Right to Live

Noam Chomsky on a 2-state resolution for preventing Today’s Holocaust:

 I don’t think that’s the optimal solution, but it has been the realistic political settlement for some time. We have to begin with some fundamentals here. The real question is: there are plainly two national groups that claim the right of self-determination in what used to be Palestine, roughly the area now occupied by Israel minus the Golan Heights, which is part of Syria.

So there are two national groups which claim national self-determination. One group is the indigenous population, or what’s left of it — a lot of it’s been expelled or driven out or fled. The other group is the Jewish settlers who came in, originally from Europe, later from other parts of the Middle East and some other places. So there are two groups, the indigenous population and the immigrants and their descendants. Both claim the right of national self-determination. Here we have to make a crucial decision: are we racists or aren’t we? If we’re not racists, then the indigenous population has the same rights of self-determination as the settlers who replaced them. Some might claim more, but let’s say at least as much right. Hence if we are not racist, we will try to press for a solution which accords them — we’ll say they are human beings with equal rights, therefore they both merit the claim to national self-determination. I’m granting that the settlers have the same rights as the indigenous population; many do not find that obvious but let’s grant it. Then there are a number of possibilities. One possibility is a democratic secular society. Virtually nobody is in favor of that. Some people say they are, but if you look closely they’re not really. There are various models for multi-ethnic societies, say Switzerland or whatever. And maybe in the long run these might be the best idea, but they’re unrealistic.

The only realistic political settlement, for the time being, in the past ten or twelve years, that would satisfy the right of self-determination for both national groups is a two-state settlement. Everybody knows what it would have to be: Israel within approximately the pre-June 1967 borders and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and a return of the Golan Heights to Syria, or maybe some other arrangement. This would be associated with maybe demilitarized zones and international guarantees of some sort or another, but that’s the framework of a possible political settlement. As I say, I don’t think it’s the best one, but that’s the realistic one, very realistic. It’s supported by most of the world. It’s supported by Europe, by the Soviet Union, has been for a long time, by almost all the non-aligned countries, it’s supported by all the major Arab states and has been for a long time, supported by the mainstream of the PLO and, again, has been for a long time, it’s supported even by the American population, by about two to one according to the polls. But there are also people who oppose it. It’s opposed by the rejection front in the Arab world, the minority elements of the PLO, Libya, a few others, minority rejectionist elements, but crucially it’s opposed by the leaders of the rejection front, namely the United States and Israel. The United States and Israel adamantly oppose it. The United States will not consider it. Both political groupings in Israel reject it totally. They reject any right of national self-determination for the indigenous popula- tion in the former Palestine. They can have Jordan if they want, or the former Syria, or something, but not the area that they now hold under military occupation. In fact they’re explicit about it. There are carefully fostered illusions here that the Labor Party is interested in compromise over the issue. But if you look closely, there’s no meaningful compromise. The position of the Labor Party remains what was expressed by their representative, who is now President, Chaim Herzog, who said that “no one can be a partner with us in a land that has been holy to our people for 2000 years.” That’s the position. They’re willing to make minor adjustments. They don’t want to take care of the population in the West Bank, because there are too many Arabs; they don’t want a lot of Arabs around, so what they would like to do is take the areas and the water and the resources they want from the West Bank but leave the population, either stateless or under Jordanian control. That’s what’s called a “compromise solution.” It’s a very cynical proposal, even worse in many respects than annexation. But that’s called here compromise and the reason is that we are again educated elites in the United States and national discussion takes a strictly racist view of this. The Palestinians are not human, they do not deserve the rights that we accord automatically to the settlers who displaced them. That’s the basis of articulate American discussion: pure, unadulterated racism. Again, that’s not true of the population, as usual, but it is of the politically active and articulate parts of it and certainly the government. As long as the United States and Israel reject the political settlement, there can’t be one.

