Fateful Triangle

by Noam Chomsky

  Throughout, the argument is that Israel’s interests—understood * It is a common claim, perhaps believed by its proponents, that there are many “champions of the PLO” in the U.S., even that the press is “pro-PLO” (see first*). When examples are given, it regularly turns out that these “champions” are critics (often harsh critics) of the PLO who, however, believe that Palestinians have the same human and national rights as Jews.

  implicitly as the interests of a rejectionist Greater Israel that denies Palestinian rights—are the “Jewish interests,” so that anyone who recognizes Palestinian rights or in other ways advocates policies that threaten “Israel’s interests” as the authors conceive them is, to paraphrase Stalinist rhetoric of earlier years, “objectively” anti-Semitic. Those who are “innocent of bigotry” are now placing Jews in “greater jeopardy” than traditional anti-Semites, with their advocacy of peace, criticism of U.S. interventionism, opposition to bloodthirsty tyrants and torturers, etc. This is the “real anti-Semitism,” and it is exceedingly dangerous. So the Anti-Defamation League has its work cut out for it.21

  It might be noted that the resort to charges of “anti-Semitism” (or in the case of Jews, “Jewish self-hatred”) to silence critics of Israel has been quite a general and often effective device. Even Abba Eban, the highly-regarded Israeli diplomat of the Labor Party (considered a leading dove), is capable of writing that “One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between antiSemitism and anti-Zionism [generally understood as criticism of policies of the Israeli state] is not a distinction at all,” and that Jewish critics (I.F. Stone and I are specifically mentioned) have a “basic complex…of guilt about Jewish survival.” Similarly Irving Howe, typically without argument, simply attributes Israel’s dangerous international isolation to “skillful manipulation of oil”22 and that “sour apothegm: In the warmest of hearts there’s a cold spot for the Jews”—so that it is quite unnecessary to consider the impact of the policies of the Labor government that he supported, for example, the brutality of the occupation,* already fully apparent and sharply condemned in Israel

  * It might be noted that to people concerned with the facts, “skillful manipulation of oil” also seems too easy an excuse (while the “sour apothegm” hardly merits comment). See, for example, the discussion by Zionist historian Jon Kimche of

  when he wrote.23 The Perlmutters deride those who voice “criticism of Israel while fantasizing countercharges of anti-Semitism,” but their comment is surely disingenuous. The tactic is standard. Christopher Sykes, in his excellent study of the pre-state period, traces the origins of this device (“a new phase in Zionist propaganda”) to a “violent counterattack” by David Ben-Gurion against a British court that had implicated Zionist leaders in arms-trafficking in 1943: “henceforth to be anti-Zionist was to be anti-Semitic.”24 It is, however, primarily in the post-1967 period that the tactic has been honed to a high art, increasingly so, as the policies defended became less and less defensible.

  Within the Jewish community, the unity in “support for Israel” that has been demanded, and generally achieved, is remarkable—as noted, to the chagrin of Israeli doves who plausibly argue that this kind of “support” has seriously weakened their efforts to modify harsh and ultimately self-destructive government policies. There is even a lively debate within the American Jewish community as to whether it is legitimate to criticize Israel’s policies at all, and perhaps even more amazing, the existence of such a debate is not recognized to be the amazing phenomenon it surely is. The position that criticism is illegitimate is defended, for example, by Elie Wiesel, who says:

  I support Israel—period. I identify with Israel—period. I never attack, never criticize Israel when I am not in Israel.

  As for Israel’s policies in the occupied territories, Wiesel is unable to how the Labor government’s apparent duplicity and rejection of possible peaceful settlement alienated friendly African countries well before the use of the “oil weapon.”

  offer a comment: What to do and how to do it, I really don’t know because I lack the elements of information and knowledge… You must be in a position of power to possess all the information… I don’t have that information, so I don’t know…25

  A similar stance of state-worship would be difficult to find, apart from the annals of Stalinism and fascism. Wiesel is regarded in the United States as a critic of fascism, and much revered as a secular saint.

  The reason generally offered in defense of the doctrine that Israel may not be criticized outside its borders is that only those who face the dangers and problems have a right to express such criticism, not those who observe in safety from afar. By similar logic, it is illegitimate for Americans to criticize the PLO, or the Arab states, or the USSR. This argument actually extends a bit more broadly: it is legitimate—in fact, a duty—to provide Israel with massive subsidies and to praise it to the skies while vilifying its adversaries, particularly those it has conquered, but it is illegitimate to voice any critical comment concerning the use of the bounty we provide.

