% FROM THE NOAM CHOMSKY ARCHIVE
% http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu:/usr/tp0x/chomsky.html
% ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/user/cap/chomsky/
% Filename:    articles/chomsky.z.no-longer-safe
% Title:       No Longer Safe
% Author:      Noam Chomsky
% Appeared-in: Z Magazine, May 1993
% Source:      Jon Aske Aritza 
% Keywords:    World Trade Center, terrorism, Kurds, fundamentalism
% Synopsis:    International terrorism by and against the US
% See-also:    

                         NO LONGER SAFE
                          Noam Chomsky
                      Z Magazine, May 1993


``The Current Crisis in the Middle East''

For some time, I've been compelled to arrange speaking
engagements long in advance. Sometimes a title is requested for a
talk scheduled several years ahead. There is, I've found, one
title that always works: ``The current crisis in the Middle
East.''  One can't predict exactly what the crisis will be far
down the road, but that there will be one is a fairly safe
prediction.  That will continue to be the case as long as basic
problems of the region are not addressed.

Furthermore, the crises will be serious in what President
Eisenhower called ``the most strategically important area in the
world.'' In the early post-War years, the US in effect extended
the Monroe Doctrine to the Middle East, barring any interference
apart from Britain, assumed to be a loyal dependency, and quickly
punished when it occasionally got out of hand (as in 1956). The
strategic importance of the region lies primarily in its immense
petroleum reserves and the global power accorded by control over
them; and, crucially, from the huge profits that flow to the
Anglo-American rulers, which have been of critical importance for
their economies. It has been necessary to insure that this
enormous wealth flows primarily to the West, not to the people of
the region. That is one fundamental problem that will continue to
cause unrest and disorder. Another is the Israel-Arab conflict
with its many ramifications, which have been closely related to
the major US strategic goal of dominating the region's resources
and wealth.

For many years, it was claimed the core problem was Soviet
subversion and expansionism, the reflexive justification for
virtually all policies since the Bolshevik takeover in Russia in
1917. That pretext having vanished, it is now quietly conceded by
the White House (March 1990) that in past years, the ``threats to
our interests'' in the Middle East ``could not be laid at the
Kremlin's door''; the doctrinal system has yet to adjust fully to
the new requirements. ``In the future, we expect that non-Soviet
threats to [our] interests will command even greater attention,''
the White House continued in its annual plea to Congress for a
huge military budget. In reality, the ``threat to our
interests,'' in the Middle East as elsewhere, had always been
indigenous nationalism, a fact stressed in internal documents and
sometimes publicly. <<>>

A ``worst case'' prediction for the crisis a few years ahead
would be a war between the US and Iran; unlikely, but not
impossible.  Israel is pressing very hard for such a
confrontation, recognizing Iran to be the most serious military
threat that it faces. So far, the US is playing a somewhat
different game in its relations to Iran; accordingly, a potential
war, and the necessity for it, is not a major topic in the media
and journals of opinion here. <<>>

The US is, of course, concerned over Iranian power. That is one
reason why the US turned to active support for Iraq in the late
stages of the Iraq-Iran war, with a decisive effect on the
outcome, and why Washington continued its active courtship of
Saddam Hussein until he interfered with US plans for the region
in August 1990. US concerns over Iranian power were also
reflected in the decision to support Saddam's murderous assault
against the Shi'ite population of southern Iraq in March 1991,
immediately after the fighting stopped. A narrow reason was fear
that Iran, a Shi'ite state, might exert influence over Iraqi
Shi'ites. A more general reason was the threat to ``stability''
that a successful popular revolution might pose: to translate to
English, the threat that it might inspire democratizing
tendencies that would undermine the array of dictatorships that
the US relies on to control the people of the region.

Recall that Washington's support for its former friend was more
than tacit; the US military command even denied rebelling Iraqi
officers access to captured Iraqi equipment as the slaughter of
the Shi'ite population proceeded under Stormin' Norman's steely
gaze.

Similar concerns arose as Saddam turned to crushing the Kurdish
rebellion in the North. In Israel, commentators from the Chief of
Staff to political analysts and Knesset members, across a very
broad political spectrum, openly advocated support for Saddam's
atrocities, on the grounds that an independent Kurdistan might
create a Syria-Kurd-Iran territorial link that would be a serious
threat to Israel. When US records are released in the distant
future, we might discover that the White House harbored similar
thoughts, which delayed even token gestures to block the crushing
of Kurdish resistance until Washington was compelled to act by a
public that had been aroused by media coverage of the suffering
of the Kurds, recognizably Aryan and portrayed quite differently
from the southern Shi'ites, who suffered a far worse fate, but
were only dirty Arabs.

In passing, we may note that the character of US-UK concern for
the Kurds is readily determined not only by the timing of the
support, and the earlier cynical treatment of Iraqi Kurds, but
also by the reaction to Turkey's massive atrocities against its
Kurdish population right through the Gulf crisis. These were
scarcely reported here in the mainstream in virtue of the need to
support the President, who had lauded his Turkish colleague as
``a protector of peace'' joining those who ``stand up for
civilized values around the world'' against Saddam Hussein. But
Europe was less disciplined. We therefore read, in the London
_Financial Times_, that ``Turkey's western allies were rarely
comfortable explaining to their public why they condoned Ankara's
heavy-handed repression of its own Kurdish minority while the
west offered support to the Kurds in Iraq,'' not a serious PR
problem here. ``Diplomats now say that, more than any other
issue, the sight of Kurds fighting Kurds [last fall] has served
to change the way that western public opinion views the Kurdish
cause.'' In short, we can breathe a sigh of relief: cynicism
triumphs, and the Western powers can continue to condone the
harsh repression of Kurds by the ``protector of peace'' while
shedding crocodile tears over their treatment by the (current)
enemy. <<>>

Israel's reasons for trying to stir up a US confrontation with
Iran, and ``Islamic fundamentalism'' generally, are easy to
understand. The Israeli military recognizes that, apart from
resort to nuclear weapons, there is little they can do to
confront Iranian power, and are concerned that after the
(anticipated) collapse of the US-run ``peace process,'' a
Syria-Iran axis may be a significant threat. The US, in contrast,
appears to be seeking a long-term accommodation to ``moderate''
(that is, pro-US) elements in Iran, and a return to something
like the arrangements that prevailed under the Shah.  How these
tendencies may evolve is unclear.

