by Noam Chomsky
“The conflagration which was openly prepared by the incendiaries broke out at the moment determined upon. On Sunday, April 6, the first day of the Christian Passover and the seventh day of the Jewish holiday, the church bells began to ring at noontime, and a large crowd of Russian burghers and artisans, acting undoubtedly upon a given signal, scattered all over the town, and fell upon the Jewish houses and stores. The bands were preceded by street urchins who were throwing stones at the windows. The rioters, whose number was swelled by these youthful ‘fighters,’ seeing that the police made no attempt to interfere, began to break into the houses and stores, and to throw the contents on the street where everything was destroyed or plundered by the festive crowd. But even then the police and soldier detachments who were stationed on the streets remained passive, and made no attempt to arrest the rioters. This attitude served in the eyes of the mob as a final proof that the rumors concerning the permission of the Tzar ‘to beat the Jews’ were correct. An immense riff-raff, in a state of intoxication, crowded the streets, shouting ‘Death to the Zhyds! Beat the Zhyds!’
“In the evening looting gave way to killing. The murderers, armed with clubs and knives, assailed the Jews in the cars, on the streets, and in the houses, wounding them severely, sometimes even fatally. Even then, the police and military remained inactive; only when in one place a group of Jews, armed with sticks, attempted to drive off the murderers, the police stepped in at once and disarmed the defenders.
“At ten o’clock in the evening the looting and killing were suddenly stopped. Rumor had it that the general staff of the rioters were holding a meeting concerning the further plan of military operations, and were making arrangements for a systematic butchery. The ‘army’ soon received the necessary orders, and in the course of the entire day of April 7, from daybreak until eight o’clock in the evening, Kishinev was the scene of bestialities such as find few parallels even in the history of the most barbarous ages... Throughout the entire day, wagons were seen moving in the streets, carrying wounded and slain Jews to the hospitals which had been converted into field-lazarettes. But even this sight did not induce the police to step in... The governor of Bessarabia, von Raaben, who, on the morning of the second day of the pogrom, was waited upon by a Jewish deputation begging for protection, replied that he could do nothing since he had received no instructions from St. Petersburg.
“At last at five o’clock in the afternoon, a telegram was received from Plehve, and at six o’clock large detachments of troops, fully armed, appeared on the central streets. No sooner had the crowd noticed that the soldiers were ready to act than it took to its heels, without a single shot being fired… It is needless to point out that had this readiness of the police and military to attend to their duty been displayed in Kishinev at the inception of the pogrom, not a single Jew would have been murdered nor a single house destroyed. As it was, the murderers and rioters were given a free hand for two days, and the result was that forty-five Jews were slain, eighty-six severely wounded or crippled, five hundred slightly wounded, apart from cases of rape, the number of which could not be determined... As against the enormous number of Jewish victims, there were only two fatalities among the intoxicated rioters.”1
“A cry of horror rang throughout Russia and the more or less civilized countries of the world when the news of the Kishinev butchery became known.” Leo Tolstoy wrote of his
burning feeling of pity for the innocent victims of the cruelty of the populace, amazement at the bestiality of all these socalled Christians, revulsion at all these so-called cultured people who instigated the mob and sympathized with its actions. But I felt a particular horror for the principal culprit, our Government with its clergy which fosters in the people bestial sentiments and fanaticism, with its horde of murderous officials. The crime committed at Kishinev is nothing but a direct consequence of that propaganda of falsehood and violence which is conducted by the Russian government with such energy... Like the Turkish Government at the time of the Armenian massacres, it remains entirely indifferent to the most horrible acts of cruelty, as long as these acts do not affect its interests. Meanwhile, “the revelations in the foreign press were of a nature to stagger all Europe and America.” There was a judicial investigation, but the trial was conducted “behind closed doors.” “By this act, the bloodstained Russian Government refused in advance to rehabilitate itself before the civilized world, which looked upon it as the instigator of the catastrophe.” Only the “hired assassins and plunderers from among the lower classes” were tried and condemned, while “the organizers of the butchery and the ring-leaders of the mob were escaping justice,” though one “had blown out his brains before the beginning of the trial.” Some were sentenced to “hard labor or penal service,” but the real ring-leaders in the government, army and police, were never sentenced by any court, again scandalizing the “civilized world.”2 And naturally the other “principal culprits,” the clergy and others who conducted “the propaganda of falsehood and violence” that instigated the mob, escaped unscathed, firm in their conviction of moral rectitude and honored in their society.
