Otherwise Occupied / The irrational stage

[Jefferson23]

Published 01:57 24.05.10
Latest update 01:57 24.05.10

Speaking by video conference from Amman, Noam Chomsky explained to a Bir Zeit University audience last week the link between the Israeli occupation and U.S. global ambitions.





By Amira Hass

"Denying my entry to the West Bank was a minor event, but significant because it indicates irrational behavior on the part of Israel," the linguist Noam Chomsky said at the start of his lecture last Tuesday to a few dozen students and faculty members of Bir Zeit University. He delivered his lecture, "Americans and the World," by video conference, of course: He in Amman, his audience in of the university's lecture halls. With all due respect to technology, the sound system did not allow for a real dialogue, much less an opportunity to pause for clarification. Thus it was impossible to interrupt Chomsky and ask him to define "irrational" and to say whether he considers this to be a new stage in of Israeli policy.

Chomsky spent time discussing a political decision taken by Israel in 1971, but he did not explicitly define it as irrational. Then, he said, Israel turned down a proposal from Egyptian president Anwar Sadat for a peace treaty in return for withdrawal. The same principle has guided Israel ever since, Chomsky said: It favors territorial expansion over security. He did not say "peace," but rather "security," repeating this at least twice. Many of his examples fell victim to technology, but not these nuances. He criticizes policy, but he cares about people - and he makes a distinction between governments, which are the object of his criticism, and nations, sometimes excessively so, to the point of exempting societies, particularly ones with internal democracy, of responsibility for the policies of their governments.

Chomsky went on to say that the 1978 Camp David Accord (between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat ) was "a diplomatic disaster" - and not the achievement it is generally hailed as being, because it came after a major war with many casualties. These casualties could have been avoided, it was implied, were Israel genuinely interested in security and were the United States motivated by concern for the fate of nations and not only by its interests as a superpower.

Without the full support of America, Israel would have acted differently - then as now, he said. That was the underlying theme of his lecture, disappointing those who believe that U.S. policy is dictated by a Zionist lobby. The Israeli occupation and its continuation, he said, must be seen in the context of the imperialist policy of the United States, which is guided by considerations of profit for the few and the control of global oil resources.


remainder: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/otherwise-occupied-the-irrational-stage-1.291839

[Jefferson23]

1. PROJECTILE DYSFUNCTION - IRON DOME, ISRAEL, TRIDENT, AND THE MEDIA

Last week, the BBC reported Barack Obama's request to Congress for $200 million in military aid to assist Israel's construction of a short-range rocket defence system, Iron Dome. The funding will be in addition to the $3 billion in military aid the US annually sends to Israel. A BBC online article explained:

"The system is designed to shoot down mortars and rockets from Gaza or Southern Lebanon with guided missiles." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ middle_east/8681919.stm)

Details were provided:

"Iron Dome was conceived and developed in Israel following the Lebanon war of 2006, during which Hezbollah launched about 4,000 rockets into northern Israel. Southern Israel has also come under fire, with thousands of rockets and mortars fired by Palestinian militants."

The BBC failed to mention that during the 2006 war Lebanon was subjected to 12,000 Israeli bombing raids, 2,500 navy shells, 100,000 army shells and 4.6 million cluster bombs. (Jane's Defence Weekly, 'The war in numbers,' August 23, 2006 and http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/02/17/ israel-s-use-cluster-bombs-shows-need-global-ban)

Even prior to the December 27, 2008 Operation Cast Lead offensive - when Israel attacked Gaza with hundreds of bombing raids and drone attacks, and thousands of artillery and tank shells - 14 Israelis had been killed by mostly home-made rockets fired from Gaza over the previous seven years as against 5,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. Some 1,400 Palestinians were massacred in the Cast Lead assault.

The BBC reported the US administration's "unshakeable commitment" to Israeli security, adding that Obama "recognised the threat posed by missiles and rockets fired by Hamas and Hezbollah".

Obama did not recognise the threat to Palestinians posed by Israeli forces and expressed no "unshakeable commitment" to Palestinian security. This ought to be surprising, given that the mainstream media habitually present the United States as an "honest broker" in the conflict. In 2006, Channel 4's Jonathan Rugman declared:

"If you think in the last week the US has given up its role as honest broker in the Middle East then now, it seems, they've taken it back." (Channel 4 News, July 21, 2006)

In 2000, a BBC 1 lunchtime news report described then President Bill Clinton as "the man who has spent eight years trying to bring permanent peace to the Middle East". (BBC1 Lunchtime News, October 16, 2000)

Edward Herman commented recently:

"U.S. officials repeat day-after-day that our 'solidarity' with Israel is an 'unshakeable bond,' that there is no 'space' between us and Israel on the issues, and that we have an 'absolute commitment to Israel's security' (Hillary Clinton). A large fraction of congress and the Senate appear regularly at AIPAC annual meetings to virtually pledge allegiance to the State of Israel, and Vice President Joseph Biden has publicly declared himself 'a Zionist,' with Israel 'the center of my work as a United States Senator and now as vice president of the United States...'"

"There is also no 'honest broker' in this fraudulent 'peace process' - honest brokering is inconsistent with complete 'solidarity' and a 'central commitment' to one side." (Herman, '"Protecting Israel's Ethnic Cleansing" - Deceptively Called "Protecting Israel's Security",' Z Magazine, May 2010)

This is blindingly obvious, but is somehow not an issue, not a reality, for mainstream journalists.

remainder in full: http://medialens.org/alerts/10/100520_projectile_dysfunction_iron.php