Understanding Power: the indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

  Okay, first true statement: for the preceding fifty years, our problems always had been “laid at the Kremlin’s door,” but now that the Kremlin’s gone, we’d might as well tell the truth about it—because we still need the same policies. 74 And in fact, just to make sure that there always is a real danger, we also have to sell all these Third World powers high-tech weaponry—the U.S. in fact very quickly became the biggest arms dealer to the Third World after the Cold War ended. 75 And the arms contractors of course know it: like, if you read Lockheed-Martin corporate propaganda, they say, look, we’ve got to build the F-22 because we’re selling advanced upgraded F-16s to these Third World regimes, and we’re selling them all kinds of complicated air defense systems, and who knows, they’re just a bunch of dictators, maybe they’ll turn against us—so we’ve got to build the F-22 to defend ourselves from all the high-tech weapons we’re selling them. 76 And of course, that’s all at the cost of the U.S. taxpayer, as usual.

  The Lot of the Palestinians

  MAN: Noam, how do you interpret the 1996 elections in Israel [in which the more right-wing Likud Party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, defeated the Labor Party, which had negotiated the Oslo Accords in 1994]? And what do you think the effect is going to be on the peace process that the Labor Party was instituting with the Palestinians?

  I think it’s going to have almost no effect on that. “Peace process” is a very funny word for what’s happened, actually—it’s a “peace process” in the same sense that it was a “peace process” in South Africa when they instituted apartheid [the system of official white supremacy]. So when South Africa instituted its apartheid system in the 1950s and set up the Bantustans [partially self-governing black territories], that was also a “peace process”—it stabilized the country, there was peace for a while, and so on. Well, in many ways that’s similar to what’s called “the peace process” in the Middle East right now, although if you look closely, that comparison is not quite fair. It’s unfair to South Africa.

  See, the Bantustans that South Africa set up in the 1950s were much more viable economically than any scattered fragment that may someday be allowed for a Palestinian state under the Oslo Agreements. And furthermore, South Africa subsidized its Bantustans: so if you go back to, say, Transkei [Bantustan under apartheid until 1991], South Africa gave it plenty of subsidies—in fact, a large part of the South African budget went to subsidizing the Bantustans, which were relatively viable areas economically. Well, Israel has never permitted any development whatsoever in the Occupied Territories—in fact, there was actually a military ordinance that no development would be allowed there if it would be competitive with Israeli business. They’ve wanted the Territories to be a captive market, and therefore there’s been no development at all. 77

  Israeli reporters have covered this very well, actually. When they went to Jordan after the peace treaty with Jordan [finalized in October 1994], even they were shocked by the difference between it and the Occupied Territories—and they wrote very interesting articles about it. 78 Remember, Jordan is a poor Third World country: it hasn’t had any of the advantages that Israel has had in being the chief American client-state, and before the 1967 war, the West Bank was somewhat more developed than Jordan. Well, today the disparity is extraordinary in the opposite direction. So in Jordan, there’s rich agriculture, and highways, and factories, and other things like that—but right across the border, the West Bank is a total disaster: Israel hasn’t allowed a cent to go into it; in fact, they’ve taken a lot of money out of it.

  For instance, the poor workers in the Israeli labor force over the years have mostly been Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip—they did the dirty work in Israel’s economy. And theoretically they were paid, but mostly theoretically—because from their pay, the Israeli government deducted what is deducted from the pay of Jewish workers, like deductions for pensions and health care and so on. Except the Palestinian workers never got any of the benefits: the money for their benefits just went right to the Israeli treasury. Well, that amount is estimated to be about a billion dollars or so. In fact, not long ago an Israeli civil rights group, partly made up of law professors at the Hebrew University and partly just a workers’ rights group [Kav La’Oved], brought a lawsuit in the Israeli courts to try to recover for these workers the roughly billion dollars it’s estimated has been stolen from them. Well, the court recently decided the case—and it decided that the claims were null and void because of the Oslo Agreements, which it said have retroactively eliminated the basis for the suit by legalizing Israel’s confiscation of the funds. And furthermore, the decision said that the purpose for making those deductions had never been to ensure equal rights for the Palestinian workers in the first place, it was just to ensure that their actual wages would be lower than those of Jewish workers and to protect Israeli workers from unfair competition by cheaper Palestinian labor. Okay? That was the real purpose of taking the money from them. And then the court said that this was a worthy and legitimate action, just like introducing tariffs to protect domestic production is a legitimate action: so therefore the robbery is retroactively justified. 79

  Well, that’s just one of the many ways in which Israel has taken plenty of wealth from the Territories, including its water. 80 And all of that is going to continue after the Oslo Agreements and the recent election. So if you look at the peace treaty, everything just keeps going to Israel—and that’s not going to change.