The propaganda campaign about ``Islamic fundamentalism'' has its
farcical elements---even putting aside the fact that US culture
compares with Iran in its religious fundamentalism. The most
extreme Islamic fundamentalist state in the world is the loyal US
ally Saudi Arabia, or to be more precise, the family dictatorship
that serves as the ``Arab facade'' behind which the US
effectively controls the Arabian peninsula, to borrow the terms
of British colonial rule. The West has no problems with Islamic
fundamentalism there. Probably the most fanatic Islamic
fundamentalist group in the world is led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,
the terrorist extremist who has been the CIA favorite and prime
recipient of the $3.3 billion in (official) US aid given to the
Afghan rebels (with roughly the same amount reported from Saudi
Arabia), the man who has recently been shelling Kabul with
thousands killed, driving hundreds of thousands of people out of
the city (including all Western Embassies), in an effort to shoot
his way into power; not quite the same as Pol Pot emptying Phnom
Penh, since the US client has been far more bloody in that
operation.

Similarly, it is not at all concealed in Israel that its invasion
of Lebanon in 1982 was undertaken in part to destroy the secular
nationalism of the PLO, which was becoming a real nuisance with
its persistent call for a peaceful diplomatic settlement, which
was undermining the US-Israeli strategy of gradual integration of
the occupied territories within Israel. One result was the
creation of Hizbollah, an Iranian-backed fundamentalist group
that drove Israel out of most of Lebanon. For similar reasons,
Israel supported fundamentalist elements as a rival to the
accommodationist PLO in the occupied territories. The results are
similar to Lebanon, as Hamas attacks against the Israeli military
become increasingly difficult to contain. The examples illustrate
the typical brilliance of intelligence operations when they have
to deal with populations, not simply various gangsters.  The
basic reasoning goes back to the early days of Zionism:
Palestinian moderates pose the most dangerous threat to the goal
of avoiding any political settlement until facts are established
to which it will have to conform.

In brief, Islamic fundamentalism is an enemy only when it is
``out of control.'' In that case, it falls into the category of
``radical nationalism'' or ``ultranationalism,'' more generally,
of independence whether religious or secular, right or left,
military or civilian; priests who preach the ``preferential
option for the poor'' in Central America, to mention a recent
case.


``Terror's senseless logic''

A lesser potential crisis is the initiation of terrorist
activities within US borders. As recognized at once, the bombing
of the World Trade Center in New York on February 26, which
killed 6 people and caused great damage, may be a portent of
things to come. Many questions arise about that terrorist act.
Let us put them aside for the moment, and take the official
accounts at face value. There are, then, two contrasting
interpretations of this event. The first interpretation was
expressed in the huge media coverage, which struck a single
chord; the second in a letter attributed to the perpetrators.

News reports and commentary were so uniform as to make extensive
sampling superfluous. ``Americans Feel Terror's Senseless
Logic,'' a typical headline read, introducing a _New York Times_
commentary by Douglas Jehl that sought to probe the deeper
meaning of the atrocity. Jehl writes that the search for a
rational explanation is misguided, a ``particularly American''
error. We are ``a culture attuned to the straightforward''; but
``terrorism represents a confrontation with the oblique.'' We
must learn not ``to assume that terrorist attacks will always
reflect Western logic.'' They may ``appear to the outside world
as senseless,'' terrorologist Brian Jenkins explains, ``but
within the little community, they will be satisfied.'' Americans
are ``unfamiliar with such geometry,'' Jehl continues, ``because
of a fortunate insulation. Until the World Trade Center bombing,
such attacks seemed to flare primarily on far-off horizons.
Americans have largely been voyeurs to sustained terror
campaigns,'' carried out by strange people out there who don't
comprehend Western logic and the ``civilized values'' to which
the West has always been dedicated. <<>>

True, Jehl notes, ``the most violent acts of international
terrorism have generally reflected some clear logic.'' He gives
one example: ``the 1983 bombing attacks on the American Embassy
and Marine barracks in Beirut,'' which were ``attempts to drive
the United States from Lebanon.'' It is also possible that the
1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner ``was revenge for the 1986 raid
on Tripoli'' in Libya, and therefore had a certain twisted
rationale.  But we have to learn that others are not like us, and
regularly act in ways that have no ``clear logic.''

A _Boston Globe_ editorial found ``two unnerving portents in the
arrest of a Muslim fundamentalist'' suspect. ``The first, and
most general, is that Americans can no longer assume they are
safe from the terrorist pathology that has afflicted other
countries.''  The second is that the US may ``become a target for
the kind of political violence practiced elsewhere by fanatic
Muslim fundamentalists,'' a fact driven home by the ``unique
cruelty'' of the World Trade Center bombing. <<>> Many others drew similar conclusions about the foreign
plague, unaccountably reaching our own shores.

