Last Straw

Inter­view from Race Talk | Listen (MP3)

Noam Chom­sky on Israel

By Kath­leen Wells

Inter­na­tion­ally recog­nized as one of America’s most critically-engaged pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als today, Noam Chom­sky spoke with me about Israel and its inter­play with the United States.

Kath­leen Wells: Hi, I’m Kath­leen Wells, polit­ical cor­res­pond­ent for Race-Talk. I’m speak­ing with Noam Chom­sky, pro­fessor of lin­guist­ics at the Mas­sachu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy and renowned polit­ical act­iv­ist and writer. He has writ­ten over a hun­dred books on lin­guist­ics, human rights, eco­nom­ics, and polit­ics. Thank you, Pro­fessor Chom­sky, for tak­ing the time to speak with me this afternoon.

Noam Chom­sky: Very pleased to be with you.

Kath­leen Wells: Speak to me about the rela­tion between the United States and Israel. Spe­cific­ally, address, as you have pre­vi­ously stated, how every crime, viol­a­tion of inter­na­tional law, that Israel com­mits is done through the dir­ect par­ti­cip­a­tion and author­iz­a­tion of the United States.

Noam Chom­sky: That’s a … As a descript­ive state­ment, that is pretty close to accur­ate. I mean “all” is a very strong word but it is cer­tainly gen­er­ally true. And, in fact, the United States has over­whelm­ingly vetoed Secur­ity Coun­cil res­ol­u­tions con­demning Israeli crimes and atro­cit­ies, pre­ven­ted the Secur­ity Coun­cil from call­ing on Israel to ter­min­ate aggres­sion, and so on and so forth. The descript­ive com­ment is not really con­tro­ver­sial. There are inter­est­ing ques­tions about why it’s true. There were also inter­est­ing ques­tions about the sources of sup­port for this pos­i­tion in the United States, which helps us explain why it is true.

The his­tory is reas­on­ably clear. This was not the case up until 1967. In fact, before 1967, the rela­tion­ships were not very dif­fer­ent from rela­tion­ships among other powers. There was sym­pathy and sup­port for Israel, which has many, many sources, includ­ing the Chris­tian Zion­ism, which is a very power­ful force that pre­cedes and is numer­ic­ally far stronger than Jew­ish Zion­ism. But for some­body like, say, Harry Tru­man, raised in a deeply Chris­tian tra­di­tion, it was just taken for gran­ted that the Bible instructs us that God gave the land of Palestine to the Jews. So it is kind of like in his bones. And that’s true for a very large part of the Amer­ican pop­u­la­tion, much more so than — far more than any other coun­try. So that is one factor, and there are other factors.

But the major change in rela­tion­ships took place in 1967. Just take a look at USA aid to Israel. You can tell that right off. And in many other respects, it’s true, too. Sim­il­arly, the atti­tude towards Israel on the part of the intel­lec­tual com­munity — you know, media, com­ment­ary, journ­als, and so on — that changed very sharply in 1967, from either lack of interest or some­times even dis­dain, to almost pas­sion­ate sup­port. So what happened in 1967?

Well, in 1967, Israel des­troyed the source of sec­u­lar Arab nation­al­ism — Nasser’s Egypt — which was con­sidered a major threat and enemy by the West. It is worth remem­ber­ing that there was a ser­i­ous con­flict at that time between the forces of rad­ical Islamic fun­da­ment­al­ism, centered in Saudi Ara­bia — where all the oil is— and sec­u­lar Arab nation­al­ism, centered in Nasser’s Egypt; in fact, the two coun­tries were at war. They were fight­ing a kind of a proxy war in Yemen at that time. The United States and Bri­tain were sup­port­ing the rad­ical Islamic fun­da­ment­al­ism; in fact, they’ve rather con­sist­ently done that — sup­port­ing Saudi Ara­bia. And Nas­ser­ite sec­u­lar nation­al­ism was con­sidered a ser­i­ous threat, because it was recog­nized that it might seek to take con­trol of the immense resources of the region and use them for regional interest, rather than allow them to be cent­rally con­trolled and exploited by the United States and its allies.

So that was a major issue. Well, Israel effect­ively des­troyed Nas­ser­ite sec­u­lar nation­al­ism and the whole Arab nation­al­ist move­ment that was centered in it. That was con­sidered a major con­tri­bu­tion to U.S. geo­pol­it­ical strategy and also to its Saudi Ara­bian ally. And, in fact, that’s when atti­tudes toward Israel changed sharply and the U.S. sup­port for Israel — mater­ial, dip­lo­matic, and other — also increased sharply.