  Furthermore, Israel is not taking any responsibility for what it’s done to the Territories during the occupation [which began in 1967]: the peace treaty in fact says explicitly that Israel has no liability for anything that was done in that time, that’s all the sole responsibility of the Palestinian Authority. In fact, it’s the only thing that the Palestinian Authority does get full responsibility for—everything else they don’t get, but they do get full responsibility for paying all the costs of the occupation. And the treaty explicitly says that if there is any future claim against Israel for something that happened during the occupation, the Palestinian Authority also is responsible for paying that claim and for reimbursing Israel if there are any charges against Israel. So here as well, what’s happened in the “peace process” is not quite like South Africa: the South African Bantustans were far more forthcoming.

  Well, all of this is just going to continue after the elections—I mean, the Likud Party would be out of their minds if they didn’t persist in all this; the Oslo Agreements are such an overwhelming victory for Israel that they’d be insane if they didn’t maintain them. So I would not expect any of that to change.

  Now, that’s not the standard story about the elections in the United States, of course. For example, the New York Times’s lead story in their “Week in Review” section after the elections said, flat out: the peace process is dead—everything the U.S. did is finished, it’s dead, it’s over. 81 But I don’t think that’s true at all—I think that’s based on a serious misunderstanding of what the “peace process” was really about. Likud would be crazy not to persist with the relations that have been established with the P.L.O. under the Oslo Agreements—just as the white South African elites would have been crazy not to continue pushing through the Bantustan process if they could have gotten away with it. In fact, the main difference between the two cases is that in the case of the Bantustans, nobody in the international community recognized the arrangement as legitimate—but in the case of the Israeli policy towards the Occupied Territories now, everybody in the world at this point basically supports it, thanks to U.S. power. In fact, the current U.S. government, the Clinton administration, has gone way beyond any of its predecessors in support for the most extremist Israeli policies. The Israeli press is constantly astonished by it. For instance, there was a big headline in a recent article in Israel, which read, “Clinton: The Last Zionist”—you know, the only one left who really believes all the bullshit. 82

  So you know, the most important part of the “peace agreement” is
its complete termination of any possibility of self-determination for the Palestinians: they’re finished as far as this goes, they get nothing. As far as the Palestinian refugees are concerned, it’s finished. I mean, for years the United States went along with rhetorical commitments about a “just settlement” of the refugee problem; now it doesn’t even do that anymore. On the issue of control of Jerusalem, while the United States used to rhetorically oppose the Israeli annexation and takeover, along with the rest of the world, now that’s over—the Clinton administration doesn’t even oppose it rhetorically anymore.

  The terms of the treaty are pretty amazing, they’re really worth looking at: they were pushed by the United States in such a way that the chance of anything at all for the Palestinians is very minimal. So people living in the Territories used to have two options: one was to go somewhere else (which Israel hoped would happen, and did happen to a considerable extent), and the other was to commute to Israel and be kind of what in Europe are called “guest workers,” what are called here “illegal migrant labor”—so they would do the dirty work in Israel that nobody wanted, for a pittance, essentially nothing. But now even that is being cut out—they’re not being allowed back into Israel. 84 And Israel is now turning to another source: they have by now about 200,000 immigrants (it’s maybe about 5 percent of the population) from all over the world, from Ghana, Ecuador, lots of them from Thailand, Romania, China, the Philippines. And these are people essentially brought over for this purpose—who just live under the most miserable conditions.

  The ones they sort of like best are the Chinese, because they have a deal with the Chinese government that if these people get out of hand—like if they demand that they be paid their wages (which they’re usually not paid), or you know, they want to stop being beaten while they’re on the job or something—Israel can just call in the Chinese authorities who will, as they put it, “deal with them.” China’s a rough, tough government, you know, so they’ll make sure that no one makes any fuss—and if they do make a fuss, Israel will just send them home where they’ll be even worse off. So the Chinese workers are easier to discipline, because of the cooperation of the Chinese authorities, and that’s something they like very much in Israel. 85

  Well, that’s a very brutal system, and it ends up displacing the Palestinians—so that means one of the options for survival for the Palestinians now is gone. The other option, leaving, of course is sort of open—if they can figure out some place to go. But with immigration restrictions being what they are all over the world, that’s getting harder and harder.

  Basically there’s nothing much left at all for the Palestinians. I mean, if Israel’s smart, what they’ll do is transfer some production across the border into the Territories, like the United States does with Mexico—that would be smart from the Israeli industrialists’ point of view. So instead of having to hire Jewish workers and giving them wages and benefits and so on, they could just move a couple miles across the border and get what the U.S. gets in Mexico or what Germany gets in Bulgaria and so on: super-cheap labor with no real standards for working conditions, and basically no environmental regulations. But there’s so much racism in Israel that they’re not even considering what would at least be rational from an economic point of view.

  So for the moment, things are pretty much finished in the Territories—I mean, you can’t predict the future, but the point of the “peace process” was to destroy the Palestinians, crush them, demoralize them, eliminate them, ensure that the U.S. and Israel take over everything. That’s why it’s all so admired here. And none of this is likely to be affected by the elections—I mean, why would it be? There may be some mild differences now with regard to Israel’s relationship with Syria, but that’s about all as far as I can see.