  2.2 U.S. Strategic Interests Returning to the main theme, reference to Jewish influence over politics and opinion seriously underestimates the scope of the so-called “support for Israel.” Turning to the second point, the argument much overestimates the pluralism of American politics and ideology. No pressure group will dominate access to public opinion or maintain consistent influence over policy-making unless its aims are close to those of elite elements with real power. These elements are not uniform in interests or (in the case of shared interests) in tactical judgments; and on some issues, such as this one, they have often been divided. Nevertheless, a closer look will illustrate the correctness of the assessment that the evolution of America’s relationship to Israel “has been determined primarily by the changing role that Israel occupied in the context of America’s changing conceptions of its political-strategic interests in the Middle East.”26 Let us consider some of the relevant historical background, in an attempt to clarify this issue.

  Despite the remarkable level of U.S. support for Israel, it would be an error to assume that Israel represents the major U.S. interest in the Middle East. Rather, the major interest lies in the energy reserves of the region, primarily in the Arabian peninsula. A State Department analysis of 1945 described Saudi Arabia as “…a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”27 The U.S. was committed to win and keep this prize. Since World War II, it has been virtually an axiom of U.S. foreign policy that these energy reserves should remain under U.S. control. A more recent variant of the same theme is that the flow of petrodollars should be largely funneled to the U.S. through military purchases, construction projects, bank deposits, investment in Treasury securities, etc. It has been necessary to defend this primary interest against various threats.

  2.2.1 Threats to U.S. Control of Middle East Oil At the rhetorical level, the threat from which the Middle East must be “defended” is generally pictured to be the USSR. While it is true that the U.S. would not tolerate Soviet moves that threatened to provide the USSR with a significant role in Middle East oil production or distribution, this has rarely been a realistic concern—which is not to say that ideologists have not come to believe the fantasies they conjure up to serve other needs.28 In fact, the USSR has been hesitant to intrude on what is recognized to be American turf.

  The pattern was set early on in the Cold War, when the U.S. organized its first major postwar counterinsurgency campaign, in Greece in 1947. Entering Greece after the Nazis had withdrawn, Britain had imposed the rule of royalist elements and former Nazi collaborators, suppressing the anti-Nazi resistance—in Athens, under Churchill’s order to British forces “to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress.”29 The repression and corruption of the Britishimposed regime revived the resistance. Severely weakened by the war, Britain was unable to cope with the problem and th
e U.S. took over the task of destroying the Communist-led peasant and worker-based nationalist movement that had fought the Nazis, while maintaining in power its own favorites, such as King Paul and Queen Frederika, whose background was in the fascist youth movements, and Minister of the Interior Mavromichalis, described by U.S. intelligence as a former Nazi collaborator and given responsibility for internal security. Some Senators found all of this difficult to reconcile with Truman Doctrine rhetoric about supporting “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures,” under which the counterinsurgency campaign was mounted. To them, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge explained that “this fascist government through which we have to work is incidental.”30

  The counterinsurgency effort was no small enterprise: in the war that ensued, 160,000 Greeks were killed and 800,000 became refugees. The American Mission set itself the task of eliminating those to whom Ambassador Lincoln MacVeagh referred as “subversive social forces,” rooted in the insidious “new growth of class-consciousness and proletarianism”—“an alien and subversive influence,” as American chargé Karl Rankin described them, to which “no leniency” should be shown until “the state has successfully reasserted its dominance” and the “bandit uprising has been quelled” (the Ambassador’s phrase, standard usage in U.S. documents as in Soviet documents concerning Afghanistan). It was the American Mission and its fascist clients (and, of course, the wealthy and, later, American corporations, who were the real beneficiaries) who represented the “native” element in Greece, as distinct from the “alien” influence of Greek peasants and workers subverted by class- consciousness.

  The dedicated savagery with which the U.S. Mission set about the task of liquidating the class enemy was a bit too much even for the British, who are not known for their gentlemanly decorum in such procedures; they were also not too happy about being displaced from yet another outpost of British influence and power. With the enthusiastic approval and direct participation of the U.S. Mission, tens of thousands were exiled, tens of thousands more were sent to prison islands where many were tortured or executed (or if lucky, only “re-educated”), the unions were broken, and even mild anti-Communist socialists were suppressed, while the U.S. shamelessly manipulated the electoral process to ensure that the right men won. The social and economic consequences were grim. A decade later, “between 1959 and 1963, almost a third of the Greek labor force emigrated in search of satisfactory employment.”31 The fascist coup of 1967, again with apparent U.S. backing, had its roots in the same events.