In 1970, there was another turn­ing point. In 1970, the Jord­anian army (Jordan was a strong, close U.S. ally) — the Jord­anian dic­tat­or­ship was essen­tially mas­sac­ring Palestini­ans dur­ing what’s the month that’s called Black Septem­ber. And the U.S. was in favor of that; it sup­por­ted that. It looked as though Syria might inter­vene to sup­port the Palestini­ans against the attack by the Hashemite dic­tat­or­ship. The U.S. didn’t want that to hap­pen. It regarded it as a threat to its Jord­anian ally and also a broader threat, ulti­mately, to Saudi Ara­bia, the jewel in the crown.

While the U.S. was mired in South­east Asia at the time — it was right at the time, a little after the Cam­bodia inva­sion and everything was blow­ing up — the U.S. couldn’t do a thing about it. So, it asked Israel to mobil­ize its very sub­stan­tial mil­it­ary forces and threaten Syria so that Syria would with­draw. Well, Israel did it. Syria with­drew. That was another gift to U.S. power and, in fact, U.S. aid to Israel shot up very sharply — maybe quad­rupled or some­thing like that — right at that time.

Now at that time, that was the time when the Nixon … so-called “Nixon Doc­trine” was for­mu­lated. A part of the Nixon Doc­trine was that the U.S., of course, has to con­trol Middle East oil resources — that goes much farther back — but it will do so through local, regional allies, what were called “cops on the beat” by Melvin Laird, Sec­ret­ary of Defense. So there will be local cops on the beat, which will pro­tect the Arab dic­tat­or­ships from their own pop­u­la­tions or any external threat. And then, of course, “police headquar­ters” is in Wash­ing­ton. Well, the local cops on the beat at the time were Iran, then under the Shah, a U.S. ally; Tur­key; to an extent, Pakistan; and Israel was added to that group. It was another cop on the beat. It was one of the local gen­darmes that was some­times called the peri­phery strategy: non-Arab states pro­tect­ing the Arab dic­tat­or­ships from any threat, primar­ily the threat of what was called rad­ical nation­al­ism — inde­pend­ent nation­al­ism — mean­ing tak­ing over the armed resources for their own pur­poses. Well, that struc­ture remained through the 1970s.

In 1979, Iran was lost because of the over­throw of the Shah and pretty soon the Khomeini dic­tat­or­ship — cler­ical dic­tat­or­ship — and the U.S. once tried to over­throw that and sup­por­ted Iraq’s inva­sion of Iran, and so on. But, any­way, that “cop” [Iran] was lost and Israel’s pos­i­tion became even stronger in the struc­ture that remained. Fur­ther­more, by that time, Israel was per­form­ing sec­ond­ary ser­vices to the United States else­where in the world. It’s worth recall­ing that through the — espe­cially through the 80s — Con­gress, under pub­lic pres­sure, was impos­ing con­straints on Reagan’s sup­port for vicious and bru­tal dic­tat­or­ships. The gov­ern­ments around the world — say Guatem­ala — the U.S. could not provide dir­ect aid to Guatem­ala, because — which was mas­sac­ring people in some areas in a gen­o­cidal fash­ion up in the high­lands — Con­gress blocked it.

Con­gress was also passing sanc­tions against aid to South-Africa, which the Reagan admin­is­tra­tion was strongly sup­port­ing South-Africa and con­tin­ued to do so right through the 1980s. This was under the frame­work of the war on ter­ror that Reagan had declared. The African National Con­gress — Mandela’s ANC — was des­ig­nated as one of the more notori­ous ter­ror­ist groups in the world as late as 1988. [So] that it [could] sup­port South-African apartheid and the Guatem­alan mur­der­ous dic­tat­or­ship and other mur­der­ous regimes, Reagan needed a kind of net­work of ter­ror­ist states to help out, to evade the con­gres­sional and other lim­it­a­tions, and he turned to, at that time, Taiwan, but, in par­tic­u­lar, Israel. Bri­tain helped out. And that was another major ser­vice. And so it continued.

Kath­leen Wells: I want to come up to today, because I only have 30 minutes.

Noam Chom­sky: So, it basic­ally con­tin­ues. I mean, if we go right up till this moment …

Kath­leen Wells: Exactly.

