abu yahmed
26-10-00, 03:52 AM
AL-AQSA INTIFADA
By Noam Chomsky*
After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories,
Prime Minister
Ehud Barak announced a new plan to determine the final status of the
region.
During these weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including 30
children,
often by "excessive use of lethal force in circumstances in which
neither the
lives of the security forces nor others were in imminent danger,
resulting in
unlawful killings," Amnesty International concluded in a detailed
report that
was scarcely mentioned in the US. The ratio of Palestinian to Israeli
dead was
then about 15-1, reflecting the resources of force available.
Barak's plan was not given in detail, but the outlines are familiar:
they conform
to the "final status map" presented by the US-Israel as the basis for
the Camp
David negotiations that collapsed in July. This plan, extending
US-Israeli rejectionist
proposals of earlier years, called for cantonization of the territories
that
Israel had conquered in 1967, with mechanisms to ensure that usable
land and
resources (primarily water) remain largely in Israeli hands while the
population
is administered by a corrupt and brutal Palestinian authority (PA),
playing the
role traditionally assigned to indigenous collaborators under the
several varieties
of imperial rule:
the Black leadership of South Africa's Bantustans, to mention only the
most obvious
analogue. In the West Bank, a northern canton is to include Nablus and
other
Palestinian cities, a central canton is based in Ramallah, and a
southern canton
in Bethlehem; Jericho is to remain isolated. Palestinians would be
effectively
cut off from Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life.
Similar arrangements are likely in Gaza, with Israel keeping the
southern coastal
region and a small settlement at Netzarim (the site of many of the
recent atrocities),
which is hardly more than an excuse for a large military presence and
roads splitting
the Strip below Gaza City. These proposals formalize the vast
settlement and
construction programs that Israel has been conducting, thanks to
munificent US
aid, with increasing energy since the US was able to implement its
version of
the "peace process" after the Gulf war.
For more on the negotiations and their background, see my July 25
commentary;
and for further background, the commentary by Alex and Stephen Shalom,
Oct. 10.
The goal of the negotiations was to secure official PA adherence to
this project.
Two months after they collapsed, the current phase of violence began.
Tensions,
always high, were raised when the Barak government authorized a visit
by Ariel
Sharon with 1000 police to the Muslim religious sites (Al-Aqsa) on a
Thursday
(Sept. 28). Sharon is the very symbol of Israeli state terror and
aggression,
with a rich record of atrocities going back to 1953. Sharon's announced
purpose
was to demonstrate "Jewish sovereignty" over the al-Aqsa compound, but
as the
veteran correspondent Graham Usher points out, the "al-Aqsa intifada,"
as Palestinians
call it, was not initiated by Sharon's visit; rather, by the massive
and intimidating
police and military presence that Barak introduced the following day,
the day
of prayers. Predictably, that led to clashes as thousands of people
streamed
out of the mosque, leaving 7 Palestinians dead and 200 wounded.
Whatever Barak's purpose, there could hardly have been a more efficient
way
to set the stage for the shocking atrocities of the following weeks.
The same
can be said about the failed negotiations, which focused on Jerusalem,
a condition
observed strictly by US commentary. Possibly Israeli sociologist Baruch
Kimmerling
was exaggerating when he wrote that a solution to this problem "could
have been
reached in five minutes," but he is right to say that "by any
diplomatic logic
[it] should have been the easiest issue to solve (Ha'aretz, Oct. 4).
It is understandable that Clinton-Barak should want to suppress what
they are
doing in the occupied territories, which is far more important. Why did
Arafat
agree? Perhaps because he recognizes that the leadership of the Arab
states regard
the Palestinians as a nuisance, and have little problem with the
Bantustan-style
settlement, but cannot overlook administration of the religious sites,
fearing
the reaction of their own populations. Nothing could be better
calculated to
set off a
confrontation with religious overtones, the most ominous kind, as
centuries of
experience reveal.
