On Palestine
By Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe and Frank Barat
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About this ebook
Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, left thousands of Palestinians dead and cleared the way for another Israeli land grab. The need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians has never been greater. Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, two leading voices in the struggle to liberate Palestine, discuss the road ahead for Palestinians and how the international community can pressure Israel to end its human rights abuses against the people of Palestine.
Praise for Gaza in Crisis by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé
“This sober and unflinching analysis should be read and reckoned with by anyone concerned with practicable change in the long-suffering region.” —Publishers Weekly
“Both authors perform fiercely accurate deconstructions of official rhetoric.” —The Guardian
Praise for Noam Chomsky . . .
“Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . perhaps the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet.” —The New York Times Book Review
“One of the radical heroes of our age . . . a towering intellect . . . powerful, always provocative.” —The Guardian
. . . and Ilan Pappé
“Ilan Pappé is Israel’s bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.” —John Pilger, journalist, writer, and filmmaker
“Along with the late Edward Said, Ilan Pappé is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history.” —New Statesman
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous bestselling political works, including Hegemony or Survival and Failed States. A laureate professor at the University of Arizona and professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at MIT, he is widely credited with having revolutionized modern linguistics. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
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On Palestine - Noam Chomsky
Introduction
How did you become an activist? Why Palestine?
These are the types of questions many activists will be asked at one point or another when talking about their life, work, and motivations with a non-activist
person. While I often want to reverse the question and ask, "Why aren’t you an activist?," I usually decide, with insight, to try my best in answering this potentially frustrating question.
Why? Because I think it is important to understand where the questions are coming from, and it is as important to look inside yourself, take a step back, relive your journey, pause, and realize that you too, not that long ago, may have asked the same questions of anyone engaged in working toward a better world—where equality, justice, and freedom apply to all, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, country of origin, skin color, political affiliation, or sexual orientation.
How, then, does one become an activist?
The easy answer would be to say that we do not become activists; we simply forget that we are. We are all born with compassion, generosity, and love for others inside us. We are all moved by injustice and discrimination. We are all, inside, concerned human beings. We all want to give more than to receive. We all want to live in a world where solidarity and companionship are more important values than individualism and selfishness. We all want to share beautiful things; experience joy, laughter, love; and experiment, together.
But we have a problem. A big one. We live in a society, and an epoch, where we do not have time to think any longer. We live in a time when taking a step back and a deep breath have become a luxury that many cannot afford.
We live in a world where the mainstream education system teaches you to obey and listen to authority from the earliest age and does not offer you the chance to think for yourself and express yourself in ways that are outside the proclaimed norm.
We live in a society where the nothing
(shopping, watching TV) has become a something
and the something
(relaxing, meditating, sharing) has become a void in need of being filled. Our minds, our souls, have slowly been corrupted by materialistic nothingness that has been created for us, billboarded in front of our eyes, and printed, tattooed on our cells by advertising, marketing, and vulture capitalism.
The remote control
of our world only has two buttons, Play
and Fast Forward,
while the one we are all looking for is the Pause.
I became
an activist through books.
After having worked since my early twenties in various menial jobs, and like a good citizen doing my nine to five, looking away at the ticking clock, enjoying my life for the reasons I was told were needed to enjoy it, fulfilling the potential that I had been allowed
to have by society and its leaders,
I stopped.
I quit my job, moved from the city I had been living in for the last six years, and started studying again. I read loads of books and realized that I wanted this period, which was supposed to be temporary (because of the dread of unemployment and boredom potentially creeping in), to last forever.
Reading and feeling enlightened by those books really played a big part in changing my vision of life and what it was supposed to mean. I started with reading Chomsky and slowly became very interested in anything that had to do with Israel/Palestine. Reading Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, John Berger, Tanya Reinhart, Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Kurt Vonnegut, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein . . . all became part of my daily routine.
Books changed me and I think that they are, more than anything else, one of the best tools we can use to learn, reflect on, and truly understand the world we are living in. They are a bridge between languages, continents, and people. A book will accompany you and will stay with you, it will mark you like nothing else. You will go back to it, quote it, argue about it. You will borrow one and lend one. The written word, in my opinion, is therefore more effective and long lasting than the spoken one as a tool for change.
I felt very lucky and privileged, when, in 2008, two of the authors I had read again and again on Palestine, Professors Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé, agreed to work on a book with me. Our long email exchanges became Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians, which found a broad audience and was translated into many languages. After the book, Noam, Ilan, and I continued talking, mostly via emails. One day, during a meeting with Ilan in Brussels, we both came to the conclusion that a follow-up to that book was necessary. One thing that had indeed left me frustrated working on Gaza in Crisis was how the email exchanges between Noam and Ilan were not interactive. Noam answered a set of questions, and Ilan did the same. The two authors had no way to respond to or argue with each other.