Noam Chom­sky: … simply ask, where are the strongest sources of sup­port for Israeli actions? Well, pick the news­pa­pers. By far the most rabid pro-Israel news­pa­per in the coun­try is the Wall Street Journal. That’s the journal of the busi­ness com­munity, and it reflects the sup­port of the busi­ness world for Israel, which is quite strong. There’s a lot of high-tech invest­ment in Israel. [Our] mil­it­ary industry is very close to Israeli mil­it­ary industry. There’s a whole net­work of inter­ac­tions. Intel, for example, is build­ing its next facil­ity for con­struct devel­op­ment of the next gen­er­a­tion of chips in Israel. But, alto­gether, the rela­tions are very tight, very intim­ate, quite nat­ural. And it’s not sur­pris­ing that the main busi­ness journal in the coun­try would be sup­port­ing Israeli expan­sion and power.

Take a look at the two polit­ical parties. Most Jew­ish money goes to Demo­crats and most Jews vote Demo­cratic. But the Repub­lican Party is much more strongly sup­port­ive of Israeli power and atro­cit­ies than the Demo­crats are. Then again, I think that reflects their closer rela­tions to the busi­ness world and to the mil­it­ary system.

There is, of course, also a Jew­ish lobby — an Israeli lobby — APAC, which is a very influ­en­tial lobby. And so there are many… and there’s Chris­tian Zion­ism, which is a huge ele­ment. Well, you know, all of these com­bined to provide a back­ground for U.S. sup­port for Israel, and they’re facing vir­tu­ally no oppos­i­tion. Who’s call­ing for sup­port of the Palestinians?

Kath­leen Wells: Exactly, and so when you hear state­ments being made that Israel is the only demo­cracy in the Middle East, and yet you see the occu­pa­tion and the block­ade on Gaza, the occu­pa­tion of East Jer­u­s­alem and the West Bank, what shall one think about this fact?

Noam Chom­sky: First, let’s ask about being the only demo­cracy in the region. First of all, it’s not true. There were free elec­tions in Palestine in Janu­ary 2006. There were free elec­tions in Palestine, care­fully mon­itored, recog­nized to be free. The vic­tor was Hamas, okay, centered in the Gaza Strip. Israel and the United States instantly, within days, under­took per­fectly pub­lic policies to try to pun­ish the Palestini­ans for vot­ing the wrong way in a free elec­tion. I mean, it couldn’t have been… you couldn’t see a more dra­matic illus­tra­tion of hatred and con­tempt for demo­cracy unless it comes out the right way.

A year later, July 2007, the U.S. and Israel, together with the Palestinian author­ity, tried to carry out a mil­it­ary coup to over­throw the elec­ted gov­ern­ment. Well, it failed. Hamas won and drove Fatah out of the Gaza Strip. Now, here, that’s described as a demon­stra­tion of Hamas ter­ror or some­thing. What they did was pree­mpt and block a U.S.-backed mil­it­ary coup to over­throw the democratically-elected government.

Kath­leen Wells: What do you say to the fact that Hamas is lis­ted on the United States State Depart­ment ter­ror­ist list? So they’re char­ac­ter­ized as terrorist?

Noam Chom­sky: Yeah, they are. Because they do things we don’t like. The ter­ror­ist list has been a his­toric joke, in fact, a sick joke. So take a look at the his­tory of the ter­ror­ist list. Up until 1982, Iraq — Sad­dam Hussein’s Iraq — was on the ter­ror­ist list.

In 1982, the Reagan admin­is­tra­tion removed Iraq from the ter­ror­ist list. Why? Because they were mov­ing to sup­port Iraq, and, in fact, the Reagan admin­is­tra­tion and, in fact, the first Bush admin­is­tra­tion strongly sup­por­ted Iraq right through its worst — Sad­dam, right through his worst atro­cit­ies. In fact, they tried to … they suc­ceeded, in fact, in pre­vent­ing even cri­ti­cism of con­dem­na­tion of the worst atro­cit­ies, like the Halabja mas­sacre — and oth­ers. So they removed Iraq from the ter­ror­ist list because they wanted to sup­port one of the worst mon­sters and ter­ror­ists in the region, namely Sad­dam Hus­sein. And since there was an empty pos­i­tion on the ter­ror­ist list, they had to fill it, so they added Cuba. Cuba’s prob­ably the tar­get of more ter­ror­ism than any coun­try in the world, back from the Kennedy years. Right? In fact, just at that time, there had been a rash of major ter­ror­ist acts against Cuba. So Cuba was added to the ter­ror­ist list to replace Sad­dam Hus­sein, who was removed because the U.S. wanted to sup­port him.

