by Noam Chomsky
The same issue of the Times contains a slightly more subtle expression of totalitarian attitudes in an Op-Ed by Annette Dulzin of Yediot Ahronot, who discusses Israel’s “moral strength” as shown by the reaction to the Beirut massacres (presumably such comment is legitimate according to the doctrine of Wiesel, Horwitz and others, particularly in the light of Blitzer’s observation about the utility of such testimonies to Israel’s moral strength for increasing U.S. military and economic aid). She writes that “The world’s news media not only search out Israel’s imperfections with a magnifying glass, they also turn their attention to the extremes of its political spectrum,” conveying as “representative of the body politic” the views of “people made irresponsible by their hatred of [Begin]” as well as “the most grotesque ideas expressed by Mr. Begin’s most mindless worshippers.” In fact, in the U.S. at least, the media characteristically ignore even serious “imperfections” and rarely report, let alone convey as representative,” positions at the extremes; but those who regard only total conformity as permissible might well consider the occasional deviation as outrageous, and with a sufficient dose of paranoia, even as typical.
Returning to Benvenisti, his conclusion is that Reagan’s peace plan is largely irrelevant in any event because it overlooks the “radical changes” which followed his earlier approval of the settlement policy. The “unilateral implementation of Israel’s version of autonomy on the ground” does not require “the odd new settlements” that might be ruled out by Reagan’s proposal—which, nevertheless, the Begin government angrily rejected, immediately announcing plans for new settlements. This “unilateral implementation” is in violation of the terms of the so-called “peace process,” but then, as Abba Eban observed, Israel had announced at once its rejection of these terms; see chapter 3, section 2.3.4. We return in chapter 6 to the actual impact of Reagan’s September 1982 peace plan on West Bank settlement.
Note that Labor’s effective endorsement of the new arrangements underscores the hypocrisy of its superficially positive response to the Reagan proposals. Labor’s actual policy is explained by Yitzhak Rabin. He notes that until now Jordan has refused to accept the Allon Plan (“territorial compromise”) as a basis for settlement and that Reagan’s plan is also unacceptable to the Labor Alignment for this reason. He “emphasized” that Labor does not differ from Likud about the “right of settlement” but only about its manner, and that if Jordan does join the negotiations Israel should agree to a 4-6 month settlement freeze, “but not throughout the negotiations, which might be prolonged.” As for the PLO, Rabin continued to reiterate the longstanding Labor policy that it cannot be a partner to negotiations “even if it accepts all of the conditions of negotiations on the basis of the Camp David agreements, because the essence of the willingness to speak with the PLO is the willingness to speak about the establishment of a Palestinian state, which must be opposed.” A few months later he reiterated the call for a “limited” settlement freeze (“let us say, six months”) if Hussein agreed to join the negotiations, though not before, adding that Labor is “in favor of certain settlements in the Jordan Valley, the greater Jerusalem area [which is by now very “great”], Gush Etzion [in the West Bank] and the southern part of the Gaza Strip.”64
The Labor Party position is elaborated further by Uzi Shimoni of Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov, head of the propaganda (hasbara) branch of the party, in its journal. Israel “has the right to all of the Land of Israel,” but it should agree to “relinquish” its rights in part, returning areas of heavy Arab population concentration in the West Bank to Jordan. It should make this concession “not because of the wishes of the Arabs of the territory,” which are irrelevant, just as they are irrelevant to American liberal opinion, but so as to avoid the “demographic problem.” At the same time, Israel must intensify settlement elsewhere so that it will become impossible to return the territories to the local population and Arab rule, as Begin agreed to do in northeastern Sinai over strong Labor opposition (see p. 110*). “The Likud government’s relinquishing defensible borders in the south of the State of Israel makes it even more necessary that any peace agreement must be conditioned on the principle that the Jordan River will be our Eastern border and that the Golan Heights will be part of the State of Israel... If Yamit had grown to the size of Netanya, for example, there would have been no agreement to return it to Egypt.”65
Commenting on Benvenisti’s research, Anthony Lewis wrote: But it is the Arab leaders who need most of all to understand the meaning of the Benvenisti study. They have maneuvered for years, avoiding negotiation. But unless they move now—unless they accept the fact of Israel and talk about ways to secure the rights of Palestinians in accommodation with that fact—there will be nothing left to negotiate.66
Lewis has been unusual in mainstream American journalism in his willingness to reveal some unpleasant truths about Israel’s recent policies.* He is right to observe that there will soon be nothing to negotiate. But we learn something important about American intellectual and political culture from the fact that even at the outer fringes of mainstream journalism—thus essentially across the board with very few exceptions—the same illusions are put forth as unquestioned fact. As discussed in chapter 3. it is Israel and the U.S. who have maneuvered to avoid negotiations, while the Arab leaders and the PLO have largely joined the international accommodationist consensus, and have accepted “the fact of Israel” long ago. If there is little left to negotiate, that is primarily the result of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism and the policies of the Labor government, then Likud, in the occupied territories, all subsidized by American munificence and backed by “supporters of Israel.” And no mainstream political grouping in Israel offers any basis for negotiations or political settlement apart from the kind of “territorial compromise” that would eliminate the last vestiges of Palestinian rights.
