Noam Chomsky speaks with Stefan Molyneux about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how United States involvement has impacted peace talks. Also includes: Jewish-state worship, totalitarian streaks in Jewish thinking, the mainstream media filter, how discussions evolve (or doesn't) through the generations, a road-map to peace and a diplomatic two-state solution.
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| Hi, everybody. | |
| This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio. | |
| We are back with Dr. | |
| Noam Chomsky, who I'm sure needs a little introduction to my erudite listeners. | |
| So, Dr. | |
| Chomsky, I'd like to talk about Israel, Palestine, and of course, the United States, the third leg on the stool of power. | |
| But before we dip into that, you've once talked about Jewish state worship, of course, even outside Israel. | |
| And you've compared it to the zeal that underlined Stalinism and fascism. | |
| Now, some of the most influential thinkers in my world have been Jewish anarchists, anti-state intellectuals, but there also seems to be this totalitarian streak in Jewish thinking that I think contributes to some of the conflicts in the Middle East. | |
| Do you have a theory that explains this divergence in Jewish thinking? | |
| Tribal loyalty. | |
| It's perfectly true. | |
| There are a fair number of Jews who are liberal, radical, anti-imperialist, and opposed to repression, occupation, state crimes, and so on. | |
| But when it comes to Israel, it shuts off. | |
| And they defend it, whatever it does. | |
| Maybe mild criticisms. | |
| It's a It's a pretty striking phenomenon, and it's not restricted to Jews in Israel. | |
| I think the same is true of ethnic groups in a diaspora quite generally. | |
| So, for example, during the period of what they call the troubles, the really serious British repression and violence and terror in Northern Ireland, there were things I could talk about in Ireland that I couldn't talk about here to an Irish audience, because here they were far more militant and uncompromised. | |
| And I think the same is true to a considerable extent in Israel. | |
| There's a degree of debate and discussion within Israel. | |
| Actually, it's declining. | |
| But up until recently, there has been that was well beyond what the Jewish community would tolerate here. | |
| Right. | |
| Now, there is, I think, particularly in America, there's, as you mentioned, quite a bit of filter that goes on. | |
| And some of this, of course, is the result of harassment and ostracism and social pressure that's put on people. | |
| Of course, you yourself, as you've said, until quite recently, you needed a police escort at times to talk about these issues. | |
| What sort of... | |
| What pressures are brought to bear in America on people who wish to broaden the scope of the debate? | |
| Well, for a long time it was... | |
| First of all, it's not just true of this issue, it's true of other issues. | |
| When I started to talk about the Vietnam War in the early 60s, the antagonism and The denunciations and violence was pretty extreme. | |
| Just to illustrate, Boston, where I live, is quite a liberal city. | |
| Our first effort to have a public demonstration against the war on the Boston Common, which is the typical place for generations for demonstrations, our first effort was in October 1965. | |
| By that time, The U.S. had practically destroyed South Vietnam. | |
| Hundreds of thousands of troops were being deployed. | |
| They'd started to bomb North Vietnam. | |
| The war was really raging. | |
| We had a demonstration on the common. | |
| It was broken up by violence. | |
| I was supposed to be one of the speakers. | |
| None of the speakers could be heard. | |
| You take a look at the Boston Globe liberal newspaper the next day. | |
| It was full of denunciations of the demonstrators. | |
| We tried a couple of months later to have another demonstration. | |
| We knew we couldn't have it in the public places, so we had it in a church, downtown church. | |
| The church was attacked. | |
| In the case of Israel-Palestine, it was pretty serious up until a few years ago. | |
| Now it's totally changed. | |
| So, for example, a couple of days ago, I gave a talk to a student-organized group at MIT on Israel-Palestine. | |
| There were maybe five or six hundred people, mostly interested and supportive and hard to get a critical question. | |
| It's changed substantially, just as it did in the case of Vietnam over the years and other issues. | |
| There is, of course, just momentum to speaking out repeatedly, as you've mentioned many times, just speak the facts as clearly as you can, that tends to sway public opinion. | |
| Do you think there's anything else that has propelled the change or the openness to broaden the debate over the last few years? | |
| On the Israel-Palestine issue? | |
| Yes. | |
| Well, first of all, there are other activities that can be carried out. | |
| And some of them have been quite effective. | |
