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Title: Reshaping History
Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: November 18–24, 2004
Language: en
Topics: Israel/Palestine
Source: Retrieved on 7th September 2021 from https://chomsky.info/20041118/
Notes: Published in Al-Ahram Weekly.

Noam Chomsky

Reshaping History

“Since the issue of Palestinian national rights in a Palestinian state

reached the agenda of diplomacy in the mid-1970s, ‘the prime obstacle to

its realization’, unambiguously, has been the United States government,

with the Times staking a claim to be second on the list..”

The fundamental principle is that “we are good” — “we” being the state

we serve — and what “we” do is dedicated to the highest principles,

though there may be errors in practice. In a typical illustration,

according to the retrospective version at the left-liberal extreme, the

properly reshaped Vietnam War began with “blundering efforts to do good”

but by 1969 had become a “disaster” (Anthony Lewis) — by 1969, after the

business world had turned against the war as too costly and 70 per cent

of the public regarded it as “fundamentally wrong and immoral”, not “a

mistake”; by 1969, seven years after Kennedy’s attack on South Vietnam

began, two years after the most respected Vietnam specialist and

military historian Bernard Fall warned that “Vietnam as a cultural and

historic entity… is threatened with extinction…[as]… the countryside

literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever

unleashed on an area of this size”; by 1969, the time of some of the

most vicious state terrorist operations of one of the major crimes of

the late 20^(th) century, of which Swift Boats in the deep South,

already devastated by saturation bombing, chemical warfare and mass

murder operations, were the least of the atrocities underway. But the

reshaped history prevails. Serious expert panels ponder the reasons for

“America’s Vietnam Obsession” during the 2004 elections, when the

Vietnam War was never even mentioned — the actual one, that is, not the

image reconstructed for history.

The fundamental principle has corollaries. The first is that clients are

basically good, though less so than “we”. To the extent that they

conform to US demands, they are “healthy pragmatists”. Another is that

enemies are very bad; how bad depends on how intensively “we” are

attacking them or planning to do so. Their status can shift very

quickly, in conformity with these guidelines. Thus the current

administration and their immediate mentors were quite appreciative of

Saddam Hussein and helpful to him while he was just gassing Kurds,

torturing dissidents and smashing a Shia rebellion that might have

overthrown him in 1991, because of his contribution to “stability” — a

code word for “our” domination — and his usefulness for US exporters, as

frankly declared. But the same crimes became the proof of his ultimate

evil when the appropriate time came for “us,” proudly bearing the banner

of Good, to invade Iraq and install what will be called a “democracy” if

it obeys orders and contributes to “stability”.

The principles are simple, and easy to remember for those seeking a

career in respectable circles. The remarkable consistency of their

application has been extensively documented. That is expected in

totalitarian states and military dictatorships, but is a far more

instructive phenomenon in free societies, where one cannot seriously

plead fear in extenuation.

The death of Arafat provides another in the immense list of case

studies. I’ll keep to The New York Times (NYT), the most important

newspaper in the world, and The Boston Globe, perhaps more than others

the local newspaper of the liberal educated elite.

The front-page NYT think-piece (12 November) begins by depicting Arafat

as “both the symbol of the Palestinian’s hope for a viable, independent

state and the prime obstacle to its realization”. It goes on to explain

that he never was able to reach the heights of President Anwar Sadat of

Egypt; Sadat ” [won] back the Sinai through a peace treaty with Israel”

because he was able to “reach out to Israelis and address their fears

and hopes” (quoting Shlomo Avineri, Israeli philosopher and former

government official, in the follow-up, 13 November).

One can think of more serious obstacles to the realisation of a

Palestinian state, but they are excluded by the guiding principles, as

is the truth about Sadat — which Avineri at least surely knows. Let’s

remind ourselves of a few.