A different interpretation of the bombing was given in a letter
from ``the LIBERATION ARMY'' received by the _New York Times_
four days after it occurred, allegedly written by the group of
Islamic fundamentalists who had carried it out. ``The American
people must know, that their civilians who got killed are not
better than those who are getting killed by the American weapons
and support,'' the letter reads: ``The American people are
responsible for the actions of their government and they must
question all of the crimes that their government is committing
against other people.'' If they do not, they ``will be the
targets of our operations. . . .'' <<>>

Still adopting the official version without question, we take the
letter to be authentic and to express the views of the
terrorists. Comparing these two diametrically opposed
interpretations, a number of questions arise.

One question is factual. According to the US version--- virtually
universal---terrorist atrocities are carried out by fanatics who
despise democracy and freedom (or are inspired by Third World
pathologies, without any ``clear logic''). Therefore, the
scholarly literature concludes, they occur ``almost exclusively
in democratic or relatively democratic societies,'' in an attempt
to destabilize or undermine them (Walter Laqueur, in a much
acclaimed study of the plague). The perpetrators are the kind of
people who bombed the ``Marine barracks in Beirut'' in one of
``the most violent acts of international terrorism,'' as the _New
York Times_ and its colleagues see it. The ``unique cruelty'' of
the World Trade Center bombing shows that we too may be
``afflicted'' by the horrors that are conducted by
``Palestinians, [Colombian] M-19s, and other Third World
detritus'' (Joe Klein, _Esquire_, 1986), and now ``Islamic
fundamentalists.'' <<>>

According to the radically conflicting version presented in the
Liberation Army letter, the US is a major perpetrator of
international terrorism, its victims being mostly the despised
``Third World detritus.''

Which version is correct?

I posed this as a question of fact, and on the surface, that is
what it seems to be. But the appearance is misleading. The
factual question arises only after we decide what counts as
terrorism. Here, we face problems. There are explicit definitions
of terrorism, more or less the same in content (though with
interesting differences, to which we return). But these are not
the ones adopted in the literature on terrorism.  Here some care
is necessary.

The explicit definitions we find in the US Code, international
conventions, official or quasi-official US documents, and other
such sources. These agree that terrorism is ``the calculated use
of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are
political, religious, or ideological in nature. This is done
through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear'' (_US Army
Operational Concept for Terrorism Counteraction_). Still simpler
is the characterization in a Pentagon-commissioned study by noted
terrorologist Robert Kupperman, which speaks of the threat or use
of force ``to achieve political objectives without the full-scale
commitment of resources,'' that is, short of outright war. <<>>

We might counterpose to these an Orwellian definition, too
cynical to take seriously: ``terrorism'' is terrorism _that is
perpetrated by official enemies_; terrorism that we or our
clients conduct does not fall under the concept. Conceivably, a
definition of that sort might have been employed in Stalinist
Russia, where, as _Times_ correspondent Steven Erlanger remarks
in one of the many self-righteous commentaries on our virtue and
their awfulness, ``The Soviet manipulation of truth devalued
political language so thoroughly, as George Orwell understood,
that no career Russian politican thinks twice about saying
whatever words are most convenient.'' <<>>

Note that if we were to adopt the Orwellian definition, we would
have to inquire no further into the doctrine of scholarship,
media, and the intellectual community generally: it would be true
as a matter of logic that terrorism is conducted by _them_
against _us_. But there is a more interesting fact: to maintain
the standard doctrine, it is _necessary_ to adopt the Orwellian
definition, the one we would ridicule if the commissars in a
totalitarian state were to sink to this level. If we define
``terrorism'' simply as terrorism, it is child's play to
demonstrate that the authors of the much-reviled Liberation Army
letter happen to be accurate in their factual assumptions.
Merely to illustrate, note that I cheated in quoting Kupperman;
he is defining not ``terrorism,'' but ``low intensity conflict,''
that is, the doctrine to which the US is officially committed,
which as both the doctrinal framework and practice show, is
simply international terrorism writ large. The US may be the only
country that is officially and publicly committed to wholesale
international terrorism as a standard policy instrument. Since
that conclusion plainly won't do at all, the Orwellian definition
must be adopted, as is done uniformly, and presumably without
awareness for the most part, a most remarkable phenomenon in a
society free from coercion, by comparative standards. Though
accurate, the conclusion is so unacceptable that it simply cannot
be perceived and never will be in respectable circles, no matter
how conclusively it is demonstrated. The intellectual culture
would have to undergo a profound revolution before such truisms
could be considered.

The doctrinal system is by no means satisfied with ``manipulation
of truth that devalues political language so thoroughly that no
self-respecting commentator thinks twice about saying whatever
words are most convenient,'' to paraphrase the derisive (and
accurate) _Times_ description of the official enemy. As already
illustrated, standard practice goes even beyond the Orwellian
definition of ``terrorism.'' Consider the _Times_ choice for
``the most violent acts of international terrorism'': ``the 1983
bombing attacks on the American Embassy and Marine barracks in
Beirut.'' Recall that international terrorism is terrorism
crossing national borders. We are to understand, then, that the
victims of the terror (the Marines in Beirut) were in their own
country and the Lebanese who bombed their barracks are outside
invaders. The assumption passes without comment in a culture that
takes it for granted that we own the world, a culture capable of
denouncing ``the assault from the inside'' against us in South
Vietnam---JFK's description, 10 days before the assassination, of
the aggression by South Vietnamese peasants against the US forces
defending their villages with bombs, napalm, and massive
expulsions of the aggressors to concentration camps.

