Fateful Triangle

by Noam Chomsky

  The Israeli thesis that Israel is a “strategic asset” was again confirmed by Israel’s moves to block Syrian efforts to support Palestinians being massacred by Jordan in September 1970, at a time when the U.S. was unable to intervene directly against what was perceived as a threat to U.S. clients in the Arab world. This contribution led to a substantial increase in U.S. aid. In the 1970s, U.S. analysts argued that Israel and Iran under the Shah served to protect U.S. control over the oil-producing regions of the Gulf. After the fall of the Shah, Israel’s role as a Middle East Sparta in the service of American power has evoked increasing American support.

  At the same time, Israel aided the U.S. in penetrating Black Africa with substantial secret CIA subsidies—supporting Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, Idi Amin in Uganda, Mobutu in Zaire, Bokassa in the Central African Republic, and others at various times40—as well as in circumventing the ban on aid to Rhodesia and South Africa,* and more recently, in providing military and technological aid, as well as many advisers, for U.S. clients in Central America.41 An increasingly visible alliance between Israel, South Africa, Taiwan and the military dictatorships of the southern cone in South America has also proven an attractive prospect for major segments of American power.42 Now, Israel is surely regarded as a crucial part of the elaborate U.S. base and backup system for the Rapid Deployment Force ringing the Middle East oil producing regions.43 These are highly important matters that deserve much more attention than I can give them here.

  * UPI, Boston Globe, May 16, 1982: the item reads, in toto, “American-made helicopters and spare parts went from Israel to Rhodesia—now Zimbabwe— despite a trade embargo during the bitter war against guerrillas, the Commerce Department has disclosed.” The Labor Party journal quotes the head of South Africa’s military industry as saying that Israeli “technological assistance permits South Africa to evade the arms embargo imposed upon it because of its racial policies” (Davar, Dec. 17, 1982). Yediot Ahronot, citing the London Times, reports that “Israeli technicians are helping South Africa evade the French military embargo” by transferring and repairing French armaments in Israeli hands (Oct. 29, 1981). Close relations with South Africa were established by the Rabin Labor government in the mid-1970s and remain warm, because, as Minister of Industry and Commerce Gidon Pat recently stated in Pretoria, “Israel and South Africa are two of the only 30 democracies in the world.” Similarly, Gad Yaakovi of the Labor Party “praised the economic and ‘other’ [i.e., military] relations with South Africa in a television interview” in Israel, Yoav Karni reports, adding that if he had said similar things in Britain, Holland or Sweden he would have lost his membership in the Social Democratic party, though his remarks caused no distress in the Israeli Labor Party.

  Had it not been for Israel’s perceived geopolitical role—primarily in the Middle East, but elsewhere as well—it is doubtful that the various pro-Israeli lobbies in the U.S. would have had much influence in policy formation, or that the climate of opinion deplored by Peled and other Israeli doves could have been constructed and maintained. Correspondingly, it will very likely erode if Israel comes to be seen as a threat rather than a support to the primary U.S. interest in the Middle East region, which is to maintain control over its energy reserves and the flow of petrodollars.

  Support for the concept of Israel as a “strategic asset” has, then, been considerable among those who exercise real power in the U.S., and this position has regularly won out in internal policy debate, assisted, to some extent, by domestic political pressures. But the position has not been unchallenged. There have also been powerful forces in favor of the kind of peaceful political settlement that has long been possible, a matter to which we turn in the next chapter.

