Editorial comment: In posting this interview of Noam Chomsky by Amy Goodman, I would like to point out my strong opposition to a few statements about Chomsky's stand on the Israel-Palestinian conflict by Ghali Hassan in his essay:
The War on Syria and Noam Chomsky
Ghali Hassan is saying, I quote:
"In recent interviews, Chomsky engaged in what can best be described as, highly misleading imperialist propaganda." and "Chomsky's distortion of reality is based on a deeply-entrenched Zionist belief, that Israel is innocent of any crimes."
In this interview Chomsky strongly emphasizes his opposition to Israel and its policies towards Gaza. He is extraordinarily critical of U.S.politics as a terrorist state in general and of its support of Israel in particular. Besides what is said in the headline here, he says, for instance: "...the United States, the leading perpetrator of violence in the world..." and "...Israel’s violation of human rights is so extreme and
consistent that you hardly have to argue about it."
- SON
Part 2 of our conversation with famed linguist and political
dissident Noam Chomsky on the crisis in Gaza, U.S. support for Israel,
apartheid and the BDS movement. "In the
Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than
apartheid," Chomsky says. "To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at
least if by 'apartheid' you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s
happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse. There’s a crucial
difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population.
That was their workforce. … The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians
in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just don’t want
them. They want them out, or at least in prison."
Click here to watch Part 1 of the interview.
AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
I’m Amy Goodman. And we’re continuing our conversation with Noam
Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, has
written many books, among them, one of the more recent books, Gaza in Crisis. I want to turn right now to Bob Schieffer, the host of CBS’s Face the Nation. This is how he closed a recent show.
BOBSCHIEFFER:
In the Middle East, the Palestinian people find themselves in the grip
of a terrorist group that is embarked on a strategy to get its own
children killed in order to build sympathy for its cause—a strategy that
might actually be working, at least in some quarters. Last week I found
a quote of many years ago by Golda Meir, one of Israel’s early leaders,
which might have been said yesterday: "We can forgive the Arabs for
killing our children," she said, "but we can never forgive them for
forcing us to kill their children."
AMYGOODMAN: That was CBS journalist Bob Schieffer. Noam Chomsky, can you respond?
NOAMCHOMSKY: Well, we don’t really have to listen to CBS,
because we can listen directly to the Israeli propaganda agencies,
which he’s quoting. It’s a shameful moment for U.S. media when it
insists on being subservient to the grotesque propaganda agencies of a
violent, aggressive state. As for the comment itself, the Israel comment
which he—propaganda comment which he quoted, I guess maybe the best
comment about that was made by the great Israeli journalist Amira Hass,
who just described it as "sadism masked as compassion." That’s about the
right characterization.
AMYGOODMAN:
I wanted to also ask you about the U.N.’s role and the U.S.—vis-à-vis,
as well, the United States. This is the U.N. high commissioner for human
rights, Navi Pillay, criticizing the U.S. for its role in the Israeli
assault on Gaza.
NAVIPILLAY:
They have not only provided the heavy weaponry, which is now being used
by Israel in Gaza, but they’ve also provided almost $1 billion in
providing the Iron Domes to protect Israelis from the rocket attacks,
but no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling.
So I am reminding the United States that it’s a party to international
humanitarian law and human rights law.
AMYGOODMAN:
That was Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner or human rights. Noam,
on Friday, this was the point where the death toll for Palestinians had
exceeded Operation Cast Lead; it had passed 1,400. President Obama was
in the White House, and he held a news conference. He didn’t raise the
issue of Gaza in the news conference, but he was immediately asked about
Gaza, and he talked about—he reaffirmed the U.S. support for Israel,
said that the resupply of ammunition was happening, that the $220
million would be going for an expanded Iron Dome. But then the weekend
took place, yet another attack on a U.N. shelter, on one of the schools
where thousands of Palestinians had taken refuge, and a number of them
were killed, including children. And even the U.S. then joined with the
U.N. in criticizing what Israel was doing. Can you talk about what the
U.S. has done and if you really do see a shift right now?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
Well, let’s start with what the U.S. has done, and continue with the
comments with the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Right at that time, the
time of the quote you gave over the radio—that you gave before, there
was a debate in the Human Rights Commission about whether to have an
investigation—no action, just an investigation—of what had happened in
Gaza, an investigation of possible violations of human rights.
"Possible" is kind of a joke. It was passed with one negative vote.