We may also ask a further question. Why does the bombing of the
Marine barracks count as terrorism at all? The major
international convention on terrorism, adopted by the General
Assembly of the United Nations, explicitly exempts from the
category acts of resistance against foreign military forces and
racist and colonialist regimes. True, it was not passed
unanimously; only 153--2 (US and Israel opposed, Honduras alone
abstaining). Therefore it remained unreported, out of history,
and not germane to the discussion of terrorism, which, for the
press and other commentators, is defined as Washington construes
the concept, in its usual splendid isolation. Furthermore, the
entire matter is barred from discussion, a fact with important
policy consequences. When the Palestinian National Council, in
1988, endorsed the UN convention, the editors of the _New York
Times_ bitterly condemned the move, ridiculing ``the old Arafat
hedge,'' a position affirmed by its leading dissident, Anthony
Lewis: ``the United States says correctly that the PLO must
unambiguously renounce all terrorism before it can take part in
negotiations,'' and recognition of international conventions
plainly does not reach those heights. It is not simply that
commentators across the board take Washington's stand as correct,
which would be startling enough, on any issue. Rather, far more
stringent totalitarian standards must be satisfied: there is no
conceivable alternative to Washington's stand; the position of
the world need not be reported, refuted, nor enter the discussion
in any way.

Those who bombed the barracks in Beirut surely perceived the
Marines as a foreign military force supporting their oppressors,
not without reason. By world standards, the incident does not
qualify as terrorism at all, let alone as the paradigm example of
``international terrorism.'' But such questions are far too
subtle to raise in an intellectual culture capable of reflexively
adopting the Orwellian definition of ``terrorism.'' <<.>>>

This is not the place to review the ample record of international
terrorism by the US and its clients. We might merely recall some
highlights, to illustrate what the despised semi-literate
detritus may have in mind. The day their letter appeared as the
lead story in the _Times_, AP reported a communiqu\'e of the
Lebanese army that ``a civilian was killed and 10 others were
wounded when an Israeli force backing South Lebanon Army
militiamen blasted the village of Kfar Milki with tank and mortar
fire'' north of Israel's ``security zone''---that is, the sector
of southern Lebanon that Israel occupies in violation of Security
Council Resolution 425 (March 1978), controls with terror and
torture, and uses as a base for attacking the rest of Lebanon at
will with many civilians killed; it is the ``security zone'' for
the US media because such is the decision of Washington and its
client. <<>>

Such helpful coincidences are not uncommon. A few weeks earlier,
_Times_ correspondent Judith Miller had a front-page story on an
Arab-American imprisoned in Israel who, under long interrogation
by the secret police, ``has provided unusually detailed
information suggesting that Hamas . . . has drawn critical
financial support and political and military guidance from agents
in the United States.'' On the same day, an inside page reported
that ``The Israelis and the South Lebanon Army pounded Shiite
villages north of the security zone with artillery today after a
South Lebanon Army stronghold came under rocket attacks,'' the
regular practice of the occupation army and its mercenaries.
Even by the standards of respectable opinion it should be
difficult to describe an attack on a murderous military force
kept in power by a foreign army as ``terrorism,'' which justifies
the bombing of civilians in retaliation. The doctrinal system has
risen to the challenge admirably, however.

The hard question that Miller and others ponder is whether
Americans should be barred from contributing to Hamas's social
and cultural activities, in the light of the confessions
extracted by the Israeli secret police in prison interrogations.
No question arises to whether Americans should be forced to
contribute to Israel's vast and well-documented terrorist
practices, as they do directly through US government grants on a
scale without precedent, and indirectly through tax-free gifts by
others (also without precedent). With regard to Hamas, the
question is a legitimate policy concern; with regard to Israel,
it is a conclusive proof of anti-Semitism.

Arab prisoners over the years have been most forthcoming under
interrogation, perhaps because ``It's part of their nature'' to
confess, as Israeli Supreme Court Justice Moshe Etzioni explained
to Amnesty International when asked about the remarkably high
level of confessions (under torture, as was later conceded, and
of course always known to all but the willfully blind). It was
never explained why Jewish prisoners were also confessing under
interrogation to crimes they did not commit; this was forgotten
several years later when the fact that prisoners were regularly
tortured could no longer be concealed, a ``revelation'' that
elicited much outrage among the High Court Justices---because the
secret police had been lying to them, a practice intolerable in a
democratic society. <<>>

Within Israel's ``security zone,'' some 300 expelled Palestinians
are now languishing in miserable and worsening conditions,
forgotten, because the Clinton administration announced that
Israel's decision to leave them to rot there is ``consistent''
with the Security Council demand that they be returned to their
homes immediately. The original 400 were expelled on grounds that
they were ``Hamas activists'' responsible for ``terrorist acts'';
namely, attacks against the Israeli occupying army. ``We should
pay heed to the fact that like all Hamas guerrilla operations
prior to the expulsion [of the 400], yesterday's operation was
targeted at soldiers,'' a lead article in the Israeli press
observed a month later: ``We cannot accuse them of practicing
random terror which hits innocent women and children, because
they don't.'' <<>>

The very knowledgeable Israeli correspondent Danny Rubinstein
writes that about half the alleged ``Hamas activists'' worked in
Islamic religious institutions, including preachers, teachers,
``a large number of young people who serve as missionaries for
increasing religious practice,'' and professionals who ``helped
establish the Islamic movement's network of educational and
welfare institutions which includes clinics, kindergartens,
kitchens for the needy, and organizations providing aid to
prisoners' families, invalids, and orphans.'' ``Members of the
military wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad organization are not
among those deported,'' he adds.