| Activism and education interact. | |
| Activism, education, demonstrations, they all, if they're properly designed, contribute to one another. | |
| And that's been true to some extent in this case. | |
| So, for example, when recently the Presbyterian Church and later the United Church of Christ have initiated Boycott operations against any institutions that are involved in the Israeli occupation. | |
| That includes any Israeli businesses and so on involved in the occupation. | |
| But it also includes U.S. multinationals which are involved in the occupation. | |
| And that's, I think, a very good action. | |
| For one thing, because it's meaningful. | |
| But for another thing, because it opens the way to discussion We debate educational programs, trying to bring people to face some of the facts of the issue. | |
| Why do we oppose the occupation? | |
| What is it like? | |
| How does the United States contribute to it? | |
| The actions and the educational programs can be, and in this case are, mutually supportive. | |
| But a lot of work over the last years has, in fact, created a Kind of a groundwork, especially among younger people, of concern and resistance and opposition to the Israeli occupation and U.S. support for it. | |
| By now, it's one of the major issues on campus. | |
| That's a huge difference from 10 or 15 years ago. | |
| As you said, you had to have police protection to talk about it. | |
| And these things don't happen by themselves. | |
| They happen with a lot of work. | |
| The Israelis that I've talked to, and again, I haven't canvassed much of the country, but the Israelis that I've talked to seem to be of the impression that the younger generation is more open to, I think, what I would characterize a productive solution to this seemingly intractable conflict, but to some degree it's sort of what they say in the physical sciences that sometimes just the elder generation has to die off for a new perspective to emerge. | |
| What would you say is the current state of intergenerational differences if they exist in Israel between the older and younger generations? | |
| Well, first of all, I think it's almost always true. | |
| So take Vietnam again. | |
| The The major thrust of the anti-war movement in Vietnam was younger people and students. | |
| There were older people involved. | |
| That was where most of the energy and the thrust was coming from. | |
| The same was true on South Africa, South African sanctions and South African actions. | |
| It's true here, too. | |
| It's hard work. | |
| Take a look at this morning's New York Times. | |
| There's an article on a plan. | |
| The government now has a plan to commemorate what they call the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. | |
| Actually, it's much more than 50 years, but that's the way they define it. | |
| It's designed as a commemoration of the valor and sacrifices The honor of the American soldiers and the American intervention. | |
| Well, the article in the Times today was about some of the protests against this by some by historians who say, look, it should be more balanced. | |
| Some by former activists, people like Tom Hayden and Dan Ellsberg, saying that the opposition to the war ought to also be brought in. | |
| What is not discussed is Discussion is the major issue that ought to be faced by Americans. | |
| That's excluded. | |
| It was not just an intervention that maybe was too costly for us. | |
| It was open aggression, major war crime, worst war crime in the post-Second World War era, outright blatant aggression, violence, and destruction. | |
| Not just of Vietnam, but also of Laos and Cambodia. | |
| That wasn't even raised. | |
| And you can barely mention that in mainstream circles. | |
| Try to do a search someday, say a Google search for the phrase, the US invasion of South Vietnam, or US aggression in Vietnam. | |
| You'll find some things. | |
| But only by critics, by dissidents, like I write about it. | |
| But I doubt if you can find the phrase in the New York Times index. | |
| It's like reading, say, a Russian journal today, doing a study of Russian periodicals and journals and looking for the phrase, Russian invasion of Afghanistan or Russian invasion of Hungary. | |
| I mean, during the communist period, you wouldn't have found it. | |
| And that's what it's like here. | |
| Yeah, of course, I just did a presentation recently where I was talking about that America dropped more tonnage of bombs in Cambodia than was dropped by all of the allies in the Second World War. | |
| It's the most bombed country in history, and this is genocidal. | |
| And the effects, of course, biologically and even genetically have been long-lasting. | |
| So I know we've just got a few more minutes. | |
| The same was true in Laos, and the same was true in Vietnam. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Alright, so I know we've got just a few more minutes, and I want to give you the platform. | |