The catastrophe had a “long-lasting effect” upon the Jews of Russia. “Neither the pogroms at the beginning of the eighties, nor the Moscow atrocities at the beginning of the nineties can compare, in their soulstirring effect upon Russian Jewry, with the massacre of Kishinev,” Dubnow writes. It was a major factor in the great wave of emigration of Jews from Russia in the following years, primarily to the United States, but also to Palestine, including “the teenage founding fathers of Israel.”3
The greatest poet of the Hebrew national renaissance, Chaim Nachman Bialik, wrote a series of famous poems in which “he portrayed his people’s agony, scourging the craven, dumb submission of the victims and calling forth the very indignation of Heaven,”4 expressing his anguish and despair over this barbaric massacre, in which 45 Jews were brutally murdered under the watchful eyes of the Russian army and police after they had been assured by a higher authority that “the proper measures for their safety had been adopted.” In one of these poems Bialik wrote:
And if there is justice—let it show itself at once! But if justice show itself after I have been blotted out from beneath the skies—let its throne be hurled down forever! Let heaven rot with eternal evil! And you, the arrogant, go in this violence of yours, live by your bloodshed and be cleansed by it.
And cursed be the man who says: Avenge! No such revenge—revenge for the blood of a little child—has yet been devised by Satan. Let the blood pierce through the abyss! Let the blood seep down to the depths of darkness, and eat away there, in the dark, and breach all the rotting foundations of the earth.5
The phrase “no revenge for the blood of a little child has yet been devised by Satan” has been repeated many times in Israel in the past years, by Menachem Begin and many others, with reference to the terrorist acts of the “two-legged beasts.”
Memories of the barbarous Kishinev massacre with its 45 victims were soon to be aroused in Israel as the Lebanese war came to an end,6 though not in the United States, which had assured the people of the Sabra and Shatila camps, “praying for protection,” “that the necessary instructions had already been given and that the proper measures for their safety had been adopted.” And surely not by the clergy and intelligentsia who had, for so long, “fostered bestial sentiments and fanaticism” in their “propaganda of falsehood and violence” of which the massacres were a “direct consequence,” as American peacekeeping forces withdrew in violation of their pledge to protect the defenseless population, and the Israeli army at once invaded West Beirut in violation of its pledges and immediately dispatched its minions to conduct a slaughter of Palestinians for which the proper words are lacking if, indeed, the cowardly and brutal murder of 45 Jews in Kishinev was an act with “few parallels even in the history of the most barbarous ages.” On the contrary, the “principal culprits” kept silent, or blamed someone else (even the Palestinians), or rushed t
o the press to assure the world that nothing they had done could have helped form policies and attitudes towards the Palestinians that allowed these events to occur. Within Israel itself, there was a real and meaningful expression of anguish on the part of certain sectors of the population. As we have seen, this reaction had the practical effect of reinforcing the trends towards militarization of Israeli society and domination of the occupied territories as it filtered through the ideological and political structures of the United States, which bears primary responsibility for the events we have described, and those to which we now turn.7
2. A Glorious Victory 2.1 The Achievements of Operation “Peace for Galilee”
A
s the end of August 1982 approached, the government of Israel could look with some satisfaction at its achievements. Its domestic opposition was quiet and Begin’s popularity was at an all-time high; as Labor cheerlessly observed, “Nothing succeeds
like success.” The opposition Labor Alignment was effectively neutralized by the widespread understanding that the U.S. had given the “green light.” Those who had qualms, and they were many, were unwilling to be more critical of state policy than the paymasters, though there were others who did not bend to this principle and continued to oppose the war with courage and honor, some refusing to serve in the hideous concentration camps or to serve in Lebanon altogether. In the occupied territories, protest over the invasion and resistance to the forthcoming extension of Israeli sovereignty remained high, but, the Israeli leadership hoped, it was not likely to be effective given Israel’s Israeli leadership hoped, it was not likely to be effective given Israel’s year occupation, and, crucially, given the submissiveness and discipline of articulate American opinion, which had permitted all of this to pass virtually unnoticed, even to be lauded as a benign experiment in ArabJewish cooperation that was but one aspect of a magnanimity unique in history as Israel marched forward to realize the democratic socialist dream.
