Product Description

This book offers chapters written by Chomsky just before the 2000 Intifada and up through October 2002, when 9-11 and a prospective military campaign against Iraq add new pressures to age-old conflicts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #789795 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Chomsky's scathing indictments of U.S. foreign policy have long divided readers, and this collection of essays about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is likely to do the same. Written during the last 30 years, these pieces display many characteristics of Chomsky's thought: a deep mistrust of U.S. and Israeli intentions and a desire to change the course of history. Chomsky is erudite, and some of the points are now standard in discussion about the Middle East, such as the contradiction of Israel being both a Jewish state and a democracy. But Chomsky reprints numerous dated talks-and some of these, while interesting historical relics, contain statements that haven't stood the test of time, such as a 1969 observation that "both international and domestic factors are more conducive to a peaceful resolution of the conflict than has been the case for some time." More recent pieces attack the Oslo peace process, which he sees as "neocolonialist" and resembling South African apartheid. Chomsky's alternative-a binational state-seems highly unlikely given the violence of the past few years. This book is also intriguing for what it omits: in his historical roundup, for instance, Chomsky fails to mention violent Arab riots against Jews before Israel's founding in 1948. For some leftist critics of the U.S. and Israel, this book will ring true. But for many readers-perhaps even some who read Chomsky's bestselling 9-11-it will seem one-sided.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Chomsky is one of the great intellectuals of the twentieth-century Left, whose Peace in the Middle East? (1974), though tiring reading, was a brilliant indictment of American and Israeli policy toward the Arab world in general and the Palestinian people in particular. It is republished here, augmented by 90 pages of new writings about the Middle East. Chomsky said a number of interesting things about Israel in 1974. While those remain interesting historically, they say less about the current situation than he seems to believe they do. Turgid at times, the new chapters will thrill his admirers, however, for they bristle with the daring comparisons (e.g., repeatedly likening recent American-Israeli Mideast peace plans to apartheid), characteristic of Chomsky, that make even the like-minded Gore Vidal look like a staid centrist. The concluding discussion of 9/11 in the context of America's animosity toward Iraq is especially timely. While the book may date quickly now that the war is a reality, it adds a deep, booming voice to the antiwar chorus. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Noam Chomsky is author of more than 80 books. He is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Customer Reviews

A great new offering from Chomsky
Chapters 1-5 and the bulk of the final chapters of 6-9 are about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first five are based on Chomsky's 1974 treatise "Peace In the Middle East." In Chapter one based on a harangue delivered at MITin 1969 attacks the concept of "retaliation" as contributing to security.He goes over the tribalalistic policy of "retaliation" launched by the Irgun and how their atrocities contributed to the escalation of violence. Of course, the mainstream Yishuv and its army, the Hagannah committed alot of atrocities too. I know Chomsky recognizes this and would probably today not repeat the rather kindly view of the Labor zionists and their intentions that he takes in Chapter one.

Israel is a state where non-Jews cannot own 92 percent of the land within pre-1967 Israel. Israeli Arabs lack the great resources in education, employment, housing, land that accords to Israeli Jews because of their exclusion from military service. He gives the example of the Druze Israeli army vetran who was not allowed to open a business in the Jewish town of Karmiel which had been expropropriated from Israeli Arabs on the grounds that it would be a military base but then it was converted into a Jewish settlement. He writes that Uri Davis, the Israeli activist was sentenced to 5 months in prison for entering this settlement without a permit. He goes over some early Israeli "fact-building" in the territories. He quotes John Cooley of the Christian Science monitor on the expropriation of thousands of acres of Palestinian land in Gaza. He quotes a report that most of the village of Aqraba on the West Bank was defoliated and its land handed over to a nearby Jewish settlement. He quotes a report of the mayor of the village of Kafr Kassem visiting the Knesset to protest the expropriation of most his village's land. This was the village of course where 47 Israeli Arabs were massacred in October 1956 as they came back from their fields for violating a curfew which had been announced an hour before.