Guess who. Obama voted against an investigation, while he was giving
these polite comments. That’s action. The United States continues to
provide, as Pillay pointed out, the critical, the decisive support for
the atrocities. When what’s called Israeli jet planes bomb defenseless
targets in Gaza, that’s U.S. jet planes with Israeli pilots. And the
same with the high-tech munition and so on and so forth. So this is,
again, sadism masked as compassion. Those are the actions.
AMYGOODMAN: What about opinion in the United States? Can you talk about the role that it plays? We saw some certainly remarkable changes. MSNBC
had the reporter Ayman Mohyeldin, who had been at Al Jazeera, very
respected. He had been, together with Sherine Tadros, in 2008 the only
Western reporters in Gaza covering Operation Cast Lead, tremendous
experience in the area. And he was pulled out by MSNBC.
But because there was a tremendous response against this, with—I think
what was trending was "Let Ayman report"—he was then brought back in. So
there was a feeling that people wanted to get a sense of what was
happening on the ground. There seemed to be some kind of opening. Do you
sense a difference in the American population, how—the attitude toward
what’s happening in Israel and the Occupied Territories?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
Very definitely. It’s been happening over some years. There was a kind
of a point of inflection that increased after Cast Lead, which horrified
many people, and it’s happening again now. You can see it everywhere.
Take, say, The New York Times. The New York Times
devoted a good part of their op-ed page to a Gaza diary a couple of days
ago, which was heart-rending and eloquent. They’ve had strong op-eds
condemning extremist Israeli policies. That’s new, and it reflects
something that’s happening in the country. You can see it in polls,
especially among young people. If you look at the polling results, the
population below 30, roughly, by now has shifted substantially. You can
see it on college campuses. I mean, I see it personally. I’ve been
giving talks on these things for almost 50 years. I used to have police
protection, literally, even at my own university. The meetings were
broken up violently, you know, enormous protest. Within the past,
roughly, decade, that’s changed substantially by now that Palestinian
solidarity is maybe the biggest issue on campus. Huge audiences. There
isn’t even—hardly get a hostile question. That’s a tremendous change.
That’s strikingly among younger people, but they become older.
However, there’s something we have to remember about the United
States: It’s not a democracy; it’s a plutocracy. There’s study after
study that comes out in mainstream academic political science which
shows what we all know or ought to know, that political decisions are
made by a very small sector of extreme privilege and wealth,
concentrated capital. For most of the population, their opinions simply
don’t matter in the political system. They’re essentially
disenfranchised. I can give the details if you like, but that’s
basically the story. Now, public opinion can make a difference. Even in
dictatorships, the public can’t be ignored, and in a partially
democratic society like this, even less so. So, ultimately, this will
make a difference. And how long "ultimately" is, well, that’s up to us.
We’ve seen it before. Take, say, the East Timor case, which I
mentioned. For 25 years, the United States strongly supported the
vicious Indonesian invasion and massacre, virtual genocide. It was
happening right through 1999, as the Indonesian atrocities increased and
escalated. After Dili, the capital city, was practically evacuated
after Indonesian attacks, the U.S. was still supporting it. Finally, in
mid-September 1999, under considerable international and also domestic
pressure, Clinton quietly told the Indonesian generals, "It’s finished."
And they had said they’d never leave. They said, "This is our
territory." They pulled out within days and allowed a U.N. peacekeeping
force to enter without Indonesian military resistance. Well, you know,
that’s a dramatic indication of what can be done. South Africa is a more
complex case but has similarities, and there are others. Sooner or
later, it’s possible—and that’s really up to us—that domestic pressure
will compel the U.S. government to join the world on this issue, and
that will be a decisive change.
AMYGOODMAN: Noam, I wanted to ask you about your recent piece for The Nation on Israel-Palestine and BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement). You were critical of the effectiveness of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. One of the many responses came from Yousef Munayyer,
the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund and its educational
program, the Palestine Center. He wrote, quote, "Chomsky’s criticism of BDS
seems to be that it hasn’t changed the power dynamic yet, and thus that
it can’t. There is no doubt the road ahead is a long one for BDS,
but there is also no doubt the movement is growing ... All other paths
toward change, including diplomacy and armed struggle, have so far
proved ineffective, and some have imposed significant costs on
Palestinian life and livelihood." Could you respond?
