First of all, I apologize to those of you who got the strange post from my on "How to Vote".It's the last time I try to post online, live, while using a portable laptop in a moving vehicle.Also, the site only sends out the first version, not the corrected one, so I simply deleted that one sentence thing.
So, welcome to the kinder, gentler, Absurd Times.It will be wry, however.I just like that word wry.Those of you who are in Moldovia or Ukraine and use Google Translate to read this, good luck.(However, in Russian it is перекошенный. which comes out as "wry."Very wry outcome, in my opinion.
OK.So, what do we get from this last election?
Instead of trying to cover the folly in an article, I took to Twitter (Absurd Times @honestcharlie) because it really was appropriate for one liners, not analysis.
Example: Don't vote for anyone who lists castrating hogs as her qualification for the Senate.
Vote for anyone who is accused of being "Corrupt" -- at least they have played the game before.
This election will go a long way towards furthering the careers of political satirists.Add a Republican Presidents, and things will be even funnier.Remember how funny the McCain/Palin combination was?It got so most people visualized Tina Fey when the name "Sarah Palin" was mentioned.
To give you an example, today a non-profession stated that Nick Wallendsa (whoever it was who did that stunt in Chicago at the Marina Towers recently) announced that he would walk a tightrope across Ted Cruz's open mouth.So, things are looking up already.
I did not see or hear Obama's press conference or speech earlier, but I was outside dining and the person opposite me looked up and saw him on the TV with a map of Syria and Iraq.I was asked what he was saying.Well, I had no idea and did not look back, but did mention that Henry IV advised his son, soon to be Henry V, to keep people busy with wars against a foreign enemy in the people you rule start to complain.Give them a common, foreign, enemy.My guess is that was the point, but I'm not sure.
Every single so-called "Left-Wing" ballot initiative passed almost everywhere: legalizing pot, supporting a woman's right to choose, overwhelming support for a higher minimum wage, expanded single payer insurance (as in government), legalizing gay marriage (why should they be exempt?), and so on.The Democrats might think about such things the next time around.
Of course, then things wouldn't be so funny.Nixon gave everyone lots of laughs.Reagan brought out the best in Bedtime for Bonzoand did Clint Eastwood impressions for us.In fact, he re-enacted lots of movies for us.Even when he had to withdraw the marines from Lebanon, he snapped into action by invading Grenada.Why?Well, there were Cuban construction workers there -- those guys can be tough, you know.
The Bushes were a goldmine.They were the Arbustos (means shrub in Spanish) of the day.I mean, these days Obama has to supply the punch lines by himself.When asked why Donald Trump was so vicious about him, Obama said "It all goes back to when we played soccer together in school growing up in Kenya."Who could top him?
No, we need a Republican president.
Well, this has already been too long, considering that about a third or more of our readers are overseas, so we will be back to the real world with the next issue.
So, this time around, we look at the solution to the problem.Simply put, the solution is to follow both national and international laws.Of course, that is easier said than done in the U.S.Following the law is for people you don't like, after all.
We had trouble finding an appropriate illustration for this version.
Finally, we decided on the above, the "Killer Tongue" illustration by Latuff.
Someone in the White House called him "Chicken Shit" because he wouldn't try to negotiate peace.He got angry.
He has also shut down the Mosque in Jerusalem.This is the sort of thing that started the 2nd Intifada, you may recall.
Well, anyway, before it is too late, here it is:
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2014
Noam Chomsky at United Nations: It Would Be Nice if the United States Lived up to International Law
After world-renowned scholar Noam Chomsky gave a major address on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the hall of the United Nations General Assembly last week, Amy Goodman interviewed the world-renowned linguist and dissident before an audience of 800 people. Chomsky spoke at an event sponsored by the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. “One important action that the United States could take is to live up to its own laws. Of course it would be nice if it lived up to international law, but maybe that’s too much to ask,” Chomsky said.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we return toMITprofessor Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author. Last week, he spoke before over 800 people in the hall of the United Nations General Assembly, before ambassadors and the public alike, on the issue of Israel and Palestine. After his speech, I conducted a public interview with Professor Chomsky.
AMYGOODMAN:What do you think is the most—the single most important action the United States can take? And what about its role over the years? What is its interest here?