  See, the Labor Party was looking for some sort of arrangement with Syria by which they could maintain the Golan Heights—which remember is Syrian territory that Israel conquered after the cease-fire in the Six Day War in 1967, then drove out most of the population and took it over and settled it. And it’s a very important area, partly because it has some agricultural wealth, but mainly because the Golan Heights has a big influence on controlling the headwaters of the Jordan River and other water sources, which are extremely important to Israel. So Israel doesn’t want to give up the Golan Heights, but Syria won’t make peace unless it formally regains control over them—and it was likely that the Labor Party was going to try to figure out some way of finessing an arrangement so that Syria could have legal control of them, but Israel will retain actual control, like maybe some 99-year lease or some deal like that that the lawyers can figure out. The Labor Party was at least likely to toy with arrangements like that, and maybe even begin to move towards them; whether Syria would have accepted or not is an open question. But now it’s likely that Likud won’t do that. Apart from that, though, I don’t really see much likelihood of a difference in the international arrangements in the region as a result of the recent election.

  What I do suspect will change are things internal to Israel—it’s only there that there’s likely to be an effect. And that’s actually where the issues of the election were. In fact, if you look at them for a minute, there’s a real irony to these elections.

  Netanyahu won a big victory: the popular vote was split almost 50/50, but if you look at the Jewish vote (which is the only part that counts as far as policy-making goes in Israel), it was a far higher proportion, it was over 55 percent—which is a landslide victory, you know. 86 And that could have a major effect. See, the support for the Likud Party was from several sources. They got close to 100 percent of the religious vote—because there’s a very big fundamentalist religious community in Israel, and since it’s a very totalitarian community, they just do what the rabbis say, and the rabbis said “Vote for Likud.” Then they also got a lot of the sort of chauvinist nationalist Jewish vote. And actually they got the vote of most of the working class and the poor as well—because the Labor Party in Israel, despite its name, is the party of the rich elites and professionals and the Europeanized segments of the population, and big business really likes it: I mean, they don’t mind Likud, but they really like Labor. In case you were confused about this, the fact that the United States has supported the Labor Party ought to be a giveaway about its real interests: the United States does not support parties of working people and the poor.

  But the point is, most of these voting blocks that joined to put Netanyahu in power have a kind of religious chauvinist element to them—you know, they want to restore and establish Jewish identity, their emphasis is on what are called in the United States “the cultural issues,” that’s what Likud won on. And often that does have sort of a populist appeal: so Likud got the support of poor and working people, and they got it in the same kind of way as Pat Buchanan gets their support here—and with about as much authenticity in terms of concern for their interests. And part of the irony of the elections is that the people these nationalist constituencies elected are almost pure Americans and secular—I mean, Netanyahu could run for office in the United States and nobody would notice it, he’s essentially an American, just listen to him on television. Or take his leading foreign policy advisor, Dore Gold: he grew up in the United States, has an American accent, he’s completely Americanized and secular—and he’s the chief policy advisor. So what in fact happened is that the most Americanized element that has ever existed in Israeli politics won the election on a nationalist/religious program. And since you’ve got to give some crumbs to your constituency, the question now is, how are they going to do it? Well, that’s the issue after the Israeli elections.

  And right now the more secular European-types in the Israeli population are extremely worried about it—and they’re extremely worried about it for the exact same reason we would be extremely worried about it if the Christian Right turned out to be the major constituency of the guy who wins the Presidential election in the United States. So suppose Bob Dole had won the Presidency h
ere in 1996 with the overwhelming support of the Christian Right, and chauvinist fanatics, and the “militias,” and so on and so forth. I mean, basic policies wouldn’t change much as a result, but something would have to be done—there would have to be some kind of palliative offer to the constituency that voted him in. And that can mean things, it can have serious effects. So those are the sorts of changes I think one can expect to see in Israel, and it’s not very clear how these internal factors will play out.

  P.L.O. Ambitions

  MAN: Can you add a word about the Palestinian leadership’s response to the whole “peace process”? You generally characterize the P.L.O. as a bunch of conservative mayor-types—has that analysis changed at all?

  Well, you know, I’ve always thought that the P.L.O. is the most corrupt and incompetent Third World movement I’ve ever seen. 87 I mean, they’ve presented themselves all these years as, you know, revolutionaries waving around guns, Marx, etc.—but they’re basically conservative nationalists, and they always were conservative nationalists: the rest was all pretense.

  In fact, part of the reason for the failure of the whole Palestinian cause is that the P.L.O. is the only Third World leadership I’ve ever seen that didn’t try to stimulate or support—or even help—any kind of international solidarity group. Even the North Koreans, crazy as they are, have made efforts to try to get popular support in the United States. But the Palestinian leadership never did. And it’s not because they weren’t told that it would be a good idea—I mean, there were people like, say, Ed Said [Palestinian-American professor], who were trying to get them to do that for years, and I was even involved in it myself. But they just couldn’t hear it. Their conception of the way politics works is that it’s arranged by rich guys sitting in back rooms who work out deals together, and the population’s irrelevant. They haven’t the slightest conception of the way a democratic system functions. So while it’s true we don’t have like a stellar democracy in the United States, what the population thinks and does makes a difference here—a big difference—and there are mechanisms to influence things. But the P.L.O. leadership has just never understood that.