Since the issue of Palestinian national rights in a Palestinian state

reached the agenda of diplomacy in the mid-1970s, “the prime obstacle to

its realization”, unambiguously, has been the US government, with the

NYT staking a claim to be second on the list. That has been clear ever

since January 1976, when Syria introduced a resolution to the UN

Security Council calling for a two-state settlement. The resolution

incorporated the crucial wording of UN 242 — the basic document, all

agree. It accorded to Israel the rights of any state in the

international system, alongside of a Palestinian state in the

territories Israel had conquered in 1967. The resolution was vetoed by

the US. It was supported by the leading Arab states. Arafat’s PLO

condemned “the tyranny of the veto”. There were some abstentions on

technicalities.

By then, a two-state settlement in these terms had become a very broad

international consensus, blocked only by the US (and rejected by

Israel). So matters continued, not only in the Security Council but also

in the General Assembly, which passed similar resolutions regularly by

votes like 150–2 (with the US sometimes picking up another client

state). The US also blocked similar initiatives from Europe and the Arab

states.

Meanwhile the NYT refused — the word is accurate — to publish the fact

that through the 1980s, Arafat was calling for negotiations which Israel

rejected. The Israeli mainstream press would run headlines about

Arafat’s call for direct negotiations with Israel, rejected by Shimon

Peres on the basis of his doctrine that Arafat’s PLO “cannot be a

partner to negotiations”. And shortly after, NYT Pulitzer-prize winning

Jerusalem correspondent Thomas Friedman, who could certainly read the

Hebrew press, would write articles lamenting the distress of Israeli

peace forces because of “the absence of any negotiating partner”, while

Peres deplores the lack of a “peace movement among the Arab people [such

as] we have among the Jewish people”, and explains again that there can

be no PLO participation in negotiations “as long as it is remaining a

shooting organisation and refuses to negotiate”. All of this shortly

after yet another Arafat offer to negotiate that the NYT refused to

report, and almost three years after the Israeli government’s rejection

of Arafat’s offer for negotiations leading to mutual recognition. Peres,

meanwhile, is described as a “healthy pragmatist”, by virtue of the

guidelines.

Matters did change somewhat in the 1990s, when the Clinton

administration declared all UN resolutions “obsolete and

anachronistic{“, and crafted its own form of rejectionism. The US

remains alone in blocking a diplomatic settlement. A recent important

example was the presentation of the Geneva Accords in December 2002,

supported by the usual very broad international consensus, with the

usual exception: “The United States conspicuously was not among the

governments sending a message of support,” the NYT reported in a

dismissive article (2 December 2002).

This is only a small fragment of a diplomatic record that is so

consistent, and so dramatically clear, that it is impossible to miss —

unless one keeps rigidly to the history shaped by those who own it.

Let’s turn to the second example: Sadat’s reaching out to Israelis and

thereby gaining the Sinai in 1979, a lesson to the bad Arafat. Turning

to unacceptable history, in February 1971 Sadat offered a full peace

treaty to Israel, in accord with then- official US policy —

specifically, Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai — with scarcely even a

gesture to Palestinian rights. Jordan followed with similar offers.

Israel recognised that it could have full peace, but Golda Meir’s Labour

government chose to reject the offers in favour of expansion, then into

the northeast Sinai, where Israel was driving thousands of Bedouins into

the desert and destroying their villages, mosques, cemeteries, homes, in

order to establish the all-Jewish city of Yamit.

The crucial question, as always, was how the US would react. Kissinger

prevailed in an internal debate, and the US adopted his policy of

“stalemate”: no negotiations, only force. The US continued to reject —

more accurately, ignore — Sadat’s efforts to pursue a diplomatic course,

backing Israel’s rejectionism and expansion. That stance led to the 1973

War, which was a very close call for Israel and possibly the world; the

US called a nuclear alert. By then even Kissinger understood that Egypt

could not be dismissed as a basket case, and he began his “shuttle

diplomacy”, leading to the Camp David meetings at which the US and

Israel accepted Sadat’s 1971 offer — but now with far harsher terms,

from the US-Israeli point of view. By then the international consensus

had come to recognise Palestinian national rights, and, accordingly,

Sadat called for a Palestinian state, anathema to the US-Israel.