  Michael Klare has suggested that a useful distinction can be drawn between the “Prussians,” who advocate the threat or use of violence to attain desired policy ends, and the “Traders,” who share the same goals but believe that peaceful means will be more effective.44 These are tactical assessments, and positions may therefore shift. It is, to first approximation, accurate to say that the “Prussians” have supported Israel as a “strategic asset,” while the “Traders” have sought a political accommodation of some sort. The point is implicitly recognized in much pro-Israeli propaganda, for example, a full-page New York Times advertisement signed by many luminaries (including some who are doves in other contexts), which calls for establishment of a pro-Israel political pressure group (NAT PAC) under the heading “Faith in Israel strengthens America.” To support their case, they write: “…if U.S. interests in the Middle East were threatened, it would take months to mount a significant presence there. With Israel as an ally, it would take only a few days.” Similarly, Joseph Churba, Director of the Center for International Security, complains that “the left in Israel” lacks appreciation of U.S. and Israeli interests and “many in their ranks, as in the ranks of the American left, are working for the same purpose, i.e., that neither country should function as an international policeman, be it in El Salvador or in Lebanon”—the left in Israel and the U.S., then, are contributing to anti-Semitism, “threatening the interests of Jews,” according to the doctrine of “the real anti-Semitism” developed by the Anti-Defamation League, discussed above. Those who understand U.S. and Israeli interests believe, as Churba does, that “Western power” should be “effectively used to moderate Soviet and radical adventurism,”45 and that the U.S. and Israel should function as international policemen in El Salvador, Lebanon and elsewhere.

  The authentic voice of the “Prussians,” in both cases.

  The same distinction is implicit in the argument as to whether Israel’s “Peace for Galilee” invasion of Lebanon strengthened the American position in the Middle East and, in general, served U.S. ends. The New Republic argues that this is so; hence the operation was justified. Others believe that American interests in the region have been harmed. Thus Thomas Friedman, after an extensive investigation of opinion in the Arab world, concludes that “not only did respect for many Arab leaders die in Lebanon [because they did not come to the defense of the victims of the Israeli attack, even when a besieged Arab capital was being defended by “a popular movement,” as a Lebanese political scientist explained], but so too much of America’s respect in the Middle East,” because of the perception that “America cannot be trusted” (the director of the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development) and that the U.S. supports Israel “as an instrument of its own policy.” A senior Kuwaiti official, echoing widely expressed opinions, stated: “You have lost where it matters most—on the humanitarian level. Whatever respect there was in the Arab world for the United States as a moral authority has been lost.”46

  Who is right in this debate? Both sides are, in their own terms. Those who deride “the humanitarian level” and the concept of “moral authority” can argue, with some plausibility, that Israel’s military might enhances the capacity of the United States to rule the region by force and violence, and that the invasion of Lebanon contributed to this end, at least in the short term. Those who have a different conception of what the U.S. role should be in world affairs will draw different conclusions from the same evidence.

  2.2.3 Subsidiary Services After the Lebanon invasion, Israel moved at once to underscore its status as a “strategic asset” and to reinforce its own position by improving relations with its allies (which, not by accident, are U.S. allies) in Africa and Latin America. Renewing relations established under CIA auspices in the 1960s (see above), Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir visited General Mobutu in Zaire, informing him that apart from direct military and technical support, “Israel will aid Zaire through its influence over Jewish organizations in the United States, which will help in improving [Zaire’s] image.”* This is a rather serious matter, since the

  * Mobutu is not the only brutal dictator to whom this idea occurred, or was suggested. In an interview with the left-wing journal AI-Hamishmar (Mapam), Dec. 29, 1981, Imelda Marcos, acting as an “international advoca
te” for her husband, explained their intention of exploiting improved relations with Israel and the influence of American Jews “to improve the tainted image [of the Philippine dictatorship] in the American media, and to combat its unpopularity

  image of this corrupt and brutal dictatorship is not of the highest, and as Mobutu complained, “the main antagonists [of Zaire] in the U.S. are Jewish members of Congress.” Shamir’s comforting response was: “Jews criticize us too.” He went on to explain that “with the cooperation of Israeli groups and with the money that American Jews will contribute, it will be possible to aid Zaire,” militarily and materially and in improving its image. General Mobutu expressed his pleasure that Israeli officers are providing military training (specifically, for his Presidential Guard) along with French and Chinese advisers. In January 1983, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon visited Zaire and an agreement was reached that Israeli military advisers would restructure Zaire’s armed forces. Sharon “defended Israel’s new arms and military aid agreement with Zaire today as a step towards increasing Israeli influence in Africa,” UPI reported. Sharon added that the program (which must be secret) would be “a contribution to Israeli exports in arms and equipment” and that it would lead other African countries to turn to Israel for military aid.47

