It started when someone forwarded his latest piece on Israel--The Solution Is The Problem--to a mailing list I'm on, and a friend of mine responded by dismissing it as opinion masquerading as news. Normally I would just say, well, it's Chomsky, that's gonna happen; but after going back and reading the article I suddenly started to find the whole thing disturbing. It's always been easy for people to dismiss the left that way--as a bunch of opinionated eggheads who get off on sounding like they have all the answers and who have been so brainwashed by the party line that they can't think for themselves any more. Somehow, if you're critical of the line taken by the mainstream press, you become "biased" while they somehow remain "objective," despite the fact that the line they are taking is as much the result of "opinion," ideology, self-interest, bias, blindness, or delusion as yours is.
Here's my thing: all news is opinion, to some extent. As hard as most mainstream outlets try to make it look like "the news" is churned out by some kind of infallible and objective computer software program into which you feed facts gathered from around the world, and out of which comes the truth, this is not the way it works. All news stories are written by human beings and all human beings approach the information they are given based on their own belief system and view of the world, and that means that any time you are reading anyone's interpretation of an event--and all reporting involves interpretation, because it has to be done in narrative form--you are reading that person's opinion. That's before we get to the part about how these human beings work for large corporations which have their own priorities and opinions and desires and are unwilling to publish certain kinds of reporting.
Given that, I would much rather read people whose opinions are clearly stated, because at least then you know what the ideological bias is and you can adjust for it. Noam Chomsky has never attempted to pretend to objectivity. The New York Times does. This means that people believe the NYT and not Noam, which is really a shame, because the NYT does not have a good track record when it comes to covering the developing world.
Anyhow.
I admit that when I first saw the by-line I thought, "Oh no, not Chomsky again," and passed it by. However, after seeing it dismissed out of hand, I went back and read it, and actually, for Chomsky, this thing *is* relatively fact-based and free of pontification. For instance, here's Chomksy:
The Oslo "peace process", begun in 1993, changed the modalities of the occupation, but not the basic concept. Shortly before joining the Ehud Barak government, historian Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote that "the Oslo agreements were founded on a neo-colonialist basis, on a life of dependence of one on the other forever". He soon became an architect of the US-Israel proposals at Camp David in 2000, which kept to this condition. At the time, West Bank Palestinians were confined to 200 scattered areas. Bill Clinton and Israeli prime minister Barak did propose an improvement: consolidation to three cantons, under Israeli control, virtually separated from one another and from the fourth enclave, a small area of East Jerusalem, the centre of Palestinian communi-cations. The fifth canton was Gaza. It is understandable that maps are not to be found in the US mainstream. Nor is their prototype, the Bantustan "homelands" of apartheid South Africa, ever mentioned.
The "opinion" element of this paragraph is in the comparison of the structure of the Palestinian territories under the Oslo accords to the attempts to preserve white dominance in South Africa in the pre-Mandela era. Well, whether you believe in the parallel or not, the main point here is that what the Oslo agreement created was not a state, nor even a province, but rather a group of isolated islands separated by Israeli territory. The advantages of this system to Israel are obvious: the more isolated and self-contained these territories are, the easier it is to control movement in and out of them, and thus to prevent the Palestinians from organizing resistance. It also makes it much harder for the Palestinian territories to become economically viable and thus lessen their dependence on Israel's economy. The Oslo accord led to an improvement in degree--the islands became larger, to the point where it was possible to organize a kind of semi-infrastructure called the Palestinian Authority, which has of course now been completely destroyed--but did not change the fact that the Palestinian areas were still isolated, economically depressed, and heavily policed. Thus, that Ben-Ami quote stating that the Oslo agreements ensure "a life of dependence of one on the other forever," well, forever is a long time, but it is nevertheless difficult to see how a community structured under these principles is ever going to achieve economic independence or political autonomy.
I would submit that recent history backs up Ben-Ami's assessment of this structure as calculated to keep the Palestinians dependent on Israel. The mere fact that when the mainstream media reports on what Israel is doing in Palestine, they can't decide whether Jenin is a "town" or a "refugee camp" tells you something about how thriving these areas are. Because there is no economic development going on in the Palestinian areas, the overwhelming majority of Palestinians have to travel to Israel to work, which means that whenever there is a security crackdown, it becomes difficult or impossible for them to get to their jobs--since leaving their own towns/refugee camps and getting to their jobs involves going through an Israeli checkpoint. You take what we now go through getting on a plane at rush hour and Logan, multiply it times five, and that's what a Palestinian has to go through every morning just to get to work--and that's when things are normal. Nobody, even on the other side, will try to tell you that the Palestinian terrorities as they are are viable as an autonomous state. So all right, maybe that paragraph is a bunch of people's "opinions." But they're not unfounded, boneheaded, or even particularly radical opinions--and Chomsky actually cites some verifiable facts in support of them, which is a lot more than you can ask for from some pundits.
No one can seriously doubt that the US role will continue to be decisive. It is crucial to understand what that role has been, and how it is internally perceived. The version of the doves is presented by the editors of the New York Times, praising President Bush's "path-breaking speech" and the "emerging vision" he articulated. Its first element is "ending Palestinian terrorism" immediately. Some time later comes "freezing, then rolling back, Jewish settlements and negotiating new borders" to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. If Palestinian terror ends, Israelis will be encouraged to "take the Arab League's historic offer of full peace and recognition in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal more seriously". But first Palestinian leaders must demonstrate that they are "legitimate diplomatic partners".