NOAMCHOMSKY:Well, one important action that the United States could take is to live up to its own laws. Of course, it would be nice if it lived up to international law, but maybe that’s too much to ask, but live up to its own laws. And there are several. And here, incidentally, I have in mind advice to activists also, who I think ought to be organizing and educating in this direction. There are two crucial cases.
One of them is what’s called the Leahy Law. Patrick Leahy, Senator Leahy, introduced legislation called the Leahy Law, which bars sending weapons to any military units which are involved in consistent human rights violations. There isn’t the slightest doubt that the Israeli army is involved in massive human rights violations, which means that all dispatch of U.S. arms to Israel is in violation of U.S. law. I think that’s significant. The U.S. should be called upon by its own citizens to—and by others, to adhere to U.S. law, which also happens to conform to international law in this case, as Amnesty International, for example, for years has been calling for an arms embargo against Israel for this reason. These are all steps that can be taken.
The second is the tax-exempt status that is given to organizations in the United States which are directly involved in the occupation and in significant attacks on human and civil rights within Israel itself, like the Jewish National Fund. Take a look at its charter with the state of Israel, which commits it to acting for the benefit of people of Jewish race, religion and origin within Israel. One of the consequences of that is that by a complex array of laws and administrative practices, the fund pretty much administers about 90 percent of the land of the country, with real consequences for who can live places. They get tax-exempt status also for their activities in the West Bank, which are strictly criminal. I think that’s also straight in violation of U.S. law. Now, those are important things.
And I think the U.S. should be pressured, internationally and domestically, to abandon its virtually unique role—unilateral role in blocking a political settlement for the past 40 years, ever since the first veto in January 1976. That should be a major issue in the media, in convocations like this, in the United Nations, in domestic politics, in government politics and so on.
AMYGOODMAN:The role of the media, can you talk about that, and particularly in the United States? And do you think that the opinion in the United States, public opinion, is shifting on this issue?
NOAMCHOMSKY:Well, the role of the—the media are somewhat shifting from uniform support for virtually everything that Israel does to—and, of course, silence about the U.S. role—that’s not just in the case of Israel, that’s innumerable other cases, as well—but is slowly shifting. But nevertheless, about, say, Operation Protective Edge, one can read in news reporting, news reporting inThe New York Times, major journal, a criticism of Hamas’s assault on Israel during Protective Edge. Hamas’s assault on Israel—not exactly what happened, but that’s what people are reading, and that’s the way it’s depicted. Israel is—over and over it’s pointed out, "Look, poor Israel is under attack. It has the right of self-defense." Everyone agrees to that. Actually, I agree, too. Everyone has a right of self-defense. But that’s not the question. The question is: Do you have a right of self-defense by force, by violence? The answer is no for anyone, whether it’s an individual or state, unless you have exhausted peaceful means. If you won’t even permit peaceful means, which is the case here, then you have no right of self-defense by violence. But try to find a word about that in the media. All you find is "self-defense." When President Obama rarely says anything about what’s happening, it’s usually, "If my daughters were being attacked by rockets, I would do anything to stop it." He’s referring not to the hundreds of Palestinian children who are being killed and slaughtered, but to the children in the Israeli town of Sderot, which is under attack by Qassam missiles. And remember that Israel knows exactly how to stop those missiles: namely, live up to a ceasefire for the first time, and then they would stop, as in the past, even when Israel didn’t live up to a ceasefire.
That framework—and, of course, the rest of the framework is the United States as an honest broker trying hard to bring the two recalcitrant sides together, doing its best in this noble endeavor—has nothing to do with the case. The U.S. is, as some of the U.S. negotiators have occasionally acknowledged, Israel’s lawyer. If there were serious negotiations going on, they would be led by some neutral party, maybe Brazil, which has some international respect, and they would bring together the two sides—on the one side, Israel and the United States; on the other side, the Palestinians. Now, those would be possible realistic negotiations. But the chances of anyone in the media either—I won’t even say pointing it out, even thinking about it, is minuscule. The indoctrination is so deep that really elementary facts like these—and they are elementary—are almost incomprehensible.
