significant, though it doubtless functions, at the local level.