The U.S. government remained solidly behind Israel’s actions despite occasional disclaimers, and the flow of military and economic aid was actually scheduled to increase, as it soon did. As for public opinion, all was not as it should be, but the main bastions were holding solidly. Much of Europe was appalled. The Socialist International, which had bent over backwards to support Israel in the recent past,8 sent a delegation to Beirut that returned with words of harsh condemnation. Mario Soares of Portugal, who headed the delegation, described their “impression of horror” at what they saw in Beirut, adding that “the pictures we have seen on French television are less than the reality” in a city that Israel had used as “an experimental ground for…new techniques of bombardment.” The French representative, national secretary of the pro-Israel Socialist Party, stated that “one cannot imagine in France, in Europe, what the bombardments of Beirut were like.” He also had the impression that the bombardments were “selective,” aiming at such targets as the places of residence of the French ambassador and of journalists and political figures, as part of a “methodical” strategy.9 But the French Socialist Party was soon to return to its protective stance, and in any event, Europe matters little as long as American opinion remains properly disciplined.
In Lebanon itself, the situation also offered much reason for satisfaction on the part of the government of Israel. Its favored candidate, Bashir Gemayel, had been elected President under Israeli guns; some were concerned that those who had carried out this semi-coup were capable of doing the same in Israel as well-among them, former Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur of the Labor Party; see chapter 5, section 6.3—but their voice was that of a shrinking minority. With the PLO removed from Beirut and the political and cultural center of Palestinian nationalism demolished, the problem of increasingly visible PLO moderation—the “veritable catastrophe” that was causing such “panic”—might well be on its way to solution, and there might even be some hope that the PLO would return to the tactics of hijacking planes, terrorist bombing, killing many Jews, and other actions more welcome to the government of Israel according to the rather plausible analysis of Yehoshua Porath, Danny Rubinstein, and others (see chapter 5, section 4.6.1). Furthermore, it should now be even easier than before to dismiss the allegiance of the West Bank Samidin to the PLO and their insistence that the path to a negotiated settlement is through Beirut. The few remaining political figures still tolerated by the occupying army, such as Elias Freij, might continue to repeat that “The P.L.O. is the official representative for the Palestinian Arabs,” but with the PLO in disarray, little heed need be given to such minor noises from below, particularly as long as they are unheard or dismissed in the United States.10Soon the Samidin would be nothing more than drugged roaches in a bottle, as the Chief of Staff was to explain shortly after; see p. 239*.
The situation in Lebanon offered still more cause for self-congratulation. In the course of the civil war, a balance of force had been created between the Muslim-Palestinian coalition and the Israeli-backed Maronite and Haddad forces. The removal of the PLO destroyed this balance; power now rested in the hands of Israel’s clients, though it still remained to eliminate the last elements of the Muslim-Palestinian coalition, as was done, shortly after the departure of the PLO fighters, with the conquest of West Beirut in violation of the agreement under which the PLO had left. Israel’s clients would now be free, it could be hoped, to impose their will by the methods at which they had proven so adept in the past, as in Karantina, Khiyam and Tel al-Zaatar. Things seemed well on their way to the “new order” in Lebanon to which Israel aspired, and the danger of Palestinian self-determination in the occupied territories— the feared “dagger poised at the heart of Israel”—also seemed to have been overcome.