But to get back to your—the last point you mentioned, it’s very important. Opinion in the United States is shifting, not as fast as in most of the world, not as fast as in Europe. It’s not reaching the point where you could get a vote in Congress anything like the British Parliament a couple days ago, but it is changing, mostly among younger people, and changing substantially. I’ll just illustrate with personal experience; Amy has the same experience. Until pretty recently, when I gave talks on these topics, as I’ve been doing for 40 years, I literally had to have police protection, even at my own university,MIT. Police would insist on walking me back to my car because of threats they had picked up. Meetings were broken up, and so on. That’s all gone. Just a couple of days ago I had a talk on these topics atMIT. Meeting wasn’t broken up. No police protection. Maybe 500 or 600 students were there, all enthusiastic, engaged, committed, concerned, wanting to do something about it. That’s happening all over the country. All over the country, Palestinian solidarity is one of the biggest issues on campus—enormous change in the last few years.
That’s the way things tend to change. It often starts with younger people. Gradually it gets to the rest of the population. Efforts of the kind I mentioned, say, trying to get the United States government to live up to its own laws, those could be undertaken on a substantial scale, domestically and with support from international institutions. And that could lead to further changes. I think that the—for example, the two things that I mentioned would have a considerable appeal to much of the American public. Why should they be funding military units that are carrying out massive human rights violations? Why should they be permitting tax exemption? Meaning we pay for it—that’s what a tax exemption means. Why should we be paying, compelled to pay, for violations of fundamental human rights in another country, and even in occupied territories, where it’s criminal? I think that can appeal to the American population and can lead to the kinds of changes we’ve seen in other cases.
AMYGOODMAN:Final question, before we open it up to each of you: Your thoughts on theBDSmovement, the boycott, divest, sanctions movement?
NOAMCHOMSKY:Well,BDSis a set of tactics, right? These are tactics that you employ when you think they’re going to be effective and in ways that you think will be effective. Tactics are not principles. They’re not actions that you undertake no matter what because you think they’re right. Tactics are undertaken, if you’re serious, because you think they’re going to help the victims. That’s how you adjust your tactics, not because I think they’re right in principle, but because I think they will be beneficial. That ought to be second nature to activists.
Also second nature should be a crucial distinction between proposing and advocating. I can propose now that we should all live in peace and love each other. I just proposed it. That’s not a serious proposal. It becomes a serious proposal when it becomes advocacy. It is given—I sketch out a path for getting from here to there. Then it becomes serious. Otherwise, it’s empty words. That’s crucial and related to this.
Well, when you take a look at theBDSmovement, which is separate, incidentally, fromBDStactics—let me make that clear. So, when the European Union issued its directive or when the—that I mentioned, or when, say, the Gates Foundation withdraws investment in security operations that are being carried out, not only in the Occupied Territories, but elsewhere, that’s very important. But that’s not theBDSmovement. That’sBDStactics, actually, BD tactics, boycott, divestment tactics. That’s important. TheBDSmovement itself has been an impetus to these developments, and in many ways a positive one, but I think it has failed and should reflect on its, so far, unwillingness to face what are crucial questions for activists: What’s going to help the victims, and what’s going to harm them? What is a proposal, and what is real advocacy? You have to think that through, and it hasn’t been sufficiently done.
So, if you take a look at the principles of theBDSmovement, there are three. They vary slightly in wording, but basically three. One is, actions should be directed against the occupation. That has been extremely successful, in many ways, and it makes sense. It also helps educate the Western populations who are being appealed to to participate, enables—it’s an opening to discuss, investigate and organize about the participation in the occupation. That’s very successful.
A second principle is thatBDSactions should be continued until Israel allows the refugees to return. That has had no success, and to the extent that it’s been tried, it’s been negative. It just leads to a backlash. No basis has been laid for it among the population. It is simply interpreted as saying, "Oh, you want to destroy the state of Israel. We’re not going to destroy a state." You cannot undertake actions which you think are principled when in the real world they are going to have a harmful effect on the victims.
