Peace In the Middle East?: A Review, Page 4
III.
I have spent the better part of the last two years studying the history of Israel, the Jewish people, and the Israeli-Arab conflict at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. I am not an expert by any means, but I am at least as qualified as Noam Chomsky (who, after all, holds no credentials in this area of study) to comment on the issues at hand at reach some conclusions as to the value of Peace in the Middle East? as an analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Firstly, this book needs to be seen for what it is: a collection of polemics, not a work of competent scholarship. Though heavily footnoted, its sourcing is shoddy and its methodology dishonest. It is advocacy and not objective historical/political analysis.
Secondly, it is clear that the real villian of this peace is not so much Israel as the United States. Chomsky's obsession with American power and the dark intentions which govern it overshadow everything he writes in this book. His hostility towards Israel is real, but it strikes me as inextricably connected to his demonization of the US. This becomes manifest in the final chapter where he tries to link American intellectual support for Israel to the Vietnam War, a bizarre attempt that smacks of paranoia and delusions of persecution. Ultimately, he concieves of most of the world's events as in some way the result of the machinations of American and, to a much lesser degree, Soviet foreign policy, or lack thereof. Either way, his conception of Superpower omnipotence remains.
That this is a simplistic and unnuanced view of things has been noted by many of Chomsky's critics before. In my opinion, Chomsky's worldview is not so much simplistic as it is an overarching, Manichean theology in which the United States, and, by extension, Israel, are forever guilty and their victims, i.e. the Palestinians, Third World revolutionary movements, international socialism, etc., are forever innocent, whatever their actions or ideologies. I have already noted Chomsky's considerable use of willful distortionism matched with his professional incompetance as a political/historical/military analyst. I would add to this that one cannot read this book without realizing that all these manipulations point in the same direction: towards indicting Israel and the United States and absolving the Arab states of all responsiblity to end the conflict. Nowhere does he suggest that the Arab states, as the more wealthy and numerous party to the conflict, may have a responsiblity of their own to lessen tensions and undertake peace initiatives. Nor does he recommend that the first step towards such a goal may be the Arab states' acceptance of Israel's right to exist. Indeed, he cannot do so, as he does not accept it himself.
Such a stance is, needless to say, not merely one-sided, but also grotesquely unfair and unjust. Criticism of Israel is one thing, negation is quite another. In this sense, there is little light between Chomsky and the most maximalist of Israel's enemies, only the details of Israel's eradication are at issue. Chomsky does attempt a moderate tone, and his vocabulary is redolent with words like "justice", "peace", "co-existence" and a host of other terms rendered Orwellian by the service to which he puts them, for his purpose is not to turn Israel into a place of serenity but a desert of Jewish dreams. Putting aside the dishonesty of his style, I must seperate from Chomsky even in absolutely objective terms. He believes a utopian socialism will be sufficient to ameliorate the sufferings and needs of the Jewish people. I believe this is an idea already relegated to the ash-heap of history. I am not a Zionist because of my contempt for other peoples, I am a Zionist because I believe that a just world is impossible without justice also for the Jewish people, a justice which will not be obtained with pie-in-the-sky dreams of a socialist paradise, nor with reckless appeals to the goodwill of our enemies. It is my hope that, sooner rather than later, Israelis and Arabs will settle into a tense but bloodless mutual contempt which, with time, may dissapate into some form of mutual rapproachment. Any other solution is, I believe, naive and foolish. Rewriting history in an attempt to prove otherwise will only obscure our ability to comprehend ourselves and others, and perpetuate that fruitless dissonance which is so much a part of the political life of the Middle East. Chomsky's irresponsibility and intellectual violence serve the good of no one. Peace can only come through mutual recognition, negation will not help us cross that Rubicon. As someone who values truthful historiography, I can regard Peace in the Middle East? as merely contemptible. On a moral level, I am appalled by it. This is a work which does nothing to remove the question mark of its title. It is a fractured mirror which only reinforces the bitterness and greivances of a single side, and thus perpetuates this war which can only end through the replacement of negation by acceptance. A bitter, unwanted acceptance, perhaps, but an acceptance nonetheless, and one which silences guns and unclenches fists, if only from opposite sides of a wall between two states composed of angry and nightmare-plagued refugees and their children. For such a consummation, Chomsky has nothing but contempt and scorn. A contempt and a scorn which we must regard, perhaps, as tragic, for he can clearly concieve of no just solution but self-immolation. But a contempt and a scorn which are also, for those of us who must live with the reality of the violence which for Chomsky is but a matter of words, a bitter and unnecessary contribution to a conflict which has already had its fill.
Benjamin Kerstein
Beersheva, Israel
August, 2004
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