In the official history reshaped by its owners, and repeated by media

think-pieces, these events are a “diplomatic triumph” for the US and a

proof that if Arabs were only able to join us in preferring peace and

diplomacy that could achieve their aims. In actual history, the triumph

was a catastrophe, and the events demonstrated that the US was willing

only to accede to violence. The US rejection of diplomacy led to a

terrible and very dangerous war and many years of suffering, with bitter

effects to this day.

In his memoirs, General Shlomo Gazit, military commander of the occupied

territories from 1967–1974, observes that by refusing to consider

proposals advanced by the military and intelligence for some form of

self-rule in the territories or even limited political activity, and by

insisting on “substantial border changes”, the Labour government

supported by Washington bears significant responsibility for the later

rise of the fanatic Gush Emunim settler movement and the Palestinian

resistance that developed many years later in the first Intifada, after

years of brutality and state terror, and steady takeover of valuable

Palestinian lands and resources.

The lengthy obituary of Arafat by Times Middle East specialist Judith

Miller (11 November) proceeds in the same vein as the front-page

think-piece. According to her version, “Until 1988, [Arafat] repeatedly

rejected recognition of Israel, insisting on armed struggle and terror

campaigns. He opted for diplomacy only after his embrace of President

Saddam Hussein of Iraq during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.”

Miller does give an accurate rendition of official history. In actual

history Arafat repeatedly offered negotiations leading to mutual

recognition, while Israel — in particular the dovish “pragmatists” —

flatly refused, backed by Washington. In 1989, the Israeli coalition

government (Shamir-Peres) affirmed the political consensus in its peace

plan. The first principle was that there can be no “additional

Palestinian state” between Jordan and Israel — Jordan already being a

“Palestinian state”. The second was that the fate of the territories

will be settled “in accordance with the basic guidelines of the

[Israeli] government”. The Israeli plan was accepted without

qualification by the US, and became “the Baker Plan” (December 1989).

Exactly contrary to Miller’s account and the official story, it was only

after the Gulf War that Washington was willing to consider negotiations,

recognising that it was now in a position to impose its own solution

unilaterally.

The US convened the Madrid conference (with Russian participation as a

fig leaf). That did indeed lead to negotiations, with an authentic

Palestinian delegation, led by Haidar Abdul- Shafi, an honest

nationalist who is probably the most respected leader in the occupied

territories. But the negotiations deadlocked because Abdul-Shafi

rejected Israel’s insistence, backed by Washington, on continuing to

take over valuable parts of the territories with settlement and

infrastructure programs — all illegal, as recognised even by the US

Justice, the one dissenter, in the recent World Court decision

condemning the Israeli wall dividing the West Bank. The “Tunis

Palestinians”, led by Arafat, undercut the Palestinian negotiators and

made a separate deal, the “Oslo Accords”, celebrated with much fanfare

on the White House lawn in September 2003.

It was evident at once that it was a sell-out. The sole document — the

Declaration of Principles — declared that the final outcome was to be

based solely on UN 242 in 1967, excluding the core issue of diplomacy

since the mid-1970s: Palestinian national rights and a two- state

settlement. UN 242 defines the final outcome because it says nothing

about Palestinian rights; excluded are the UN resolutions that recognise

the rights of Palestinians alongside those of Israel, in accord with the

international consensus that has been blocked by the US since it took

shape in the mid-1970s. The wording of the agreements made it clear that

they were a mandate for continued Israeli settlement programs, as the

Israeli leadership (Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres) took no pains to

conceal. For that reason, Abdul-Shafi refused even to attend the

ceremonies. Arafat’s role was to be Israel’s policeman in the

territories, as Rabin made very clear. As long as he fulfilled this

task, he was a “pragmatist”, approved by the US and Israel with no

concern for corruption, violence, and repression. It was only after he

could no longer keep the population under control while Israel took over

more of their lands and resources that he became an arch-villain,

blocking the path to peace: the usual transition.