There’s a third category having to do with civil rights within Israel, and there are things that could be done here. One of the ones I mentioned, in fact—the tax-free status for U.S. organizations that are engaged in civil rights and human rights violations. And remember, a tax exemption means I pay for it. That’s what a tax exemption is. Well, that’s an action that could be undertaken. Others that have been undertaken have had backlashes which are harmful. And I won’t run through the record, but these are the kinds of questions that always have to be asked when you’re involved in serious activisms, if you care about the victims, not just feeling good, but caring about the victims. That’s critically important.
AMYGOODMAN:MITprofessor, world-renowned linguist, dissident, Noam Chomsky, speaking last Tuesday in the hall of the United Nations General Assembly before 800 people in an event hosted by the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. If you’d like a copy of today’s show, you can go to our website at democracynow.org.
We wish a very happy birthday to our video producer, Robby Karran. For all our New York viewers,Democracy Now!co-host Juan González will be one of the journalists questioning the New York gubernatorial candidates in tonight’s debate. The debate will be broadcast live at 8:00 p.m. onPBSstations across New York. I’ll be speaking inVienna, Austria, Friday at an event hosted byORF, Austria’s public broadcaster, then on Saturday speaking at the Elevate Festival inGraz, Austria. Again, you can go to democracynow.org for more details.
We waited awhile on this because it seemed so obvious.Then we realized that few people have even the slightest memory of what has happened even in the 21st Century in Palestine .v Israel and the U.S.Another note:there is nothing in this speech that has not already been documented here as it happened.Since then, however, our readership has at least quadrupled, so it was time.
Our media gave so much coverage of Gaza and Hamas and decided that Hamas was invented by evil Islamists.Well, the truth of it was that WE insisted, Bush the Decider insisted, that Palestine hold an election.Palestine said it wasn't a good idea, but we insisted.To our surprise, Hamas won by a huge majority and hence was the legitimate leader of all Palestine.We said "no, that won't do.The election was a bad idea."This caused a split where Hamas wound up in Gaza and the others still in the West Bank.To be sure, the PLO was always a primarily secular organization.
One reason to mention it's secular origins is the habit today of labeling every act we don't like as terrorism and, once we establish that the perpetrator converted to Islam, all questions as to why vanish.Is it not possible that the Canadian Government's refusal to give him a passport played a role?The fact that his adoptive father was supported by the U.S. in Libya to help overthrow Gaddafi is never mentioned.
A jogger mistakenly bumped into the PM of Canada recently.Immediately the questions was "Is he a Moslem"?Only Moslems go jogging these days?
During the slaughter of over 2,000 innocent and somewhat bewildered civilians in Gaza, we kept hearing only about Israel's right to self-defense.Often the demand is made that Hamas recognize Israel as a Jewish state.Since Hamas is not recognized as a state, how could it recognize anyone?And how democratic is a place called a "Jewish State"?Surely, our first amendment would not mean shit there.
There is plenty to criticize about these terrorists in Syria.Remember that bit about one of them eating his victim?We want to arm and train the "legitimate" opposition to Assad?Such as?Give us a name, any name.
Well, this is far off from the Israel mess, but this following speech is especially apt on the subject.It is the one International problem and controversy that has a legally outlined solution, endorsed by the entire U.N. and also at one time by Israel as well as Palestine.Since there is no doubt as to the solution, what is the problem?Read Chomsky, below:
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2014
In U.N. Speech, Noam Chomsky Blasts United States for Supporting Israel, Blocking Palestinian State
As U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announces plans to set up an investigation into the attacks on United Nations facilities during Israel’s recent assault on the Gaza Strip, we broadcast the speech of world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky, who recently spoke in the hall of the U.N. General Assembly at an event sponsored by the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. "The pattern that was set in January 1976 continues to the present," said Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Israel rejects a settlement of these terms and for many years has been devoting extensive resources to ensuring it will not be implemented with the unremitting and decisive support of the United States — military, economic, diplomatic and ideological."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday he is setting up an investigation into the attacks on U.N. facilities during Israel’s recent assault on Gaza. Some 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilian, were killed in the conflict, along with 67 Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel.
Well, today we spend the hour with Professor Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author. He’s Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than half a century. In a rare event that took place last Tuesday, 800 people packed the hall of the U.N. General Assembly to see Noam Chomsky—ambassadors and the public from around the world. The event was hosted by the [Committee on the] Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Noam Chomsky gave a major address, and I followed with a public interview. First, the speech.