The primary innovation of Barak's new plan is that the US-Israeli
demands are
to be imposed by direct force instead of coercive diplomacy, and in a
harsher
form, to punish the victims who refused to concede politely. The
outlines are
in basic accord with policies established informally in 1968 (the Allon
Plan),
and variants that have been proposed since by both political groupings
(the Sharon
Plan, the Labor government plans, and others). It is important to
recall that
the policies have not only been proposed, but implemented, with the
support of
the US. That support has been decisive since 1971, when Washington
abandoned
the basic diplomatic
framework that it had initiated (UN Security Council Resolution 242),
then pursued
its unilateral rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that
followed, culminating
in the "Oslo process." Since all of this has been effectively vetoed
from history
in the US, it takes a little work to discover the essential facts. They
are not
controversial, only evaded.
As noted, Barak's plan is a particularly harsh version of familiar
US-Israeli
rejectionism. It calls for terminating electricity, water,
telecommunications,
and other services that are doled out in meager rations to the
Palestinian population,
who are now under virtual siege. It should be recalled that
independent development
was ruthlessly barred by the military regime from 1967, leaving the
people in
destitution and dependency, a process that has worsened considerably
during the
US-run "Oslo process."
One reason is the "closures" regularly instituted, must brutally by the
more
dovish Labor-based governments. As discussed by another outstanding
journalist,
Amira Hass, this policy was initiated by the Rabin government "years
before Hamas
had planned suicide attacks, [and] has been perfected over the years,
especially
since the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority." An
efficient
mechanism of strangulation and control, closure has been accompanied by
the importation
of an essential commodity to replace the cheap and exploited
Palestinian labor
on which much of the economy relies: hundreds of thousands of illegal
immigrants
from around the world, many of them victims of the "neoliberal reforms"
of the
recent years of "globalization." Surviving in misery and without
rights, they
are regularly described as a virtual slave labor force in the Israeli
press.
The current Barak proposal is to extend this program, reducing still
further
the prospects even for mere survival for the Palestinians. A major
barrier to
the program is the opposition of the Israeli business community, which
relies
on a captive Palestinian market for some $2.5 billion in annual
exports, and
has "forged links with Palestinian security officials" and Arafat's
"economic
adviser, enabling them to carve out monopolies with official PA
consent" (Financial
Times, Oct. 22; also NYT, same day). They have also hoped to set up
industrial
zones in the territories, transferring pollution and exploiting a cheap
labor
force in maquiladora-style installations owned by Israeli enterprises
and the
Palestinian elite, who are enriching themselves in the time-honored
fashion.
Barak's new proposals appear to be more of a warning than a plan,
though they
are a natural extension of what has come before. Insofar as they are
implemented,
they would extend the project of "invisible transfer" that has been
underway
for many years, and that makes more sense than outright "ethnic
cleansing" (as
we call the process when carried out by official enemies). People
compelled to
abandon hope and offered no opportunities for meaningful existence will
drift
elsewhere, if they have any chance to do so.
The plans, which have roots in traditional goals of the Zionist
movement from
its origins (across the ideological spectrum), were articulated in
internal discussion
by Israeli government Arabists in 1948 while outright ethnic cleansing
was underway:
their expectation was that the refugees "would be crushed" and "die,"
while "most
of them would turn into human dust and the waste of society, and join
the most
impoverished classes in the Arab countries." Current plans, whether
imposed
by coercive diplomacy or outright force, have similar goals. They are
not unrealistic
if they can rely on the world-dominant power and its intellectual
classes.
The current situation is described accurately by Amira Hass, in
Israel's most
prestigious daily (Ha'aretz, Oct. 18). Seven years after the
Declaration of Principles
in September 1993 -- which foretold this outcome for anyone who chose
to see
-- "Israel has security and administrative control" of most of the West
Bank
and 20% of the Gaza Strip. It has been able "to double the number of
settlers
in 10 years, to enlarge the settlements, to continue its discriminatory
policy
of cutting back water quotas for three million Palestinians, to prevent
Palestinian
development in most of the area of the West Bank, and to seal an entire
nation
into restricted areas, imprisoned in a network of bypass roads meant
for Jews
only. During these days of strict internal restriction of movement in
the West
Bank, one can see how carefully each road was planned: So that 200,000
Jews have
freedom of movement, about three million Palestinians are locked into
their Bantustans
until they submit to Israeli demands. The bloodbath that has been going
on for
three weeks is the natural outcome of seven years of lying and
deception, just
as the first Intifada was the natural outcome of direct Israeli
occupation."
