Middle East Illusions: Including Chomsky's Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood [Hardcover]

His views are an extreme minority view in the USA but he is also one of the few people that somehow could see through all the hazes of rhetoric and propaganda and see the actual situation. The USA has in fact acted illegally for decades invading one country after another and trying to impose the American view of democracy on smaller countries. Such actions if justified require the support and consensus of international institutions, no matter how inconvenient that concept might be for Britain and the USA.

Where I start to depart from his logic (but not completely) is the area of the Middle East and Israel. If one reads the translations of various Arab documents there is a strong connection between the Muslim faith, the Arabs as a whole, and the local groups - this being the "Palestinians" or Arabs living in and around Israel. The political writings when translated seem quite unambiguous. These documents are the basic political framework of organizations such as Hamas. They convey clearly a determination never to negotiate with Israel, never to accept any state or government not based on the Muslim religion, and that the Jews and Christians are to be converted to to Islam or killed or expelled until the land is again 100% Muslim. For me that is pretty strong stuff, sounds a lot like our old friend Adolf Hitler, and there is not much room for misinterpretation here. It is simply and grossly naïve to keep having rounds of peace talks and various conferences.

I see only two solutions. Either the situation remains in deadlock at a low boil "as is" or alternately some international body such as the UN must impose a legally binding political solution that guarantees a Jewish State and a separate and geographically continuous Muslim Palestinian state. The US can lead but cannot act alone to support Isreal.

Jack in Toronto

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

Chomsky makes a few major points in this compendium of works. For starters he points out that Israel cannot be a democracy and still be Jewish. This is a point that somehow is never debated on United States "news" nor in the rags we call newspapers. Perhaps we never debate this issue because the hard-right and the soft middle have decided that to do so would be "anti-semitic" and betray the conservative US Jewry.

It is interesting to note that Chomsky was attacked for being a Marxist-Lenist hell bent on destroying Israel and afraid of a socialist democratic state. This of course is the semantic game that enables anti-Arab sentiment to become legitimate. Through the use of Holocaust guilt and outright suppression of speech and ideas the Zionist movement denies the ability for a true discussion which could lead to a solution for the peace process.

The aged works Chomsky produces pay attention to the wrongs committed by Arab states and gives due respect to the need for Jewish peoples to be safe. But this need for security he argues will never be satisfied until all parties learn to live together. A Binationalist solution seems a good place to start, but the ultimate solution is for Israel to become a true democracy. The world cannot allow for a Jewish state to exist, Judaism is a religion not a state, the state of Israel cannot be controlled by one clan it cannot be a theocratic state.

While we patrol the world stifling radical Muslims and decrying totalitarianism, the Unites States supporst a racist state known as Israel.

Or maybe not.

Read this book and decide for yourself.