Ilan and I therefore decided that if another book were produced, it would have to consist of face-to-face conversations. Truly excited by the prospect, I emailed Noam, pretty sure that he was not going to be available due to his extremely busy schedule. To my surprise, Noam responded positively and, a few months after I sent the email, Ilan and I boarded a plane for Boston to meet Noam in his office at MIT.
In preparing the questions and the topics we were going to address, I thought that it was important to start with the past. Some commentators argue that you should always look forward, think about the future, that thinking about the past tends to be a stumbling block that impedes on the negotiations, the peace process. They are, often on purpose, missing the point. The past, as far as Palestine and Palestinians are concerned, is 1948, the Nakba, and the ethnic cleansing of two-thirds of the population (yes, two-thirds; try to put this in perspective and do the math with the country you are living in right now) that was expelled from historical Palestine to make space for a new state, Israel. It is a not-so-distant past; we are not talking about centuries ago. It is a very present past, for all Palestinians. Talking about it, analyzing it, is therefore crucial to understanding the current situation. Understanding Zionism is also key and the two professors have slightly different perspectives about the matter.
In discussing the present, we focused on the role of civil society and the impact it can have on radically changing the narrative and actual policies on the ground. The huge growth and the impact of the boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) movement cannot be underestimated in putting Palestine back on the map. The BDS movement helped rejuvenate and rebuild the solidarity movement worldwide. It offered a step-by-step guide (with flexibility depending on the different national interests) on how to turn from a defensive stance to an offensive one. The BDS movement asserted: Let’s stop trying to justify our actions, let’s act. This made for very engaging discussions. The BDS movement is a subject of debate between Professor Pappé and Professor Chomsky and both this book and Gaza in Crisis allow room for differences between the two. I do think there is something to gain by enabling this conversation—that it can be constructive and reinforce the struggle for Palestinian rights.
Finally and obviously, we talked about the future—the day-after question. What is actually meant, practically, by a free Palestine
? What kind of state is possible? Is a state the solution? How will Palestinians and Israelis share the country? What constitution will be drafted?
While it is important to focus on the present, as things on the ground are getting worse every day, having a clear strategy and political vision is crucial if we want people around the globe to see what is possible.
With that, the conversation part was concluded, and, as far as I was concerned, this was good enough. Ilan, however, thought we needed something more. He offered to write what I think is an amazing and incredibly timely and challenging original piece called The Old and New Conversations.
It is a rallying call to move forward, change gears, and totally rethink the vocabulary we use when it comes to the Palestine question—to use semantics as an educating tool for change.
This piece makes, in my opinion, the book a much better and solid one. It fills in the blanks and opens up the debate to the world.
But something brought us back to the present in a most forceful way: another Israeli aggression in Gaza. Shortly after we submitted this book to the publisher, Israel was at it again. Mowing the lawn
as they horrifyingly call it. The carpet bombing of an imprisoned population by its occupier, with the support of most Western states, spurred Ilan and Noam to write additional contributions. Working on the book again while Israel was indiscriminately carpet bombing a population of 1.8 million Palestinians was often very difficult. When things are radically wrong, writing does not feel like the most obvious response for an activist. Writing while feeling extremely angry and useless often does not produce the best results. I was glad to see some of my close friends involved in civil disobedience actions all over the world. It gave me strength and faith. With good people like that around, the struggle, after all, might not be endless. But the writing was essential and I hope that this book will help challenge the narrative of the powerful, the PR of governments, repeated in loop by the corporate media that helps justify the crimes, that allows them to be committed, that paralyzes people.
The Palestine question is emblematic of what is wrong with the world. The role played by Western states, the complicity of corporations and of various institutions make this case a very special one. The fact that Israel actually benefits from violating international law and receives red carpet
treatment from the West means that we all have a role to play in ending the injustice that the Palestinians are facing. The injustice in Palestine has ramifications throughout the world. From Ferguson to Athens, via Mexico, it is clear that many governments are reproducing the tools that Israel uses to repress and oppress the Palestinians. The replication of those same tactics, methods, and often weapons serves as proof that the Palestinians are now used as guinea pigs for experimentation. And Palestine is a great laboratory. Exploring the Palestine case is therefore crucial for understanding where we stand as human beings and what we stand for. Finding a solution to this question could then open the door to a new vision, to a new world, to new possibilities for all of us.