NOAMCHOMSKY:It’s a pleasure to be here to be able to talk with you and discuss with you afterwards.
Many of the world’s problems are so intractable that it’s hard to think of ways even to take steps towards mitigating them. The Israel-Palestine conflict is not one of these. On the contrary, the general outlines of a diplomatic solution have been clear for at least 40 years. Not the end of the road—nothing ever is—but a significant step forward. And the obstacles to a resolution are also quite clear.
The basic outlines were presented here in a resolution brought to the U.N. Security Council in January 1976. It called for a two-state settlement on the internationally recognized border—and now I’m quoting—"with guarantees for the rights of both states to exist in peace and security within secure and recognized borders." The resolution was brought by the three major Arab states: Egypt, Jordan, Syria—sometimes called the "confrontation states." Israel refused to attend the session. The resolution was vetoed by the United States. A U.S. veto typically is a double veto: The veto, the resolution is not implemented, and the event is vetoed from history, so you have to look hard to find the record, but it is there. That has set the pattern that has continued since. The most recent U.S. veto was in February 2011—that’s President Obama—when his administration vetoed a resolution calling for implementation of official U.S. policy opposition to expansion of settlements. And it’s worth bearing in mind that expansion of settlements is not really the issue; it’s the settlements, unquestionably illegal, along with the infrastructure projects supporting them.
For a long time, there has been an overwhelming international consensus in support of a settlement along these general lines. The pattern that was set in January 1976 continues to the present. Israel rejects a settlement of these terms and for many years has been devoting extensive resources to ensuring that it will not be implemented, with the unremitting and decisive support of the United States—military, economic, diplomatic and indeed ideological—by establishing how the conflict is viewed and interpreted in the United States and within its broad sphere of influence.
There’s no time here to review the record, but its general character is revealed by a look at what has happened in Gaza in the past decade, carrying forward a long history of earlier crimes. Last August, August 26th, a ceasefire was reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. And the question on all our minds is: What are the prospects for the future? Well, one reasonable way to try to answer that question is to look at the record. And here, too, there is a definite pattern: A ceasefire is reached; Israel disregards it and continues its steady assault on Gaza, including continued siege, intermittent acts of violence, more settlement and development projects, often violence in the West Bank; Hamas observes the ceasefire, as Israel officially recognizes, until some Israeli escalation elicits a Hamas response, which leads to another exercise of "mowing the lawn," in Israeli parlance, each episode more fierce and destructive than the last.
The first of the series was the Agreement on Movement and Access in November 2005. I’ll give a close paraphrase of it. It called for a crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah for the export of goods and the transit of people, continuous operation of crossings between Israel and Gaza for the import and export of goods and the transit of people, reduction of obstacles to movement within the West Bank, bus and truck convoys between the West Bank and Gaza, the building of a seaport in Gaza, the reopening of the airport in Gaza that Israel had recently destroyed. These are essentially the terms of successive ceasefires, including the one just reached a few weeks ago.
The timing of the November 2005 agreement is significant. This was the moment of Israel’s disengagement, as it’s called, from Gaza—the removal of several thousand Israeli settlers from Gaza. Now, this is depicted as a noble effort to seek peace and development, but the reality is rather different. The reality was described, very quickly, by the Israeli official who was in charge of negotiating and implementing the ceasefire, Dov Weissglas, close confidant of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. As he explained to the Israeli press, the goal of the disengagement—I’m quoting him—was "the freezing of the peace process," so as to "prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state" and to ensure that diplomacy "has been removed indefinitely from our agenda."
The reality on the ground is described by Israel’s leading specialists on the occupation—a historian, respected historian Idith Zertal, Israel’s leading diplomatic correspondent Akiva Eldar, wrote the major book, the standard work on the settlement project, calledLords of the Land, referring to the settlers. What they say about the disengagement is this: They say, "the ruined territory"—and by then, it was ruined, largely part of the reason for the removal of the settlers—"the ruined territory was not released for even a single day from Israel’s military grip, or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day. After the disengagement, Israel left behind scorched earth, devastated services, and people with neither a present nor a future. The settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory and to kill and harass its inhabitants by means of its formidable military might." Now, that’s an accurate description from the most respected Israeli source.