NOAMCHOMSKY: Well, actually, I did respond. You can find it on The Nationwebsite. But in brief, far from being critical of BDS, I was strongly supportive of it. One of the oddities of what’s called the BDS
movement is that they can’t—many of the activists just can’t see
support as support unless it becomes something like almost worship:
repeat the catechism. If you take a look at that article, it very
strongly supported these tactics. In fact, I was involved in them and
supporting them before the BDS movement even existed. They’re the right tactics.
But it should be second nature to activists—and it usually is—that
you have to ask yourself, when you conduct some tactic, when you pursue
it, what the effect is going to be on the victims. You don’t pursue a
tactic because it makes you feel good. You pursue it because it’s
going—you estimate that it’ll help the victims. And you have to make
choices. This goes way back. You know, say, back during the Vietnam War,
there were debates about whether you should resort to violent tactics,
say Weathermen-style tactics. You could understand the motivation—people
were desperate—but the Vietnamese were strongly opposed. And many of
us, me included, were also opposed, not because the horrors don’t
justify some strong action, but because the consequences would be harm
to the victims. The tactics would increase support for the violence,
which in fact is what happened. Those questions arise all the time.
Unfortunately, the Palestinian solidarity movements have been unusual
in their unwillingness to think these things through. That was pointed
out recently again by Raja Shehadeh, the leading figure in—lives in
Ramallah, a longtime supporter, the founder of Al-Haq, the legal
organization, a very significant and powerful figure. He pointed out
that the Palestinian leadership has tended to focus on what he called
absolutes, absolute justice—this is the absolute justice that we
want—and not to pay attention to pragmatic policies. That’s been very
obvious for decades. It used to drive people like Eqbal Ahmad, the
really committed and knowledgeable militant—used to drive him crazy.
They just couldn’t listen to pragmatic questions, which are what matter
for success in a popular movement, a nationalist movement. And the ones
who understand that can succeed; the ones who don’t understand it can’t.
If you talk about—
AMYGOODMAN: What choices do you feel that the BDS movement, that activists should make?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
Well, they’re very simple, very clear. In fact, I discussed them in the
article. Those actions that have been directed against the occupation
have been quite successful, very successful. Most of them don’t have
anything to do with the BDS movement. So take,
say, one of the most extreme and most successful is the European Union
decision, directive, to block any connection to any institution,
governmental or private, that has anything to do with the Occupied
Territories. That’s a pretty strong move. That’s the kind of move that
was taken with regard to South Africa. Just a couple of months ago, the
Presbyterian Church here called for divestment from any multinational
corporation that’s involved in any way in the occupation. And there’s
been case after case like that. That makes perfect sense.
There are also—so far, there haven’t been any sanctions, so BDS
is a little misleading. It’s BD, really. But there could be sanctions.
And there’s an obvious way to proceed. There has been for years, and has
plenty of support. In fact, Amnesty International called for it during
the Cast Lead operations. That’s an arms embargo. For the U.S. to impose
an arms embargo, or even to discuss it, would be a major issue, major
contribution. That’s the most important of the possible sanctions.
And there’s a basis for it. U.S. arms to Israel are in violation of
U.S. law, direct violation of U.S. law. You look at U.S. foreign
assistance law, it bars any military assistance to any one country,
unit, whatever, engaged in consistent human rights violations. Well, you
know, Israel’s violation of human rights violations is so extreme and
consistent that you hardly have to argue about it. That means that U.S.
aid to Israel is in—military aid, is in direct violation of U.S. law.
And as Pillay pointed out before, the U.S. is a high-contracting party
to the Geneva Conventions, so it’s violating its own extremely serious
international commitments by not imposing—working to impose the Geneva
Conventions. That’s an obligation for the high-contracting parties, like
the U.S. And that means to impose—to prevent a violation of
international humanitarian law, and certainly not to abet it. So the
U.S. is both in violation of its commitments to international
humanitarian law and also in violation of U.S. domestic law. And there’s
some understanding of that.
AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to get your response, Noam, to Nicholas Kristof on the issue of Palestinian nonviolence. Writing in The New York Times
last month, Kristof wrote, quote, "Palestinian militancy has
accomplished nothing but increasing the misery of the Palestinian
people. If Palestinians instead turned more to huge Gandhi-style
nonviolence resistance campaigns, the resulting videos would reverberate
around the world and Palestine would achieve statehood and freedom."
