Fateful Triangle

by Noam Chomsky

  3. American Liberalism and Ideological Support for Israel

  A

  s noted, the view of the “Prussians” has generally won out in internal policy debate. But the story is more complex. American liberalism has led the way in constructing the “blindly

  chauvinistic and narrow-minded” support for Israeli policy that General Peled deplores. On the same day that the U.S. and Israel stood alone against the world at the United Nations (see chapter 2, section 1), the national conference of the Democratic Party “adopted a statement highly sympathetic to Israel’s recent attacks in Lebanon, qualifying it only with an expression of regret over ‘all loss of life on both sides in Lebanon’.” In contrast, the Foreign Ministers of the European Community “vigorously condemned the new Israeli invasion of Lebanon” as a “flagrant violation of international law as well as of the most elementary humanitarian principles,” adding that this “unjustifiable action” posed the risk of “leading to a generalized war.”56 This is by no means an isolated case.

  In fact, the front page of the New York Times on that day (June 27) encapsulates the U.S.-Israel “special relationship” rather neatly. There are three adjacent columns. One is a report by William Farrell from Beirut, describing the effects of Israel’s latest bombardments: cemeteries jammed, people buried in mass graves, hospitals in desperate need of supplies, garbage heaped everywhere in stinking piles, bodies decomposing under tons of rubble, buildings little more than shattered hulks, morgue refrigerators full, bodies piled on the floors of hospitals, the few doctors desperately trying to treat victims of cluster and phosphorus bombs, Israel blocking Red Cross medical supplies, hospitals bombed, surgery interrupted by Israeli shelling, etc. The second is a report by Bernard Nossiter from New York, reporting how the U.S. blocked UN action to stop the slaughter on the grounds that the PLO might be preserved as “a viable political force.” The third is a report by Adam Clymer from Philadelphia on the sympathetic support of the Democratic national conference for Israel’s war in Lebanon. The three front-page reports, side-by-side, capture the nature of the “special relationship” with some accuracy—as does the lack of editorial comment.

  American liberalism had always been highly sympathetic to Israel, but there was a noticeable positive shift in attitudes in 1967 with the demonstration of Israel’s military might. Top Israeli military commanders made it clear not long after that Israel had faced no serious military threat and that a quick victory was anticipated with confidence—that the alleged threat to Israel’s existence was “a bluff.”57 But this fact was suppressed here in favor of the image of an Israeli David confronting a brutal Arab Goliath,58 enabling liberal humanitarians to offer their sympathy and support to the major military power of the region as it turned from crushing its enemies to suppressing those who fell under its control, while leading Generals explained that Israel could conquer everything from Khartoum to Baghdad to Algeria within a week, if necessary (Ariel Sharon).59

  The rise in Israel’s stock among liberal intellectuals with this demonstration of its military prowess is a fact of some interest. It is reasonable to attribute it in large part to domestic American concerns, in particular, to the inability of the U.S. to crush indigenous resistance in Indochina. That Israel’s lightning victory should have been an inspiration to open advocates of the use of violence to attain national goals is not surprising, but there are many illusions about the stance of the liberal intelligentsia on this matter. It is now sometimes forgotten that in 1967 they overwhelmingly supported U.S. intervention (more accurately, aggression) in Indochina and continued to do so, though many came to oppose this venture for the reasons that impelled business circles to the same judgment: the costs became too high, out of proportion to the benefits that might be gained—a “pragmatic” rather than principled opposition, quite different from the stance adopted towards depredations of official enemies, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, for example. (In contrast, the central elements of the peace movement opposed aggression in both cases on principled grounds; these facts have been much obscured in the subsequent rewriting of history). Thus the appeal of Israel’s efficient and successful use of force was, in fact, quite broad. It was only half-jokingly that people spoke of sending Moshe Dayan to Vietnam to show how to do the job right.

  At the same time, the challenge to authority at home was regarded with much distress. A dread image was conjured up of Vietcong, Maoist fanatics, bearded Cuban revolutionaries, rampaging students, Black Panthers, Arab terrorists and other forces—perhaps on the Russian leash—conspiring to shake the foundations of our world of privilege and domination. Israel showed how to treat Third World upstarts properly, winning the allegiance of many frightened advocates of the virtues of knowing one’s place. For some, the military might that Israel displayed induced open admiration and respect, while others disguised these feelings, appealing to the alleged vulnerability of Israel before the forces it had so decisively crushed, and still others were deluded by the effective “‘David and Goliath’ legend” (see note 58).

  Individuals have their own reasons, but tendencies of this nature are readily detectable and go a long way towards explaining the outpouring of “support for Israel” as it demonstrated its capacity to wield the mailed fist. It is since 1967 that questioning of Israel policies has largely been silenced, with effective use of the moral weapons of anti-Semitism and “Jewish self-hatred.” Topics that were widely discussed and debated in Europe or in Israel itself were effectively removed from the agenda here, and a picture was established of Israel, its enemies and victims, and the U.S. role in the region, that bore only a limited resemblance to reality. The situation slowly began to change in the late 1970s, markedly so, after the increasingly visible repression under the Milson-Sharon regime in the occupied territories (only partially reported here) and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which offered a serious challenge to the talents of propagandists.