Now on to the discussion of the conflict in Chapters 6-9. Israel refused Sadat's offer for a separate peace in February 1971 on terms indistinguishable from the Camp David Agreement of 1979 because as Chomsky quotes General Haim Bar Lev, Israel thought it could hold out for more. The near apopalyctic outcome of October 1973, convinced Israel and its U.S. patron that Egypt had to be removed from the conflict. But Israel continued to convert the occupied territory into an exclusivist Jewish utopia while the Israeli economy enjoyed the stimulus from increased military production and the captive export market in the territories. Israel began deliberately bombing Lebanese civillians and Palestinian refugees, often without any provocation of PLO shelling, in Lebanon in the 1970's for as former foreign minister Abba Eban explained there was a "rational prospect" that after being bombed these civilians would pressure the Lebanese government and PLO to come to Israel's terms. The Begin/Sharon invasion of Lebanon in 1982 initially killed close to 20,000 people and thousands more were killed in such operations as Shimon Peres's 1985 "Iron Fist" campaign against what the Israeli commander called "terrorist villagers" daring to resist the occupation of their country.

The arrangements of the peace process, he quotes Ehud Barak's last foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami in a 1998 book in Hebrew, was that of a "permanent neocolonial dependency." He quotes from the Israeli business press, Israeli business jubilation about setting up factories in the territories so miserable Palestinians can be exploited without Israeli elites having to deal with the demands for decent conditions by unionized Israeli workers. They have thus been dissapointed by the necessity of the Israeli state to institute "closures," the economic and social strangulation of Palestinians that began in March 1993, long before Hamas suicide bombings, but that's what has to be done to make Palestinians accept Israeli-imposed arrangements.

Israel increased settlebuilding in the West Bank by 50 percent during Rabin's last government, Yossi Beilin bragged on Israeli tv in 1997. They did alot of what Netanyahu was being denounced for but, Beilin said, "quietly and with wisdom" without the crude rhetoric and tactics of the Likud which causes such PR problems. The Har Homa plan, he notes, was released by the Labor government in February 1996 and planned to go forth exactly in the manner a year later as Netanyahu did. He quotes Michael Kleiner, head of the far right Land of Israel party as pointing out as Netanyahu's government announced its implementation of the E-1 program, that Benyamin Ben Eliezer when he was head of the Labor government's housing ministry had started it with Rabin's approval. The E-1 program is the building of Jewish settlements and bypass roads in the Central West Bank that connect with Jewish settlements in Jerusalem and metropolitan areas within Israel. It cuts the West Bank in two and blocks Palestinian access to their cultural center in East Jerusalem.
E-1 is something that is visible, Chomsky writes, if one actually looks at a map of Ehud Barak's supposedly ultra-generous offer of July 2000. The Palestinian "state" envisioned in that plan groups the Palestinians into several cantons that are isolated from one another: in the north (centered in Nablus), in the Center (centered in Ramalla), in the South (centered in Bethleham), with the city of Jericho isolated by itself in the East. In Gaza Israel would retain the Southern coast and in the middle the settlement of Netzarim, the latter being an excuse to retain all sorts of jew-only roads that cut up the strip and to retain a military presence there.

He notes that Israel bombed Lebanon in December 1975 and killed 50 plus Lebanese villagers in retaliation for a UN resolution calling for a Palestinian state and recognition of Israel which the U.S. would veto in January 1976 but which had the support of the Arab states and the PLO. The PLO even wrote that resolution claimed Haim Herzog as he warned they did the 1981 Fahd plan (indistinguishable from the March 2002 Abdullah plan Chomsky notes)which Israel rejected.
Israel he writes is useful to the U.S as a gendarme in the region that protects the status quo, against any threats to the U.S. backed oil producing dictatorships in the region.

A valuable perspective to a complex problem
Despite what the previous reviewer implies by attempting to label this book as anti-jew/anti-american, there are no simplistic answers to the complex multi-perspective problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. BOTH sides are at fault and both sides need to own up to their complicity, and one can either continue to take sides and cast blame based on past slights and offenses or one can proceed to attempt to move forward into the future intent on finding a solution to this miserable situation that has affected the security of not just the region but the world. Chomsky argues that "socialist binationalism offer the best long-range hope for a just peace in the region".

