by Noam Chomsky
Hayden laid the blame for the present crisis on the PLO, stating that the PLO, by “its tragic refusal to recognize Israel’s existence as being compatible with Palestinian nationalism, by its repeated calls for annihilation of the Zionist state and by its use of terrorism, has made the current Israeli response inevitable”—compare the actual facts, discussed in chapters 3, 4 above—though he said that he did not “turn a blind moral eye to reports of massive and excessive civilian casualties” or the use of cluster bombs, the familiar stance of many liberal supporters of American aggression in Indochina. He further stated that a direct Israeli invasion of Beirut would be “understandable,” thus lining up with Begin’s Likud against the Labor Party, which opposed this final step; and he held that “Israel won’t be able to…pull back without a PLO withdrawal.”225 As quoted, at least, he did not explain why the refusal of Israel to have any dealings with the political representative of the Palestinians does not justify Palestinian military action against Israel, given that the Israeli invasion is justified by the failure of the PLO to recognize Israel, putting aside the fact, which does not appear to be entirely irrelevant, that the PLO has long agreed to the establishment of a separate state alongside of Israel, a position rejected across the mainstream of Israeli politics.
At a luncheon at the Beverly Hilton for the new president of a “fraternal organization which seeks to link American and Israeli Jewry,” Fonda gave him “a small menorah she had bought in Hebron [that is, in Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank, the settlement of the Gush Emunim racist-chauvinist fanatics who at that very moment were carrying out the pogroms described in chapter 4] during her visit to the Jewish state.” The new president then joined with Vidal Sassoon and a number of Rabbis in a strong endorsement for Hayden for State Assembly, noting the praise he had received from officials of the Begin government and the Labor opposition in Israel, and his views “against the PLO” and for Israel “as a Zionist and Jewish state”226—that is, a state based on the principle of discrimination against the ethnic-religious minorities, a principle that is effectively applied in the Jewish state, as we have seen, though the facts have been equally effectively suppressed in the country where one may make tax-free donations to these discriminatory programs.*
* One might note, in this connection, Irving Howe’s distress over “Jewish boys and girls, children of the generation that saw Auschwitz, [who] hate democratic Israel and celebrate as revolutionary the Egyptian dictatorship,” some of whom “go so far as to collect money for Al Fatah … About this I cannot say more; it is simply too painful” (“Political terrorism; hysteria on the left,” in Chertoff, ed., The New Left and the Jews). He gives no evidence that any such examples exist. If they did, they were sufficiently marginal as to pass unnoticed except by those seeking some means to discredit the activist movements of the 1960s, and surely did not typify the New Left, which was hardly enamored of Nasser and was largely dovish Zionist (see my article in the same volume for documentation). It is interesting to compare Howe’s reaction to the alleged collection of funds by Jewish boys and girls (or anyone in the U.S.) for Fatah, with his reaction to their by no means imaginary collection of charitable funds for Israel’s “national institutions.” to be used for purposes deemed “directly or indirectly beneficial to persons of Jewish religion, race or origin” (not to citizens) including measures that effectively exclude Arab citizens from 92% of the land,
At a meeting in New York after the war, Fonda “announced her unqualified support for Israel and condemned the hypocrisy with regard to Israel in connection with the Lebanon war,” which she attributed to anti-Semitism and to the subservience of liberals to third world states, both phenomena of great moment in the United States. “I love Israel,” she said, “and I believe that Israel is a loyal ally of the United States,” and thus deserving of support, apparently with no further questions asked. “She spoke with great emotion about the prisoners of Zion in the USSR”—but not, as reported, about those who might be called “prisoners of Zion” in another sense of the phrase: in Ansar in Lebanon or in the West Bank villages terrorized by the settlers who were selling her a menorah. Halhul for example (see chapter 4, section 5.1). “Israel rarely makes mistakes,” she said, “and when Israel makes a mistake— everyone, particularly Jews, shouts and screams.” She asked: “Who ever made a criticism of Yasser Arafat, the head of the PLO?”—surely no one in the American press—“and who does he represent anyway?”—a question to which she might have heard some answers on her visit to Hebron, had she chosen to mingle with the local population, apart from her gracious hosts. She concluded “that it is easy to sit here, Jews and non-Jews, and to make criticisms.” “But we do not live on the Lebanon border and we were not attacked for 12 years by the Palestinian terrorists,” so we have no right to criticize.227 And by the same logic, those who have not lived in Palestinian refugee camps surely have no right to criticize the PLO.