Now, you take a look through the ter­ror­ist list, yeah, that’s the way it is. So, for example, Hezbol­lah is on the ter­ror­ist list. Well, you know, prob­ably it’s car­ried out ter­ror­ist acts, but by the stand­ards of the U.S. and Israel, they’re barely vis­ible. The main reason why Hezbol­lah is on the ter­ror­ist list is because it res­isted Israeli occu­pa­tion of South­ern Lebanon and, in fact, drove Israel out of South­ern Lebanon after twenty-two years of occu­pa­tion — that’s called ter­ror­ism. In fact, Lebanon has a national hol­i­day, May 25^th, which is called Lib­er­a­tion Day. That’s the national hol­i­day in Lebanon com­mem­or­at­ing, cel­eb­rat­ing the Israeli with­drawal from south­ern Lebanon in year 2000, and largely under Hezbol­lah attack.

Kath­leen Wells: How would you char­ac­ter­ize Hezbol­lah and Hamas? How would you char­ac­ter­ize them?

Noam Chom­sky: Hezbol­lah hap­pens to be the major polit­ical group­ing in Lebanon. It’s the Hezbollah-based coali­tion, hand­ily won the last elec­tion in the year 2009. Now you know it’s not a per­fect elec­tion, but it’s one of the … by the stand­ards of U.S.-backed dic­tat­or­ships it was an amaz­ing elec­tion, and they won it. They didn’t hap­pen to win the largest num­ber of rep­res­ent­at­ives because of the way the con­fes­sional sys­tem works, but they won the pop­u­lar vote by about the same amount that Obama had won.

So they’re the main polit­ical group­ing in the coun­try. They largely — almost com­pletely — con­trol south­ern Lebanon. They’re a national Lebanese organ­iz­a­tion. They’ve … they’re charged with some ter­ror­ist acts out­side of Lebanon, maybe cor­rectly. But again, if the charges … we take all the charges and weigh them against U.S./Israeli viol­ence, aggres­sion, and ter­ror, they don’t even count. But that’s basic­ally what they are. As far as Israel’s con­cerned, Hezbollah‘s pos­i­tion is they don’t recog­nize Israel. They don’t … they… but they say they’re pos­i­tion is, well, they’ll accept any agree­ment with Israel that the Palestini­ans accept; we’re a Lebanese organisation.

What about Hamas? Hamas is a … its back­ground is it’s an out­growth of the Muslim Broth­er­hood, an Islam­ist organ­iz­a­tion, which would be a major com­pet­itor in Egypt’s elec­tions, if Egypt per­mit­ted demo­cratic elec­tions, which it won’t. The Egyp­tian dic­tat­or­ship — which the U.S. strongly backs, Obama per­son­ally strongly backs — doesn’t per­mit any­thing remotely like elec­tions and is very bru­tal and harsh. But they don’t … they hate the Muslim Broth­er­hood, and Hamas is an offshoot.

In its early days, Israel sup­por­ted Hamas as a weapon against the sec­u­lar PLO. Later, when Hamas really crys­tal­lised, became a sig­ni­fic­ant organ­iz­a­tion, Israel turned against them, and it became bit­terly opposed to them in Janu­ary 2006, as the U.S. did, when they won a free elec­tion. That was intol­er­able and they had to be overthrown.

Hamas’s pos­i­tion is that as a polit­ical party it does not recog­nize Israel, but that doesn’t mean much: the Demo­cratic Party doesn’t recog­nize coun­tries either. It says that their pos­i­tion is that they’re will­ing to accept a two-state set­tle­ment in accord­ance with the inter­na­tional con­sensus, which the U.S. and Israel have blocked for 35 years. So they say, “Yes, we’ll accept that, but we don’t want to recog­nize Israel.” Well, okay, that’s their pos­i­tion. Are they a nice organ­iz­a­tion? No. I wouldn’t … I cer­tainly wouldn’t want to live under their cler­ical rule. But com­pared with organ­iz­a­tions and states that the United States strongly sup­ports, they don’t stand out as par­tic­u­larly harsh, say Egypt, for example.

Kath­leen Wells: So respond to those who defend Israel’s policy and state that Israel is sur­roun­ded by enemies. Their Arab neigh­bours — Hezbol­lah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Ahmad­ine­jad in Iran — they pose a threat to Israel. They want to see Israel’s destruc­tion, and they feel like these Arab coun­tries are an immin­ent threat to Israel. Give me your thoughts on those who defend Israel’s policies.