Israeli intelligence agrees. An important report last December
published in Israel's leading journal, _Ha'aretz_, quoted a
``senior government official'' who said that the intelligence
services (Shin Bet) provided Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with
_six names_ of Hamas activists, adding one more when they were
asked ``to increase the number''; intelligence was ``astonished''
to learn that more than 400 had been expelled---without any
relevant intelligence information. The facts were reported here
only by Alexander Cockburn, to my knowledge; the press kept to
the version presented in the _New York Times_ by Israeli Arabist
Ehud Yaari, an associate of the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy. According to Yaari, who does not cite the
intelligence reports and other Israeli sources that he knows
well, ``About 300 of the 413 deportees constituted Hamas's
command network in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.'' His account
makes some sense on the assumptions expressed by Cabinet Legal
Advisor Yossef Harish, arguing for the expulsion before Israel's
High Court: asked how many residents of the occupied territories
are members of terrorist organizations, he responded ``I think
all of them.'' <<>>

The expulsions serve to undermine social and cultural work in the
occupied territories, much like the fevered propaganda campaign
to cut off support from US citizens for such activities. There is
nothing new about these plans. It is worthwhile to recall the
longstanding policy guidelines of the Labor doves. These were
stated lucidly in internal discussion in 1972 by Haim Herzog,
later President:

``I do not deny the Palestinians any place or stand or opinion on
every matter. But certainly I am not prepared to consider them as
partners in any respect in a land that has been consecrated in
the hands of our nation for thousands of years. For the Jews of
this land there cannot be any partner.'' <<>>

Herzog was merely expressing traditional doctrine. ``We demand
that our inheritance, Palestine, be returned to us and if there
is no room for Arabs, they have the opportunity of going to
Iraq,'' David Ben-Gurion declared in 1937, expressing a consensus
that reached to the moral heroes of the Yishuv (Jewish
settlement), who argued that wholesale ``compulsory transfer'' by
the British was the solution to the problem. <<>>

These doctrines were forcefully reaffirmed after Israel's 1967
conquests. Israeli rule over the territories is ``permanent,''
Moshe Dayan held: ``the settlements are forever, and the future
borders will include these settlements as part of Israel.'' One
of the Israeli leaders most attuned to the needs and concerns of
the Palestinians, Dayan advised the cabinet that Israel should
tell the Palestinian refugees in the territories ``that we have
no solution, that you shall continue to live like dogs, and
whoever wants to can leave---and we will see where this process
leads. . . .  In five years we may have 200,000 less people---and
that is a matter of enormous importance.'' The regime of daily
humiliation and brutality that ensued is the ``benign
occupation'' lauded by the _New York Times_ and other starry-eyed
observers. From the founder, Chaim Weizmann, until Yitzhak Rabin
today, the guiding assumption has been that with sufficient force
and resolve, the ``insignificant Negroes'' who were scattered in
the Land of Israel will be ``crushed'' and ``broken''; they will
``die'' or ``turn into human dust and the waste of society,''
Israeli Arabists predicted, ``and join the most impoverished
classes in the Arab countries.''  It therefore only makes sense
to deny them the means for a decent existence.

Such facts may also have been in the minds of the writers of the
Liberation Army letter, who, like poor and oppressed people
everywhere, do not need to pore through arcane secret documents
to learn about the reality of the world, which they know from
their daily experience.

Ehud Yaari's current home, the Washington Institute of Near East
Studies, plays an interesting role in American cultural life.
Virtually a segment of the Israeli lobby, it enables reporters to
present US-Israeli propaganda while preserving their fabled
objectivity, keeping their opinions to themselves while citing
some ``expert'' to provide the line they wish to propagate, the
standard device. The Institute was established by Martin Indyk,
an Australian employee of the registered Israeli lobby (AIPAC),
who felt that most Washington think tanks were too pro-Arab and
anti-Israel, some even recommending that the US join the
international consensus on a peaceful diplomatic settlement.
Indyk is now Clinton's main Middle East adviser, having obtained
citizenship a few days before his appointment. Another leading
expert at the Institute, the much-quoted Robert Satloff, explains
that Palestinians should be heartened by the Clinton
Administration's determination that Israel is honoring the
Security Council resolution on the deportees by flagrantly
violating it: ``It's to the Palestinians' negotiating advantage
that the US and the Israelis have the relationship they have
now.'' That insight should come as a great relief to the men
seeking to survive the harsh climate of Scorpion Hill in southern
Lebanon, and their families. <<>>

It would only be fair to add that as Israel expelled 400 ``Hamas
activists'' from their homes, it demonstrated its unique
sensitivity to the suffering of Muslims by admitting a group of
Bosnians (83, according to a report by Marwan Bishara). In an
effort to temper the world reaction to the deportation, the
government of Israel adopted an earlier proposal to this effect
by Israeli Arab mayors, placing its implementation in the hands
of a leader of the parliamentary left, Yossi Sarid; most of those
who had initiated the proposal backed out, Bishara reports, given
the circumstances. The Bosnians were sent to the Arab village of
Tarshiha, the site of a land clearing operation by air and
artillery bombardment, then deportation, in 1948--49, leaving
some 700 Christians of the original 4--5,000 population (4/5
Muslims), according to Israeli historian Benny Morris. The lands
were confiscated and used for Jewish settlement; the former
inhabitants and their descendants live in refugee camps in
Lebanon. Bishara recommends that ``the newly arrived Bosnians
should visit the Village of Flowers, and in particular, a certain
fascinating villa with `mysterious' beauty that school children
sometimes visit. It was built using the stones of the deserted
and destroyed houses of Tarshiha Moslems. It is a post-modern
residence in a post-cynical country,'' known here as ``the symbol
of human decency,'' in _Times_ lingo. <<>>

The official terrorist plague peaked in 1985, when Mid-East
terrorism was selected as the lead story of the year in an AP
poll of editors. The worst single terrorist act of that year in
the Middle East was a car-bombing in Beirut that killed 80 people
and wounded 256. The target was the Shi'ite leader Sheikh
Fadlallah, who escaped unharmed. The attack was organized by the
CIA and its Saudi clients with Lebanese and British assistance,
and specifically authorized by CIA director William Casey,
according to _Washington Post_ reporter Bob Woodward's book on
Casey. That was not the worst terrorist act of the year, however.
The prize was taken by the blowing up of an Air India flight,
killing 329 people---the worst terrorist air attack ever. It was
traced to a paramilitary camp in Alabama where terrorists were
trained for actions in Central America and elsewhere. On a visit
to India, Attorney-General Edwin Meese tacitly conceded that the
operation originated in a US terrorist training camp. <<>> Little further is known; such incidents do not
fall within the canon, according to the reigning Orwellian
doctrine, and therefore merit little attention.