legalized robbery of Arab lands, channelling development funds to Jewish rather than Arab citizens, etc. This is not “too painful to discuss” for an ardent (post1967) supporter of Israel, though in this case the phenomenon is quite real. See chapters 2, 4 and references cited for discussion of the background for all of this.
Not everyone in Israel is entranced by these observations, though most of the press, including the left-wing press cited, is quite pleased. The well-known Israeli dove Uri Avneri, for example, writes: “I have learned to despise Jane Fonda, who gained a reputation as a fighter for peace and human rights, and who now sells this name to various fascists, among them Israelis, in order to advance her career and that of her husband...,” along with some far harsher comments.
A “partial list of events in the vicinity of Hebron,” about which Fonda could have learned with ease on her visit there, is presented by Rafik Halabi, who notes that “until now their perpetrators have not been revealed and no one has come to trial for any of them.” Included are a 1976 incident in which “tens of [Arab] youths and students from Hebron” were held prisoner in Kiryat Arba, set upon by dogs so that several required hospitalization; the 1976 expulsion of a judge of a Muslim religious court by the Kiryat Arba settlers after they publicly humiliated him; killings, destruction of vineyards, looting and destruction of property in the house of a leading Muslim family, throwing of grenades at Arab houses, destruction of houses, etc.; alongside of events of the sort described in chapter 4, section 5. Chaim Bermant, an orthodox Jew himself, describes Fonda’s Hebron hosts as orthodox Jews for whom “Hate Thy Neighbour” has become a “creed” and a general “philosophy”: “The knitted kippa [skullcap; their symbol], in Arab eyes, has become the badge of the bully and the thug, and I’m afraid I’m beginning to see it in the same light myself.”228
At the opposite extreme of California politics, newly-elected rightist Senator Pete Wilson, virtually quoting Jane Fonda a few days earlier, said that “he intends to follow a strongly pro-Israel line in the Senate because Israel is ‘the only real hope that we enjoy of a strong, determined ally’ in the explosive Middle East.”229 On the views of California’s other Senator, liberal Democrat Alan Cranston, see chapter 2, section 1. In short, considerable unity, across the board.
Jane Fonda is, of course, not alone in her contention that criticism of the war in Lebanon is an expression of anti-Semitism. Norman Podhoretz, among many others, makes the same allegation.* Critics of theinvasion, he holds, deny to the Jews “the right of self-defense,” which they exercised by invading Lebanon: “What we have here is the old anti-Semitism modified to suit the patterns of international life. Why should Americans lend themselves to this disgusting maneuver?”230 Or Israelis; for example, those who pointed out the absurdity of appealing
* Podhoretz is the editor of Commentary, which I have avoided discussing here. For an example of what it contains, see Robert W. Tucker, “Lebanon: The Case for the War,’ October 1982, which begins by denying that Israel had any “welldeveloped plan” to destroy the PLO presence in
Lebanon (rather, the IDF was, “one might almost say pulled” to Beirut by unexpected lack of “effective opposition”), carefully avoiding extensive and quite compelling evidence to the contrary from Israeli sources, some cited earlier, and continuing at the same level of concern for fact. Tucker rejects the “moral critique” of Israel’s aggression, writing that “what has so often been presented as hard-headed political analysis is, when its surface is once scratched, moral preference masquerading as political analysis.” He gives no examples, but the judgment holds of his affectation of “hard-headed political analysis,” a largely muddleheaded expression of his “moral preference” for the doctrine that “there is nothing in reason or morality that enjoins a government to refrain from taking action against a threat to the state’s security,” that is, to engage in aggressive war, even in a case such as this, where “the threat that united virtually all Israelis” turns out to be the threat “of a PLO state in the West Bank.” His position is a familiar one; Hitler and Goebbels, for example, gave a similar justification for their resort to force. See p. 372*. It is not unusual for this moral stance to be represented as “hard-headed political analysis.”