Noam Chomsky, your response?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
Well, first of all, that’s a total fabrication. Palestinian nonviolence
has been going on for a long time, very significant nonviolent actions.
I haven’t seen the reverberations in Kristof’s columns, for example, or
anywhere. I mean, there is among popular movements, but not what he’s
describing.
There’s also a good deal of cynicism in those comments. What he
should be doing is preaching nonviolence to the United States, the
leading perpetrator of violence in the world. Hasn’t been reported here,
but an international poll last December—Gallup here and its counterpart
in England, the leading polling agencies—it was an international poll
of public opinion. One of the questions that was asked is: Which country
is the greatest threat to world peace? Guess who was first. Nobody even
close. The United States was way in the lead. Far behind was Pakistan,
and that was probably because mostly of the Indian vote. Well, that’s
what Nicholas Kristof should be commenting on. He should be calling for
nonviolence where he is, where we are, where you and I are. That would
make a big difference in the world. And, of course, nonviolence in our
client states, like Israel, where we provide directly the means for the
violence, or Saudi Arabia, extreme, brutal, fundamentalist state, where
we send them tens of billions of dollars of military aid, and on and on,
in ways that are not discussed. That would make sense. It’s easy to
preach nonviolence to some victim somewhere, saying, "You shouldn’t be
violent. We’ll be as violent as we like, but you not be violent."
That aside, the recommendation is correct, and in fact it’s been a
recommendation of people dedicated to Palestinian rights for many years.
Eqbal Ahmad, who I mentioned, 40 years—you know, his background, he was
active in the Algerian resistance, a long, long history of both very
acute political analysis and direct engagement in Third World struggles,
he was very close to the PLO—consistently urged this, as many, many
people did, me included. And, in fact, there’s been plenty of it. Not
enough. But as I say, it’s very easy to recommend to victims, "You be
nice guys." That’s cheap. Even if it’s correct, it’s cheap. What matters
is what we say about ourselves. Are we going to be nice guys? That’s
the important thing, particularly when it’s the United States, the
country which, quite rightly, is regarded by the—internationally as the
leading threat to world peace, and the decisive threat in the Israeli
case.
AMYGOODMAN: Noam, Mohammed Suliman, a Palestinian human rights worker in Gaza, wrote in The Huffington Post
during the Israeli assault, quote, "The reality is that if Palestinians
stop resisting, Israel won’t stop occupying, as its leaders repeatedly
affirm. The besieged Jews of the Warsaw ghetto had a motto 'to live and
die in dignity.' As I sit in my own besieged ghetto," he writes, "I
think how Palestinians have honored this universal value. We live in
dignity and we die in dignity, refusing to accept subjugation. We’re
tired of war. ... But I also can no longer tolerate the return to a
deeply unjust status quo. I can no longer agree to live in this open-air
prison." Your response to what Mohammed Suliman wrote?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
Well, several points again. First, about the Warsaw Ghetto, there’s a
very interesting debate going on right now in Israel in the Hebrew press
as to whether the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was justified. It began with
an article, I think by a survivor, who went through many details and
argued that the uprising, which was sort of a rogue element, he said,
actually seriously endangered the Jews of the—surviving Jews in the
ghetto and harmed them. Then came responses, and there’s a debate about
it. But that’s exactly the kind of question you want to ask all the
time: What’s going to be the effect of the action on the victims? It’s
not a trivial question in the case of the Warsaw Ghetto. Obviously,
maybe the Nazis are the extreme in brutality in human history, and you
have to surely sympathize and support the ghetto inhabitants and
survivors and the victims, of course. But nevertheless, the tactical
question arises. This is not open. And it arises here, too, all the
time, if you’re serious about concern for the victims.
But his general point is accurate, and it’s essentially what I was
trying to say before. Israel wants quiet, wants the Palestinians to be
nice and quiet and nonviolent, the way Nicholas Kristof urges. And then
what will Israel do? We don’t have to guess. It’s what they have been
doing, and they’ll continue, as long as there’s no resistance to it.
