[Peace-discuss] Chomsky interview / yesterday's pro-Gaza demo on the Quad

[Karen Medina]

Wow, Chomsky said a lot of "you know"s during this interview.

And, of course, Chomsky is right -- if Obama was sincere about opening
the borders it would be a great step. Telling Israel that it should
defend itself without using violence would also be in line. And
acknowledging the acts that Israel did first -- including kidnappings
of civilians and breaches of the ceasefire agreement.

BTW, yesterday's pro-Gaza demonstration on the Quad was well-attended.

I have three (3) regrets about the demonstration:
1) The in-your-face yelling that was encouraged and done by a few
members of the very large pro-Gaza group toward the very small group
of pro-Israel supporters there. I understand the desire, but peace
demonstrations are most effective when the desire for this sort of
thing is restrained.
2) That more AWARE members were not there.
3) That I still do not have a black and white keffiyeh scarf to wear.

-karen medina


On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 11:11 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>        Noam Chomsky: Obama's Stance on Gaza Crisis
>        "Approximately the Bush Position"
>        Democracy Now! January 23, 2009
>
> JUAN GONZALEZ: President Obama has made his first substantive remarks on the
> crisis in Gaza since being elected. Obama was speaking at the State
> Department, flanked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as he named two
> key envoys. Retired Senate majority leader George Mitchell, who negotiated a
> lasting agreement in Northern Ireland, will be Middle East envoy. And
> Richard Holbrooke, who brokered a deal in the Balkans in the mid-1990s, will
> be envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
>
> In his remarks, Obama backed Israel's three-week attack on Gaza as a
> defensive move against Hamas rocket fire but also said he was deeply
> concerned about the humanitarian situation for Palestinians in Gaza. The
> twenty-two-day assault killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, most of them
> civilians, at least a third children. More than 5,500 were injured. Thirteen
> Israelis were killed over the same period, ten of them soldiers, and four by
> friendly fire...
>
> AMY GOODMAN: A Hamas spokesperson told Al Jazeera television Obama's
> position toward the Palestinians doesn't represent a change. Osama Hamdan
> said, "I think this is an unfortunate start for President Obama in the
> region and the Middle East issue. And it looks like the next four years, if
> it continues with the same tone, will be a total failure."
>
> Well, for more on this, we are joined by Noam Chomsky, professor of
> linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over
> half-a-century. He has written over a hundred books, including Failed
> States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy ... let's start off
> by your response to President Obama's statement and whether you think it
> represents a change.
>
> NOAM CHOMSKY: It's approximately the Bush position. He began by saying that
> Israel, like any democracy, has a right to defend itself. That's true, but
> there's a gap in the reasoning. It has a right to defend itself. It doesn't
> follow that it has a right to defend itself by force. So we might agree,
> say, that, you know, the British army in the United States in the colonies
> in 1776 had a right to defend itself from the terror of George Washington's
> armies, which was quite real, but it didn't follow they had a right to
> defend themselves by force, because they had no right to be here. So, yes,
> they had a right to defend themselves, and they had a way to do it—namely,
> leave. Same with the Nazis defending themselves against the terror of the
> partisans. They have no right to do it by force. In the case of Israel, it's
> exactly the same. They have a right to defend themselves, and they can
> easily do it. One, in a narrow sense, they could have done it by accepting
> the ceasefire that Hamas proposed right before the invasion—I won't go
> through the details—a ceasefire that had been in place and that Israel
> violated and broke.
>
> But in a broader sense—and this is a crucial omission in everything Obama
> said, and if you know who his advisers are, you understand why—Israel can
> defend itself by stopping its crimes. Gaza and the West Bank are a unit.
> Israel, with US backing, is carrying out constant crimes, not only in Gaza,
> but also in the West Bank, where it is moving systematically with US support
> to take over the parts of the West Bank that it wants and to leave
> Palestinians isolated in unviable cantons, Bantustans, as Sharon called
> them. Well, stop those crimes, and resistance to them will stop.
>
> Now, Israel has been able pretty much to stop resistance in the Occupied
> Territories, thanks in large part to the training that Obama praised by
> Jordan, of course with US funding and monitoring control. So, yes, they've
> managed to. They, in fact, have been suppressing demonstrations, even
> demonstrations, peaceful demonstrations, that called for support for the
> people of Gaza. They have carried out lots of arrests. In fact, they're a
> collaborationist force, which supports the US and Israel in their effort to
> take over the West Bank.
>
> Now, that's what Obama—if Israel—there's no question that all of these acts
> are in total violation of the foundations of international humanitarian law.
> Israel knows it. Their own advisers have told each other—legal advisers have
> explained that to them back in '67. The World Court ruled on it. So it's all
> total criminality. But they want to be able to persist without any
> objection. And that's the thrust of Obama's remarks. Not a single word about
> US-backed Israeli crimes, settlement development, cantonization, a takeover
> in the West Bank. Rather, everyone should be quiet and let the United States
> and Israel continue with it.
