Understanding Power: the indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

  They do exactly the same thing when there are no cameras.

  The real point is, Israel is having a lot of trouble putting down this popular revolution. I mean, the repression of the Palestinians in the West Bank is not qualitatively different right now from what it’s been for the last twenty years—it’s just that it’s escalated in scale since the Palestinians started fighting back in the Intifada. So the brutality you see occasionally now on television has in fact been going on for the last twenty years, and it’s just the nature of a military occupation: military occupations are harsh and brutal, there is no other kind [Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria during the Six Day War in 1967, and has controlled them ever since]. There’s been home-destruction, collective punishments, expulsion, plenty of humiliation, censorship—I mean, you’d have to go back to the worst days of the American South to know what it’s been like for the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. They are not supposed to raise their heads—that’s what they say in Israel, “They’re raising their heads, we’ve got to do something about it.” And that’s the way the Palestinians have been living. 38

  Well, the United States has been quite happy supporting that—so long as it worked. But in the last few years, it hasn’t worked. See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence. If violence is effective, everything’s okay; but if violence loses its effectiveness, then they start worrying and have to try something else. So right now you can see U.S. planners reassessing their policies towards the Occupied Territories, just as you can see the Israeli leadership reassessing them—because violence isn’t working as well anymore. In fact, the occupation’s beginning to be rather harmful for Israel. So it’s entirely possible that there could be some tactical changes coming with respect to how Israel goes about controlling the Territories—but none of this has anything to do with “using the media.”

  WOMAN: What do you think a solution might he for resolving the conflict in the region, then?

  Well, outside of the United States, everybody would know the answer to that question, I mean, for years there’s been a very broad consensus in the world over the basic framework of a solution in the Middle East, with the exception of two countries: the United States and Israel. 39 It’s going to have to be some variety of two-state settlement.

  Look, there are two groups claiming the right of national self-determination in the same territory; they both have a claim, they’re competing claims. There are various ways in which such competing claims could be reconciled—you could do it through a federation, one thing or another—but given the present state of conflict, it’s just going to have to be done through some form of two-state settlement. 40 Now, you could talk about the modalities—should it be a confederation, how do you deal with economic integration, and so on—but the principle’s quite clear: there has to be some settlement that recognizes the right of self-determination of Jews in something like the state of Israel, and the right of self-determination of Palestinians in something like a Palestinian state. And everybody knows where that Palestinian state would be—in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, along roughly the borders that existed before the Six Day War in 1967. And everybody knows who the representative of the Palestinians is: it’s the Palestine Liberation Organization [P.L.O.].

  All of this has been obvious for years—why hasn’t it happened? Well, of course Israel’s opposed to it. But the main reason it hasn’t happened is because the United States has blocked it: the United States has been blocking the peace process in the Middle East for the last twenty years—we’re the leaders of the rejectionist camp, not the Arabs or anybody else. See, the United States supports a policy which Henry Kissinger called “stalemate”; that was his word for it back in 1970. 41 At that time, there was kind of a split in the American government as to whether we should join the broad international consensus on a political settlement, or block a political settlement. And in that internal struggle, the hard-liners prevailed; Kissinger was the main spokesman. The policy that won out was what he called “stalemate”: keep things the way they are, maintain the system of Israeli oppression. And there was a good reason for that, it wasn’t just out of the blue: having an embattled, militaristic Israel is an important part of how we rule the world.

  Basically the United States doesn’t give a damn about Israel: if it goes down the drain, U.S. planners don’t care one way or another, there’s no moral obligation or anything else. But what they do care about is control of the enormous oil resources of the Middle East. I mean, a big part of the way you run the planet is by controlling Middle East oil, and in the late 1950s, the United States began to recognize that Israel would be a very useful ally in this respect. So for example, there’s a National Security Council Memorandum in 1958 which points out that the main enemy of the United States in the Middle East (as everywhere) is nationalism, what they call “radical Arab nationalism”—which means independence, countries pursuing a course other than submission to the needs of American power. Well, that’s always the enemy: the people there don’t always see why the enormous wealth and resources of the region have to be in the control of American and British investors while they starve, they’ve never really gotten that into their heads—and sometimes they try to do something about it. Alright, that’s unacceptable to the United States, and one of the things they pointed out is that a useful weapon against that sort of “radical Arab nationalism” would be a highly militarized Israel, which would then be a reliable base for U.S. power in the region. 42

  Now, that insight was not really acted upon extensively until the Six Day War in 1967, when, with U.S. support, Israel essentially destroyed Nasser [the Egyptian President]—who was regarded as the main Arab nationalist force in the Middle East—and virtually all the other Arab armies in the region too. That won Israel a lot of points, it established them as what’s called a “strategic asset”—that is, a military force that can be used as an outlet for U.S. power. In fact, at the time, Israel and Iran under the Shah (which were allies, tacit allies) came to be regarded by American planners as two parts of a tripartite U.S. system for controlling the Middle East. This consisted first of all of Saudi Arabia, which is where most of the oil is, and then its two gendarmes, pre-revolutionary Iran and Israel—the “Guardians of the Gulf,” as they were called, who were supposed to protect Saudi Arabia from indigenous nationalist forces in the area. Of course, when the Shah fell in the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Israel’s role became even more important to the United States, it was the last “Guardian.” 43