Noam Chom­sky: Well, the truth of the mat­ter is that Israel and the United States, which act in tan­dem, are a tre­mend­ous threat to the … mainly to the Palestini­ans. In fact, while we’re dis­cuss­ing the poten­tial threat to Israel that might exist, the United States and Israel are crush­ing and des­troy­ing the Palestini­ans. That’s the live reality.

Now what about the threat? Well, yeah, there’s a poten­tial threat, and Israel and the United States are sub­stan­tially respons­ible for it. I mean, if the U.S. and Israel would accept the over­whelm­ing inter­na­tional con­sensus on a polit­ical set­tle­ment, that would very sharply reduce the threat. But Israel and the U.S. prefer Israeli expan­sion to dip­lo­matic set­tle­ment and, there­fore, are block­ing that set­tle­ment — they’re alone. I mean, Europe, the non-aligned coun­tries — the Arab League, the Organ­iz­a­tion of Islamic States, which includes Iran — have all accep­ted the inter­na­tional con­sensus on the two-state set­tle­ment. I mean, there are details to be worked out, but the basic struc­ture is clear. For 35 years, the U.S. and Israel have been block­ing it. There are a few rare and tem­por­ary excep­tions, but that’s basic­ally the story. I don’t have time to run through all the details here.

Kath­leen Wells: But what’s the rationale? Noam Chom­sky: That cre­ates… Kath­leen Wells: But what’s the… Noam Chom­sky: The rationale‘s very simple. Kath­leen Wells: Exactly.

Noam Chom­sky: They prefer expan­sion to secur­ity. That’s been expli­citly true since 1971. I think the most fate­ful decision that Israel and the U.S. made in this regard was in Feb­ru­ary 1971 when Pres­id­ent Sadat of Egypt offered Israel a full peace set­tle­ment — full peace set­tle­ment; no con­di­tions — noth­ing for the Palestini­ans, in return for Israeli with­drawal from the occu­pied ter­rit­or­ies, and, in fact, he cared only about Sinai. Jordan made the same pro­posal a year later with regard to the West Bank. Israel had to decide, at that point, whether to accept secur­ity — which would cer­tainly have fol­lowed from the with­drawal from the con­flict of the major Arab mil­it­ary forces, primar­ily Egypt, secondly Jordan — whether to accept secur­ity or to insist on expan­sion. Now expan­sion at that time was mostly into the Sinai. Israel was devel­op­ing plans for sub­stan­tial expan­sion into the Egyp­tian Sinai, includ­ing a major city, Yamit, sup­posedly a mil­lion people, a lot of set­tle­ments, and so on. And that was a very clear choice: do we choose expan­sion or secur­ity? They chose expansion.

The cru­cial ques­tion is what would the United States do? Well, there was an internal bur­eau­cratic battle in the U.S., and Henry Kis­singer won out. He was in favor of what he called “stale­mate.” A stale­mate meant no nego­ti­ations, just force. So the U.S. and Israel pro­ceeded with expan­sion. Sadat, for the next… he made ges­ture after… move after move for the next year or two to try to con­vince the U.S. to accept the polit­ical set­tle­ment. It was dis­reg­arded. He kept threat­en­ing war if Israel con­tin­ued to develop the north­east Sinai. It was dis­missed. Then came the Octo­ber 1973 war, which was a very close thing for Israel, the worst moment in its his­tory. Well, at that point, Kis­singer and the Israeli lead­ers recog­nised they can’t simply dis­miss Egypt, and they moved slowly towards the Camp David Set­tle­ment in 1978, which pretty much accep­ted what Sadat had offered in 1971 — a dip­lo­matic cata­strophe. Mean­while, Israel has con­tin­ued its expan­sion, by then mostly into the West Bank, and the U.S. was sup­port­ing it all the way, and so it continues.

So, sure, if Israel con­tin­ues to settle in the occu­pied ter­rit­or­ies — illeg­ally, incid­ent­ally, as Israel recog­nised in 1967 (it’s all illegal; they recog­nized it) — it’s under­min­ing the pos­sib­il­it­ies for the viable exist­ence of any small Palestinian entity. And as long as the United States and Israel con­tinue with that, yes, there will be insecurity.