The Oslo Accords, 20 years ago, established that Gaza and the West Bank are an indivisible territorial unity, whose integrity cannot be broken up. For 20 years, the United States and Israel have been dedicated to separate Gaza and the West Bank in violation of the accords that they had accepted. And a look at the map explains why. Gaza offers the only access to the outside world of Palestine. If Gaza is separated from the West Bank, whatever autonomy might ultimately be granted in the West Bank would be imprisoned—Israel on one side, a hostile Jordan, ally of Israel, on the other side, and in addition, one of Israel’s slow and steady U.S.-backed policies is to take over the Jordan Valley, about a third of the West Bank, much of the arable land, which would essentially imprison the rest even more tightly, if Gaza is separated from the West Bank. Now, that’s the major geostrategic reason for the Israeli insistence, with U.S. backing, on separating the two in violation of the Oslo agreements and the series of ceasefires that have been reached since November 2005.
Well, the November 2005 agreement lasted for a few weeks. In January 2006, a very important event took place: the first full, free election in the Arab world, carefully monitored, recognized to be free and fair. It had one flaw. It came out the wrong way: Hamas won the Parliament, control of the Parliament. The U.S. and Israel didn’t want that. You may recall, at that period, the slogan on everyone’s lips was "democracy promotion." The highest U.S. commitment in the world was democracy promotion. Here was a good test. Democracy: Election came out the wrong way; the U.S. instantly decided, along with Israel, to punish the Palestinians for the crime of voting the wrong way; a harsh siege was instituted, other punishments; violence increased; the United States immediately began to organize a military coup to overthrow the unacceptable government. That’s quite familiar practice, I won’t go through the record. The European Union, to its shame and discredit, went along with this. There was an immediate Israeli escalation. That was the end of the November agreement, followed by major Israeli onslaughts.
In 2007, a year later, Hamas committed even a greater crime than winning a fair election: It preempted the planned military coup and took over Gaza. That’s described in the West, in the United States, most of the West, as Hamas’s taking over Gaza by force—which is not false, but something is omitted. The force was preempting a planned military coup to overthrow the elected government. Now, that was a serious crime. It’s bad enough to vote the wrong way in a free election, but to preempt a U.S.-planned military coup is far more serious. The attack on Gaza increased substantially at that point, major Israeli onslaughts. Finally, in January 2008, another ceasefire was reached. Terms were pretty much the same as those that I quoted. Israel publicly rejected the ceasefire, said that it would not abide by it. Hamas observed the ceasefire, as Israel officially recognizes, despite Israel’s refusal to do so.
Now, that continued until November 4th, 2008. On November 4th, which was the day of the U.S. election, Israeli forces invaded Gaza, killed half a dozen Hamas militants. That led to Qassam rockets attacking Israel, huge Israeli response, lots of killings—all Palestinians, as usual. By the end of December, couple of weeks later, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire. The Israeli Cabinet considered it and rejected it. This was a dovish Cabinet, led by Ehud Olmert—rejected it and decided to launch the next major military operation.
That was Cast Lead, which was a horrible operation, so much so that it caused a very substantial international reaction, investigations by a United Nations commission, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch. In the middle of the assault—the assault, incidentally, was carefully timed to end immediately before President Obama’s inauguration. He had already been elected, but he wasn’t inaugurated yet, so when he was asked to comment on the ongoing atrocities, he responded by saying that he couldn’t do so, the United States has only one president, and he wasn’t president yet. He was talking about lots of other things, but not this. The attack was timed to end immediately before the inauguration, so he therefore could respond to the questions by saying, "Well, now is not the time to look at the past, let’s look forward to the future." Diplomats know very well that that’s a standard slogan for those who are engaged in serious crime: "Let’s forget about the past, let’s look forward to a glorious future." Well, that was right in the middle of the assault.
The Security Council did pass a resolution—unanimously, U.S. abstaining—calling for an immediate ceasefire with the usual terms. That was January 8th, 2009. It was never observed, and it broke down completely with the next major episode of "mowing the lawn" in November 2012. Now, you can get a good sense of what was going on by looking at the casualty figures for the year 2012. Seventy-nine people were killed, 78 of them Palestinians—the usual story.
