Part 9, NOAM CHOMSKY: The New World Order
November 23, 1991
NOAM CHOMSKY:
And you bomb beyond their borders when you feel like it.
And so, this is the proper way to run the Occupied Territories. However,
remember that this is a "dove" speaking, so his position is: You should give the
Palestinians something. But what he actually said is (quoting): "If you give Ahmed a
seat on the bus, he may limit his demands. So you ought to give Ahmed a seat on the
bus." Well, you could imagine that maybe there's some neo-Nazi somewhere who's
advising the Syrians that they should run what is now Israel the way they run the Bekaa
Valley in Lebanon, but they should give "Hymie" a seat on the bus. Then, maybe
he'll limit his demands. That would be the doves. Or maybe somebody is advising
South Africa that you should give "Sambo" a seat in the bus, and maybe he'll
shut up. That's the doves. So again, there's the spectrum, and we learn a little more
about ourselves by looking at it. Well, the doves' view is that the Palestinians should be
given a seat on the bus; namely, autonomy -- the autonomy of a prison camp, basically what
they have now, but nothing more; no citizenship; no independence.
The great achievement of the Madrid Conference, and the one that has called
forth such raptures in the American press, is that the Palestinian representatives
permitted in by the United States have partially agreed to this. So the news -- actually,
the Israeli Lobby -- is naturally quite enthusiastic. The New York Times the other day had
an op-ed by the Deputy Director of something called the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy which is an organization that journalists go to when they don't want to express
their own opinions, but they want their support for Israeli policies expressed for them by
an objective outsider. That's a standard journalistic trick. The Washington Institute for
Near East Policy has no other function, as far as I'm aware, than to provide such
statements. Its deputy director notes (I'm quoting) that: "Gains were made in Madrid.
The Palestinians reversed their thirteen-year rejection of autonomy which was called for
in the Camp David Accords" -- the accords welcomed by Menachem Begin because they
removed the Arab deterrent from the conflict and offered the Palestinians the autonomy of
a prisoner-of-war camp, as the mainstream Israeli press points out. Well, the news columns
in the U.S. are much impressed by what they call (quoting the New York Times) "the
Palestinian self-adjustment to the real world."
That is, the acceptance of a period of autonomy under Israeli domination, during
which Israel can establish the fact of permanent domination with enormous subsidies from
U.S. taxpayers. The idea is that now that "Ahmed" has limited his demands, he's
praised for what is called "the new pragmatism", this willingness to accept half
a loaf under Israeli domination instead of the all-or-nothing demands -- that's referring
to the demands for self-determination in a Palestinian state alongside Israel (a totally
absurd idea, supported only by the entire world outside of the United States and its
Israeli client), and therefore, by definition, extremist, rejectionist, and not pragmatic.
Pragmatic means: "self-adjustment to the real world," which is: "What we
say goes." If you do that, then the news columnists are willing to welcome you as
"pragmatic". That's Clyde Haberman, and the same is true of a host of
others. I won't bother referring to it. In fact, there's so much of it, and it's too
late to talk about it, but it's standard. Open the press at random and you'll find similar
praise for "the new pragmatism."
Until 1988, to continue with the history a little bit, the U.S. was quite
satisfied with the status quo, as was Israel. In 1988, the Intifada was beginning to raise
some costs -- costs for Israel to control it, costs for the U.S. which, in fact, was
becoming something of a laughing stock internationally because of the increasingly
desperate insistence that the Palestinians were not repeating the magic words produced by
[Secretary of State] George Schultz for them to say. It became a joke, in fact.
So the United States made the obvious decision to pretend that the Palestinians
had capitulated, and to impose upon them the U.S. positions. They'd say, "Okay, they
accepted our position." There's actually a name for that in the diplomatic
literature. It's called "the trollop ploy," referring to the Trollop
Novel. This was done by the Kennedy Administration whom, you'll remember, were big
intellectuals. They referred to things like novels. And the reference is to the Trollop
Novel, where the heroine interprets a meaningless gesture by the hero as an offer of
marriage.
So the trick is, if you're really stuck in a diplomatic corner, what you do, if
you have enormous power and control over the World Information System, is pretend that the
other guy has accepted your demands and then stick him with it. And count on the media and
the academic scholarship and so on to say, "Yeah, they capitulated to your
demands." In mid-December of 1988, George Schultz went through this comic act.
Claimed that Yassir Arafat had said the magic words. In fact, as any literate person could
see, he was saying exactly what he had been saying for years. It was just as far
from the U.S. demands as ever. And no Palestinian spokesperson could ever accept the
actual U.S. demands. But now, they were stuck with it because George Schultz had said so,
and everybody repeated it. So that ended that story. The U.S. then moved to what was
called a "dialogue" with the Palestinians. They were offered an opportunity to
have tea in the master's ante chamber where they were told in the first meeting
(transcripts were leaked and published in Israel and Egypt --not here, though they were in
English in the Jerusalem Post, so everybody could read them) that they should understand
two things. ONE: There would be no international conference, so forget about that;
and TWO: they should call off the Intifada, or what the U.S. described as "the riots
which we regard as terrorism against the State of Israel." So, in other words: go
back to the previous status quo and forget about any political settlement, and then we'll
agree to talk to you. Well, this was understood very well within Israel, I should say. The
Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin of the "dovish" Labor Party had a meeting with
PEACE NOW leaders shortly after the opening of the dialogue. And he told them: "Don't
worry about it. It's quite okay. We're in favor of it."
He said that the dialogue is a low-level dialogue which is completely
meaningless, and which will provide us, he said, with a year or more to crush the Intifada
by force. And he assured them that they will be crushed. Well, that's what happened. They
were crushed! There's a limit to what flesh and blood can endure. Violence works!
The dialogue diverted attention, as intended. Then came along the diplomatic
initiative to divert the Bush/Baker/Peres/Shamir Plan, the purpose of which was to divert
any attempt to implement the real peace process.
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