  A few weeks earlier, Sharon had visited Honduras “to cement relations with a friendly country which has shown interest in connection with our defense establishment.” Israeli radio reported that Israel had helped Honduras acquire what is regarded as the strongest air force in Central America, and noted that “the Sharon trip raised the question of whether Israel might act as an American proxy in Honduras.” “It has also been reported that Israeli advisers have assisted in training

  in the American Congress.” Commenting, journalist Leon Hadar reports the opinion of Israeli officials that other third world dictatorships with a “negative image” are also interested in using this device to obtain greater political, economic and military aid from the U.S., and that strengthening of Israel’s role in the Third World is one of the “advantages” that Israel will gain from strategic cooperation with the U.S.

  Honduran pilots.”48 A “top-level military source” in Honduras stated that the new Israel-Honduras agreement involved sophisticated jet fighters, tanks, Galil assault rifles (standard issue for state terrorists in Central America), training for officers, troops and pilots, and perhaps missiles. Sharon’s entourage included the head of the Israeli Air Force and the director-general of the Defense Ministry; they “were accorded the full measure of honors usually accorded to a visiting head of state.” A government functionary stated that Sharon’s visit was “more positive” than Reagan’s shortly before, since Sharon “sold us arms” while “Reagan only uttered platitudes, explaining that Congress was preventing him from doing more.” There is no significant domestic force to prevent Israel from “doing more,” a fact deplored by Israeli doves. “The unannounced visit and military accord underline Israel’s growing role as U.S. arms broker and proxy in crisis-ridden Central America.” Meanwhile in Guatemala, Chief of Staff Mario Lopez Fuentes, who regards President Rios Montt as insufficiently violent, complained about U.S. meddling concerning human rights; “What we want is to be left at liberty,” he said; “It would be preferable if the U.S. were to take an attitude similar to that of other allies such as Israel, he indicated.”49

  Israel’s services in Central America have been considerable, including Nicaragua (under Somoza), Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and now apparently Costa Rica since it began to draw closer to U.S. policy in the region after the election of Luis Alberto Monge in February 1982. The Israeli contributions to Guatemalan and Honduran military forces are particularly significant: in the former case, because the military regimes placed in power through U.S. intervention were finding it difficult to resist a growing insurrection while congressional human rights restrictions were impeding direct U.S. military aid to these mass murderers; and in the case of Honduras, because of Reagan’s increasingly visible efforts to foment disorder and strife by supporting the Somozist National Guard based in Honduras in their forays into Nicaragua, where they torture and destroy in the manner in which they were trained by the United States for many years.50 Before the Falklands war, it had been hoped that Argentine neo-Nazis could be employed for this purpose, as well as for improving the efficiency of state terrorism in El Salvador and Guatemala. A more reliable client-ally may be needed to perform this proxy role, however.

  Charles Maechling, who led counterinsurgency and internal-defense planning for Presidents Johnson and Kennedy from 1961-66 and is now an associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described U.S. trainees in Latin America as “indistinguishable from the war criminals hanged at Nuremberg after World War II,”* adding that “for the United States, which led the crusade against the Nazi evil, to support the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads is an outrage.”51 Apart from being an outrage, it has become difficult, because of congressional legislation. Hence the importance of Israel’s contributions through the 1970s and increasingly today, in support of those who employ the methods of Himmler’s extermination squads.