  The immense popularity that Israel won by demonstrating its military efficiency also offered a weapon that could be usefully employed against domestic dissidents. Considerable effort was devoted to showing that the New Left supported Arab terrorism and the destruction of Israel, a task largely accomplished in defiance of the facts (the New Left, as the documentary record clearly shows, quite generally tended to support the position of Israeli doves).60

  It is interesting that one of the devices currently used to meet the new challenge is to extend to the press in general the deceptive critique applied to the New Left in earlier years. Now, the insistent complaint is that the media are antagonistic to Israel and subject to the baleful influence of the PLO, motivated by their reflex sympathy for Third World revolutionary struggles against Western power. While this may appear ludicrous given the evident facts, neither the effort (see p 36* and further examples below) nor its not insignificant success in containing deviations towards a minimal degree of even-handedness will come as any surprise to students of twentieth century propaganda systems, just as there was no surprise in the earlier successes of those who were fabricating a picture of New Left support for PLO terrorism and contempt for Israel precisely because it is a democracy advancing towards socialism, one of Irving Howe’s insights.61 We are, after all, living in the age of Orwell.

  One can, perhaps, offer a more sympathetic psychological interpretation. Those who are accustomed to near total dominance of articulate opinion may feel that the world is coming to an end if their control is threatened or weakened ever so slightly, reacting in the manner of an over-indulged child who is chided for the first time. Hence the wailing about the reflex sympathy of the press for the PLO and its immutable hatred of Israel when, say, there is an occasional report of the bombing of hospitals or beating of defenseless prisoners. Or the phenomenon may simply be an expression of a totalitarian mentality: any deviation from the orthodox spectrum of “support for Israel” (which includes a variety of permissible “critical support”) is an intolerable affront, and it is therefore barely an exa
ggeration to describe slight deviation as if it were near total.

  As an illustration (there are many), consider a March 1983 newsletter of the American Professors for Peace in the Middle East—a well-funded organization that is concerned about peace in the Middle East in the same sense in which the Communist Party is concerned about peace in Afghanistan—sent to its 15 Regional Chairmen and its many Campus Representatives. It warns of an “organized, centrally controlled, information plan” on the “Arab side” which is not matched by anything representing “the Israeli position.” Their concern is aroused by “a list of speakers who are being toured through the university circuit…to present the Arab point of view,” giving presentations that “smack more of propaganda than of education.” “In order of frequency and virulence the speakers are: Hatem Hussaini, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Fawaz Turki, Stokely Carmichael, James Zogby, Hassan Rahman, Chris Giannou, M.D., Israel Shahak, and Gail Pressberg.” As any observer of the American scene will be aware, these nefarious figures almost completely dominate discussion of the Middle East in the United States, and “the Israeli point of view” virtually never obtains a hearing, though, the newsletter adds, “there are doubtless many speakers who espouse the Israeli position” and would speak if only there were an opportunity for them to do so. Even if there were some truth to the paranoid concept of “an organized, centrally controlled, information plan,” or the belief that these speakers are part of it, or that they “present the Arab point of view,”* it should be obvious that this would be a phenomenon of marginal significance in the United States and could not begin to compare with the massive pro-Israel propaganda system, of which this organization—which alone surely dwarfs anything on the “Arab side”—is a tiny element. But the frightened little men of the APPME probably believe all of this. Perhaps they are aware that this “information plan” and its agents have virtually no access to the mass media or journals of opinion, but they are right in noting that no way has yet been found to prevent them from responding to invitations at one or another college, a flaw in the American system that still remains to be addressed.

  As the invasion of Lebanon proceeded, the list of those who were deliberately falsifying the facts to place Israel in a less than favorable light grew quite long, including the European press and much of the American press and television, the International Red Cross and other

  * Among them are people who have always been harsh critics of all the Arab states and the PLO, for example, the third in order of virulence and others as well, but it is true that no one on the list meets the approved standards of servility to the Israeli government propaganda system, so they might be considered “pro-Arab” by someone who takes this to be the criterion for distinguishing “education” from “propaganda.” For the record, virtually every talk I have given on this topic has been arranged by some tiny student or faculty group, as any sane person familiar with the United States would of course know without being told.

  relief agencies, American diplomats, and in fact virtually everyone except spokesmen for the Israeli government and selected Americans returning from guided tours. The general tone is conveyed by Eliahu Ben-Elissar, chairman of the Knesset’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, who received “the most applause” at the convention of B’nai Brith when he said: “We have been attacked, criticized, dirtied, besmirched… I wouldn’t want to accuse the whole world of anti-Semitism, but how to explain this violent outburst.”62 A similar perception, widely shared, was expressed by Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon:

  Today we are in the arena opposite the entire world. It is the people of Israel, a small and isolated people, against the entire world.63

  This “horrible thing that is now taking place around us in the world” is “no doubt” the result of anti-Semitism, not the Lebanon war or the Beirut massacres a few days before. We return to some details of this intriguing story.