>
> He spoke about the constructive steps of the peace—of the Arab peace
> agreement very selectively. He said they should move forward towards
> normalization of relations with Israel. But that wasn't the main theme of
> the Arab League peace proposal. It was that there should be a two-state
> settlement, which the US blocks. I mean, he said some words about a
> two-state settlement, but not where or when or how or anything else. He said
> nothing about the core of the problem: the US-backed criminal activities
> both in Gaza, which they attacked at will, and crucially in the West Bank.
> That's the core of the problem.
>
> And you can understand it when you look at his advisers. So, say, Dennis
> Ross wrote an 800-page book about—in which he blamed Arafat for everything
> that's happening—barely mentions the word "settlement" over—which was
> increasing steadily during the period when he was Clinton's adviser, in fact
> peaked, a sharp increase in Clinton's last year, not a word about it.
>
> So the thrust of his remarks, Obama's remarks, is that Israel has a right to
> defend itself by force, even though it has peaceful means to defend itself,
> that the Arabs must—states must move constructively to normalize relations
> with Israel, but very carefully omitting the main part of their proposal was
> that Israel, which is Israel and the United States, should join the
> overwhelming international consensus for a two-state settlement. That's
> missing.
>
> JUAN GONZALEZ: Noam Chomsky, I'd like to ask you about the enormous civilian
> casualties that have shocked the entire world in this last Israeli
> offensive. The Israelis claim, on the one hand, that it's the unfortunate
> result of Hamas hiding among the civilian population, but you've said in a
> recent analysis that this has been Israeli policy almost from the founding
> of the state, the attack on civilian populations. Could you explain?
>
> NOAM CHOMSKY: They say so. I was just quoting the chief of staff—this is
> thirty years ago, virtually no Palestinian terrorism in Israel, virtually.
> He said, "Our policy has been to attack civilians." And the reason was
> explained—you know, villages, towns, so on. And it was explained by Abba
> Eban, the distinguished statesman, who said, "Yes, that's what we've done,
> and we did it for a good reason. There was a rational prospect that if we
> attack the civilian population and cause it enough pain, they will press for
> a," what he called, "a cessation of hostilities." That's a euphemism meaning
> cessation of resistance against Israel's takeover of the—moves which were
> going on at the time to take over the Occupied Territories. So, sure, if
> they—"We'll kill enough of them, so that they'll press for quiet to permit
> us to continue what we're doing."
>
> Actually, you know, Obama today didn't put it in those words, but the
> meaning is approximately the same. That's the meaning of his silence over
> the core issue of settling and takeover of the Occupied Territories and
> eliminating the possibility for any Palestinian meaningful independence,
> omission of this. But Eban [inaudible], who I was quoting, chief of staff,
> would have also said, you know, "And my heart bleeds for the civilians who
> are suffering. But what can we do? We have to pursue the rational prospect
> that if we cause them enough pain, they'll call off any opposition to our
> takeover of their lands and resources." But it was—I mean, I was just
> quoting it. They said it very frankly. That was thirty years ago, and
> there's plenty more beside that.
>
> JUAN GONZALEZ: And Obama's call to open up Gaza, to end the blockade of Gaza
> on the Israelis, do you see that as any kind of a meaningful turn?
>
> NOAM CHOMSKY: It would—those are nice words. And if he did it, that would be
> fine. But there isn't any indication that he means it. In fact, this morning
> on the—Israel has already made it clear, stated explicitly, its foreign
> minister Tzipi Livni, that they're not going to live up to the ceasefire
> until Gaza returns to them a captured soldier. Well, that avoids the fact
> that Israel is far in the lead, not in capturing soldiers, but in kidnapping
> civilians, hijacking ships, bringing them to Israel as hostages. In fact,
> one day before this Israeli soldier was captured at the border, Israeli
> forces entered Gaza and kidnapped two civilians and took them to Israel,
> where they were hidden away in the prison system sometime. So, and in fact,
> according to reports I just received from Israel—I can't give you a
> source—they say that the radio news this morning has been reporting steadily
> that Amos Gilad, who's the go-between between Israel and Egypt, notified the
> Egyptians that Israel is not interested in a ceasefire agreement, but rather
> an arrangement to stop the missiles and to free Gilad Shalit. OK, I presume
> that will be in the newspapers later. So, yes, it's nice to say, "Let's open
> the borders," but not avoiding the conditions that are imposed, in fact, not
> even mentioning the fact that the borders have been closed for years because
> the United States has backed Israeli closure of them.
>
> And again, his main point, which he started with, Israel, like any
> democracy, has a right to defend itself. That is true, but deceitful,
> because it has a right to defend itself, but not by force, especially when
> there are peaceful options that are completely open, the narrow one being a
> ceasefire, which the US and Israel would observe for the first time, and the
> second and the deeper one, by ending the crimes in the Occupied Territories.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, the timing of all of this—can you talk about
> Election Day here in the United States, November 4th, what exactly happened
> there, and then the fact that it went from Election Day to three days before
> the inauguration of Barack Obama, Israel's announcement of the unilateral
> ceasefire?
>