4.2.3 Policies (Continued) Returning again to Benvenisti (see note 57), he goes on to elaborate the consequences of the current programs being implemented by the Likud government, with tacit Labor backing, indeed, extending Labor’s policies when in office. “The economy of the West Bank,” he states,
* Lewis, whose position generally accords with that of the Labor Party, is considered so “anti-Israel” by the American Zionist establishment that their press urges readers to boycott his talks (Jewish Week, New York; reported by Jewish Post & Opinion. Dec. 3, 1982). Like the regular behavior of the AntiDefamation League, this is another illustration of the Stalinist character of the American Zionist institutions noted and condemned by Israeli doves; see chapter 2, section 2.1.
“may be characterized as undeveloped, non-viable, stagnant and dependent. It is an auxiliary sector of both the Israeli and Jordanian economies.” It is a “captive market” for Israeli manufactures, Israel’s largest single market, where 25% of Israel’s exports are sold.67 There is “no capital investment, no government investment in industrial infrastructure, no credit facilities or capital market, no protection from the import of Israeli goods.” There are, however, Israeli taxes. The working population increasingly serves as a cheap labor force for Israel, a repetition of what happened to the Arab population within Israel itself; in the terms preferred by Col. (ret.) Sasson Levi, a specialist in Arab affairs who “served in a key capacity in the military government of Judea and Samaria,” the Arabs of the territories benefit from “the opportunity given to them to work in Israel.”68 Continuing with the rhetoric preferred by the conquerors, Israeli scholars Sandler and Frisch (see note 67) are euphoric about “the remarkable accomplishments of the territories in the last decade” and “the benefits derived from contact with Israel.” Like Col. Levi and many others, they have little to say about why the Palestinians in the territories do not appear to share their enthusiasm. Perhaps this is yet another manifestation of Irving Howe’s “sour apothegm: In the warmest of hearts there’s a cold spot for the Jews”; or perhaps, as Levi remarks, the reason is that “the terrorist organizations continued to in
cite the people.”
Israel’s policies in the West Bank, Benvenisti concludes, are “an outgrowth of an imperial concept—’I want this’—combined with the ability to go about taking it.” It must be stressed again that this “ability” is conferred by lavish U.S. funding, ideological support of the kind described, and diplomatic support; for example, the U.S. veto of an April 2, 1982 Security Council resolution calling on Israel to reinstate the ousted elected mayors Bassam Shak’a of Nablus, Karim Khalef of Ramallah, and Ibrahim Tawil of El Bireh, recent targets of terrorist attack (see this section above).* The U.S., which stood alone in voting against the resolution (Zaire abstained), regarded it as “one-sided.”69
In fairness, it should be noted that Israel is not the only state to be accorded such diplomatic protection by the U.S. A few months earlier, the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning “South Africa’s utilization of the illegally occupied territory of Namibia as a springboard for armed invasions and destabilization of the People’s Republic of Angola.” Other countries too have been afforded such diplomatic protection, for example, Indonesia at the time of its invasion of East Timor, as liberal hero Daniel P. Moynihan relates with much satisfaction in his memoirs, referring to his success in blocking United Nations action to deter the aggression and prevent the subsequent
* On the same day, the U.S. vetoed a resolution which “named no names and made no charges,” but “simply repeated United Nations Charter principles opposing intervention in the affairs of other countries and the use of force.” It was implicitly directed against U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, which at that time was still being denied. The U.S. objected to the resolution on the grounds that it “breeds cynicism” and “harms the United Nations” because “it undermines the Inter-American system” and “mocks the search for peace” The basis for this charge was that the resolution called upon the Secretary General of the UN to keep the Security Council informed about the crisis in Central America and the Caribbean. Observers could recall no previous occasion when one country cast two vetoes on two different subjects at the same session. Those whose sense of humor inclines them in this direction might be intrigued to look back at the learned discussions by distinguished Western anthropologists on Russian vetoes in the early days of the UN, when the U.S. dominated the organization; the explanation offered was that Russian negativism resulted from the practice of swaddling infants, “diaperology,” as the theory was called by the occasional skeptics.
massacre that Moynihan partially and misleadingly acknowledges.70 The policies that Benvenisti describes were established by the Labor government shortly after the 1967 conquest, then accelerated by Begin. The consequences were predicted from the start by Israeli doves, who were generally ignored or denounced here in the post-1967 raptures about Israel’s unique magnificence—when, for example, Irving Howe was explaining that Israel offers “about as good a model as we have for the democratic socialist hope of combining radical social change with political freedom” (precisely at the time when such hopes, such as they were, were rapidly receding), and issuing vitriolic denunciations of those who attempted to report some of the facts as obsessed by “a complex of values and moods verging on the pathology of authoritarianism,”* among
* See my Peace in the Middle East?, chapter 5, for extensive discussion of Howe’s virulent attacks on Daniel Berrigan and unnamed “New Leftists” (particularly “New Left students” and “young professors,” the main targets of Howe’s venom during the years of their active opposition to the Indochina war), and comparison with the facts that he entirely ignores. It is interesting that this style of invective, carefully avoiding fact and argument, is regarded rather highly in the intellectual community—at least, when the targets are active opponents of the violence of some favored state. See chapter 2. One should bear in mind, in this connection, the mythical picture that has been constructed of the New Left and the student movement, and of the self-designated “responsible” figures who were offended by its principled objection to aggression and massacre. Those who are in a position to design the historical record assure us that they were courageously defending “civilized values” against the excesses of the student movement, as they indeed were, if we include among these values the right of the U.S. to murder peasants in Indochina without any vulgar disruption at home, such as resistance to military service, for example. This is an important story in itself, which would carry us too far afield.