So matters proceeded through the 1990s. The goals of the Israeli doves

were explained in 1998 in an academic study by Shlomo ben-Ami, soon to

become Barak’s chief negotiator at Camp David: the “Oslo peace process”

was to lead to a “permanent neocolonial dependency” in the occupied

territories, with some form of local autonomy. Meanwhile Israeli

settlement and integration of the territories proceeded steadily with

full US support. It reached its highest peak in the final year of

Clinton’s term (and Barak’s), thus undermining the hopes of a diplomatic

settlement.

Returning to Miller, she keeps to the official version that in “November

1988, after considerable American prodding, the PLO accepted the United

Nations resolution that called for recognition of Israel and a

renunciation of terrorism”. The actual history is that by November 1988,

Washington was becoming an object of international ridicule for its

refusal to “see” that Arafat was calling for a diplomatic settlement. In

this context, the Reagan administration reluctantly agreed to admit the

glaringly obvious truth, and had to turn to other means to undercut

diplomacy. The US entered into low- level negotiations with the PLO, but

as Prime Minister Rabin assured Peace Now leaders in 1989, these were

meaningless, intended only to give Israel more time for “harsh military

and economic pressure” so that “In the end, they will be broken,” and

will accept Israel’s terms.

Miller carries the story on in the same vein, leading to the standard

denouement: at Camp David, Arafat “walked away” from the magnanimous

Clinton-Barak offer of peace, and even afterwards refused to join Barak

in accepting Clinton’s December 2000 “parameters”, thus proving

conclusively that he insists on violence, a depressing truth with which

the peace-loving states, the US and Israel, must somehow come to terms.

Turning to actual history, the Camp David proposals divided the West

Bank into virtually separated cantons, and could not possibly be

accepted by any Palestinian leader. That is evident from a look at the

maps that were easily available, but not in the NYT, or apparently

anywhere in the US mainstream, perhaps for that reason. After the

collapse of these negotiations, Clinton recognised that Arafat’s

reservations made sense, as demonstrated by the famous “parameters”,

which, though vague, went much further towards a possible settlement —

thus undermining the official story, but that’s only logic, therefore as

unacceptable as history. Clinton gave his own version of the reaction to

his “parameters” in a talk to the Israeli Policy Forum on 7 January

2001: “Both Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat have now accepted

these parameters as the basis for further efforts. Both have expressed

some reservations.”

One can learn this from such obscure sources as the prestigious

Harvard-MIT journal International Security (Fall 2003), along with the

conclusion that “the Palestinian narrative of the 2000–01 peace talks is

significantly more accurate than the Israeli narrative” — the US-NYT

“narrative”.

After that, high-level Israeli-Palestinian negotiators proceeded to take

the Clinton parameters as “the basis for further efforts,” and addressed

their “reservations” at meetings in Taba through January. These produced

a tentative agreement, meeting some of the Palestinian concerns — and

thus again undermining the official story. Problems remained, but the

Taba agreements went much further towards a possible settlement than

anything that had preceded. The negotiations were called off by Barak,

so their possible outcome is unknown. A detailed report by EU envoy

Miguel Moratinos was accepted as accurate by both sides, and prominently

reported in Israel. But I doubt that it has ever been mentioned here in

the mainstream.

Miller’s NYT version of these events is based on a highly-praised book

by Clinton’s Middle East envoy and negotiator Dennis Ross. As any

journalist must be aware, any such source is highly suspect, if only

because of its origins. And even a casual reading would suffice to

demonstrate that Ross’s account is wholly unreliable. Its 800 pages

consist mostly of adulation of Clinton (and his own efforts), based on

almost nothing verifiable; rather, on “quotations” of what he claims to

have said and heard from participants, identified by first names if they

are “good guys”. There is scarcely a word on what everyone knows to have

been the core issue all along, back to 1971 in fact: the programmes of

settlements and infrastructure development in the territories, relying

on the economic, military, and diplomatic support of the US, Clinton

quite clearly included. Ross handles his Taba problem simply: by

terminating the book immediately before they began (which also allows

him to omit Clinton’s evaluation, just quoted, a few days later). Thus

he is able to avoid the fact that his primarily conclusions were

instantly refuted.