By far the major targets of direct US international terrorism
have been Cuba and Nicaragua, as determined by the World Court,
in the latter case, in a decision that elicited much derision
here. These terrorist operations were extraordinary in scale,
vastly beyond those attributed to the officially designated
terrorist states. Among them is the terrorist act that should
rank as history's most ominous, an act that might have set off a
nuclear war. At one of the tensest moments of the Cuban missile
crisis, when Cubans may have had operational control of the
missiles, one of Kennedy's terrorist teams blew up a Cuban
industrial facility killing 400 workers, guided by ``photographs
taken by spying planes,'' Fidel Castro alleged. When reported
years later by the highly regarded authority Raymond Garthoff,
the revelation drew no detectable notice, and the incident---of
course---does not fall within the canon. <<>>

Throughout all these years, Americans remained ``voyeurs,''
observing the mindless evil of others with wonder and dismay.

An honest observer familiar with even a fraction of the shameful
record could hardly fail to be amazed by the discipline of the
intellectual community, which keeps to the official line without
detectable deviation: ``Terror's senseless logic'' is foreign to
American thought patterns, the ``unique cruelty'' of the World
Trade Center bombing reveals that we can no longer be merely
observers from afar of the horrors perpetrated by uncivilized
wretches who cannot aspire to enter our moral universe, and all
the rest. The _New York Times_ editors recommend measures to
``Keep Foreign Terrorism Foreign''; understandable, if we think
of it as an extreme version of what a minor player like Qaddafi
might mean had he said the same thing, calling for measures to
keep terrorism away from his shores after the terrorist attack on
Tripoli that murdered dozens of civilians---but does not enter
the canon. <<>>

While some are laboring to establish an ``Iranian connection'' in
the World Trade Center bombing, a CIA connection is much more
prominent. As publicly recognized, those charged and suspected
are directly involved with the CIA-run operations in Afghanistan,
financed by the US and Saudi Arabia, where they learned their
trade. In particular, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, widely reported
to be the guru of the group, is considered by specialists to have
been close to Hekmatyar, the CIA's favorite terrorist and Islamic
fundamentalist fanatic. Other veterans of CIA training have
``radically transformed'' anti-government activities in Egypt, a
senior Egyptian official said, sharply raising the level of
violence and terror there, while still others appear to be doing
the same in Yemen. Egypt's President Mubarak claims that the CIA
clients have been ``persuaded by the Iranians'' to destabilize
Arab regimes, so guilt is properly assigned; but it is not an
easy task. <<>>

A final comment on the World Trade Center bombing. The accused
left a remarkably transparent trail and chose a curious way to
bomb a building. Two possibilities come to mind. The first is
that this was an amateur job of the most extraordinary ineptness.
The second is that it was a highly professional operation by
efficient and practiced hands, using a group of people that was
easily penetrated and manipulated for these purposes. At the time
of writing (March 1993), both possibilities seem open.


``Hatred by the People''

The Liberation Army letter condemns US government crimes, and
calls on the American people to question them. Reporting and
commentary that is designed to enlighten would make it clear that
there is nothing new about such sentiments, and would explore the
reasons for them.

In July 1958, President Eisenhower commented on US problems in
the Arab world in a staff discussion: ``The trouble is that we
have a campaign of hatred against us, not by the governments but
by the people,'' who are ``on Nasser's side.'' As for Nasser, he
was ``an extremely dangerous fanatic,'' John Foster Dulles
concluded in August 1956, because of his stubborn insistence on a
neutralist course---though even Nasser wasn't as bad as
Khrushchev, ``more like Hitler than any Russian leader we have
previously seen,'' Dulles informed the National Security Council
a year later. <<>>

Typically, governments are not a problem; they can be controlled,
or else overthrown. The people are a more difficult nut to crack.
The problem is pervasive, domestically as well. In the Middle
East, it arose once again during the 1990--91 Gulf conflict. It
was common then to say that the world was united against Saddam
Hussein; not untrue, if ``the world'' consists of its white
faces. But in a sector of the world extending from Morocco to
Indonesia, and not only there, it would have been more accurate
to say that the world was united against the US-UK war, taking
``the world'' to include its people. It was only the harshest and
most brutal US allies, such as Syria and Saudi Arabia, that could
efficiently suppress popular opposition; where there was even a
minimal ``democratic opening'' or departure from tyranny, that
generally proved impossible. The hostility to functioning
democracy that has long been a guiding principle of US policy,
peaking in the 1980s, is readily understandable.