The settlement and construction programs continue, with US support,
whoever may
be in office. On August 18, Ha'aretz noted that two governments --
Rabin and
Barak -- had declared that settlement was "frozen," in accord with the
dovish
image preferred in the US and by much of the Israeli left. They made
use of the
"freezing" to intensify settlement, including economic inducements for
the secular
population, automatic grants for ultra-religious settlers, and other
devices,
which can be carried out with little protest while "the lesser of two
evils"
happens to be making the decisions, a pattern hardly unfamiliar
elsewhere. "There
is freezing and there is reality," the report observes caustically. The
reality
is that settlement inthe occupied territories has grown over four times
as fast
as in Israeli population centers, continuing -- perhaps accelerating --
under
Barak.
Settlement brings with it large infrastructure projects designed to
integrate
much of the region within Israel, while leaving Palestinians isolated,
apart
from "Palestinian roads" that are travelled at one's peril. Another
journalist
with an outstanding record, Danny Rubinstein, points out that "readers
of the
Palestinian papers get the impression (and rightly so) that activity in
the settlements
never stops. Israeli is constantly building, expanding and reinforcing
the Jewish
settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is always grabbing homes
and lands
in areas beyond the 1967 lines - and of course, this is all at the
expense of
the Palestinians, in order to limit them, push them into a corner and
then out.
In other words, the goal is to eventually dispossess them of their
homeland and
their capital, Jerusalem" (Ha'aretz, October 23).
Readers of the Israeli press, Rubinstein continues, are largely
shielded from
the unwelcome facts, though not entirely so. In the US, it is far more
important
for the population to be kept in ignorance, for obvious
reasons: the economic and military programs rely crucially on US
support, which
is domestically unpopular and would be far more so if its purposes were
known.
To illustrate, on October 3, after a week of bitter fighting and
killing, the
defense correspondent of Ha'aretz reported "the largest purchase of
military
helicopters by the Israeli Air Force in a decade," an agreement with
the US to
provide Israel with 35 Blackhawk military helicopters and spare parts
at a cost
of $525 million, along with jet fuel, following the purchase shortly
before of
patrol aircraft and Apache attack helicopters. These are "the newest
and most
advanced multi-mission attack helicopters in the US inventory," the
Jerusalem
Post adds. It would be unfair to say that those providing the gifts
cannot discover
the fact. In a database search, David Peterson found that they were
reported
in the Raleigh (North Carolina) press. The sale of military
helicopters was
condemned by Amnesty International (Oct. 19), because these
"US-supplied helicopters
have been used to
violate the human rights of Palestinians and Arab Israelis during the
recent
conflict in the region." Surely that was anticipated, barring advanced
cretinism.
Israel has been condemned internationally (the US abstaining) for
"excessive
use of force," in a disproportionate reaction" to Palestinian violence.
That
includes even rare condemnations by the ICRC, specifically, for
attackson at
least 18 Red Cross ambulances (NYT, Oct 4). Israel's response is that
it is being
unfairly singled out for criticism. The response is entirely accurate.
Israel
is employing official US doctrine, known here as "the Powell doctrine,"
though
it is of far more ancient vintage, tracing back centuries: Use massive
force
in response to any perceived threat.
Official Israeli doctrine allows "the full use of weapons against
anyone who
endangers lives and especially at anyone who shoots at our forces or at
Israelis"
(Israeli military legal adviser Daniel Reisner, FT, Oct. 6).
Full use of force by a modern army includes tanks, helicopter gunships,
sharpshooters
aiming at civilians (often children), etc. US weapons sales "do not
carry a stipulation
that the weapons can't be used against civilians," a Pentagon official
said;
he "acknowleged however that anti-tank missiles and attack helicopters
are not
traditionally considered tools for crowd control" -- except by those
powerful
enough to get away with it, under
the protective wings of the reigning superpower. "We cannot
second-guess an Israeli
commander who calls in a Cobra (helicopter) gunship because his troops
are under
attack," another US official said (Deutsche Presse-Agentur,October 3).