| A lot of my listeners come from a more abstract philosophical bent, but I really do like to get sort of practical solutions forward. | |
| So I wonder if you could give us a brief roadmap of, I don't have to say practical because I know that that's one of your major concerns, of a roadmap forward, of course, as you say, that involves the US that could bring some resolution to the tensions in the Middle East. | |
| Well, there's all sorts of tensions in the Middle East. | |
| So, for example, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a major factor in setting off sectarian conflicts, which didn't exist before. | |
| But they became really extraordinary during the invasion. | |
| They've now spread to the whole region. | |
| They're tearing the region apart. | |
| The rise of ISIS is one aspect of them. | |
| That's one whole range of problems. | |
| Another set of problems has to do with Israel-Palestine, and these have different roadmaps. | |
| There actually is something called a roadmap for Israel-Palestine. | |
| It was proposed by George W. Bush and the other members of what's called the Quartet The Quartet is the United States, Europe, Russia, and the United Nations, which are supposed to be kind of monitoring the Israel-Palestine conflict. | |
| Back in around about ten years ago, 2004, I think it was, they proposed a roadmap for resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. | |
| You can look it up on the Internet. | |
| Immediately, the government of Israel announced that they would accept the roadmap with 14 reservations, and they listed the reservations. | |
| You take a look at the reservations, they completely undermined the roadmap, totally. | |
| The end of the roadmap. | |
| The roadmap made some sense. | |
| It would have been a Of course, it avoided one crucial part. | |
| The US must stop its crucial support, its decisive support for Israeli actions. | |
| The United States has been blocking an international settlement of this issue for 40 years. | |
| Well, that part was omitted. | |
| But other than that, it had reasonable proposals. | |
| If you look, you will discover that the Israeli reservations to the roadmap, which undermined it totally, were simply not reported here. | |
| In fact, the first time they reached a general American audience was in Jimmy Carter's book, Israel, Peace or Apartheid. | |
| It included the reservations in an appendix, but nobody mentioned it, reviews and so on. | |
| Well, that's the method. | |
| There is Of all the problems in the world, this is one of the ones that has the easiest resolution. | |
| There is an overwhelming international consensus, includes virtually everyone apart from Israel and the United States, on a diplomatic solution. | |
| And the general outlines of it are well known. | |
| They were actually brought to the Security Council of the United Nations, In 1976, by the three major Arab states, Egypt, Syria and Jordan, they introduced a resolution calling for a two-state settlement, | |
| Israel and Palestine, on the internationally recognized border with, and I'm quoting it now, with guarantees for the right of each state to exist in peace and security Within secure and recognized borders. | |
| Okay, that's the basic framework for a settlement. | |
| There has to be more said on the status of Jerusalem, on the refugees and other things to talk about. | |
| But that's the core of it. | |
| Well, what happened to that resolution? | |
| The United States vetoed it, so it's out of history. | |
| The same thing happened in 1980. | |
| The U.S. vetoed the resolution. | |
| No time to go through the record, but since then, the U.S. has been consistently blocking a settlement in essentially these terms. | |
| Now, of course, the way it's presented here is that the U.S. is an honest broker trying to bring together the two sides which are battling each other. | |
| That's very far from the truth. | |
| The U.S. is providing the decisive diplomatic support for Israel's Yeah, as you pointed out, the US and Israel are getting what they want through this process of propagandistically cloaked attrition along the West Bank. | |
| Yeah, I think that the case could very strongly be made that start looking at the Middle East and start looking at Washington if you're looking for a solution that is generally accepted by the international community to at least the Israel-Palestinian conflict. | |
| But as long as they're continuing to get what they want, as you say, why would they change? | |
| So it really, I think, is up to the American population to educate themselves about these issues and find out where they stand, which I think is pretty clear for most people. | |
| I know we don't have a lot of time. | |
| I just wanted to say thank you very much for your time and thanks, of course, for all of the activism that you've been doing since the 1940s in the course of peace and clarity in our moral thinking. | |
| I really, really appreciate that. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| It's good to talk to you. | |
| Thank you so much. |