  The congressional human rights campaign (often misleadingly attributed to the American presidency) was a reflection of the “Vietnam syndrome,” a dread malady that afflicted much of the population in the wake of the Vietnam war, with such terrifying symptoms as insight into

  * The extensive direct U.S. involvement in state terrorism in Latin America, as Maechling notes, began under the Kennedy Administration, when the mission of the Latin American military was shifted from “hemispheric defense” to “internal security,” i.e., war against their own populations. The effects were catastrophic, throughout Latin America. In terms of its impact, this 1961 decision of the Kennedy liberals was one of the most significant ones of recent history. It is little known here.

  the ways in which American power is used in the world and concern over torture, murder, aggression, and oppression. It had been hoped that the disease had been cured, but the popular reaction to Reagan’s revival of Kennedy-style counterinsurgency showed that the optimism was premature, so Israel’s contributions are perhaps even more welcome than before. It has, incidentally, been alleged that the U.S. has been opposed to Israel’s Latin American ventures (e.g., that Carter opposed Israel’s aid to Somoza), but this is hardly likely. There is little doubt that the U.S. could have prevented any intervention of which it did not approve, and it sometimes did so, though not in Nicaragua, where the Human Rights Administration in fact supported Somoza to the end of his bloody rule, even after the natural allies of the U.S., the Nicaraguan business community, had turned against him.

  Israel’s services have extended beyond the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, to Asia as well. Thus on one occasion Israel supplied American jets to Indonesia when its arms were depleted in the course of the massacre of Timorese, and the Human Rights Administration, while doing its best to provide the armaments required to consummate this mission, was still reluctant to do so too openly, perhaps fearing that the press might depart from its complicity in this slaughter.52 Taiwan has been a particularly close ally. The Israeli press speaks of “the Fifth World”—Israel, South Africa, Taiwan—a new alliance of technologically advanced states that is engaged in advanced weapons development, including nuclear weapons, missiles, and so on.53 We return in chapter 7 to these developments, which may by now be causing some alarm in Washington.

  With Reagan’s efforts to enflame the Nicaragua-Honduras border and Sharon’s trip to Honduras, the Israeli connection became so visible as to call forth some official denials, duly reported as fact in the New York Times. Noting that Israel is “enlarging its military training missions and role as a principal supplier of arms to Central America,” Leslie GeIb writes that “from every indication, the Israelis are not there, as are most of the others [Americans, PLO, Cubans, East Germans], as participants in a form of East-West confrontatio
n or to engage in revolutionary or counterrevolutionary intrigue.” These “indications” turn out to be statements to this effect by Israeli and American officials, none of whom “said that Israel was in Central America to do Washington’s bidding or to help out in countries such as Guatemala where the Administration is barred from providing military aid because of civil rights abuses.” Naturally, one would expect Israeli and American officials to proclaim any such arrangements openly, so their failure to do so suffices to prove that there is nothing to this canard. A State Department official comments that “we’ve indicated we’re not unhappy they are helping out” in places like Guatemala and Honduras, “but I wouldn’t say we and the Israelis have figured out together what to do.”54 Elaborate “figuring out” would seem to be superfluous, given the shared perceptions and interests, not to speak of the extremely close relations at all levels, including the military itself, military industry, intelligence, diplomatic, etc.

  It is striking that Gelb assumes as a matter of course that while Israel might be pursuing its own interests (as it no doubt is, one of these being to render services to U.S. power), this could not be true of, say, Cuba, which surely has no reason to feel threatened and therefore could not be trying to break out of its “isolation” (as Israel is, he reports) by supporting friendly governments. One might have expected Gelb, perhaps, to be sensitive to this issue. He was the director of the Pentagon Papers study, which contained the astonishing revelation that U.S. intelligence, over the 20-year period surveyed, was so completely indoctrinated by Cold War propaganda that it was unable to conceive of the possibility that the North Vietnamese might have been motivated by their own perceived interests, instead of simply acting as lackeys of the USSR or China.55