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Now!
Noam Chomsky, in an interview with
Al-Ahram's Nermeen Al-Mufti, takes stock of the month-long US-Israeli
onslaught on Lebanon and reflects on the fallout.
Why is Israel given the
right to self- defense while Arab countries are denied it?
Thucydides gave an answer to
that a long time ago: "The strong do as they can, and the
weak suffer as they must." It is one of the leading principles
of international affairs.
Many Arab states declared
that they would not sever relations with Israel, saying that
this was Hizbullah's war, the consequences Hizbullah's fault.
Do you think there was -- and perhaps remains -- American pressure
behind these statements?
At an emergency Arab League
meeting, most Arab states -- apart from Algeria, Lebanon, Syria
and Yemen -- condemned Hizbullah. In doing so, they were willing
to "openly defy public opinion", as The New York
Times reported. They later had to back down, including Washington's
oldest and most important ally in the region, Saudi Arabia.
King Abdullah said that, "if
the peace option is rejected due to Israeli arrogance, then only
the war option remains, and that no one knows the repercussions
on the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no
one, including those whose military power is now tempting them
to play with fire."
Most analysts assume -- plausibly
I think -- that their primary concern is the growing influence
of Iran, and the embarrassment caused by the fact that alone
in the Arab world, Hizbullah has offered support for Palestinians
under brutal attack in the occupied territories.
Was there any legal or moral
justification for this war, as Bush, Rice and Western news media
insisted?
We can ignore Bush and Rice,
who are participants in the US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
We know very well that by Western
standards there is no moral or legal justification for the war.
Sufficient proof is the fact that for many years Israel regularly
kidnapped Lebanese, sending them to prisons in Israel, including
secret prisons like the notorious Camp 1391, which was exposed
by accident and quickly forgotten (and in the US, never even
reported within the mainstream). No one suggested that Lebanon,
or anyone else, had the right to invade and destroy much of Israel
in retaliation.
As this long and ugly record
makes clear, kidnapping of civilians -- a far worse crime than
the capture of soldiers -- is considered insignificant by the
US, UK, and other Western states, and by articulate opinion within
them quite generally, when it is done by "our side".
That fact was revealed very
dramatically once again at the outset of the current upsurge
of violence after Hamas captured an Israeli soldier, Corporal
Gilad Shalit, on June 25. That action elicited a huge show of
outrage in the West, and support for Israel's sharp escalation
of its attacks in Gaza. One day before, on June 24, Israeli
forces kidnapped two civilians in Gaza, a doctor and his brother,
and sent them off somewhere in Israel's prison system. The event
was scarcely reported, and elicited little if any comment within
the mainstream. The timing alone reveals with vivid clarity that
the show of outrage over the capture of Israeli soldiers is cynical
fraud, and undermines any shreds of moral legitimacy for the
ensuing actions.
So for Israel, any pretext
could justify daily massacres in Lebanon and Gaza?
With a vivid imagination, one
can conjure up all sorts of pretexts. In the real world, there
are none. And we may add the forgotten West Bank, where the US
and Israel are proceeding with their plans to drive the last
nails into the coffin of Palestinian national rights by their
programs of annexation, cantonization and imprisonment (by takeover
of the Jordan Valley). These plans are carried out within the
framework of another cynical fraud: "convergence" (in
Hebrew, hitkansut ), portrayed in the US as "withdrawal",
in a remarkable public relations triumph. Also long forgotten
is the occupied Golan Heights, virtually annexed by Israel in
violation of unanimous Security Council orders (but with tacit
US support).
As an Iraqi, I understand
that the ongoing war against Lebanon and Gaza is an essential
part of the Bush scheme of reshaping the region: to redraw the
borders mapped by Sykes- Picot...
I doubt that most of them have
even heard of Sykes-Picot. They have their own plans for the
region. Primary among them is the traditional commitment to control
the world's major energy resources. Those who do not fall in
line can expect to be targets of subversion or aggression. That
should not be surprising, at least to those familiar with the
history of the past century -- in fact well before.
Do you think that Iran and
Syria were behind this war, as Bush inferred?
It is generally assumed that
they at least gave Hizbullah authorization for the July 12 attack
on Israeli military forces at the border. However, many of the
most serious analysts of Hizbullah, and of Iran, have concluded
that Hizbullah's actions are taken on its own initiative.
How can we explain the role
of the Security Council in destroying Lebanon and Gaza now, and
Iraq before?
The Security Council acts within
constraints set by the great powers, primarily the United States.
In turn, the United States can generally rely on Britain, particularly
Blair's Britain, which is described sardonically in Britain's
leading journal of international affairs as "the spear-carrier
of the pax Americana."
In the early post-war years,
for obvious reasons, the UN was generally under US domination,
and was very popular among US elites. By the mid- 1960s, that
was becoming less true, with decolonization and the recovery
of industrial societies from wartime devastation. Since that
time, the US has been far in the lead in vetoing Security Council
resolutions on a wide range of issues, with Britain second, and
none of the others even close.
Correspondingly, elite support
for the UN sharply declined in the US, though, interestingly,
popular support for the UN remains remarkably high, one of the
many illustrations of an enormous gap between public opinion
and public policy in the US.
Over and above that crucial
constraint, US power allows it to shape those resolutions and
actions that it is willing to accept. Other powers have their
own cynical reasons for what they do, but their influence is
naturally less -- again, the maxim of Thucydides. Popular forces
could make a substantial difference, and sometimes do, but until
the prevailing "democratic deficit" is reduced, that
effect will be limited.
I am unable to understand
this Israeli arrogance. Are you?
The maxim of Thucydides again.
But it is worth bearing in mind that Israel can go just as far
as its protector in Washington permits and supports.
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