It is certainly clear here what Chomsky thinks of the version put forward by the "doves." However, most of this paragraph consists of quotations from the NYT and from Bush's speech, and is a fairly straightforward attempt to a) summarize the U.S.'s current position and b) remind us that the NYT writers have opinions too (what's a "legitimate" diplomatic partner? since when have we seen Bush do any "path-breaking"? Can you imagine circumstances under which Sharon woudl be willing to "roll back" Jewish settlements?).
The real world has little resemblance to this self-serving portrayal - virtually copied from the 1980s, when the US and Israel were desperately seeking to evade PLO offers of negotiation and political settlement. In the real world, the primary barrier to the "emerging vision" has been, and remains, unilateral US rejectionism. There is little new in the current "Arab League's historic offer".
OK, this is certainly an opinion, let's see if he can back it up.
It repeats the basic terms of a security council resolution of January 1976 which called for a political settlement on the internationally recognised borders "with appropriate arrangements ... to guarantee ... the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of all states in the area". This was backed by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states and the PLO but opposed by Israel and vetoed by the US, thereby vetoing it from history. Similar initiatives have since been blocked by the US and mostly suppressed in public commentary.
Well, this ought to be verifiable. Anyone know where we can find a record of this 1976 UN security council resolution? Wherever that is, we should also be able to find a record of how everyone voted, and whether it's true that the US vetoed it. I don't have time to go looking right now, so let's assume for the sake of argument that Chomsky is not making shit up when he says that this 1976 resolution was passed and that the US vetoed it. If that's true, and the offer that the Arab League has put on the table is essentially that 1976 resolution, then there *isn't* very much new about their "historic offer," is there?
Not surprisingly, the guiding principle of the occupation has been incessant humiliation. Israeli plans for Palestinians have followed the guidelines formulated by Moshe Dayan, one of the Labour leaders more sympathetic to the Palestinian plight. Thirty years ago Dayan advised the cabinet that Israel should make it clear to refugees that "we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave". When challenged, he responded by citing Ben-Gurion, who said that "whoever approaches the Zionist problem from a moral aspect is not a Zionist". He could have also cited Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel, who held that the fate of the "several hundred thousand negroes" in the Jewish homeland "is a matter of no consequence".
Opinions a-popping all over this paragraph. However, they are mostly the opinions of Israeli political figures, and are cited not for the truth of the matter asserted, but in order to show us how the Israeli right has traditionally approached the problem of the Palestinian territories.
The Palestinians have long suffered torture, terror, destruction of property, displacement and settlement, and takeover of basic resources, crucially water.
This certainly sounds opinionated, probably because of the use of the words "suffered" and "torture." Well, the thing is, torture has in fact long been a documented fact of life for Palestinian political prisoners. Ask Amnesty International. As for "destruction of property, displacement and settlement, and takeover of basic resources," if all of *that* had not happened, Israel would not now exist. So this sentence is does contain opinion--moral judgment, condemnation, outrage, and all that--but it is also a statement of fact.
The basic problem then, as now, traces back to Washington, which has persistently backed Israel's rejection of a political settlement in terms of the broad international consensus. Current modifications of US rejectionism are tactical. With plans for an attack on Iraq endangered, the US permitted a UN resolution calling for Israeli withdrawal from the newly-invaded territories "without delay" - meaning "as soon as possible", secretary of state Colin Powell explained at once. Powell's arrival in Israel was delayed to allow the Israeli Defence Force to continue its destructive operations, facts hard to miss and confirmed by US officials.
This is interpretation, certainly. But you would have to look hard to find anyone who would deny most of these claims, even on the other side. The U.S. has consistently supported Israel. The only reason the Bush administration now gives a shit about the situation in Israel is that it affects its ability to line up support for our own military operations--which is to say that our current changes in policy *are* tactical. Every story I read about Powell's trip to Israel mentioned the fact that it seemed strange for him to take a week to get there, given the urgency of the situation and the speed of modern air travel. I do not see that any of this takes us very far out on a limb.
But the US has not officially withdrawn its recognition that the conventions apply to the occupied territories, or its censure of Israeli violations as the "occupying power". In October 2000 the security council reaffirmed the consensus, "call[ing] on Israel, the occupying power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations..." The vote was 14-0. Clinton abstained.
This is another verifiable fact. Anyone want to look it up?
Until such matters are permitted to enter mainstream discussion in the US, and their implications understood, it is meaningless to call for "US engagement in the peace process", and prospects for constructive action will remain grim.
And here we get to the punch line.
Is this piece biased? Absolutely. Chomsky does not spend very much time talking about the recent suicide bombings, or about the history of violence involved with the Intifada, or about the kind of rhetoric, misinformation, and bigotry that commonly circulates in the Arab world about Israel and the Jews. To the extent that this piece is his "opinion," it's not that what he's saying is not based on fact, so much as the fact that he's only presenting part of the picture.
So all right then. But every single piece of news that you will ever read about this situation reflects *somebody's* bias; and most of them only present the other side of the picture. His point in writing this article is to make people aware that there *is* another side to the issue, and that if any progress is going to be made we will have to accept the validity--and relevance--of the history he is talking about. The fact that Palestinians assassinate Israeli leaders and blow up innocent civilians does not change the history that he goes over in this article, nor does it change the fact that as long as the Palestinian territories are maintained according to the "divide and rule" philosophy that created them in the first place, Palestinians will go right on assassinating Israeli leaders and blowing up innocent civilians.
Articles deploring Palestinian terrorism and calling on Arafat to embrace peace and submit to the U.S.'s paternal guidance are a dime a dozen. People willing to confront the complexities built into this situation by its history are rarer. People who actually know shit about this topic due to years of research are rarer still. Chomsky's written a book on Israel, the US, and the Palestinians; I haven't. For me, that means maybe I should believe that he knows what he's talking about until I have a reason to suspect otherwise.
But of course all of that is just my opinion.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
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