other similar thoughts to which we return.71 In essence, these policies are supported by both major political groupings and there is no indication, despite the recent Reagan plan, that the American policy of lending them the required support will change. It is possible that the same story will be relived in southern Lebanon—what some Israeli doves now refer to bitterly as “the North Bank”—in coming years. See chapter 6, section 7.1.
Danny Rubinstein points out that there has been opposition within Israel to the settlement policy, but it has been ineffectual because of lack of support from the United States—a complaint of Israeli doves that we have already noted several times. Reagan’s reversal of the earlier American stand on the legality of the settlements gave a “dispensation” to the Israeli government to carry out “a massive settlement program,” building 70 settlements in place of the 10 previously announced. “As long as the Americans, our only friends, do not raise problems, then the internal opposition is silent,” a “sad fact” that was also proven during the Lebanon war, he notes. Those who think that the Israeli government is bringing about a “catastrophe” for Israel are unable to make harsher criticisms than those heard from Washington. We have reached “the last moment” in the occupied territories, with vast resources (provided by the U.S.) being devoted to settlement there, amounting to virtual annexation. Settlement projects are being carried out across the spectrum: by the construction company of the Histadrut Labor Union (Solel Boneh),* religious groups, Rabbi Kahane’s followers who “tell the
* At a demonstration of “about 2000 Peace Now activists” protesting new settlements, Professor Avishai Margalit, a well-known philosopher at the Hebrew University, “attacked the Histadrut for participating in the massive construction programs in the territories, [a stand] which went against the position taken by most of its [Peace Now’s] members who were for a solution
Arabs that they must get out of here,” and so on.72 Histadrut firms are now also operating stone quarries in Lebanon, supplying cut stone to the “Israeli security forces” (i.e., occupying army), and are engaged in many other projects to “enable the Israeli army to settle down there during the winter months.”73
4.3 The Demographic Problem and its Solution The commitment to integrate the occupied territories within Israel in some form raised the “demographic problem” discussed earlier. The only real solution to the problem is some sort of transfer of the population. As noted earlier, it has been alleged that this was Defense Minister Sharon’s intent (see chapter 3, section 2.2.1), and some such notion seems implicit in the logic of the Likud moves towards “de facto annexation.” It is not surprising, then, to hear the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Meir Cohen, say “that Israel had made a grave mistake by not expelling 200,000 to 300,000 Arabs from the West Bank” in 1967. In fact, Labor has had somewhat similar ideas, though they were more delicately put. Prime Minister Rabin had urged that Israel
create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King
involving a territorial compromise between us and the Arabs,” i.e., the Labor Party position; Ha’aretz, Nov. 28, 1982 (Israeli Mirror). The platform of Peace Now opposes “continued rule over another people” and calls for “partition of the Land of Israel,” but is unclear about precisely what is intended.
Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat.74 It has been traditional in Labor Zionism to see the King of Jordan (f
ormerly, Transjordan) as the partner for negotiations, not the local population; see below, chapter 4, section 9.1. Rabin was breaking no new ground in this respect. Furthermore the feeling that ultimately the Arabs must somehow find their place elsewhere has deep roots in Zionist thinking, including such figures as Berl Katznelson, one of the heroes of socialist Zionism (a man who “rose gradually to the status of a secular ‘rabbi’ for most of the early pioneers”75), though he had in mind Syria and Iraq as the ultimate repository for the indigenous population.76
The same idea had been advocated by Chaim Weizmann, David BenGurion, and many others. As Ben-Gurion stated, expressing a common view, “there is nothing morally wrong in the idea,” even if the transfer is compulsory, i.e., is expulsion.77 Recall his view that the indigenous population, about whom he seems to have known little and cared less, have no “emotional involvement” in the country, no attachment to their traditional homes.* One hears the same views expressed today. General
* See chapter 3, section 2.2.2. Another important advocate of removal of the indigenous population was Yosef Weitz, a high official of the Jewish National Fund. When he held this position in the early 1940s, he explained that the proper solution “is the land of Israel, at least the Western Land of Israel [cisJordan] without Arabs, because there is no room for compromise. They must be completely removed, leaving “not one village, not one tribe,” with the possible exception of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the Old City of Jerusalem. They must be removed to Trans-Jordan, Syria or Iraq. This plan was widely discussed in the Palestinian Jewish community and was authorized by the top leadership, including Moshe Sharett (then Shertok) and Berl Katznelson, well-known doves. See Israel Shahak, “‘They should leave and empty out the region’,” letter,