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Title: Blinded by the Truth
Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: November 2–8, 2000
Language: en
Topics: Israel/Palestine
Source: Retrieved on 22nd June 2021 from https://chomsky.info/20001102/
Notes: Published in the Al-Ahram Weekly.

Noam Chomsky

Blinded by the Truth

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

cantonisation 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 centre 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 formalise the vast settlement and construction

programmes 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. 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 authorised a visit by Ariel Sharon

with 1,000 police to the Muslim religious sites (Al-Aqsa) on a Thursday

(28 September). 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 seven 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, 4 October).

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 recognises 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 Labour 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 meagre 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, most brutally by the more dovish

Labour-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

labour 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 “globalisation.” Surviving

in misery and without rights, they are regularly described as a virtual

slave labour force in the Israeli press.

The current Barak proposal is to extend this programme, reducing still

further the prospects even for mere survival for the Palestinians. A

major barrier to the programme 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, 22

October; also New York Times, same day). They have also hoped to set up

industrial zones in the territories, transferring pollution and

exploiting a cheap labour force in maquiladora-style installations owned

by Israeli enterprises and the Palestinian elite, who are enriching

themselves in the time-honoured 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, 18 October).

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 per

cent 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 blood

bath 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 programmes continue, with US support,

whoever may be in office. On 18 August, 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 in the occupied territories

has grown over four times as fast as in Israeli population centres,

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. Israel 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, 23 October).

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 programmes rely crucially on US

support, which is domestically unpopular and would be far more so if its

purposes were known. To illustrate, on 3 October, after a week of bitter

fighting and killing, the defence 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 (19

October), 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

International Committee of the Red Cross, specifically, for attacks on

at least 18 Red Cross ambulances (NYT, 4 October). 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, 6 October). 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

“acknowledged 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, 3 October).

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 in 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, 15 October).

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.