Don't just read one book that supports your bias at the expense of others if you are going to attempt to gain some real insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...Chomsky is one of the leading voices on the left, but I also recommend balancing his viewpoint by checking out some of right-leaning conservative David Horowitz's commentaries on his Frontpage site ...read it carefully and you may be surprised at the revealing statements made by some of Israel's earliest leaders that hint at agendas not usually discussed and highlighted by more mainstream commentators and historians putting forth "official" versions of this convoluted story.

Suffice it to say that both polar opposites, Chomsky on the left and Horowitz on the right, have intelligent and valuable insights to add to the discussion...the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. For an entirely Israeli-hawk viewpoint then go ahead and read Netanyahu's "A Durable Peace" as the previous reviewer recommends...but to only read that alone is akin to wearing blinders while denying any other perspective.

I don't entirely agree with Chomsky, nor Horowitz, nor Netanyahu...but since we are reviewing "Middle East Illusions" I would like to quote from the lengthy introduction a few points that I find reasonable, intelligent, and thought-provoking:

--"These essays were written in the period 1969-1973, in the belief that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs were pursuing self-destructive and possibly suicidal policies, and that, contrary to generally held assumptions, there were - and remain - alternatives that ought to be considered and that might well contribute to a more satisfactory outcome...These alternatives presuppose a willingness on the part of each of the local parties to recognize the essential element of justice in the demands of the other."

--"I am well aware that to Palestinians and Israelis such discussions may seem hopelessly abstract, if not downright immoral. Palestinians may ask how it is possible to compare the rights of the oppressor and the oppressed, the foreign settlers and those whose homes they have taken. Israelis may contend that one cannot balance the simple desire to live in peace in the state established by decision of the United Nations against the demands of those who resort to violence and terror and who threaten the very existence of Israeli society. It is a simple exercise to construct a brief for each side. Some seem to take comfort in this fact, oblivious to the consequences of the positions that they advocate and refusing to comprehend the pleas of their adversaries."

--"The Jewish national movement, Zionism, was a product of European "civilization". Palestinian nationalism, as distinct from more generalized Arab nationalism, was in large measure a product of Zionist success. Between the two World Warsw, the local conflict intensified in bitterness and scale as Jewish immigration took roots in Western Palestine, bringing economic development and material benefits while often dispossessing Arab peasants through land purchase and boycotting their labor and produce. The motives for the latter policies were complex. In part, they can be traced to chauvinism and an "exclusivist" ideology, byt in part they also relfected the dilemmas of socialists who hoped to build an egalitarian society with a Jewish working class, not a society of wealthy Jewish planters exploiting natives. The Uishuv was faced with a profound, never resolved contradiction. The most advanced socialist forms in existence, the germs of a just and egalitarian society, were constructed on lands purchased by the Jewish National Funds and from which Arabs were excluded in principle, lands that were in many instances purchased from absentee landlords with little regard for the peasants who lived and worked on them.

--"These contradictions did not pass without recognition. One of the earlist settlers wrote in the Hebrew periodical HaShiloah in 1907 that Zionism should "avoid a narrow, limited nationalism which sees no further than itself...Unless we want to deceive ourselves deliberately, we have to admit that we have thrown people out of their miserable lodgings and taken away their sustenence. Zionism" should be based on "justice and law, absolute equality, and human brotherhood." He was reprimanded for his "Diaspora way of thinking" and told that "the main thing we should take into account should be what is good and effective for ourselves." Commenting on this interchange, Aarohn Cohen observes "Here we already have in embryo the essence of the debate that was to characterize discussions within the Zionist movement over the years."

--"Given the commitment to a Jewish state and the belief in Israeli military and economic supremacy, it is not surprising that there was no serious political challenge to the policy of incorporation of the occupied territories. Even some Israelis who were opposed to these policies felt that they were forced on Israel by the refusal of the Arab states to negotiate. Implicit in thise judgement is the belief that no Israeli initiative toward the Palestinians could prvide the basis for security and regional peace. In fact, for many Israelis the question does not even arise. They simply adopt the position of Minister of Information Israel Galili: "We do not consider the Arabs of the land an ethnic group nor a people with a distinct nationalistic character" As Prime Minister Golda Meir put it: "It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist"...This is a convienent position for Israelis to assume, since once it is adopted, moral issues vanish."