Abdul-Shafi is mentioned in Ross’s book once, in passing. Naturally, his

friend Shlomo ben-Ami’s perception of the Oslo process is ignored, as

are all significant elements of the interim agreements and Camp David.

There is no mention of the flat refusal of his heroes, Rabin and Peres —

rather, “Yitzhak” and “Shimon” — even to consider a Palestinian state.

In fact, the first mention of the possibility in Israel appears to be

during the government of the “bad guy”, the far- right Binyamin

Netanyahu. His minister of information, asked about a Palestinian state,

responded that Palestinians could call the cantons being left to them “a

state” if they liked — or “fried chicken”.

This is only for starters. Ross’s view is so lacking in independent

support and so radically selective that one has to take with a heavy

grain of salt anything that he claims, from the specific details he

meticulously records verbatim (maybe with a hidden tape recorder) to the

very general conclusions presented as authoritative but without credible

evidence. It is of some interest that this is reviewed as if it could be

considered an authoritative account. In general, the book is next to

worthless, except as giving the perceptions of one of the actors. It is

hard to imagine that a journalist cannot be aware of that.

Not worthless, however, is crucial evidence that escapes notice. For

example, the assessment of Israeli intelligence during these years:

among them Amos Malka, head of Israeli military intelligence; General

Ami Ayalon, who headed the General Security Services (Shin Bet); Matti

Steinberg, special advisor on Palestinian affairs to the head of the

Shin Bet; and Colonel Ephraim Lavie, the research division official

responsible for the Palestinian arena. As Malka presents the consensus,

“The assumption was that Arafat prefers a diplomatic process, that he

will do all he can to see it through, and that only when he comes to a

dead end in the process will he turn to a path of violence. But this

violence is aimed at getting him out of a dead end, to set international

pressure in motion and to get the extra mile.” Malka also charges that

these high-level assessments were falsified as they were transmitted to

the political leadership and beyond. US reporters could easily discover

them from readily accessible sources, in English.

There is little point continuing with Miller’s version, or Ross. Let’s

turn to The Boston Globe, at the liberal extreme. Its editors (12

November) adhere to the same fundamental principle as the NYT (probably

near universal; it would be interesting to search for exceptions). The

editors do recognise that the failure to achieve a Palestinian state

“cannot be blamed solely on Arafat. Israel’s leaders… played their

part…” The decisive role of the US is unmentionable, unthinkable.

The Globe also ran a front-page think-piece on 11 November. In its first

paragraph we learn that Arafat was “one of the iconic group of

charismatic, authoritarian leaders — from Mao Zedong in China to Fidel

Castro in Cuba to Saddam Hussein in Iraq — who arose from anti-colonial

movements that swept the globe following World War II.”

The statement is interesting from several points of view. The linkage

reveals, once again, the obligatory visceral hatred of Castro. There

have been shifting pretexts as circumstances changed, but no information

to question the conclusions of US intelligence in the early days of

Washington’s terrorist attacks and economic warfare against Cuba: the

basic problem is his “successful defiance” of US policies going back to

the Monroe Doctrine. But there is an element of truth in the portrayal

of Arafat in the Globe think-piece, as there would have been in a

front-page report during the imperial ceremonies for the semi-divine

Reagan, describing him as one of the iconic group of mass murderers —

from Hitler to Idi Amin to Peres — who slaughtered with abandon and with

strong support from media and intellectuals. Those who do not comprehend

the analogy have some history to learn.