What they’re doing is, briefly, taking over whatever they want, whatever
they see as of value in the West Bank, leaving Palestinians in
essentially unviable cantons, pretty much imprisoned; separating the
West Bank from Gaza in violation of the solemn commitments of the Oslo
Accords; keeping Gaza under siege and on a diet; meanwhile,
incidentally, taking over the Golan Heights, already annexed in
violation of explicit Security Council orders; vastly expanding
Jerusalem way beyond any historical size, annexing it in violation of
Security Council orders; huge infrastructure projects, which make it
possible for people living in the nice hills of the West Bank to get to
Tel Aviv in a few minutes without seeing any Arabs. That’s what they’ll
continue doing, just as they have been, as long as the United States
supports it. That’s the decisive point, and that’s what we should be
focusing on. We’re here. We can do things here. And that happens to be
of critical significance in this case. That’s going to be—it’s not the
only factor, but it’s the determinative factor in what the outcome will
be.
AMYGOODMAN:
Yet you have Congress—you’re talking about American population changing
opinion—unanimously passing a resolution in support of Israel.
Unanimously.
NOAMCHOMSKY:
That’s right, because—and that’s exactly what we have to combat, by
organization and action. Take South Africa again. It wasn’t until the
1980s that Congress began to pass sanctions. As I said, Reagan vetoed
them and then violated them when they were passed over his veto, but at
least they were passing them. But that’s decades after massive protests
were developing around the world. In fact, BDS-style tactics—there was never a BDS
movement—BDS-style tactics began to be carried out on a popular level
in the United States beginning in the late '70s, but really picking up
in the ’80s. That's decades after large-scale actions of that kind were
being taken elsewhere. And ultimately, that had an effect. Well, we’re
not there yet. You have to recall—it’s important to recall that by the
time Congress was passing sanctions against South Africa, even the
American business community, which really is decisive at determining
policy, had pretty much turned against apartheid. Just wasn’t worth it
for them. And as I said, the agreement that was finally reached was
acceptable to them—difference from the Israeli case. We’re not there
now. Right now Israel is one of the top recipients of U.S. investment.
Warren Buffett, for example, recently bought—couple of billion dollars
spent on some factory in Israel, an installment, and said that this is
the best place for investment outside the United States. Intel is
setting up its major new generation chip factory there. Military
industry is closely linked to Israel. All of this is quite different
from the South Africa case. And we have to work, as it’ll take a lot of
work to get there, but it has to be done.
AMYGOODMAN:
And yet, Noam, you say that the analogy between Israel’s occupation of
the terrories and apartheid South Africa is a dubious one. Why?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
Many reasons. Take, say, the term "apartheid." In the Occupied
Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call
it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by "apartheid" you mean
South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied
Territories is much worse. There’s a crucial difference. The South
African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their
workforce. It was 85 percent of the workforce of the population, and
that was basically their workforce. They needed them. They had to
sustain them. The bantustans were horrifying, but South Africa did try
to sustain them. They didn’t put them on a diet. They tried to keep them
strong enough to do the work that they needed for the country. They
tried to get international support for the bantustans.
The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories is totally different. They just don’t want them. They want
them out, or at least in prison. And they’re acting that way. That’s a
very striking difference, which means that the apartheid analogy, South
African apartheid, to the Occupied Territories is just a gift to Israeli
violence. It’s much worse than that. If you look inside Israel, there’s
plenty of repression and discrimination. I’ve written about it
extensively for decades. But it’s not apartheid. It’s bad, but it’s not
apartheid. So the term, I just don’t think is applicable.
AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser. Speaking to The New York Times,
Eiland said, quote, "You cannot win against an effective guerrilla
organization when on the one hand, you are fighting them, and on the
other hand, you continue to supply them with water and food and gas and
electricity. Israel should have declared a war against the de facto
state of Gaza, and if there is misery and starvation in Gaza, it might
lead the other side to make such hard decisions." Noam Chomsky, if you
could respond to this?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
That’s basically the debate within the Israeli top political echelon:
Should we follow Dov Weissglas’s position of maintaining them on a diet
of bare survival, so you make sure children don’t get chocolate bars,
but you allow them to have, say, Cheerios in the morning? Should we—
AMYGOODMAN:
Actually, Noam, can you explain that, because when you’ve talked about
it before, it sort of sounds—this diet sounds like a metaphor. But can
you explain what you meant when you said actual diet? Like, you’re
talking number of calories. You’re actually talking about whether kids
can have chocolate?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
Israel has—Israeli experts have calculated in detail exactly how many
calories, literally, Gazans need to survive. And if you look at the
sanctions that they impose, they’re grotesque. I mean, even John Kerry
condemned them bitterly. They’re sadistic. Just enough calories to
survive. And, of course, it is partly metaphoric, because it means just
enough material coming in through the tunnels so that they don’t totally
die. Israel restricts medicines, but you have to allow a little trickle
in. When I was there right before the November 2012 assault, visited
the Khan Younis hospital, and the director showed us that there’s—they
don’t even have simple medicines, but they have something. And the same
is true with all aspects of it. Keep them on a diet, literally. And the
reason is—very simple, and they pretty much said it: "If they die, it’s
not going to look good for Israel. We may claim that we’re not the
occupying power, but the rest of the world doesn’t agree. Even the
United States doesn’t agree. We are the occupying power. And if we kill
off the population under occupation, not going to look good." It’s not
the 19th century, when, as the U.S. expanded over what’s its national
territory, it pretty much exterminated the indigenous population. Well,
by 19th century’s imperial standards, that was unproblematic. This is a
little different today. You can’t exterminate the population in the
territories that you occupy. That’s the dovish position, Weissglas. The
hawkish position is Eiland, which you quoted: Let’s just kill them off.