--"General Peled has explained over and over again that the new 1967 boundaries did not increase the security of Israel; quite the contrary, demilitarized zones might leave Isreal in a better position from a strictly military point of view. Those who make a fetish of security, he argues, have been concerned " not with Israel's security but with her territorial dimensions."

--"There is much loose talk about "security guarantees" that confuse these issues further. Thus it is claimed, correctly, that superpower guarantees are unreliable and that it is impossible to count on the United Nations. Therefor, it is urged, Israel must be in a position to guarantee its own security. But in this world Israel will never be in a position to guarantee its own security, no matter what its borders may be and no matter how massive its armaments. Guarantees of security do not exist. In the long run, Israel's security rests on relations with its neighbors. The policy of annexation rules out long-term security as unobtainable and thus virtually guarantees further military conflict and the ultimate destruction of a state that can only lose once. The annexation policy also maximizes the short-term threat, by stimulating irredentist forces in the surrounding states and gaining them international support. The short-term threat was regarded as slight in the past few years - mistakenly, as the October war revealed."

--"...history will perhaps realize the worst fears of early Zionist leaders, such men as Arthur Ruppin, who was in charge of colonization in the 1920's and who warned just fifty years ago that "a Jewish state of one million or even a few million (after fifty years!) will be nothing but a new Montengro or Lithuania." He warned that Zionism must no longer pursue Herzls "dipolomatic and imperialist approach" and must recognize that "Herzl's concept of a Jewish state was possible only because he ignored the presence of the Arabs."

As always Chomsky documents his information diligently from repected sources. I personally believe that Israel has a right to exist, and I am not ignorant that it is under intense international pressure while being the victims of immoral suicide attacks on a regular basis...but the Israeli policy-makers need to confront the reality of the manner in which their actions are contributing towards co-creating and adding fuel to the fire of a volatile situation.

S. Hassel

Useful study of Middle East quagmire
Part 1 is a reprint of Chomsky's 1974 book, Peace in the Middle East? examining the 1967 war and its results. Part 2 looks at the same themes of Israel, Palestine and the US role, from the perspective of 2002. Part 3 studies the world after 9/11 and the `war on terror'.

Israel, like most US dependencies, has huge inequality, great and growing poverty, high and rising unemployment, falling wages and worsening working conditions. It constantly expands its illegal settlements in the occupied territories, cuts the Palestinians' water quotas, and imprisons Palestinians in areas sealed by a net of bypass roads meant for Jews only.

Israel organises torture, terror, the destruction of tens of thousands of homes, and detentions without trial. Under Israeli occupation, Palestine's unemployment has doubled, investment has halved, income is down 20%, and GNP is down 40%. When the Security Council reaffirmed that the 4th Geneva Convention applies to occupied territories, Clinton abstained.

In mid-September 2000, the US shipped attack helicopters to Israel, and US Marines conducted joint exercises with elite units of the Israeli Defence Force. On 29 September, Sharon made his infamous, government-authorised visit to the Temple Mount, with a thousand armed guards. On 3 October, Israel signed its biggest arms deal for a decade, buying 35 Blackhawk military helicopters from the USA. In February 2001, Israel bought nine Apache attack helicopters. Curiously, this huge backing for Israel went virtually unreported.

In December 2001, the USA vetoed a Security Council Resolution calling for international monitors to oversee a reduction in violence. The USA has consistently rejected a Palestinian state: as elsewhere, nationalism is its enemy.

The USA is repeating the British Empire's Middle Eastern failures. Dean Acheson said that Britain `may act as our lieutenant (the fashionable word is partner)'. Britain is still the lieutenant in Iraq; Israel is now the lieutenant in Palestine, bleeding from its doomed struggle to kill off Palestinian sovereignty. In its Middle East colonies and dependencies, the British Empire created an `Arab façade' to have `the outward semblance of sovereignty'. Now the USA does the same in Iraq.