As for the government of the country that had officially been liberated, it announced casualty figures of close to 20,000 killed and over 30,000 wounded, almost 7000 in Beirut where about 80-90% were civilians, very likely underestimates for reasons already discussed. The wounded included a large number of amputees and many victims of cluster and phosphorus bombs, a tribute to American technology and munificence. Many thousands, including much of the remaining teenage and adult male population of Palestinians and also many thousands of Lebanese and others, were in Israeli concentration camps in Lebanon and Israel where they could be brutalized in peace, with little concern in what Dubnow called “the more or less civilized countries of the world.” In the south of Lebanon, the refugee camps had been destroyed by bombardment or bulldozed after the refugees had been removed. The two-legged beasts who had infested the area, most of them since 1948 when they had fled or were driven from their homes, had once again been demoralized and dispersed; their villages demolished, they remained without sustenance, shelter, health and social services, or protection after the male population had been removed. The army of occupation had no plans for them at that time except to “drive them East,” in the words of the responsible senior official, Ya’akov Meridor, who was busy denouncing the U.S. and European media, following their “regular policy of toeing the PLO line,” for their “lies” about casualties and destruction, and could not concern himself with the fate of the people in his charge. Many had, in fact, been driven East. In these respects too, then, there was ample reason for satisfaction.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops were moving into positions well north of Beirut from which they could launch an attack on Palestinian and Lebanese “terrorists” who had not yet been eliminated, and on the remaining Syrian troops to the north and east. As few could fail to observe, Damascus was within range of Israeli heavy artillery. Further bombings in September destroyed the strategic Beirut-Damascus highway behind Syrian lines, “effectively cutting off Syrian troops west of the central mountain chain from reinforcements and supplies.”11 The basis had been laid for the next stage in dispersing the refugees and extending Israel’s regional power, though the plans were soon to be upset by unanticipated factors.
2.2 The Syrian Phase of the War In this connection, something should be sa
id about a topic so far put aside, the Syrian phase of Israel’s Lebanon war. The nearest that we have to a definitive account of this topic was provided in a series of detailed articles by military analyst Ze’ev Schiff in Ha’aretz. He dismisses the claim, a “new invention” offered in justification for Operation Peace for Galilee after the fact, that Syria was planning an attack on Israel that was forestalled by Israel’s preemptive move. Defense Minister Sharon’s claims to this effect, he argues, entirely lack foundation; “it is known today” that the Syrian command had no such plans under present circumstances, and were emphasizing “defensive measures.” Phalangist initiatives had led to a Syrian response to protect their lines of communication, something that no army could have failed to undertake. It was the view of Israeli intelligence and others that these Phalangist “provocations” had the “intention of causing us [Israel] to come into military conflict with the Syrians.” Further conflict resulted from Sharon’s “large plan,” namely, to impose his ‘‘new order” in Lebanon by ‘‘driving the Syrians out of Lebanon” and installing Bashir Gemayel, the head of the Phalangist Lebanese Forces, as President, blocking Syria’s anticipated attempt to place its favorite, former Maronite President Suleiman Franjieh, in power as it had done six years before with Elias Sarkis. Recall that the election was scheduled for AugustSeptember, quite probably a factor in the timing of the Israeli invasion, a conclusion that Schiff does not draw here (but see chapter 5, sections 4.4, 4.6.1), but that is reinforced by his analysis. “Syria made efforts to avoid conflict” with Israel, but was unable to do so, because of the very nature of Sharon’s “large plan,” which was put into effect at once, as the Labor opposition was aware despite a pretense of shock and outrage at Begin’s “duplicity” (see chapter 5, section 6.3).