Failed States by Noam Chomsky

Author:Noam Chomsky
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780141925219
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-10-20T10:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Supporting Evidence: The Middle East

Beyond declarations of leaders, and the self-refuting case of Iraq, several additional bits of evidence have been adduced to justify the faith in the sincerity of the messianic mission: the most important are Lebanon, Egypt’s Kifaya (“Enough”) movement, and Palestine. Let us examine each in turn.

The case of Lebanon can be dismissed, unless the CIA decides to take credit for the bombing that killed Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, which set off the anti-Syrian demonstrations that have led to a complex but significant opening of the society. Though it is hardly credible, one can imagine why the story might have some resonance in Beirut. Perhaps the Lebanese have not consigned to oblivion the most horrendous car bombing in Beirut, in 1985, a huge explosion killing eighty people and wounding two hundred, mostly women and girls leaving the mosque exit where the bomb was placed. The attack, aimed at a Muslim cleric who escaped, was traced to the CIA and Saudi intelligence, apparently operating with British help. Accordingly, it is out of Western history.1

The year 1985 is identified by scholarship and media as the peak of Middle East terror during Reagan’s “war on terror.” By far the most significant acts of terror that year were the Beirut bombing, Shimon Peres’s vicious Iron Fist operations targeting “terrorist villagers” in Israeli-occupied Lebanon, and Israel’s bombing of Tunis, murdering seventy-five Tunisians and Palestinians with extreme brutality, according to the report from the scene by Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk. The United States assisted by refusing to inform its ally Tunisia that the bombers were on the way, though the Sixth Fleet certainly knew. The attack was praised by Secretary of State George Shultz, then unanimously condemned by the UN Security Council as an “act of armed aggression” (United States abstaining). The pretext for the bombing was retaliation for the killing of three Israelis in Cyprus, apparently traced to Syria, but Tunis was a defenseless and ideologically more useful target, housing the headquarters of the PLO. The Cyprus killings were in turn retaliation for regular kidnappings and killings on the high seas by Israeli naval forces attacking ships in transit between Cyprus and northern Lebanon, with many of those captured brought to Israel and kept in prison without charge as hostages.2

In accord with the reigning single standard, the major terrorist atrocities—or worse, aggression—are excluded from the canon of international terrorism. The special status of 1985 as the peak year of the “plague spread by depraved opponents of civilization itself” is conferred by two events in each of which a single American died. The most famous is the Achille Lauro hijacking, in retaliation for the Tunis bombing, during which a crippled American, Leon Klinghoffer, was brutally murdered. That was undoubtedly a shocking crime, which finds its place alongside the murder of the crippled Palestinians Kemal Zughayer and Jamal Rashid by Israeli forces during their destruction of the Jenin refugee camp. Zughayer was shot dead carrying a white flag as he tried to wheel himself away from Israeli tanks, which apparently drove over him, ripping his body to shreds.

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