  Meanwhile, Israel began to pick up secondary functions: it started to serve as a mercenary state for the United States around the world. So in the 1960s, Israel started to be used as a conduit for intervening in the affairs of black African countries, under a big C.I.A. subsidy. And in the 1970s and Eighties, the United States increasingly turned to Israel as kind of a weapon against other parts of the Third World—Israel would provide armaments and training and computers and all sorts of other things to Third World dictatorships at times when it was hard for the U.S. government to give that support directly. For instance, Israel acted as the main U.S. contact with the South African military for years, right through the embargo [the U.N. Security Council imposed a mandatory arms embargo on South Africa in 1977 after the U.S. and Britain had vetoed even stronger resolutions]. 44 Well, that’s a very useful alliance, and that’s another reason why Israel gets such extraordinary amounts of U.S. aid. 45

  The Threat of Peace

  But notice that this whole system only works as long as Israel remains embattled. So suppose there was a real peace settlement in the Middle East, and Israel was just integrated into the region as its most technologically advanced country, kind of like Switzerland or Luxembourg or something. Well, at that point its value to the United States is essentially over—we already have Luxembourg, we don’t need another one. Israel’s value to the United States depends on the fact that it is threatened with destructi
on: that makes them completely dependent on the United States for survival, and therefore extremely reliable—because if the rug ever is pulled out from under them in a situation of real conflict, they will get destroyed.

  And that reasoning has held right up to the present. I mean, it’s easy to show that the United States has blocked every move towards a political settlement that has come along in the Middle East—often we’ve just vetoed them at the U.N. Security Council. 46 In fact, up until very recently, it’s been impossible in the United States even to talk about a political settlement. The official line in the United States has been, “The Arabs want to kill all the Jews and throw them into the sea”—with only two exceptions. One is King Hussein of Jordan, who’s a “moderate,” because he’s on our side. And the other was President Sadat of Egypt, who in 1977 realized the error of his ways, so he flew to Jerusalem and became a man of peace—and that’s why the Arabs killed him, because the Arabs’ll kill anybody who’s for peace [Sadat was assassinated in 1981]. That has been the official line in the United States, and you simply cannot deviate from it in the press or scholarship.

  It’s total lies from beginning to end. Take Sadat: Sadat made a peace offer to Israel in February 1971, a better offer from Israel’s point of view than the one he later initiated in 1977 [which led to the Camp David peace talks]. It was a full peace treaty exactly in accord with U.N. Resolution 242 [which had called for a return to pre-June 1967 borders in the region with security guarantees, but made no mention of Palestinian rights]—the United States and Israel turned it down, therefore it’s out of history. 47 In January 1976, Syria, Jordan and Egypt proposed a two-state peace settlement at the U.N. Security Council on the basis of U.N. 242, and the P.L.O. supported the proposal—it called for territorial guarantees, the whole business: the United States vetoed it, so it’s out of history, it didn’t happen. 48 And it just goes on from there: the United States was unwilling to support any of these peace offers, so they’re out of history, they’re down Orwell’s memory hole. 49

  In fact, it’s even at the point where journals in the United States will not permit letters referring to these proposals; the degree of control on this is startling, actually. For example, a few years ago George Will wrote a column in Newsweek called “Mideast Truth and Falsehood,” about how peace activists are lying about the Middle East, everything they say is a lie. And in the article, there was one statement that had a vague relation to fact: he said that Sadat had refused to deal with Israel until 1977. 50 So I wrote them a letter, the kind of letter you write to Newsweek—you know, four lines—in which I said, “Will has one statement of fact, it’s false; Sadat made a peace offer in 1971, and Israel and the United States turned it down.” Well, a couple days later I got a call from a research editor who checks facts for the Newsweek “Letters” column. She said: “We’re kind of interested in your letter, where did you get those facts?” So I told her, “Well, they’re published in Newsweek, on February 8, 1971”—which is true, because it was a big proposal, it just happened to go down the memory hole in the United States because it was the wrong story. 51 So she looked it up and called me back, and said, “Yeah, you’re right, we found it there; okay, we’ll run your letter.” An hour later she called again and said, “Gee, I’m sorry, but we can’t run the letter.” I said, “What’s the problem?” She said, “Well, the editor mentioned it to Will and he’s having a tantrum; they decided they can’t run it.” Well, okay.

  But the point is, in Newsweek and the New York Times and the Washington Post and so on, you simply cannot state these facts—it’s like belief in divinity or something, the lies have become immutable truth.

  WOMAN: Then what happened with the Camp David Accords—why did the United States and Israel agree to deal with Egypt at that point?

  Well, if you look back to around 1971 or so, you’ll find that all the American ambassadors in the Middle East were warning Kissinger that there was going to be a war if the United States kept blocking every diplomatic option for resolving the conflict. 52 Even the big oil companies were in favor of a political settlement, they were telling the White House: “Look, if you block every diplomatic option, the Arabs are going to go to war, they’ve got no choice.” 53 But in the White House they were just laughing, it was all a big joke—just like they were laughing in Israel. And on purely racist grounds.