Kath­leen Wells: This is essen­tially an issue of land; it’s not a reli­gious issue. It’s an issue of land, and it’s eco­nom­ics that’s motiv­at­ing Israel to expand. Is that what you are saying?

Noam Chom­sky: Primar­ily. In fact, the Pres­id­ent of Israel, Ezer Weiz­man, shortly before he became Pres­id­ent after 1967, poin­ted out, (he was then chief of the Air Force) — he said, ‘Look we could with­draw from the occu­pied ter­rit­or­ies, but then we couldn’t live at the scale and style and grandeur that we would prefer.’ That’s not an exact quote; words were approx­im­ately to that effect. And, you know, that’s basic­ally true.

The expan­sion into the West Bank is, you know, it’s kind of under­stand­able. I mean, the parts of the West Bank that Israel is tak­ing over are, first of all, a good part of the arable land: the pleas­ant sub­urbs of Jer­u­s­alem and Tel Aviv, which hap­pen to be in the West Bank; the major water resources, which are in the area that Israel is tak­ing over; the Jordan Val­ley, which is arable land, of course, and essen­tially impris­ons what’s left. And then Israel has been send­ing cor­ridors through the occu­pied ter­rit­or­ies. The most import­ant one — one of sev­eral — is east of what’s called Jer­u­s­alem. Jer­u­s­alem is now a vastly-expanded area which Israel has annexed in viol­a­tion of Secur­ity Coun­cil orders, as well as in viol­a­tion of inter­na­tional law. And expand­ing east from there is a cor­ridor, star­ted in the 1970s under Yitzhak Rabin, now includes the town of Ma’ale Adu­mim. It basic­ally bisects the West Bank. There are two other cor­ridors to the north. It breaks up the remain­ing areas of the West Bank into what Ariel Sharon — the archi­tect, one of the main archi­tects of the policy — called Bantustans.

And, sure, as long as they do that, there is going to be con­tinu­ing … it’s under­stand­able why they do it: sure, they want that land, and they want the resources. And it does, as Ezer Weiz­man said, it allows them to live in a scale and char­ac­ter bey­ond what would hap­pen if they lived peace­fully within their own ter­rit­or­ies. And the U.S. backs them, so they can do it, and it’s con­tinu­ing to back them under Obama. So, sure, their pos­i­tion is: well, okay, let’s just go ahead and do it. And it does lead to insec­ur­ity, but that’s the decision they made in 1971.

Kath­leen Wells: And you have stated that this expan­sion is dan­ger­ous for Israel. Can you elab­or­ate on that?

Noam Chom­sky: Well, you already elab­or­ated on it at the begin­ning, when you said that they are facing threats. When you expand into some­body else’s ter­rit­ory and you refuse to allow … and you des­troy the national … the legit­im­ate national aspir­a­tions of the indi­gen­ous inhab­it­ants, now restric­ted to about 22% of Palestine, even in the inter­na­tional arrange­ments … when you do that, sure, you’re going to lead to insec­ur­ity. Remem­ber also that Israel has invaded its north­ern neigh­bour, Lebanon, five times — bru­tally, harshly, plenty of ter­ror, plenty of viol­ence and no cred­ible pre­text.* I don’t have time to go through the details, but I’ve done so in print. Well, yes, so Lebanon is hos­tile, too. Lebanon hap­pens to be a weak state; they can’t do much, but that leads to plenty of hos­til­ity in the region.

With regard to Iran, Iran was a very close ally of Israel’s as long as it was under the Shah. Ahmad­ine­jad has issued what we call “threats against Israel.” They’re not actu­ally threats, and if you look at the exact word­ing, he’s repeat­ing state­ments by Khomeini at a time when Israel was pretty close to Iran and didn’t care about them. He’s say­ing, “Yes, in the end of days Israel should dis­ap­pear.” Okay, not nice — does a lot of other rot­ten things; it’s a hor­rible regime. But to say that it’s a threat to Israel is a bit extreme. I mean, it’s a … and, in fact, to the extent that there is a poten­tial Ira­nian threat it would be … it’s claimed that the Ira­nian nuc­lear pro­gram is a threat.