  A major motivation for this counterinsurgency campaign was concern over Middle East oil. In his March 12, 1947 speech announcing the Truman Doctrine, the President observed that “It is necessary only to glance at a map” to see that if Greece should fall to the rebels “confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East.” A February 1948 CIA study warned that in the event of a rebel victory, the U.S. would face “the possible loss of the petroleum resources of the Middle East (comprising 40 per cent of world reserves).”32 A Russian threat was fabricated to justify U.S. intervention, but without factual basis; Stalin was trying to rein in the Greek guerrillas, knowing that the U.S. would not tolerate the loss of this Middle East outpost, as Greece was regarded, and not at all pleased at the prospect of a possible Balkan Communist confederation under Titoist influence. Again, it does not follow from the fact that the threat was fabricated that it was not believed in some planning circles; in public as in personal life, it is easy to come to believe what it is convenient to believe. The exaggeration of the Russian threat should be understood as an early example of the functioning of the Cold War system by which each superpower exploits the threat of the great enemy (its “Great Satan,” to borrow Ayatollah Khomeini’s term) to mobilize support for actions it intends to undertake in its own domains.

  The success of the Greek counterinsurgency campaign, both at the military and ideological level, left its stamp on future U.S. policymaking. Since that time there has been recurrent talk about Russia’s attempts to gain control of Middle East oil, the Soviet drive to the Gulf, etc. But no serious case has been made that the USSR would risk nuclear war—for that would be the likely consequence—by pursuing any such objective.

  A more realistic threat to U.S. dominance of the region has been posed by Europe.* In the 1940s, the U.S. succeeded in displacing France, and to a large extent Britain, in part by design, in part simply as a reflection of the power balance.33 One consequence of the CIA-backed coup that restored the Shah in Iran in 1953 was to transfer 40% of Iranian oil from British to American hands, a fact that led the New York Times editors to express concern that some misguided British circles might believe that “American ‘imperialism’…has once again elbowed Britain from a historic stronghold.” At the same time, the editors exulted that “underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.”34 The costs of the object lesson were indeed heavy, as events were to show, and are still being paid; and many others have been compelled to learn the same lesson since.

  Concern over European involvement in the region persisted. The U.S. strongly opposed the attempt by Britain and France to reassert their influence in the area with the 1956 Suez invasion (in conjunction with Israel); the U.S. was instrumental in expelling all three powers from Egyptian territory, though Soviet threats may also have played their part. Henry Kissinger, in his 1973 “Year of Europe” address, warned of the dangers of a Europe-dominated trading bloc including the Middle East and North Africa from which the U.S. might be excluded. Later, he confided in a private meeting that one basic element in his post-1973

  * And more recently, Japan, which in 1982 replaced the U.S. as Saudi Arabia’s number one trading partner and is also first or second as supplier for most other Gulf oil producers. Still, the Middle East is “the only U.S. foreign market that has experienced any significant growth in the past few years.” William 0. Beeman, Christian Science Monitor, March 30, 1983.

  diplomacy was “to ensure that the Europeans and Japanese did not get involved in the diplomacy” concerning the Middle East.35 Subsequent U.S. opposition to the “Euro-Arab dialogue” stems from the same concerns. Today, competition among the state capitalist societies (including now some lesser powers such as South Korea) for a share in the wealth generated by oil production is a matter of growing significance.

  2.2.2 The Indigenous Threat: Israel as a Strategic Asset A third threat from which the region must be “defended” is the indigenous one: the threat of radical nationalism. It is in this context that the U.S.-Israel “special relationship” has matured. In the early 1950s, the U.S.-Israel relationship was decidedly uneasy, and it appeared for a time that Washington might cement closer relations with Egyptian President Nasser, who had some CIA support. These prospects appeared sufficiently worrisome so that Israel organized terrorist cells within Egypt to carry out attacks on U.S. installations (also on Egyptian public facilities) in an effort to drive a wedge between Egypt and the U.S.,36 intending that these acts would be attributed to ultranationalist Egyptian fanatics.*

  From the late 1950s, however, the U.S. government increasingly * The official in charge of these operations, Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon, became Secretary-General of the Histadrut (the socialist labor union). According to the respected Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, Lavon gave orders that were “much more severe” than those leading to the terrorist operations in Egypt, including an attempt “to poison the water sources in the Gaza Strip and the demilitarized zones” (Davar, Jan. 26, 1979). He does not indicate whether these alleged orders were executed.36

  came to accept the Israeli thesis that a powerful Israel is a “strategic asset” for the United States, serving as a barrier against indigenous radical nationalist threats to American interests, which might gain support from the USSR. A recently declassified National Security Council
memorandum of 1958 noted that a “logical corollary” of opposition to radical Arab nationalism “would be to support Israel as the only strong pro-West power left in the Near East.”37 Meanwhile, Israel concluded a secret pact with Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia. According to David BenGurion’s biographer, this “periphery pact” was encouraged by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and was “long-lasting.”38 Through the 1960s, American intelligence regarded Israel as a barrier to Nasserite pressure on the Gulf oil-producing states, a serious matter at the time, and to Russian influence. This conclusion was reinforced by Israel’s smashing victory in 1967, when Israel quickly conquered the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, the last, after violating the cease-fire in an operation ordered by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan without notifying the Prime Minister or Chief of Staff.39