Continuing, the Globe report, recounting Arafat’s crimes, tells us that

he gained control of the south of Lebanon and “used it to launch a

stream of attacks on Israel, which responded by invading Lebanon [in

June 1982]. Israel’s stated goal was to drive the Palestinians back from

the border region, but, under the command of then-general and defense

minister Sharon, its forces drove all the way to Beirut, where Sharon

allowed his Christian militia allies to commit a notorious massacre of

Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camp and drove Mr. Arafat

and the Palestinian leadership into exile in Tunis.”

Turning to unacceptable history, during the year prior to the Israeli

invasion the PLO adhered to a US-brokered peace arrangement, while

Israel conducted many murderous attacks in south Lebanon in an effort to

elicit some Palestinian reaction that could be used as a pretext for the

planned invasion. When none materialised, they invented a pretext and

invaded, killing perhaps 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese, thanks to US

vetoes of Security Council resolutions calling for ceasefire and

withdrawal. The Sabra-Chatilla massacre was a footnote at the end. The

goal that was stated very clearly by the highest political and military

echelons, and by Israeli scholarship and analysis, was to put an end to

the increasingly irritating Arafat initiatives towards diplomatic

settlement and to secure Israel’s control over the occupied territories.

Similar reversals of well-documented facts appear throughout the

commentary on Arafat’s death, and have been so conventional for many

years in US media and journals that one can hardly blame the reporters

for repeating them — though minimal inquiry suffices to reveal the

truth.

Minor elements of the commentaries are also instructive. Thus the Times

think-piece tells us that Arafat’s likely successors — the “moderates”

preferred by Washington — have some problems: they lack “street

credibility”. That is the conventional phrase for public opinion in the

Arab world, as when we are informed about the “Arab street”. If a

Western political figure has little public support, we do not say he

lacks “street credibility”, and there are no reports on the British or

American “street”. The phrase is reserved for the lower orders,

unreflectively. They are not people, but creatures who inhabit

“streets”. We may also add that the most popular political leader on the

“Palestinian street”, Marwan Barghouti, was safely locked away by

Israel, permanently. And that George Bush demonstrated his passion for

democracy by joining his friend Sharon — the “man of peace” — in driving

the one democratically elected leader in the Arab world to virtual

prison, while backing Mahmoud Abbas, who, the US conceded, lacked

“street credibility”. All of this might tell us something about what the

liberal press calls Bush’s “messianic vision” to bring democracy to the

Middle East, but only if facts and logic were to matter.

The NYT published one major op-ed on the Arafat death, by Israeli

historian Benny Morris. The essay deserves close analysis, but I’ll put

that aside here, and keep to just his first comment, which captures the

tone: Arafat is a deceiver, Morris says, who speaks about peace and

ending the occupation but really wants to “redeem Palestine”. This

demonstrates Arafat’s irremediable savage nature.

Here Morris is revealing his contempt not only for Arabs (which is

profound) but also for the readers of the NYT. He apparently assumes

that they will not notice that he is borrowing the terrible phrase from

Zionist ideology. Its core principle for over a century has been to

“redeem The Land”, a principle that lies behind what Morris recognises

to be a central concept of the Zionist movement: “transfer” of the

indigenous population, that is, expulsion, to “redeem The Land” for its

true owners. There seems to be no need to spell out the conclusions.

Morris is identified as an Israeli academic, author of the recent book

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. That is correct.

He has also done the most extensive work on the Israeli archives,

demonstrating in considerable detail the savagery of the 1948- 9 Israeli

operations that led to “transfer” of the large majority of the

population from what became Israel, including the part of the UN-

designated Palestine state that Israel took over, dividing it about 50-

50 with its Jordanian partner. Morris is critical of the atrocities and

“ethnic cleansing” (in more precise translation, “ethnic purification”):

namely, it did not go far enough. Ben-Gurion’s great error, Morris

feels, perhaps a “fatal mistake”, was not to have “cleaned the whole

country — the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River”.

To Israel’s credit, his stand on this matter has been bitterly

condemned. In Israel. In the US he is the appropriate choice for the

major commentary on his reviled enemy.