Accordingly,
such killing machines must be provided in an unceasing flow.
It is not surprising that a US client state should adopt standard US
military
doctrine, which has left a toll too awesome to record, including very
recent
years. The US and Israel are, of course, not alone in adopting
this doctrine, and it is sometimes even condemned: namely, when adopted
by enemies
targeted for destruction. A recent example is the response of Serbia
when its
territory (as the US insists it is) was attacked by Albanian-based
guerrillas,
killing Serb police and civilians and abducting civilians (including
Albanians)
with the openly-announced intent of eliciting a "disproportionate
response" that
would arouse Western indignation, then
NATO military attack. Very rich documentation from US, NATO, and other
Western
sources is now available, most of it produced in an effort to justify
the bombing.
Assuming these sources to be credible, we find that the Serbian
response -- while doubtless "disproportionate" and criminal, as alleged
-- does
not compare with the standard resort to the same doctrine by the US and
its clients,
Israel included.
In the mainstream British press, we can at last read that "If
Palestinians were
black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to economic sanctions
led by
the United States [which is not accurate, unfortunately]. Its
development and settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system
of apartheid,
in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny
fraction of
its own country, in self-administered `bantustans', with
`whites' monopolising the supply of water and electricity. And just as
the black
population was allowed into South Africa's white areas in disgracefully
under-resourced
townships, so Israel's treatment of Israeli Arabs - flagrantly
discriminating
against them in housing and education spending - would be recognised as
scandalous
too" (Observer, Guardian, Oct.15).
Such conclusions will come as no surprise to those whose vision has not
been
constrained by the doctrinal blinders imposed for many years. It
remains a major
task to remove them in the most important country. That is a
prerequisite to any constructive reaction to the mounting chaos and
destruction,
terrible enough before our eyes, and with long-term implications that
are not
pleasant to contemplate.
* Noam Chomsky is known throughout the world. He teaches Linguistics
at M.I.T.
More about Chomsky including the special video documentary
"THE NEW WORLD ORDER, LATIN AMERICA, AND THE MIDDLE EAST",
can be found at http://www.MiddleEast.Org/chomsky.htm
By Noam Chomsky*
After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories,
Prime Minister
Ehud Barak announced a new plan to determine the final status of the
region.
During these weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including 30
children,
often by "excessive use of lethal force in circumstances in which
neither the
lives of the security forces nor others were in imminent danger,
resulting in
unlawful killings," Amnesty International concluded in a detailed
report that
was scarcely mentioned in the US. The ratio of Palestinian to Israeli
dead was
then about 15-1, reflecting the resources of force available.
Barak's plan was not given in detail, but the outlines are familiar:
they conform
to the "final status map" presented by the US-Israel as the basis for
the Camp
David negotiations that collapsed in July. This plan, extending
US-Israeli rejectionist
proposals of earlier years, called for cantonization of the territories
that
Israel had conquered in 1967, with mechanisms to ensure that usable
land and
resources (primarily water) remain largely in Israeli hands while the
population
is administered by a corrupt and brutal Palestinian authority (PA),
playing the
role traditionally assigned to indigenous collaborators under the
several varieties
of imperial rule:
the Black leadership of South Africa's Bantustans, to mention only the
most obvious
analogue. In the West Bank, a northern canton is to include Nablus and
other
Palestinian cities, a central canton is based in Ramallah, and a
southern canton
in Bethlehem; Jericho is to remain isolated. Palestinians would be
effectively
cut off from Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life.
Similar arrangements are likely in Gaza, with Israel keeping the
southern coastal
region and a small settlement at Netzarim (the site of many of the
recent atrocities),
which is hardly more than an excuse for a large military presence and
roads splitting
the Strip below Gaza City. These proposals formalize the vast
settlement and
construction programs that Israel has been conducting, thanks to
munificent US
aid, with increasing energy since the US was able to implement its
version of
the "peace process" after the Gulf war.
For more on the negotiations and their background, see my July 25
commentary;
and for further background, the commentary by Alex and Stephen Shalom,
Oct. 10.
The goal of the negotiations was to secure official PA adherence to
this project.
Two months after they collapsed, the current phase of violence began.