AMYGOODMAN:Professor Noam Chomsky speaking last Tuesday in the hall of the U.N. General Assembly before 800 people in an event hosted by the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. We’ll return to his speech and my public interview with him in a moment.
[break]
AMYGOODMAN:We return to Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author. Last week, Professor Chomsky, in a rare event, spoke in the hall of the U.N. General Assembly to about 800 people, a number of them ambassadors and the public from around the world. He talked about the aftermath of the November 2012 Israeli assault on Gaza.
NOAMCHOMSKY:After the November assault, there was a ceasefire reached with the usual terms. I’ll describe what happened next by quoting a leading specialist, Nathan Thrall. He’s a leading Middle East analyst for the International Crisis Group. As he writes, Israel recognized that Hamas was observing the terms of the ceasefire, and "therefore saw little incentive" in doing the same. The military attacks on Gaza increased, along with more stringent restrictions on imports. Exports were blocked. Exit permits were blocked.
That continued until April 2014, when Palestinians committed another crime: Gaza-based Hamas and West Bank-based Palestinian Authority signed a unity agreement. Israel was infuriated—infuriated even more when the world mostly supported it. Even the United States gave weak, but actual, support. Several reasons for the Israeli reaction. One is that unity between Gaza and the West Bank, between the two movements, would threaten the long-standing policies of separating the two, for the reasons that I mentioned. Another reason was that a unity government undermines one of the pretexts for Israel’s refusal to participate in negotiations seriously—namely, how can we negotiate with an entity that is internally divided? Well, if they’re unified, that pretext disappears. Israel was infuriated. It launched major assaults on the Palestinians in the West Bank, primarily targeting Hamas. Hundreds of people arrested, mostly Hamas members. Also Gaza, also killings.
There was a pretext, of course. There always is. The pretext was that three teenagers, Israeli teenagers, in the settlements had been brutally murdered, captured and murdered. Israel claimed officially that they thought that they were alive, so therefore launched a long, several weeks’ assault on the West Bank, alleging that they were trying to find them alive. Meanwhile, the arrests, attacks and so on. It turns out that they knew immediately that they had been killed. Now, they also knew immediately that it was very unlikely that Hamas was involved. The government said they had certain knowledge that Hamas had done it, but their own leading specialists, like [Shlomi Eldar], had pointed out right away that the assault—which was a brutal crime—was very likely committed by members of a breakaway clan, the Qawasmeh clan in Hebron, which was not given a green light by Hamas and had been a thorn in their sides. And that, apparently, is true, if you look at the later arrests and punishments. Anyway, that was a pretext for this assault, killings in Gaza, too. That finally elicited a Hamas response. Then came Operation Protective Edge, the one which was just completed, and more brutal and destructive even the ones that preceded it.
The pattern is very clear. And so far, at least, it appears to be continuing. The latest ceasefire was reached on August 26th. It was followed at once by Israel’s greatest land grab in 30 years, almost a thousand acres in the Gush Etzion area near what’s called Jerusalem, Greater Jerusalem, about five times the size of anything that Jerusalem ever was, taken over by Israel, annexed in violation of Security Council orders. The U.S. State Department informed the Israeli Embassy that Israeli—I’m quoting it now—"Israeli activity in Gush Etzion undermines American efforts to protect Israel at the United Nations," and urged that Israel shouldn’t provide ammunition for "those at the [United Nations] who would interpret [Israel’s] position as hardening." Actually, that warning was given 47 years ago, in September 1967, at the time of Israel’s first colonization, illegal colonization, of Gush Etzion. Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg recently reminded us of this. Little has changed since, in the last 47 years, apart from the scale of the crimes, which continue, without a break, with constant U.S. support.
Well, as for the prospects, there is a conventional picture. It’s repeated constantly on all sides—Israel, Palestine, independent commentators, diplomats. The picture that’s presented is that there are two alternatives: either the two-state settlement, which represents an overwhelming international consensus, virtually everyone, and if that fails, there will have to be one state—Israel will take over the West Bank, the Palestinians will hand over the keys, as it’s sometimes said. Palestinians often have favored that. They say then they will be able to carry out a civil rights struggle, maybe modeled on the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, fight for civil rights within the whole one state controlled by Israel. Now, Israelis criticize that on the grounds of what is called "the demographic problem," the fact that there will be too many non-Jews in a Jewish state—in fact, pretty soon a majority. Those are the alternatives that are presented, overwhelmingly, hardly an exception.