  See, intelligence systems are very flawed institutions: they’re highly ideological, they’re fanatic, they’re racist, and as a result the information that comes through them is usually grossly distorted. Well, in this case the intelligence information was, “Arabs don’t know how to fight.” The chief of Israeli military intelligence, Yehosifat Harkabi, his line was, “War is not the Arab’s game”—you know, these gooks don’t know which end of the gun to hold, you don’t have to worry about them. And the American military, the C.I.A., everyone obviously was producing the same information: if Sadat mobilizes an army in the Sinai, you kind of laugh, “What do these guys think they’re doing? We’ll leave seven hundred men on the Bar-Lev Line and that’ll stop them.” 54 So the United States refused to pursue a diplomatic settlement, and that refusal then brought on the 1973 war—where suddenly it turned out that war was the Arab’s game: the Egyptians won a major victory in the Sinai, it was quite a military operation, in fact. And it just shocked U.S. and Israeli intelligence, it really frightened them—because like I say, state planners usually understand violence, even if they can’t understand anything else. So in the ’73 war, it suddenly became clear that the assumption that “war is not the Arab’s game” was false: Egypt wasn’t a military basket-case.

  Okay, as long as Egypt was a basket-case, the United States had been content to let them be a Russian ally—if the Russians want to sink money into this morass, that’s fine, we don’t mind, we just laugh at them. But in the 1973 war, it suddenly became clear that Egypt wasn’t just a basket-case, they knew how to shoot and do all these other things that matter, so Kissinger decided to accept what had in fact been long-standing Egyptian offers to become an American client-state. Well, that’s what Egypt had wanted all along, so they immediately kicked out the Russians and got on the American gravy-train. And now they’re the second-biggest recipient of U.S. aid, though still way behind Israel—and at that point Sadat became a “moderate,” because he had switched to our side. And since Egypt was considered the major Arab deterrent to hawkish Israeli policies, the obvious back-up position was just to remove them from the conflict, so Israel would be free to solidify its control in the region—as it has done, in fact. See, before the 1973 war, U.S. planners thought that Israel didn’t have to worry about any Arab forces at all. Now they saw that that was wrong—so they moved to extract Egypt from the conflict. And that was the great achievement of the Camp David peace process: it enabled Israel to integrate the Occupied Territories and attack Lebanon without any Egyptian deterrent. Alright, try to say that in the U.S. media.

  Incidentally, by now you are beginning to be able to say it in the strategic analysis literature. So if you read articles by strategic analysts, they’re starting to say, yeah, that’s the way it worked. 55 Of course that’s the way it worked, that’s the way it was designed. That’s the way it was obviously going to work right at the time of Camp David—I mean, I was writing about this in 1977. 56 If you eliminate the major Arab deterrent force and increase U.S. aid to Israel to the level of 50 percent of total U.S. aid worldwide, and Israel is committed to integrating the Occupied Territories and attacking and disrupting Lebanon, if you get that configuration of events, what do you think is going to happen? It’s transparent, a child could figure it out. But you can’t say it, because to say it would imply that the United States is not the leader of the world peace forces, and is not interested in justice and freedom and human rights around the world. Therefore you can’t say any of these things here, and by now you probably can’t even see them.

  Water and the Occupied Territories

  MAN: But doesn’t Israel ne
ed the Occupied Territories for defense purposes, with respect to the other Arab states on its borders—isn’t that the main reason for holding on to them?

  Well, there I can only talk about the way that they look at it—the way the top Israeli decision-makers look at it. So there’s a very interesting book published in Hebrew, called Mechiro shel Ihud, which is a detailed documentary record of the period from 1967 to 1977, when the Labor Party was in power in Israel [the Occupied Territories were originally seized by Israel in 1967]. It’s by a guy named Yossi Beilin, who was the top advisor to Shimon Peres and is kind of a Labor Party dove, and he had access to all sorts of Labor Party documents. And the book is almost a daily record of cabinet meetings in Israel between 1967 and ’77—right in the period when they were trying to figure out just what to do with the Occupied Territories. 57

  Well, there’s virtually no mention of security, barely a mention of it. One thing that does get mentioned a lot is what they call the “demographic problem”—the problem of what do you do about too many Arabs in a Jewish state. Okay, that’s called the “demographic problem” in Israel, and in fact, people here refer to it that way too. 58 The purpose of that term, which sounds like kind of a neutral sociological term, is to disguise the fact that it’s a deeply racist notion—we would see that right off if we applied it here. Like, suppose some group in New York City started talking about the “demographic problem”—there are too many Jews and blacks. There are too many Jews and blacks in New York City, and we’ve got to do something about it, because they’re taking over—so we’ve got to deal with the “demographic problem.” It wouldn’t be very hard to decode this. But in Israel and in this book of cabinet records, there’s a lot of talk about the “demographic problem,” and it’s easy to see what that means.