Tensions,
always high, were raised when the Barak government authorized a visit
by Ariel
Sharon with 1000 police to the Muslim religious sites (Al-Aqsa) on a
Thursday
(Sept. 28). Sharon is the very symbol of Israeli state terror and
aggression,
with a rich record of atrocities going back to 1953. Sharon's announced
purpose
was to demonstrate "Jewish sovereignty" over the al-Aqsa compound, but
as the
veteran correspondent Graham Usher points out, the "al-Aqsa intifada,"
as Palestinians
call it, was not initiated by Sharon's visit; rather, by the massive
and intimidating
police and military presence that Barak introduced the following day,
the day
of prayers. Predictably, that led to clashes as thousands of people
streamed
out of the mosque, leaving 7 Palestinians dead and 200 wounded.
Whatever Barak's purpose, there could hardly have been a more efficient
way
to set the stage for the shocking atrocities of the following weeks.
The same
can be said about the failed negotiations, which focused on Jerusalem,
a condition
observed strictly by US commentary. Possibly Israeli sociologist Baruch
Kimmerling
was exaggerating when he wrote that a solution to this problem "could
have been
reached in five minutes," but he is right to say that "by any
diplomatic logic
[it] should have been the easiest issue to solve (Ha'aretz, Oct. 4).
It is understandable that Clinton-Barak should want to suppress what
they are
doing in the occupied territories, which is far more important. Why did
Arafat
agree? Perhaps because he recognizes that the leadership of the Arab
states regard
the Palestinians as a nuisance, and have little problem with the
Bantustan-style
settlement, but cannot overlook administration of the religious sites,
fearing
the reaction of their own populations. Nothing could be better
calculated to
set off a
confrontation with religious overtones, the most ominous kind, as
centuries of
experience reveal.
The primary innovation of Barak's new plan is that the US-Israeli
demands are
to be imposed by direct force instead of coercive diplomacy, and in a
harsher
form, to punish the victims who refused to concede politely. The
outlines are
in basic accord with policies established informally in 1968 (the Allon
Plan),
and variants that have been proposed since by both political groupings
(the Sharon
Plan, the Labor government plans, and others). It is important to
recall that
the policies have not only been proposed, but implemented, with the
support of
the US. That support has been decisive since 1971, when Washington
abandoned
the basic diplomatic
framework that it had initiated (UN Security Council Resolution 242),
then pursued
its unilateral rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that
followed, culminating
in the "Oslo process." Since all of this has been effectively vetoed
from history
in the US, it takes a little work to discover the essential facts. They
are not
controversial, only evaded.
As noted, Barak's plan is a particularly harsh version of familiar
US-Israeli
rejectionism. It calls for terminating electricity, water,
telecommunications,
and other services that are doled out in meager rations to the
Palestinian population,
who are now under virtual siege. It should be recalled that
independent development
was ruthlessly barred by the military regime from 1967, leaving the
people in
destitution and dependency, a process that has worsened considerably
during the
US-run "Oslo process."
One reason is the "closures" regularly instituted, must brutally by the
more
dovish Labor-based governments. As discussed by another outstanding
journalist,
Amira Hass, this policy was initiated by the Rabin government "years
before Hamas
had planned suicide attacks, [and] has been perfected over the years,
especially
since the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority." An
efficient
mechanism of strangulation and control, closure has been accompanied by
the importation
of an essential commodity to replace the cheap and exploited
Palestinian labor
on which much of the economy relies: hundreds of thousands of illegal
immigrants
from around the world, many of them victims of the "neoliberal reforms"
of the
recent years of "globalization." Surviving in misery and without
rights, they
are regularly described as a virtual slave labor force in the Israeli
press.
The current Barak proposal is to extend this program, reducing still
further
the prospects even for mere survival for the Palestinians. A major
barrier to
the program is the opposition of the Israeli business community, which
relies
on a captive Palestinian market for some $2.5 billion in annual
exports, and
has "forged links with Palestinian security officials" and Arafat's
"economic
adviser, enabling them to carve out monopolies with official PA
consent" (Financial
Times, Oct. 22; also NYT, same day). They have also hoped to set up
industrial
zones in the territories, transferring pollution and exploiting a cheap
labor
force in maquiladora-style installations owned by Israeli enterprises
and the
Palestinian elite, who are enriching themselves in the time-honored
fashion.