There certainly have been very plausible opportunities for a political settlement over many years, in fact, just to mention a few which have disappeared from history because they’re too inconvenient: in February 1971 President Sadat of Egypt offered a full peace treaty to Israel on the pre-June 67 borders. In accordance with official American policy, incidentally, but not operative policy, offering nothing to the Palestinians, he didn’t even offer them a Palestinian state, nothing. Nevertheless Israel rejected it, and the United States backed them in that rejection. In January 1976 Syria, Jordan and Egypt, the so-called “confrontation states,” made a proposal in the U.N. Security Council for a two-state settlement with international guarantees and territorial rights secured and so on. That was backed and even prepared by the PLO, supported by the Soviet Union and most of the world. It was vigorously opposed by Israel, which even boycotted the session, in fact, it bombed Lebanon in retaliation against the United Nations, killing about 50 people, no excuse at all, just a fit of anger, “We’re going to kill anybody who gets in our way if you push this,” and the United States vetoed it. There have been a series of such things ever since. The United States has always blocked them and Israel has always refused them, and that means there’s no political settlement. Rather there is a state of permanent military confrontation. That’s aside from what it means to the Palestinians, which is obvious and terrible; it’s very bad for Israel. It’s leading to their own destruction, in my view, certainly to their economic collapse and moral degeneration and probably, sooner or later, their physical destruction, because you can’t have a state of military confrontation without a defeat sooner or later. It’s leading the world very close to nuclear war, repeatedly. Every time we have an Arab-Israeli conflict — and there will be more of them, as long as we maintain a military confrontation — the Soviet Union and the United States come into confrontation. Both are involved. The Soviet Union is close by, it’s not like Central America, it’s a strategic region right near their border, they’re involved; it’s very far from us but it’s a strategic region for us because of the oil nearby, primarily. So we’re involved, the fleets come into confrontation, it’s very close. In 1967 it came very close to nuclear war and it will again. So it’s very dangerous, it’s the most likely spot where a nuclear war would develop, but we are pursuing it, because we don’t want a political settlement. The United States is intent on maintaining a military confrontation.

QUESTION: You mentioned racism vis-à-vis the Palestinians. To what extent, if any, have Israelis of Ashkenazic origin absorbed German racial attitudes toward not just Arabs but even to the Oriental Jews, the Sephardim, is there anything in that?

CHOMSKY: I wouldn’t call it particularly German.

QUESTION: European?

CHOMSKY: Yes. It’s part of European culture to have racist attitudes toward the Third World, including us, we’re part of Europe in that respect. Naturally the Jewish community shared the attitudes of the rest of Europe, not surprising. There certainly are such things inside Israel. My feeling is they could be overcome in time under a situation of peace. I think they’re real, but I don’t think they’re lethal, through slow integration they could probably be overcome. The one that probably can’t be overcome is the anti-Arab racism, because that requires subjugation of a defeated and conquered people and that leads to racism. If you’re sitting with your boot on somebody’s neck, you’re going to hate him, because that’s the only way that you can justify what you’re doing, so subjugation automatically yields racism, and you can’t overcome that. Furthermore, anti-Arab racism is rampant in the United States and much of the West, there’s no question about that. The only kind of racism that can be openly expressed with outrage is anti-Arab racism. You don’t put caricatures of blacks in the newspapers any more; you do put caricatures of Arabs.

QUESTION: But isn’t it curious that they’re using the old Jewish stereotypes, the money coming out the pockets, the beards, the hooked nose?

CHOMSKY: I’ve often noticed that the cartoons and caricatures are very similar to the ones you’d find in the Nazi press about the Jews, very similar.

QUESTION: What dimension does the Holocaust play in this equation? Is it manipulated by the Israeli state to promote its own interests?

CHOMSKY: It’s very consciously manipulated. I mean, it’s quite certainly real, there’s no question about that, but it is also undoubted that they manipulate it. In fact, they say so. For example, in the Jerusalem Post, in English so you can read it, their Washington correspondent Wolf Blitzer, I don’t recall the exact date, but after one of the big Holocaust memorial meetings in Washington he wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post in which he said it was a great success. He said, “Nobody mentioned arms sales to the Arabs but all the Congressmen understood that that was the hidden message. So we got it across.” In fact, one very conservative and very honest Zionist leader, Nachem Goldman, who was the President of the World Zionist Organization and who was detested towards the end because he was much too honest — they even refused to send a delegation to his burial, I believe, or a message. He’s one of the founders of the Jewish state and the Zionist movement and one of the elder statesmen, a very honest man, he — just before his death in 1982 or so — made a rather eloquent and unusual statement in which he said that it’s — he used the Hebrew word for “sacrilege” — he said it’s sacrilege to use the Holocaust as a justification for oppressing others. He was referring to something very real: exploitation of probably the world’s most horrifying atrocity in order to justify oppression of others. That kind of manipulation is really sick.