  The truth of the matter is that Israel has been granted a unique immunity from criticism in mainstream journalism and scholarship, consistent with its unique role as a beneficiary of other forms of American support. We have already seen a number of examples and many more will appear below. Two examples noted earlier in this chapter offer a clear enough indication of this immunity: the Israeli terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities and other public places in Egypt (the Lavon affair), and the attack on the unmistakeably identified U.S. Liberty with rockets, aircraft cannon, napalm, torpedoes and machine guns, clearly premeditated, leaving 34 crewmen dead and 75 wounded in “the Navy’s bloodiest ‘peacetime’ international incident of the 20th century”* (see notes 36, 39). In both cases, the general reaction of the press and scholarship has been silence or misrepresentation. Neither has entered history as a deplorable act of terrorism and violence, either at the time or in retrospect. In the case of the bombings in Egypt, the Israeli novelist Amos Oz, writing in the New York Times, refers to the terrorist acts obliquely as “certain adventurist Israeli intelligence operations”—the standard formulation—in a highly regarded article on the “beautiful Israel” of pre-Begin days.64 The nature of the attack on the Liberty was also evaded not only by the press fairly generally but by the government and by a U.S. Naval Board of Inquiry, though high-ranking figures had no doubt that the official report was a whitewash; former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, for example, states that the attack “could not possibly have been a case of mistaken identity,” as officially claimed.65

  Can one imagine that any other country could carry out terrorist bombings of U.S. installations or attack a U.S. ship killing or wounding 100 men with complete impunity, without even critical comment for many years? That is about as likely as that across the spectrum of mainstream opinion, some country (other than our own) should be depicted as guided by a “high moral purpose” through the years (see chapter 1, citing Time, a journal regarded as critical of Israel), while its

  * Richard Smith (see note 39). He notes that the only comparable incident in recent years was the Japanese attack upon the U.S. gunboat Panay in 1937 in which 3 were killed, and contrasts the “strangely callous” Israeli attitude with the far more forthcoming Japanese reaction, both at the personal and governmental levels. His conclusion is that nations have no friends, only interests; but he overlooks the fact that Japan could not count upon the American intelligentsia to cover up the incident, a privilege that Israel correctly took for granted.

  enemies are dehumanized and despised, and history is reconstructed to preserve the desired illusions, a topic to which we turn directly.

  Notes—Chapter 2 The Origins of the “Special Relationship”

  1. Bernard D. Nossiter, New York Times, June 27, 1982.

  2. Boston Globe, June 27; June 9, 1982.

  3. Nadav Safran, Israel: the Embattled Ally (Harvard, Cambridge, 1978, pp. 576, 110), a study that bends over backwards to provide an interpretation sympathetic to Israel; see TNCW, chapter 13, for discussion.

  4. G. Neal Lendenmann, “The Struggle in Congress over Aid Levels to Israel,” American-Arab Affairs, Winter 1982-3 (see chapter 4, note 60); Boston Globe, Sept. 26, 1982.

  5. For an attempt to assess the actual level of U.S. aid, see Thomas Stauffer, Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 29, 1981. For the specific details of the official record, see Yosef Priel, Davar, Dec. 10, 1982; Ignacio Klich, South, February 1983.

  6. Bernard Weinraub, New York Times, May 26, 1982.

  7. “Senate OK’s foreign aid plan with $2.6b for Israel,” Washington Post— Boston Globe, Dec. 18, 1982.

  8. Ian S. Lustick, “Israeli Politics and American Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1982/83; Amanda Mitchison, “Gift horses,” New Statesman, Feb. 4, 1983.

  9. “Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services,” reprinted in Counterspy, May-June 1982; one of the documents brought by American journalists from Iran, where they were released after the takeover of the American Embassy. Given the circumstances, one cannot be certain of the authenticity of the doc
ument, though this tends to be confirmed both by its character and the subsequent discussion concerning it. A former chief of the Israeli Mossad (essentially, the Israeli CIA), Isser Harel, accepted the authenticity of the document but condemned it as “antiSemitic, one-sided and malicious,” “dilletantish,” reflecting a tendency in the CIA to “rewrite history” at the time the report was written in 1979; Yuval Elizur, Boston Globe, Feb. 5, 1982, citing an interview in Ma’ariv.

  10. General (Res.) Mattityahu Peled, New Outlook (Tel Aviv), May/June 1975, reporting on a visit to the United States.

  11. New Outlook editor Simha Flapan, speaking at an October 1979 conference in Washington; cited by Merle Thorpe, Jr., President, Foundation for Middle East Peace, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 97th Congress, First Session, Dec. 16, 1981 (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1982, p. 143).

  12. See chapter 4, below.

  13. Jessie Lurie, Jewish Post & Opinion, May 28, 1982.

  14. On the political influence of what he calls “the Israeli lobby,” see Seth Tillman, The United States in the Middle East (Indiana, Bloomington, 1982). Tillman was on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with special concern for the Middle East.