Barak's new proposals appear to be more of a warning than a plan,
though they
are a natural extension of what has come before. Insofar as they are
implemented,
they would extend the project of "invisible transfer" that has been
underway
for many years, and that makes more sense than outright "ethnic
cleansing" (as
we call the process when carried out by official enemies). People
compelled to
abandon hope and offered no opportunities for meaningful existence will
drift
elsewhere, if they have any chance to do so.
The plans, which have roots in traditional goals of the Zionist
movement from
its origins (across the ideological spectrum), were articulated in
internal discussion
by Israeli government Arabists in 1948 while outright ethnic cleansing
was underway:
their expectation was that the refugees "would be crushed" and "die,"
while "most
of them would turn into human dust and the waste of society, and join
the most
impoverished classes in the Arab countries." Current plans, whether
imposed
by coercive diplomacy or outright force, have similar goals. They are
not unrealistic
if they can rely on the world-dominant power and its intellectual
classes.
The current situation is described accurately by Amira Hass, in
Israel's most
prestigious daily (Ha'aretz, Oct. 18). Seven years after the
Declaration of Principles
in September 1993 -- which foretold this outcome for anyone who chose
to see
-- "Israel has security and administrative control" of most of the West
Bank
and 20% of the Gaza Strip. It has been able "to double the number of
settlers
in 10 years, to enlarge the settlements, to continue its discriminatory
policy
of cutting back water quotas for three million Palestinians, to prevent
Palestinian
development in most of the area of the West Bank, and to seal an entire
nation
into restricted areas, imprisoned in a network of bypass roads meant
for Jews
only. During these days of strict internal restriction of movement in
the West
Bank, one can see how carefully each road was planned: So that 200,000
Jews have
freedom of movement, about three million Palestinians are locked into
their Bantustans
until they submit to Israeli demands. The bloodbath that has been going
on for
three weeks is the natural outcome of seven years of lying and
deception, just
as the first Intifada was the natural outcome of direct Israeli
occupation."
The settlement and construction programs continue, with US support,
whoever may
be in office. On August 18, Ha'aretz noted that two governments --
Rabin and
Barak -- had declared that settlement was "frozen," in accord with the
dovish
image preferred in the US and by much of the Israeli left. They made
use of the
"freezing" to intensify settlement, including economic inducements for
the secular
population, automatic grants for ultra-religious settlers, and other
devices,
which can be carried out with little protest while "the lesser of two
evils"
happens to be making the decisions, a pattern hardly unfamiliar
elsewhere. "There
is freezing and there is reality," the report observes caustically. The
reality
is that settlement inthe occupied territories has grown over four times
as fast
as in Israeli population centers, continuing -- perhaps accelerating --
under
Barak.
Settlement brings with it large infrastructure projects designed to
integrate
much of the region within Israel, while leaving Palestinians isolated,
apart
from "Palestinian roads" that are travelled at one's peril. Another
journalist
with an outstanding record, Danny Rubinstein, points out that "readers
of the
Palestinian papers get the impression (and rightly so) that activity in
the settlements
never stops. Israeli is constantly building, expanding and reinforcing
the Jewish
settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is always grabbing homes
and lands
in areas beyond the 1967 lines - and of course, this is all at the
expense of
the Palestinians, in order to limit them, push them into a corner and
then out.
In other words, the goal is to eventually dispossess them of their
homeland and
their capital, Jerusalem" (Ha'aretz, October 23).
Readers of the Israeli press, Rubinstein continues, are largely
shielded from
the unwelcome facts, though not entirely so. In the US, it is far more
important
for the population to be kept in ignorance, for obvious
reasons: the economic and military programs rely crucially on US
support, which
is domestically unpopular and would be far more so if its purposes were
known.