to the right of self-defense when in fact the PLO had scrupulously observed the July 1981 cease-fire. Others concocted lurid tales of how Lebanon was “dismembered by Soviet-armed PLO terrorists and Syrian forces who have used its towns and villages as a battleground,” leading to the death of 100,000 civilians; the world stood by in silence “while the PLO imposed a seven-year reign of terror on Lebanon” and now condemns Israel for its “recent campaign to uproot the terrorists from their bases” despite its “extraordinary precautions” to prevent civilian casualties. And of course the bottom line: “vital American interests are at stake.”231 The signers speak of “the campaign of lies and distortions mounted by the terrorists and their supporters,” an apt description of their own statement.
It is easy enough to ridicule such pronouncements by comparing them with the undisputed facts about the civil war in Lebanon, or with the descriptions by Israeli soldiers, journalists and military experts. But to do so would be to miss the more important point, the efficacy of the Big Lie when the media are effectively disciplined and the illustration, yet again, of how easy it is for intellectuals to believe anything, however fantastic, in the service of some Holy State and to produce apologetics for its atrocities, phenomena of no small significance in this terrible century.
Some attempted more original arguments, for example, Arthur Goldberg, who offered this one: Free from the illusion, now demonstrated to be without foundation, that the PLO has the coherence, strength and support to act as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people,” and liberated from its terroristic acts and blackmail against Palestinian leaders, inhabitants of the West Bank, and other Arab countries, it should be possible to conclude an autonomy agreement with all deliberate speed.232
It is not entirely clear who is said to be now “free” and “liberated” in this semi-coherent statement, but the idea appears to be that by successfully employing its overwhelming military might to smash the PLO, Israel has demonstrated that the PLO cannot claim to represent the Palestinian people, specifically, those in Lebanon and the occupied territories who support it even though it is not the world’s fourth strongest military power. With a bit more understanding of the facts, and a rather different moral stance, Meir Pail put the point in these terms, presenting what he suggests may have been “the real aim of the invasion,” conveyed in the following “message of vital import to the Palestinians” in the occupied territories:
“Beware you Palestinians living under Israeli rule! All that we have done to the refugee camps, the cities and towns and villages of south Lebanon, on the coast of the Mediterranean between Rashidiye, Tyre and Beirut we can do to you in Gaza, Judea, Samaria…and even perhaps in Um-el-Faham and Nazareth [within Israel proper]. And we can do that now, especially, given that there is no P.L.O. or any other legitimate organized body that could be seen to represent the Palestinian cause. If you will bend down and follow our rules, it would be best that you accept the limited autonomy offered you as defined by Begin-Sharon-Milson; if not, your fate will be that of Rashidiye (near Tyre), EinHilwa (near Sidon), or Beirut.”233
This “message” is a more literate version of what Goldberg is apparently trying to say, stripped of the deceptive rhetoric that only barely conceals the true meaning of his words. The former Supreme Court Justice and UN Ambassador has produced a most impressive contribution to contemporary thought: if some political entity can be destroyed by force, that demonstrates its illegitimacy and the right of the conqueror to determine the fate of those whom it had pretended to represent. This idea has not previously been advanced, to my knowledge, though its usefulness is evident; for example, to justify the Nazi conquests. Goldberg’s article would also delight structuralist literary analysts with its intriguing formal properties. Thus it begins by berating the media for joining the PLO in speaking of “an invasion” when “Israeli troops encircle Beirut” (how odd for them to do so), and it ends, with charming consistency, by referring to Israel’s “justified invasion of Lebanon.”