> NOAM CHOMSKY: On Election Day, November 4th, Israel violated—violently
> violated a ceasefire that had held, free will, in fact, a sharp reduction in
> rockets, probably not even from Hamas. It had been established in June or
> July. On November 4th, Election Day, presumably because the attention was
> shifted elsewhere, Israeli forces entered Gaza, killed half a dozen, what
> they call, militants, and the pretext was they found a tunnel in Gaza. Well,
> you know, from a military point of view, that's an absurdity. If there was a
> tunnel and if it ever reached the Israeli border, they'd stop it right
> there. So this was obviously just a way to break the ceasefire, kill a
> couple of Hamas militants and ensure that the conflict would go on.
>
> As for the bombing, it was very carefully timed. And, in fact, they've told
> us this. They've told us it was meticulously timed for months before the
> invasion, a very target-selected timing, everything. It began on a Saturday,
> timed at right before noon, when children were leaving schools, people
> milling in the streets of the densely populated city, perhaps the most
> densely in the world. That's when it began. They killed a couple hundred
> people in the first few minutes.
>
> And it ended—it was timed to end right before the inauguration. Now,
> presumably the reason was—Obama had kept silent about the atrocities and the
> killings, a horrible, horrible story, which you can see on Al Jazeera and
> little bits of it here. He had kept silent on the pretext that there's only
> one president. Well, on Inauguration Day, that goes. There's two—there's a
> new president. And Israel surely wanted to make it—to ensure that he would
> not be in a position where he would have to say something about the ongoing
> atrocities. So they terminated it, probably temporarily, right before the
> inauguration. And then he could go on with what we heard today...
>
> AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, I want to turn for a second to George Mitchell,
> who President Obama has tapped as the special envoy to the Middle East.
> Mitchell is the retired Senate majority leader, best known for helping to
> broker Northern Ireland's landmark Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which
> ended decades of bloody conflict. In 2000, Mitchell was appointed by former
> president Bill Clinton to head a committee investigating ongoing
> Israeli-Palestinian violence. Sallai Meridor, Israel's ambassador to
> Washington, welcomed Obama's appointment of Mitchell, saying Israel holds
> him in, quote, "high regard"... Noam Chomsky, your response?
>
> NOAM CHOMSKY: In Ireland, Mitchell did quite a commendable job. But notice
> that in Ireland, there was an objective, and he helped realize that
> objective: peaceful reconciliation. Britain took into account for the first
> time the grievances of the population, and the terror stopped. OK? And the
> terror was quite real.
>
> In Israel, again, you have to look at what he avoided. He says, "Yes, we
> want to have a Palestinian state." Where? OK? He said not a word about—lots
> of pleasantries about everyone should live in peace, and so on, but where is
> the Palestinian state? Nothing said about the US-backed actions continuing
> every day, which are undermining any possibility for a viable Palestinian
> state: the takeover of the territory; the annexation wall, which is what it
> is; the takeover of the Jordan Valley; the salients that cut through the
> West Bank and effectively trisect it; the hundreds of mostly arbitrary
> checkpoints designed to make Palestinian life impossible—all going on, not a
> word about them.
>
> So, OK, we can have—in fact, you know, the first Israeli government to talk
> about a Palestinian state, to even mention the words, was the ultra
> right-wing Netanyahu government that came in 1996. They were asked, "Could
> Palestinians have a state?" Peres, who had preceded them, said, "No, never."
> And Netanyahu's spokesman said, "Yeah, the fragments of territory that we
> leave to them, they can call it a state if they want. Or they can call it
> fried chicken." Well, that's basically the attitude.
>
> And Mitchell had nothing to say about it. He carefully avoided what he knows
> for certain is the core problem: the illegal, totally illegal, the criminal
> US-backed actions, which are systematically taking over the West Bank, just
> as they did under Clinton, and are undermining the possibility for a viable
> state.
>
> JUAN GONZALEZ: Noam Chomsky, for Americans who want to figure out how to
> move now with the new Obama administration to end these atrocities that are
> occurring in the Middle East, what do you suggest? And also, what's your
> viewpoint of the divestment movement? Many young people are urging something
> similar to South Africa, to begin pressing increasingly for divestment from
> Israel.
>
> NOAM CHOMSKY: The position that people who are interested in peace ought to
> take is very straightforward. I mean, a majority of the American population,
> considerable majority, already agree with the full Arab League peace plan,
> not the little sliver of it that Obama mentioned. The peace plan calls for a
> two-state settlement on the international border, maybe with minor
> modifications. That's an overwhelming national consensus. The Hamas supports
> it. Iran has said, you know, they'll go along with it.
>
> Is divestment a proper tactic? Well, you know, if you look back at South
> Africa, divestment became a proper tactic after years, decades of education
> and organizing, to the point where Congress was legislating against trade,
> corporations were pulling out, and so on. That's what's missing: the
> education and organizing which makes it an understandable move. And, in
> fact, if we ever got to that point, you wouldn't even need it, because the
> US could be brought in line with international opinion.
>
>        ###
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>