AMYGOODMAN: And who do you think is going to prevail, as I speak to you in the midst of this ceasefire?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
The Weissglas position will prevail, because Israel just—you know, it’s
already becoming an international pariah and internationally hated. If
it went on to pursue Eiland’s recommendations, even the United States
wouldn’t be able to support it.
AMYGOODMAN:
You know, interestingly, while the Arab countries, most of them, have
not spoken out strongly against what Israel has done in Gaza, Latin
American countries, one after another, from Brazil to Venezuela to
Bolivia, have. A number of them have recalled their ambassadors to
Israel. I believe Bolivian President Evo Morales called Israel a
"terrorist state." Can you talk about Latin America and its relationship
with Israel?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
Yeah, just remember the Arab countries means the Arab dictators, our
friends. It doesn’t mean the Arab populations, our enemies.
But what you said about Latin America is very significant. Not long
ago, Latin America was what was called the backyard: They did whatever
we said. In strategic planning, very little was said about Latin
America, because they were under our domination. If we don’t like
something that happens, we install a military dictatorship or carry—back
huge massacres and so on. But basically they do what we say. Last 10 or
15 years, that’s changed. And it’s a historic change. For the first
time in 500 years, since the conquistadors, Latin America is moving
toward degree of independence of imperial domination and also a degree
of integration, which is critically important. And what you just
described is one striking example of it. In the entire world, as far as I
know, only a few Latin American countries have taken an honorable
position on this issue: Brazil, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador have
withdrawn ambassadors in protest. They join Bolivia and Venezuela, which
had done it even earlier in reaction to other atrocities. That’s
unique.
And it’s not the only example. There was a very striking example, I
guess maybe a year or so ago. The Open Society Forum did a study of
support for rendition. Rendition, of course, is the most extreme form of
torture. What you do is take people, people you don’t like, and you
send them to your favorite dictatorship so they’ll be tortured.
Grotesque. That was the CIA program of
extraordinary rendition. The study was: Who took part in it? Well, of
course, the Middle East dictatorships did—you know, Syria, Assad,
Mubarak and others—because that’s where you sent them to be
tortured—Gaddafi. They took part. Europe, almost all of it participated.
England, Sweden, other countries permitted, abetted the transfer of
prisoners to torture chambers to be grotesquely tortured. In fact, if
you look over the world, there was only really one exception: The Latin
American countries refused to participate. Now, that is pretty
remarkable, for one thing, because it shows their independence. But for
another, while they were under U.S. control, they were the torture
center of the world—not long ago, a couple of decades ago. That’s a real
change.
And by now, if you look at hemispheric conferences, the United States
and Canada are isolated. The last major hemispheric conference couldn’t
come to a consensus decision on the major issues, because the U.S. and
Canada didn’t agree with the rest of the hemisphere. The major issues
were admission of Cuba into the hemispheric system and steps towards
decriminalization of drugs. That’s a terrible burden on the Latin
Americans. The problem lies in the United States. And the Latin American
countries, even the right-wing ones, want to free themselves of that.
U.S. and Canada wouldn’t go along. These are very significant changes in
world affairs.
AMYGOODMAN:
I wanted to turn to Charlie Rose interviewing the Hamas leader Khaled
Meshaal. This was in July. Meshaal called for an end to Israel’s
occupation of Gaza.
KHALEDMESHAAL:
[translated] This is not a prerequisite. Life is not a prerequisite.