That principle has guided US policy towards Iraq throughout.
Until his first transgression, in August 1990, Saddam Hussein was
a trusted friend, whose ``iron fist . . . held Iraq together,
much to the satisfaction of the American allies Turkey and Saudi
Arabia,'' as _Times_ chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas
Friedman reported Administration thinking in the months after the
war.  But Saddam's disobedience could not stand unpunished, so
the US sought to find a general who might might topple Saddam,
``and then Washington would have the best of all worlds: an
iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein''---in effect, a
return to the status quo. For similar reasons, the US always
dismissed the Iraqi democratic opposition with disdain, including
its most conservative elements, such as London-based banker Ahmed
Chalabi, who observed in March 1992 that Washington was ``waiting
for Saddam to butcher the insurgents in the hope that he can be
overthrown later by a suitable officer,'' an attitude rooted in
the US policy of ``supporting dictatorships to maintain
stability.'' As Friedman later reported, he had perceived State
Department reasoning quite accurately. <<.>>>

We might ask why there should have been ``a campaign of hatred
against us by the people'' already in July 1958, when the US had
just unceremoniously expelled Israel from the Sinai and its
allies from the Canal Zone after the Israeli-French-British
invasion of Egypt, and well before the ``special relationship''
with Israel was in place. It's easy to explain the hatred in
Iran, where a CIA coup overthrew the conservative parliamentary
regime and restored the Shah in 1953. A decade of CIA operations
in Syria may help explain the matter further. Syria had
traditionally been pro-American, but clandestine US intervention
``helped reverse a century of friendship,'' Douglas Little
observes in a review of these operations. In 1948, the CIA
approached Chief of Staff Husni Zaim to discuss the ``possibility
[of an] army supported dictatorship,'' a result achieved when
Zaim overthrew the goverment a few months later. Zaim called for
peace talks with Israel, offering to resettle 250,000 Palestinian
refugees, and approved an ARAMCO oil pipeline concession. Israel
chose not to pursue the diplomatic opportunity. Zaim was
overthrown a few months later. In 1951, Col. Adib Shishakli
overthrew the government and set up a military dictatorship, with
clandestine US support. Matters drifted out of control again, and
in March 1956, Eisenhower approved Project Omega, which aimed to
overthrow the increasingly pro-Nasser regime in Syria as part of
a more general plan to undermine Nasser by supporting the Gulf
dictatorships and scuttling the Aswan Dam project. Operation
Straggle, organized jointly with British intelligence to
overthrow the government of Syria, was timed (apparently, under
British initiative) exactly on the day of the invasion of Egypt,
which France and Britain had kept secret from the US. Possibly
the British goal was to keep the US preoccupied elsewhere. In any
event, Syrian counterintelligence had uncovered the plot, and it
quickly unravelled. The ``Eisenhower Doctrine,'' approved by
Congress in 1957, authorized the President to dispatch US troops
to counter ``Soviet subversion,'' the usual code word for
independent initiatives (which, naturally, tended to lead to
reliance on the USSR, given US hostility and subversion). While
Egypt was the publicly-designated culprit, US officials believed
that Syria was more ``nearly under the control of international
communism,'' Little concludes. Several clandestine operations
sought to subvert the government of Syria, leading finally to a
bungled CIA effort again penetrated by Syrian intelligence. The
end result was great hostility to the US, close Syrian relations
with the USSR, and much hysteria in Washington about ``losing the
whole Middle East to Communism.'' <<>>

Eisenhower's rueful comment on the ``hatred of the people'' was
made on July 15, 1958, as he sent 10,000 Marines to Lebanon to
shore up a right-wing government, in response to the nationalist
coup in Iraq that was taken to be Nasserite in inspiration, the
first break in the Anglo-American rule over the oil-rich states.
That caused renewed hysteria in both Washington and London,
leading to secret decisions to grant nominal independence to
Kuwait to prevent the nationalist rot from spreading, while
Britain reserved the right ``ruthlessly to intervene, whoever it
is has caused the trouble . . . if things go wrong.'' The US
adopted the same stand with regard to the richer prizes in the
Arabian peninsula. The primary motive was to ensure that profits
from Kuwaiti oil would maintain the health of Britain's ailing
economy, a problem that was to arise for the senior partner too
not long after. <<>>

Some months earlier, in January 1958, the National Security
Council had concluded that a ``logical corollary'' of opposition
to radical Arab nationalism ``would be to support Israel as the
only strong pro-Western power left in the Middle East.'' Ten
years before, Israel's military successes had much impressed the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, leading them to consider Israel to be the
major regional military power after Turkey, offering the U.S.
means to ``gain strategic advantage in the Middle East that would
offset the effects of the decline of British power in that
area.'' Close intelligence links were established at that time.
By the mid-1960s, Israel's role as a barrier to Nasserite
influence in the Gulf became more salient, and the alliance was
firmed up as Israel destroyed Egypt's military forces in 1967,
also conquering the West Bank, the Sinai and Gaza Strip, and the
Syrian Golan Heights, and expelling several hundred thousand
Palestinians (200,000 more were expelled in subsequent months, in
what was cynically called a ``voluntary'' migration; Dayan's
projected 200,000 would be in addition to these). <<; Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, _Dangerous Liason_
(HarperCollins, 1991).>>>

By then the ``hatred of the people'' had more tangible reasons
than in 1958. It became more firmly established as Israel pursued
its policies of integrating the territories with lavish US
support, and attacking Lebanon from the early 1970s, with a huge
civilian toll.

When we add to the balance the US support for the dictatorships
that ensure the flow of oil riches to the West, instead of to the
people of the region, and other US actions (for example, the
bombing of Libya, the support for Israel's terror bombing of
Tunis, and much else), we begin to perceive that ``terror's
logic'' may not be entirely ``senseless,'' however inexcusable
the means employed, and that it is a pea on a mountain when
compared with the regular US practice of international terrorism.
The fear that Americans may no longer be mere ``voyeurs to
sustained terror campaigns'' are not groundless. The population,
as usual, is ill-served by the intellectual culture, with its
remarkably totalitarian strains, which provides a version of
history so radically at odds with reality that its victims can
scarcely understand what is happening to them.

