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<h1 style="COLOR: #333333 !important; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><font
size="5">Noam Chomsky: We Are All - Fill in the Blank</font></h1>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">[from Z Communications
- <a
href="https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/we-are-all-fill-in-the-blank/">https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/we-are-all-fill-in-the-blank/</a>
]</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">The world reacted with
horror to the murderous attack on the French satirical journal
Charlie Hebdo. In the New York Times, veteran Europe
correspondent Steven Erlanger graphically described the immediate
aftermath, what many call France’s 9/11, as “a day of sirens,
helicopters in the air, frantic news bulletins; of police cordons
and anxious crowds; of young children led away from schools to
safety. It was a day, like the previous two, of blood and horror
in and around Paris.” The enormous outcry worldwide was
accompanied by reflection about the deeper roots of the atrocity.
“Many Perceive a Clash of Civilizations,” a New York Times
headline read.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">The reaction of horror
and revulsion about the crime is justified, as is the search for
deeper roots, as long as we keep some principles firmly in mind.
The reaction should be completely independent of what thinks about
this journal and what it produces. The passionate and ubiquitous
chants “I am Charlie,” and the like, should not be meant to
indicate, even hint at, any association with the journal, at least
in the context of defense of freedom of speech. Rather, they
should express defense of the right of free expression whatever
one thinks of the contents, even if they are regarded as hateful
and depraved.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">And the chants should
also express condemnation for violence and terror. The head of
Israel’s Labor Party and the main challenger for the upcoming
elections in Israel, Isaac Herzog, is quite right when he says
that “Terrorism is terrorism. There’s no two ways about it.” He
is also right to say that “All the nations that seek peace and
freedom [face] an enormous challenge” from murderous terrorism –
putting aside his predictably selective interpretation of the
challenge.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">Erlanger vividly
describes the scene of horror. He quotes one surviving journalist
as saying that “Everything crashed. There was no way out. There
was smoke everywhere. It was terrible. People were screaming. It
was like a nightmare.” Another surviving journalist reported a
“huge detonation, and everything went completely dark.” The scene,
Erlanger reported, “was an increasingly familiar one of smashed
glass, broken walls, twisted timbers, scorched paint and emotional
devastation.” At least 10 people were reported at once to have
died in the explosion, with 20 missing, “presumably buried in the
rubble.”</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">These quotes, as the
indefatigable David Peterson reminds us, are not, however, from
January 2015. Rather, they are from a story of Erlanger’s on
April 24 1999, which made it only to page 6 of the New York Times,
not reaching the significance of the Charlie Hebdo attack.
Erlanger was reporting on the NATO (meaning US) “missile attack on
Serbian state television headquarters” that “knocked Radio
Television Serbia off the air.”</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">There was an official
justification. “NATO and American officials defended the attack,”
Erlanger reports, “as an effort to undermine the regime of
President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia.” Pentagon spokesman
Kenneth Bacon told a briefing in Washington that “Serb TV is as
much a part of Milosevic’s murder machine as his military is,”
hence a legitimate target of attack.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">The Yugoslavian
government said that “The entire nation is with our President,
Slobodan Milosevic,” Erlanger reports, adding that “How the
Government knows that with such precision was not clear.”</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">No such sardonic
comments are in order when we read that France mourns the dead and
the world is outraged by the atrocity. There need also be no
inquiry into the deeper roots, no profound questions about who
stands for civilization, and who for barbarism.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">Isaac Herzog, then, is
mistaken when he says that “Terrorism is terrorism. There’s no
two ways about it.” There are quite definitely two ways about it:
terrorism is not terrorism when a much more severe terrorist
attack is carried out by those who are Righteous by virtue of
their power. Similarly, there is no assault against freedom of
speech when the Righteous destroy a TV channel supportive of a
government that they are attacking.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">By the same token, we
can readily comprehend the comment in the New York Times of civil
rights lawyer Floyd Abrams, noted for his forceful defense of
freedom of expression, that the Charlie Hebdo attack is “the most
threatening assault on journalism in living memory.” He is quite
correct about “living memory,” which carefully assigns assaults on
journalism and acts of terror to their proper categories: Theirs,
which are horrendous; and Ours, which are virtuous and easily
dismissed from living memory.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">We might recall as well
that this is only one of many assaults by the Righteous on free
expression. To mention only one example that is easily erased
from “living memory,” the assault on Falluja by US forces in
November 2004, one of the worst crimes of the invasion of Iraq,
opened with occupation of Falluja General Hospital. Military
occupation of a hospital is, of course, a serious war crime in
itself, even apart from the manner in which it was carried out,
blandly reported in a front-page story in the <em>New York Times</em>,
accompanied with a photograph depicting the crime. The story
reported that “Patients and hospital employees were rushed out of
rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit or lie on the floor
while troops tied their hands behind their backs.” The crimes were
reported as highly meritorious, and justified: “The offensive also
shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the
militants: Falluja General Hospital, with its stream of reports of
civilian casualties.”</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0;margin-bottom:10px;">Evidently such a
propaganda agency cannot be permitted to spew forth its vulgar
obscenities.</p>
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