Well, okay, if you believe that, there are clear steps to take: move towards a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region. Now, that would not ter­min­ate any poten­tial threat, but it would cer­tainly mit­ig­ate it. Nuclear-weapons-free zones are very import­ant steps towards redu­cing the threat of nuc­lear weapons and of pro­lif­er­a­tion. And, in fact, the U.S. is com­mit­ted to that. It agreed to it in 1995 and in the Nuc­lear Review Con­fer­ence just last May. A couple of weeks ago, Egypt, which leads the Non-Aligned Move­ment at the moment [of] 118 coun­tries, pressed very hard for mov­ing towards estab­lish­ing a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region. The U.S. was pressed into a corner and couldn’t dis­agree, so said, “Sure, we agree in prin­ciple.” But Hil­lary Clin­ton said, “Yes, but the time is not right”. And the U.S. — Obama — hid behind the Israeli pos­i­tion, which said, sure, let’s do it but after this com­pre­hens­ive peace set­tle­ment, in which the U.S. and Israel can delay indef­in­itely, as they’ve been doing. So there are no steps toward a nuclear-weapons-free zone, to which, incid­ent­ally, the United States is very strongly com­mit­ted.

The U.S. and Bri­tain, when they invaded Iraq, tried to provide a kind of a thin, legal cover for it. And the legal cover was Secur­ity Coun­cil Res­ol­u­tion 687 from 1991, which called on Iraq to elim­in­ate its weapons of mass destruc­tion pro­gram. And, as you recall, the U.S. and Israel and the U.K. claimed that they had not done so. Well, it turned out to be false, but they claimed

that they had not done so. But if you look at that res­ol­u­tion, Art­icle 14, it calls on the sign­ers to move to estab­lish a nuclear-weapons-free zone in their region. So the U.S. and UK, above every­one else, are com­mit­ted to this. But it isn’t even dis­cussed here.

So to talk about the Ira­nian nuc­lear threat, while we’re refus­ing to take the most ele­ment­ary steps towards elim­in­at­ing any poten­tial threat that might arise some­time, is kind of ludicrous. In fact, if you look [at] the … there is now a declas­si­fied study from last April from the Defense Intel­li­gence Agency and the Pentagon, assess­ing the mil­it­ary bal­ance in the region, the Ira­nian threat included, in par­tic­u­lar; and they point out that Iran’s mil­it­ary doc­trine is essen­tially defens­ive, it’s an attempt to deter attacks, that Iran’s mil­it­ary expendit­ures are rel­at­ively low com­pared to the region and, of course, minus­cule as com­pared to the U.S. and that, if they’re devel­op­ing nuc­lear weapons, it would be as a deterrent.

So whatever threat Iran poses, it’s not a mil­it­ary threat; it’s a threat of inde­pend­ence. Well, Israel doesn’t like that, the U.S. doesn’t like that, but to call that a threat — while, Israel has a huge nuc­lear capa­city, has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, is reject­ing calls from the inter­na­tional agency — Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency — to open up it’s facil­it­ies to inspec­tion, backed by the U.S. and is, in fact, pro­ceed­ing to crush Palestini­ans. I mean, any­body watch­ing this from Mars would break down in hys­ter­ical laughter.

Kath­leen Wells: Well, Israel is the only nation in the Middle East which has nuc­lear weapons, but it has not offi­cially acknow­ledged that they have them.

Noam Chom­sky: That’s cor­rect. And it is one of three coun­tries — three nuc­lear states — that have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Israel, India, and Pakistan, all of which are pro­tec­ted by the United States in their nuc­lear weapons pro­grams, to which the U.S., in fact, con­trib­utes and has con­trib­uted. Those are the three non-signers.

Kath­leen Wells: And so… Noam Chom­sky: And that con­tin­ues to this moment. I mean, in this con­text, how can we even listen to Obama say­ing he wants to get rid of nuc­lear weapons?

Kath­leen Wells: And so, I mean, there is some cyn­icism I hear in your voice so … and it’s under­stand­able, I would say. But so what do … what can we expect to hap­pen, if there’s not going to be … the inter­na­tional com­munity is call­ing on the Middle East to be a nuclear-free– zone and yet Israel and the United States are not mov­ing in that direction?

Noam Chom­sky: Not only are they not mov­ing in that dir­ec­tion, but block­ing it.

Kath­leen Wells: So … Noam Chom­sky: And remem­ber that the U.S. has a spe­cific com­mit­ment, over and above other coun­tries, because of the Iraq inva­sion. Kath­leen Wells: So where do we go from here?

Noam Chom­sky: That’s up to people like you, the cit­izens of the United States. If we have … if we care about what our coun­try is doing, we should pro­ceed to do some­thing about it.

Kath­leen Wells: So when you say we should pro­ceed to do some­thing, get me some spe­cif­ics. What should we do?

