From jad@ckuxb.att.com Ukn Feb 3 12:52:30 1993 Received: from att-out.att.com by css.itd.umich.edu (5.67/2.2) id AA11116; Wed, 3 Feb 93 12:52:28 -0500 Message-Id: <9302031752.AA11116@css.itd.umich.edu> To: pauls@css.itd.umich.edu Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 12:45:15 EST From: jad@ckuxb.att.com Status: RO X-Status: Article 20065 of alt.conspiracy: Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.individualism,alt.censorship,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,soc.culture.usa Subject: Part 8, NOAM CHOMSKY: The New World Order Message-ID: <1993Feb3.160153.19059@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Followup-To: alt.conspiracy Keywords: NOAM CHOMSKY: The New World Order Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU Organization: University of Virginia, FREE Public Access UNIX! Lines: 140 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * (continuation) NOAM CHOMSKY: In February 1971, a problem arose. President Sadat of Egypt offered a peace treaty in those terms -- virtually identical with the terms of official U.S. policy. Israel rejected it. That was under the "doves", incidentally -- the Labor Party, looking for broader territorial gains. And the United States had had to decide whether to pursue its own policy or to change that policy. That was kind of an internal bureaucratic conflict. Henry Kissinger then won out (he was then National Security Advisor) and pursued his policy which was what he called "stalemate" -- keeping things the way they are; no peace treaty. Israel responded to Sadat's offer by recognizing it as a genuine peace treaty. The U.S. backed the rejection. That's a big split in change in U.S. policy, actually. Coincidentally, that happens to be the month in which George Bush appeared on the national scene as U.N. ambassador, although he had nothing to do with policy (probably no more than he does now). Ever since then, the U.S. policy has been flatly rejectionist, and separated from the rest of the World in the manner that I described. >From `71 to `73, that was a period of great triumphalism in Israel. The assumption was that Israel had overwhelming military power. It could disregard the Arabs altogether. As the former Chief of Military Intelligence in Israel, Yehoshefat Harkabi (now a dove, incidentally) .... as he put it at the time, "War is not the Arabs' game." They don't know which end of the gun to hold, so we can just keep the stalemate. Kissinger accepted that, so there was no need to respond to Sadat's offers, or anything. Now, in October, 1973, those illusions were shattered. It turns out that they did know which end of the guns to hold. It was kind of a near thing. Policy had to shift. Kissinger, who was, incidentally, no great genius, does understand things like violence. He seemed to have a good understanding of that. And he could see that Egypt had it, and therefore, he had to pay attention to them. And therefore, U.S. policy shifted. It shifted in the perfectly natural way. Since Egypt could not be simply dismissed as a basket case, the thing to do was to incorporate it into the U.S. system; that is, to accept Sadat's actually longstanding offers to turn Egypt into a U.S. client state, and to remove it from the conflict. That's the major Arab military force, and if you remove it from the conflict you essentially eliminate the only Arab deterrent, which means that Israel is then free to continue to pursue the major policies which the U.S. supports and pays for; namely, integrating the Occupied Territories and attacking its northern neighbor, Lebanon. Well, that is the Camp David Agreement. Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy was culminated in the Camp David Agreement which had exactly these properties. And that was quite obvious, at the time, to anyone who was willing to look at the facts without ideological blinkers. And it's actually conceded in retrospect. It's called "ironic". "Ironic" is another one of those technical terms which refers to the predictable consequences of intended U.S. actions which happen to conflict too radically with the professed values. So that's what's called "ironic" in the political science literature, and so on. And that's a term that applies very broadly to almost everything. So that was "ironic", but as I say, it was obvious to any ten-year-old at the time. And it's now conceded. Well, that's exactly what Israel did, of course, with HUGE U.S. aid. The Carter Administration raised aid to the stratosphere so that Israel could, in fact, continue to do this with the Arab deterrent removed. Well, then comes the invasion of Lebanon. Actually, there was one in `78; another in 1982. It's purpose was to destroy the moderates in the P.L.O. That's widely conceded .... not even conceded -- proclaimed in the Israeli literature. General Harkabi pointed out that this was a war for the West Bank. The problem was P.L.O. moderation. They kept making these annoying demands for negotiations leading to mutual recognition, and so on. And that's no good. We want them to go back to terrorism. We want them shooting down planes, and that kind of stuff. Then, they're easy to deal with. The point was actually put rather well by the editor of The New Republic, Martin Peretz in an interview in Israel right before the 1982 invasion. He advised Israel (I'm quoting) "to administer to the P.L.O. in Lebanon a lasting military defeat that will clarify to the Palestinians in the West Bank that their struggle for an independent state has suffered a setback of many years. Then, the Palestinians will be turned into just another crushed nation like the Kurds and the Afghans. And their problems, which are beginning to be boring, will be forgotten." Well, it's possible, with regard to the Afghans, that if you go to some of the more extreme Stalinist elements in the Communist Party bureaucracy, you could hear similar comments on the Afghans back in those days. And I should say that Peretz's comments and attitudes toward the Kurds do rather accurately capture U.S. policy toward them, as we've just seen again. Well that's U.S. policy, and it stays like that until today. Now, there's a spectrum, as always. There are the hawks and the doves. So let's look. According to the hawks, the Palestinians deserve nothing like other crushed nations. And then there are the doves. And here, a good example is Thomas Friedman again. On the occasion of his receipt of the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Israel ... he had several interviews in the Israeli Press where he advised Israel to run the Occupied Territories in the manner in which they run South Lebanon. Now, that means under the control of a terrorist, mercenary army with big prison camps where you hold hundreds of torture chambers; actually, where you hold hundreds of hostages to ensure that the villages submit to the rule of the terrorist mercenary force. (to be continued) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * A 90-minute video documentary, from which this transcript was made, is available exclusively from JCOME. In addition to the full Chomsky lecture, the documentary contains background information about Chomsky and JCOME -- the only Jewish-American organization that has Chomsky on its Advisory Committee. JCOME is extending a special offer at this time. To get a copy of the video documentary simply send a check for $20 (only $15 for the documentary and $5 shipping) and indicate you read about Chomsky and JCOME on Internet or e-mail. Send to: The Jewish Committee on the Middle East P.O. Box 18367 Washington, D.C. 20036 Phone orders cannot be taken. But for additional information about JCOME -- including copies of recent magazine ads and the MID-EAST REALITIES newsletter that can be sent directly to your fax machine -- call JCOME 24-hours daily to: (202) 362-JCOME (202) 362-5266 E-mail: jcome@mcimail.com FAX: (202) 362-6965 [JCOME on MCIMail] + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + JCOME would be grateful to you for posting the installments of this transcript to computer bulletin boards, as well as posting hardcopies in public places, both on and off campus. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Transcribed for JCOME by John DiNardo.