Thursday, December 05, 2002

The New York Review of Books: Israelis & Palestinians: What Went Wrong?
This article reads plausibly but one wonders at the truth of so many statements of the Zionist narrative. Leaving aside the failure to mention the crucial fact of US military, economic and diplomatic aid, the following statements might raise eyebrows:

ELON: The establishment of Israel was widely recognized at the time as perhaps the inevitable, even legitimate, result of a war that the Jews had neither started nor provoked; above all it was seen as a legitimate haven for Holocaust survivors and DPs who, in most cases, refused to go back to Poland or Germany. Having been rejected in their former homelands, many of them wanted to go to Israel and only to Israel.

CHOMSKY (Fateful Triangle): As for the wretched survivors of Hilter's holocaust themselves, it is likely that many - perhaps most - would have chosen to come to the United States had this opportunity been offered, but the Zionist movement, including American Zionists, preferred that they settle in a Jewish state... Roosevelt's advisor Morris Ernst wrote in 1948 of his shock at the refusal of American Jewish leaders to consider the possibility of giving "these beaten people of Europe a choice" to go to the US or Palestine.

ALON: The 1967 war was the great watershed. It interrupted a decade of gradual détente between Israel and Egypt... Israel was at first praised in the West for scoring a spectacular victory in a war largely provoked by the bizarre miscalculations of the Egyptian and Syrian rulers.

CHOMSKY: The former Commander of the Air Force... stated there was "no threat of destruction" but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that Israel could "exist according to the scale, spirit and quality she now embodies." Menachem Begin had the following remarks to make: "In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."

ALON: The truth was that despite the "Three No's" of Khartoum, (no Arab recognition, negotiation or peace with Israel), direct negotiations with Jordan began soon after the Six-Day War, by 1970 with King Hussein himself. Even while Golda Meir was publicly lamenting, "If the Arabs would only sit down with us at a table like decent human beings and talk!," her representatives were secretly meeting the King. (Alon makes no mention whatever of Sadat's peace offer of 1971, apparently this has been erased from history).

CHOMSKY: After Nasser's death, the new President Sadat moved at once to implement peace with Israel. In February 1971, he offered Israel a full peace treaty on the pre-June 67 borders.... This offer caused much distress in Israel (it caused "panic" in the words of the well-known Israeli writer Amos Elon)"

Well, well, now wouldnt this make you laugh. Is this the same Amos Elon whose article we now are examining? The credibility of writers like Elon and the Zionist narrative in general is shot to pieces, but how many readers of the New York review of books would realise that?

Continuing with Chomsky: "Apparently under Kissinger's influence, the Nixon Administration decided to suspend State Department efforts aimed at a peaceful settlement in accordance with the international consensus and the explicit proposals of Egypt. An envoy was sent to a conference of US Ambassadors in the mideast... to a man the US ambassadors replied that if the countries in the Mideast concluded that the process itself had ended, there would be a disastrous war. Sadat also repeatedly warned that he would be forced to resort to war if his efforts at a peaceful settlement were rebuffed. Nahum Goldman observed that Sadat has conducted a daring policy by declaring himself ready to recognise Israel, and that if he cannot show results, the army will be compelled to launch a war."

ALON: As a result, on both sides now, the extremists are dominant: in Israel and Palestine they veto all progress toward peace.

Me: As indicated above, according to Chomsky's narrative, it is the US, beginning with the Kissinger regime and sustained since then up to the present day, that vetoes all progress towards the internationally accepted political settlement, ie a two state solution based on the (1967) green line. Alon's article can only be regarded as propaganda and disinformation which serves to obscure this central fact. Of course, as some people maintain, Chomsky could be "biased" and "lying", but it doesnt seem that way to me. Rather it seems that virtually the entire mainstream of the Zionist/Israeli/US narrative is "biased and lying" and Chomsky is nearly alone in telling the truth. How can you lie about a basic historical fact like Sadat's 1971 peace offer? Of course you cant, especially when you yourself are on record (as Alon is) as writing about it at the time it occurred. But what you can do is put it in Orwell's famous "Memory Hole". Then it simply disappears from history, and people consuming news and media today would never know about it...

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