My own opinion, which I’ve written about repeatedly—without convincing many people, apparently, but I’ll try to convince you—is that this is a total illusion. Those are not the two alternatives. There are two alternatives, but they’re different ones. One alternative is the international consensus on a two-state settlement, basically the terms of January 1976. By now, it’s virtually everyone—the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic States, includes Iran, Europe, Latin America—informally, at least, about everyone. That’s one option. The other option, the realistic one, is that Israel will continue doing exactly what it is doing right now, before our eyes, visible, with U.S. support, which is also visible. And what’s happening is not a secret. You can open the newspapers and read it.
Israel is taking over what they call Jerusalem, as I mentioned, a huge area, maybe five times the area of historic Jerusalem, Greater Jerusalem, big area in the West Bank, includes many Arab villages being dispossessed, destroyed, bringing settlers in. All of this is doubly illegal. All the settlements are illegal, as determined by the Security Council, advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. But the Jerusalem settlements are doubly illegal, because they’re also in violation of explicit Security Council orders going back to 1968, with the U.S. actually voting for them at that time, barring any change in the status of Jerusalem. But it continues. That’s Greater Jerusalem. There are then corridors extending to the east. One major corridor extending from Jerusalem almost to Jericho, virtually bisecting the West Bank, includes the Israeli town of Ma’ale Adumim, which was built largely during the Clinton administration, Clinton years, with the obvious purpose of bisecting the West Bank—still a little contested territory, but that’s the goal. There’s another corridor further to the north including the town of Ariel, partially bisecting what remains. Another one further to the north including the town of Kedumim. If you look at the map, these essentially break up the West Bank into pretty much cantons. It looks, from a map, as though a large territory is left, but that’s misleading. Most of that is uninhabitable desert. And that’s separate from what I mentioned before, the slow, steady takeover of the Jordan Valley to the east—again, about a third of the arable land, the country.
Israel has no official policy of taking it over, but they’re pursuing the policy in the way that has been carried out now for a hundred years, literally—small steps so nobody notices, or at least people pretend not to notice, establish a military zone. The Palestinians who live there have to be displaced because it’s a military zone, no settlement allowed, and pretty soon there’s a military settlement, Nahal settlement, and another, then, sooner or later, it becomes an actual settlement. Meanwhile, dig wells, dispossess the population, set up green zones—a large variety of techniques which have, by now, reduced the Arab population from about 300,000 in 1967 to roughly 60,000 today. As I mentioned, that essentially imprisons what’s left.
I don’t think Israel has any intention of taking over the Palestinian population concentrations, which are left out of this, these plans. There are analogies often made to South Africa, but they’re quite misleading. South Africa relied on its black population. That was 85 percent of the population. It was its workforce. And they had to sustain them, just like slaveowners have to maintain their capital. They tried to sustain the population. They even tried to gain international support for the bantustans. Israel has no such attitude toward the Palestinians. They don’t want to have anything to do with them. If they leave, that’s fine. If they die, that’s fine. In standard neocolonial pattern, Israel is establishing—permitting the establishment of a center for Palestinian elites in Ramallah, where you have nice restaurants and theaters and so on. Every Third World country under the colonial system had something like that.
Now, that’s the picture that’s emerging. It’s taking shape before our eyes. It has so far worked very well. If it continues, Israel will not face a demographic problem. When these regions are integrated slowly into Israel, actually, the proportion of Jews in Greater Israel will increase. There are very few Palestinians there. Those who are there are being dispossessed, kicked out. That’s what’s taking shape before our eyes. I think that’s the realistic alternative to a two-state settlement. And there’s every reason to expect it to continue as long as the United States supports it.
AMYGOODMAN:Professor Noam Chomsky, speaking last Tuesday in the hall of the U.N. General Assembly before about 800 people, ambassadors and the public alike. The event was hosted by the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. After he spoke, I interviewed him in front of the audience. We’ll play highlights after break.
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