Palestine is slowly becoming global—a social issue that all movements fighting for social justice need to embrace. The next step is connecting the dots between various struggles around the world and creating a truly united front.
We are many. We will prevail.
Frank Barat
Brussels
September 2014
Chapter One
The Old and New Conversations
Ilan Pappé
When Frank Barat and I sat with Noam Chomsky for a long discussion about Palestine we divided our conversation into three parts: a discussion on the past, focusing on understanding Zionism as a historical phenomenon; a conversation about the present, with a particular focus on the validity and desirability of applying the apartheid model to Israel and on the efficacy of the BDS movement as a major strategy of solidarity with the Palestinian people; and finally, in talking about the future, we discussed the choice between a two-state and a one-state solution.
The principal purpose of these meetings was to help us all clarify our views in light of the dramatic changes not only in Israel and Palestine in recent years but in the region as a whole. We assumed that many readers would agree with us that Chomsky’s take on Palestine, at the present historical juncture, is a crucial contribution for any relevant discussion on the issue. We hope that this conversation helps to clarify the Palestine issue, specifically highlighting the possible transition that is taking place in the solidarity movement with the Palestinians, with wide implications for the struggle from within Israel/Palestine. We do not cover all the issues; we selected those that seemed controversial, and strove for the exchange to be a civilized one (apart from one or two less-tame outbursts) for a movement that needs to be united. The fragmentation of the liberation movement itself, its apparent lack of clear leadership, and the ambiguity that characterizes the Israeli peace camp all contribute to this dissension. Nonetheless, a dialogue among those who believe in peace must be possible!
We seem to be in the midst of a transition from an old conversation about Palestine to a new one. I myself feel very comfortable in the new conversation but would not like to lose the comrades who are still happier in the older one. So here, in the first part of this book, I aim to delineate the two conversations before engaging in a conversation with Noam on the issues that are at the heart of the matter.
The Old Peace Orthodoxy and Its Challengers
The need to look for a new conversation about Palestine stems first and foremost from the dramatic changes on the ground in recent years. These developments are likely familiar to most of our readers, and I will summarize them in the most updated form possible toward the end of this essay and assess their impact on the future conversation.
But I think the search for new ideas, and maybe even for a new language, about Palestine emerged out of a longer-term crisis. The crisis was characterized by the inability to translate impressive gains outside of Palestine, especially in transforming world public opinion about it, into tangible changes on the ground. The new search is an attempt to deal with several gaps and paradoxes that haunt the solidarity movement with Palestine as a result of this obstacle.
These days the ever-growing camp of activists for peace and justice in Palestine is facing several paradoxes that are hard to reconcile. Let me first consider these paradoxes and then suggest a way forward both through my own analysis, the analyses of others, and finally through a conversation with Chomsky.
The first paradox is the gap between the dramatic change in world public opinion on the issue of Palestine on the one hand, and the continued support from the political and economic elites in the West for the Jewish state on the other (and hence the lack of any impact of that change on the reality on the ground).
Activists for the cause of Palestine sense rightly that their message of justice and their basic understanding of the grave situation in Israel and Palestine are now widely accepted in the world, but yet this has not alleviated the Palestinians’ sufferings wherever they are.
While in the past, the activists could have attributed this gap to a measure of sophistication behind the Israeli actions that hid well the uncanny, and quite often criminal, Israeli policies, this could not have been the case in our century. The successive Israeli governments since the beginning of this century rendered any sophisticated analysis of Israel quite redundant. These days, it is very easy to expose not only the Israeli policy but also the racist ideology behind it. The activists’ efforts and this deplorable policy produced a dramatic shift in Western, including American, public opinion; but so far this shift has failed to reach the upper echelons of society and therefore on the ground Israel continues—unabated and uninterrupted—its policies of dispossession and does not seem to be paying a price for its policies.
The second gap, indeed paradox, is the one between this widely held negative image of Israel on the one hand, and the very positive image its own Jewish society has of the state. Israel’s relative economic prosperity still promises that the most isolated state in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is regarded by its own Jewish citizens as a thriving state that has ended the Arab-Israeli conflict and has only to struggle with residues of the Western war against terrorism
in the form of Hamas and Hezbollah (but even that is not deemed a crucial issue in the wake of the Arab Spring
). Israel does suffer from social and cultural rifts and cracks, but they have been muted for the time being by the invention of a phony threat of an Iranian nuclear war and other such scenarios that also ensure the uninhibited flow of money to the army and security services.
This sense of success of course is not shared by the Palestinian citizens of