To illustrate, on October 3, after a week of bitter fighting and
killing, the
defense correspondent of Ha'aretz reported "the largest purchase of
military
helicopters by the Israeli Air Force in a decade," an agreement with
the US to
provide Israel with 35 Blackhawk military helicopters and spare parts
at a cost
of $525 million, along with jet fuel, following the purchase shortly
before of
patrol aircraft and Apache attack helicopters. These are "the newest
and most
advanced multi-mission attack helicopters in the US inventory," the
Jerusalem
Post adds. It would be unfair to say that those providing the gifts
cannot discover
the fact. In a database search, David Peterson found that they were
reported
in the Raleigh (North Carolina) press. The sale of military
helicopters was
condemned by Amnesty International (Oct. 19), because these
"US-supplied helicopters
have been used to
violate the human rights of Palestinians and Arab Israelis during the
recent
conflict in the region." Surely that was anticipated, barring advanced
cretinism.
Israel has been condemned internationally (the US abstaining) for
"excessive
use of force," in a disproportionate reaction" to Palestinian violence.
That
includes even rare condemnations by the ICRC, specifically, for
attackson at
least 18 Red Cross ambulances (NYT, Oct 4). Israel's response is that
it is being
unfairly singled out for criticism. The response is entirely accurate.
Israel
is employing official US doctrine, known here as "the Powell doctrine,"
though
it is of far more ancient vintage, tracing back centuries: Use massive
force
in response to any perceived threat.
Official Israeli doctrine allows "the full use of weapons against
anyone who
endangers lives and especially at anyone who shoots at our forces or at
Israelis"
(Israeli military legal adviser Daniel Reisner, FT, Oct. 6).
Full use of force by a modern army includes tanks, helicopter gunships,
sharpshooters
aiming at civilians (often children), etc. US weapons sales "do not
carry a stipulation
that the weapons can't be used against civilians," a Pentagon official
said;
he "acknowleged however that anti-tank missiles and attack helicopters
are not
traditionally considered tools for crowd control" -- except by those
powerful
enough to get away with it, under
the protective wings of the reigning superpower. "We cannot
second-guess an Israeli
commander who calls in a Cobra (helicopter) gunship because his troops
are under
attack," another US official said (Deutsche Presse-Agentur,October 3).
Accordingly,
such killing machines must be provided in an unceasing flow.
It is not surprising that a US client state should adopt standard US
military
doctrine, which has left a toll too awesome to record, including very
recent
years. The US and Israel are, of course, not alone in adopting
this doctrine, and it is sometimes even condemned: namely, when adopted
by enemies
targeted for destruction. A recent example is the response of Serbia
when its
territory (as the US insists it is) was attacked by Albanian-based
guerrillas,
killing Serb police and civilians and abducting civilians (including
Albanians)
with the openly-announced intent of eliciting a "disproportionate
response" that
would arouse Western indignation, then
NATO military attack. Very rich documentation from US, NATO, and other
Western
sources is now available, most of it produced in an effort to justify
the bombing.
Assuming these sources to be credible, we find that the Serbian
response -- while doubtless "disproportionate" and criminal, as alleged
-- does
not compare with the standard resort to the same doctrine by the US and
its clients,
Israel included.
In the mainstream British press, we can at last read that "If
Palestinians were
black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to economic sanctions
led by
the United States [which is not accurate, unfortunately]. Its
development and settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system
of apartheid,
in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny
fraction of
its own country, in self-administered `bantustans', with
`whites' monopolising the supply of water and electricity. And just as
the black
population was allowed into South Africa's white areas in disgracefully
under-resourced
townships, so Israel's treatment of Israeli Arabs - flagrantly
discriminating
against them in housing and education spending - would be recognised as
scandalous
too" (Observer, Guardian, Oct.15).
Such conclusions will come as no surprise to those whose vision has not
been
constrained by the doctrinal blinders imposed for many years. It
remains a major
task to remove them in the most important country. That is a
prerequisite to any constructive reaction to the mounting chaos and
destruction,
terrible enough before our eyes, and with long-term implications that
are not
pleasant to contemplate.
* Noam Chomsky is known throughout the world. He teaches Linguistics
at M.I.T.
More about Chomsky including the special video documentary
"THE NEW WORLD ORDER, LATIN AMERICA, AND THE MIDDLE EAST",
can be found at http://www.MiddleEast.Org/chomsky.htm