Life is a right for our people in Palestine. Since 2006, when the world
refused the outcomes of the elections, our people actually lived under
the siege of eight years. This is a collective punishment. We need to
lift the siege. We have to have a port. We have to have an airport. This
is the first message.
The second message: In order to stop the bloodletting, we need to
look at the underlying causes. We need to look at the occupation. We
need to stop the occupation. Netanyahu doesn’t take heed of our rights.
And Mr. Kerry, months ago, tried to find a window through the
negotiations in order to meet our target: to live without occupation, to
reach our state. Netanyahu has killed our hope or killed our dream, and
he killed the American initiative.
AMYGOODMAN:
That is the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal. In these last few minutes we
have left, Noam Chomsky, talk about the demands of Hamas and what Khaled
Meshaal just said.
NOAMCHOMSKY:
Well, he was basically reiterating what he and Ismail Haniyeh and other
Hamas spokespersons have been saying for a long time. In fact, if you
go back to 1988, when Hamas was formed, even before they became a
functioning organization, their leadership, Sheikh Yassin—who was
assassinated by Israel—others, offered settlement proposals, which were
turned down. And it remains pretty much the same. By now, it’s quite
overt. Takes effort to fail to see it. You can read it in The Washington Post.
What they propose is: They accept the international consensus on a
two-state settlement. They say, "Yes, let’s have a two-state settlement
on the international border." They do not—they say they don’t go on to
say, "We’ll recognize Israel," but they say, "Yes, let’s have a
two-state settlement and a very long truce, maybe 50 years. And then
we’ll see what happens." Well, that’s been their proposal all along.
That’s far more forthcoming than any proposal in Israel. But that’s not
the way it’s presented here. What you read is, all they’re interested in
is destruction of Israel. What you hear is Bob Schieffer’s type of
repetition of the most vulgar Israeli propaganda. But that has been
their position. It’s not that they’re nice people—like, I wouldn’t vote
for them—but that is their position.
AMYGOODMAN:
Six billion dollars of damage in Gaza right now. About 1,900
Palestinians are dead, not clear actually how many, as the rubble hasn’t
all been dug out at this point. Half a million refugees. You’ve got
something like 180,000 in the schools, the shelters. And what does that
mean for schools, because they’re supposed to be starting in a few
weeks, when the Palestinians are living in these schools, makeshift
shelters? So, what is the reality on the ground that happens now, as
these negotiations take place in Egypt?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
Well, there is a kind of a slogan that’s been used for years: Israel
destroys, Gazans rebuild, Europe pays. It’ll probably be something like
that—until the next episode of "mowing the lawn." And what will
happen—unless U.S. policy changes, what’s very likely to happen is that
Israel will continue with the policies it has been executing. No reason
for them to stop, from their point of view. And it’s what I said: take
what you want in the West Bank, integrate it into Israel, leave the
Palestinians there in unviable cantons, separate it from Gaza, keep Gaza
on that diet, under siege—and, of course, control, keep the West Golan
Heights—and try to develop a greater Israel. This is not for security
reasons, incidentally. That’s been understood by the Israeli leadership
for decades. Back around 1970, I suppose, Ezer Weizman, later
the—general, Air Force general, later president, pointed out, correctly,
that taking over the territories does not improve our security
situation—in fact, probably makes it worse—but, he said, it allows
Israel to live at the scale and with the quality that we now enjoy. In
other words, we can be a rich, powerful, expansionist country.
AMYGOODMAN:
But you hear repeatedly, Hamas has in its charter a call for the
destruction of Israel. And how do you guarantee that these thousands of
rockets that threaten the people of Israel don’t continue?
NOAMCHOMSKY:
Very simple. First of all, Hamas charter means practically nothing. The
only people who pay attention to it are Israeli propagandists, who
love it. It was a charter put together by a small group of people under
siege, under attack in 1988. And it’s essentially meaningless. There are
charters that mean something, but they’re not talked about. So, for
example, the electoral program of Israel’s governing party, Likud,
states explicitly that there can never be a Palestinian state west of
the Jordan River. And they not only state it in their charter, that’s a
call for the destruction of Palestine, explicit call for it. And they
don’t only have it in their charter, you know, their electoral program,
but they implement it. That’s quite different from the Hamas charter.
Noam Chomsky,
world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author.
He is Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, where he has taught for more than 50 years
Source: Democracy Now