The historically unique US-Israel alliance has been based on the
perception that Israel is a ``strategic asset,'' fulfilling US
goals in the region in tacit alliance with the Arab facade in the
Gulf and other regional protectors of the family dictatorships,
and performing services elsewhere. Those who see Israel's future
as an efficient Sparta, at permanent war with its enemies and
surviving at the whim of the US, naturally want that relationship
to continue---including, it seems, most of the organized American
Jewish community, a fact that has long outraged Israeli doves.
The doctrine is explained currently by General (res.)  Shlomo
Gazit, former head of Israeli military intelligence and a senior
official of the military administration of the occupied
territories. After the collapse of the USSR, he writes,

``Israel's main task has not changed at all, and it remains of
crucial importance. Its location at the center of the Arab Muslim
Middle East predestines Irael to be a devoted guardian of
stability in all the countries surrounding it. Its [role] is to
protect the existing regimes: to prevent or halt the processes of
radicalization and to block the explanion of fundamentalist
religious zealotry.'' <<>>

To which we may add: performing dirty work that the US is unable
to undertake itself, because of popular opposition or other
costs. The conception has its grim logic. What is remarkable is
that advocacy of it should be identified as ``support for
Israel.''


A Way Out?

Is there a way out of this morass? As the years pass, the
prospects dim, but it remains possible to imagine a diplomatic
settlement which, while satisfying no one's sense of justice and
guaranteeing nothing, nevertheless provides at least some hope
for peace and moves towards the closer integration across
national boundaries that is a necessity if the region is to have
a healthy future.

One problem---not the only one but a central one nonetheless---
is the conflict over the occupied territories. As well-known to
those familiar with primary sources and the dissident literature,
including readers of this journal, the US has undermined the
international consensus on a diplomatic settlement since 1971,
when Henry Kissinger took control of US policy and introduced his
policy of ``stalemate.'' The US has scarcely deviated since from
this rejectionist stand, in virtual international isolation,
vetoing Security Council resolutions, voting alone (with Israel)
against General Assembly resolutions, barring peace initiatives
from Europe, the Arab states, and the PLO. Most of this record
has been suppressed in the media and journals of opinion, often
grossly falsified, a fact extensively documented elsewhere.
Again, the population has been ill-served by the ``manipulation
of truth'' by the doctrinal managers, who have, once again,
``devalued political language so thoroughly, as George Orwell
understood, that no [American intellectual or political figure]
thinks twice about saying whatever words are most convenient'';
the Erlanger paraphrase is a bit of an exaggeration, as was his
original, but not by much. The comparison to the perversion of
the record on terrorism is striking.

Until Kissinger's policy coup, the US was well within the
international consensus. The State Department's Rogers plan of
December 1969 called for a settlement in terms of UN 242 as
understood throughout most of the world, with nothing for the
Palestinians, and a full peace agreement on the (pre-June 1967)
international borders, perhaps with minor and mutual adjustments.
Israel rejected the territorial arrangements, Egypt and other
Arab states the conditions on a full peace agreement. In February
1971, Egypt accepted a UN initiative virtually identical to the
Rogers Plan. Israel recognized it as a genuine peace offer, but
rejected it, anticipating further territorial gains.  The USSR
accepted the same plan in November 1971.

By then, however, Kissinger had taken over, with his lunatic
insistence on ``stalemate until Moscow urged compromise or until,
even better, some moderate Arab regime decided that the route to
progress was through Washington.'' The facts were an utter
irrelevance, even eight years later, when Kissinger delivered
himself of this astonishing pronouncement, adding with equal
perspecuity that ``Until some Arab state showed a willingess to
separate from the Soviets, or the Soviets were prepared to
dissociate from the maximum Arab program, we had no reason to
modify our policy'' of stalemate. Of the two major Arab states,
Saudi Arabia and Egypt, it is true that the former had not
separated from the Soviets, nor could it, since it did not even
have diplomatic relations with the hated Russians---who had never
associated themselves with the ``maximum Arab program.'' And
Egypt had not really separated from the Soviets either, both
having adopted the official US policies that Kissinger rejected.
But analyzing Kissinger's pronouncements by the standards of
``Western logic'' is a pointless exercise; his real goal, as he
makes clear, was to undermine his despised enemy Secretary of
State Rogers. <<>>

Since then, the US has always insisted on two basic conditions:
first, there can be no international involvement, the Middle East
being US turf; second, the Palestinians, being useless for US
strategic purposes, have no right of self-determination. The
latter condition was in flat contradiction to the international
consensus by the mid-1970s, reflected in the 1976 Security
Council resolution vetoed by the US which called for a two-state
settlement. The Camp David agreement under Carter was tolerable
because it satisfied the US conditions, also preparing the ground
for Israel's accelerated integration of the territories and
attacks against Lebanon, as was obvious at once, and is now
conceded in retrospect. The record of US rejectionism is what is
technically called ``the peace process.'' That process now
continues, satisfying the US demands: the current negotiations
are run unilaterally by the US, with only a token presence by
other powers, and the Palestinians are offered nothing, as
stipulated by the 1989 Baker-Shamir-Peres plan, which has yet to
be discussed in the US mainstream. <<.>>>

The essence of ``Western logic'' was expressed with admirable
clarity by Nestor Sanchez, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
in the Reagan years, after the UN Truth Commission report exposed
huge atrocities by US clients in El Salvador---exposed, that is,
some of the atrocities that had long been known to anyone who
cared, including the media, which now profess to be shocked.
Sanchez considers the whole exercise ridiculous:

``We won. Why do we have to beat a dead horse? You go into a
prize fight and the winner knocks out the contender, and then you
question the blow? That's stupid.'' <<>>

Any Nazi would nod his head in approval. The logic is impeccable,
and a leading principle of statecraft.

On other matters, the American people have questioned crimes that
their government commits against the people of the traditional
colonial domains, with salutary consequences. On the matters
reviewed here, that has yet to happen. The beginning of wisdom is
willingness to face the facts. From there, the road is not an
easy one, but refusal to follow it only guarantees further
torment.