Noam Chom­sky: We should be organ­ising and act­ing to get Con­gress to com­pel the admin­is­tra­tion to move towards redu­cing the dire threat of nuc­lear weapons. And there are many ways to do it. One is by estab­lish­ing nuclear-weapons-free zones. The Middle East is one case, but it’s not the only case. So, to men­tion another, rel­ev­ant here, the African Union did finally agree to a nuclear-weapons-free zone, but it can’t imple­ment it, and the reason it can’t imple­ment it is because of the United States and Britain.

There is an island in the Indian Ocean, Diego Gar­cia, which is claimed by the African Union; its part of Africa. Bri­tain and the U.S. — it has bases for U.S. nuc­lear weapons and nuc­lear sub­mar­ines, and so on. The pop­u­la­tion was kicked out by Bri­tain so that the United States could estab­lish a major mil­it­ary base there. That base is used — it’s a major mil­it­ary base — it’s used for bomb­ing of Middle East and Cent­ral Asia. Obama is beef­ing it up very sharply — both its nuc­lear weapons capa­city and its massive ordin­ance. In fact, he’s just sent there a couple of hun­dred so-called bunker busters, the biggest weapons in the arsenal, short of nuc­lear weapons, aimed at Iran. All of that’s going on right now. Diego Gar­cia is excluded by the U.S. and Bri­tain from the African Union nuclear-weapons-free zone, which means they can’t imple­ment it.

Well, that’s one case. The Middle East is another case, there actu­ally are oth­ers. But if we are inter­ested in non-proliferation, we should be com­pel­ling the U.S. gov­ern­ment to take con­crete steps that are avail­able towards redu­cing the threat of war — for example, dis­mant­ling the mil­it­ary base in Diego Gar­cia and ter­min­at­ing the threats of aggres­sion against Iran and mov­ing towards mit­ig­at­ing the threat of use of nuc­lear weapons or devel­op­ment of nuc­lear weapons. It can be done in many ways, nuclear-weapons-free zones being the most obvious.

Kath­leen Wells: But this is …

Noam Chom­sky: There is a lot we could do.

Kath­leen Wells: But this isn’t widely covered in the U.S. media.

Noam Chom­sky: That’s a little bit of an under­state­ment. It isn’t covered, period. Try to find some references.

Kath­leen Wells: So how do Amer­ican cit­izens get informed on this issue? It’s not covered … Why is it that we …

Noam Chom­sky: By people like you writ­ing about it and organ­ising and edu­cat­ing: that’s our job. We are not thrust in jail for telling the truth about these things. I’m afraid I have to take off. I have another interview.

Kath­leen Wells: Okay. I really appre­ci­ate you … Can I ask you one last question

Noam Chom­sky: Yeah.

Kath­leen Wells: Okay. As a Jew­ish Amer­ican, what would you like to say to other Jew­ish Amer­ic­ans regard­ing Israel?

Noam Chom­sky: Pretty much what I said in the 1970’s. I mean, I wrote at that time — and I think it’s even more true today — that those who call them­selves sup­port­ers of Israel are, in fact, sup­port­ers of Israel’s moral degen­er­a­tion, increased isol­a­tion, and pos­sible ulti­mate destruc­tion. I hate to say it, and I hate to see it, but it’s com­ing true.

Kath­leen Wells: Okay. On that note, I think it went well. Thank you very much. I appre­ci­ate you tak­ing the time with me, Pro­fessor Chom­sky. Have a great afternoon.

Noam Chom­sky: Good to talk to you. Kath­leen Wells: Okay, bye-bye.

*On August 3, 2010, Hareetz repor­ted that Israel and Lebanon entered into a bor­der clash that was spurred by Israel’s attempt to uproot a tree on Lebanon’s soil. The incid­ent amoun­ted to a thirty-minute fire­fight that left three Lebanese sol­diers, a Lebanese journ­al­ist, and an Israeli officer dead.

On August 7, 2010, ten­sions between Israel and Lebanon escal­ated when the Israeli Navy opened fire on a Lebanese fish­ing boat. This clash marked the worst con­front­a­tion between the two sides since Israel’s 2006 incur­sion into Lebanon, dur­ing which about 1,200 Lebanese — mostly civil­ians — were killed.

On August 10, 2010, Amer­ican law­makers said that because of the clash/firefight on August 3, U.S. fund­ing for Lebanon’s mil­it­ary would be blocked/cut.