There appears to be one striking exception to this picture of a broad spectrum of American discussion, namely, the publication here of Jacobo Timerman’s harsh criticism of Begin’s Israel, The Longest War, and the reception accorded to it.234 An earlier version was published in the New Yorker, a mass circulation journal that reaches a liberal intellectual audience, and it has been extensively reviewed, critically but also with respect, a most unusual occurrence with regard to a book that is critical of Israel, since 1967. This is true even in the New Republic, where passages in the book are described as “stuff and nonsense” and “faintly nauseating,” but it is nevertheless taken to be “an eloquent personal testimony, and a contribution of lasting significance to the great debate on Israel.”235 The latter comment is a radical departure from the normal style of this journal in the case of people who presume to criticize policies of Israel, except within the limits of the tolerated form of “critical support.” More typical are the terms applied to Alexander Cockburn, whose detailed factual and analytic commentary on the war and the Sharon-Milson repression, in the Village Voice, was unique in American journalism in its insight, detail, and accuracy and was thus a major irritant in New Republic circles: he is “a nasty piece of work,” “despicable,” with a “double moral standard,” “admiration for the P.L.O. and extreme tolerance of the Soviet Union,”236 charges flung without a shred of evidence or argument, and with the veracity that we expect in comparable descriptions of political enemies in the Daily Worker. Elsewhere too, reviewers and journals that rarely tolerate critical discussion of Israel have praised Timerman’s book for its balance and integrity (while generally dismissing its contents). Why such exceptional treatment? Does this show that the spectrum of approved opinion is indeed far wider than I have suggested, in mainstream intellectual circles?
The comment cited from the New Republic gives a clue to the mystery. The book is, indeed, a “personal testimony,” and can be tolerated as “a contribution of lasting significance to the great debate on Israel,” in fact as virtually the sole critical discussion to be admitted to this canon, precisely for this reason. It contains few facts and little analysis, but is primarily a cry of anguish, often quite harsh and eloquent. It is, therefore, fairly safe: one man’s impressions, to be understood in terms of his personal history and psychology, and therefore an excellent choice to represent the side of the critics in the “great debate.” A further clue is given by the reference in every review to the book’s “balance.” The New Republic, for example, begins by noting Timerman’s “strong criticism of some modes of condemning Israel and of supporting the Palestinians,” and his “devastating indictment of the P.L.O. sympathizers and the effect of their sympathy,” quoted at length. These examples are cited as “sharp bursts of shrewd insight,” the only ones so honored. It is not easy to
know to whom Timerman is referring in these “sharp bursts of shrewd insight,” since this impassioned “personal testimony” is rather short on specifics, but there is little doubt that this “balance” contributes to rendering his criticism tolerable, alongside of the restriction to personal impressions and feelings. A closer scrutiny of the features of the book that permit it to be admitted into the “great debate” yields some insight into the contemporary ideological scene.
As already noted, Timerman repeats standard myths about Israel, for example, that the 1982 Lebanon war “was the first war launched by Israel” (see chapter 4, section 3). This is one notable contribution to “balance,” and there are numerous others. Consider the statement that the PLO “started the 1975 war” in Lebanon—by arranging to have a busload of Palestinians killed by the Phalange in April (see section 3.1). Or the claim that the Peace Now demonstrators on July 4 were “ready to withdraw this very day from Lebanon and negotiate this very day with the Palestinians, regardless of who represents them, for the establishment of an independent sovereign state on the West Bank,” a serious misrepresentation of the facts; with some exceptions, the demonstrators took no such position, nor did Peace Now as an organization, but the picture is a useful contribution to images of Israel that are welcome here, regardless of the facts. Or consider the injunction to the Palestinians to abandon their “terrorist strategy” and “sterile diplomacy” and to “organize politically”—unaccompanied by any account of just how they were to “organize politically” under the regime imposed by the Labor Party and then Begin, or why their willingness to accept a two-state settlement in accordance with the international consensus is “sterile diplomacy” (indeed it is, given U.S.-Israeli rejectionism, but that is not Timerman’s point). Such assertions, which help establish the “balance” that renders his condemnation of Israeli policies tolerable, go part of the way towards explaining the relatively favorable reception of the book. But let us look further.