From: jaske@abacus.bates.edu
Subject: Chomsky (LOOT-9/92): Letter from Le
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
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Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 13:28:51 GMT


From: jaske@abacus.bates.edu (Jon Aske)
Subject: Chomsky (LOOT-9/92): Letter from Lexington

(338 lines)

The following letter by Noam Chomsky was published in:
 
     LIES OF OUR TIMES (LOOT), September 1992
 
as part of a regular column (_Letter from Lexington_) and is
reprinted here with the magazine's permission.  
 
_Lies of Our Times_ is a magazine of media criticism. "Our Times"
are the times we live in but they are also the words of the _New
York   Times_, the most cited news medium in the United States,
our paper of record. Our "Lies" are more than just literal
falsehoods; they encompass subjects that have been ignored,
hypocrisies, misleading emphases, and hidden premises - all of
the biases which systematically shape reporting.
 
Published by Sheridan Square Press, Inc. Produced and distributed
by Institute for Media Analysis, Inc.  Subscription rate: $24
(US); $32 (Canada, Mexico, W. Europe); $36 (Other). Payable to
the order of Sheridan Square Press. 11 issues a year (combined
July-August issue) of 24 pages each, except December issue is 28
pages -- includes yearly index.  Lies Of Our Times, 145 West 4th
Street, New York, NY 10012, (212) 254-1061, Fax: (212) 254-9598
 
=================================================================
 
Letter from Lexington
=====================
 
August 6, 1992
 
 
Dear LOOT,
 
The front page of the _New York Times Book Review_, July 23,
features the headline: "You Can't Murder History" -- a curious
thought as we approach the anniversary of 500 years that have
offered some lessons to the contrary.  We might ask, for example,
how the intellectual community has dealt with the fate of the
native population (as for the _Book Review_, see my "Letter,"
May).  Or the Atlantic passage and its aftermath.  Or our record
in Latin America, culminating in the Pol Pot-style terror of the
past decade.  Or the wars in Indochina.  Or a few other questions
that come to mind when thoughts about the murder of history are
expressed in the Newspaper of Record, particularly at this
historical moment.
 
No fear, however.  The article, by Frederick Starr, keeps to a
safely narrowed perspective: "History in the old Soviet Union was
like cancer in the human body, an invisible presence whose
existence is bravely denied but against which every conceivable
weapon is mobilized." He recalls "those all-powerful Soviet
officials whose job it was to suppress the public's memory" of
each "grisly episode" of "the cancer of history," but who, in the
end, "could not hold back the tide." Unfortunate commissars,
whose power base collapsed.
 
The guardians of history in every society are acutely sensitive
to the faults of officially-designated enemies.
 
The crude way to murder history is to lie.  A more effective
device is to set the bounds of permissible discourse.  In
coverage of contemporary affairs, the practice is a virtual
reflex, as has been extensively documented.  It is also standard
in media critique, ensuring that unacceptable truths are banished
from the mind.  Thus, it is child's play to demonstrate the
docility of the media with regard to US depredations in the Third
World.  Accordingly, the question we must ponder is whether they
went too far in their anti-establishment zeal.  Typical is an
academic study of the media on Central America and the Middle
East, which focuses on a single question: Was the anti-US,
anti-Israel bias of the media utterly uncontrolled, or kept
within tolerable bounds? (Landrum Bolling, ed., _Reporters
Under Fire_; see my _Necessary Illusions_ for a review).  The
technique requires lock-step loyalty, rarely a problem.
 
An enlightening example is a recent book by Jim Lederman, who has
reported from Israel for NPR for many years: _Battle Lines: the
American Media and the Intifada_ (Holt, 1992).  The _Times_
reviewer, Trudy Rubin, opens by noting that the book offers "some
thoughtful insights" into the fundamental question: "whether
American news media cover Israel impartially," or whether they
are too critical and pro-Palestinian, perhaps even anti-Semitic
(_NYT Book Review_, March 1, 1992).  The bounds having been
properly set, there is no fear that the real world will intrude.
 
The media have afforded the PLO many victories, Lederman writes.
One "tribute to the PLO's early media successes" is that
Palestinian nationhood is "virtually unquestioned today" apart
from "far right" extremists, while the US media refused to be
"co-opted" into Israel's "nation-building enterprise." "Many
journalists who met [Arafat] were mesmerized,...and bought [his
secular democratic state] as a viable idea," though it "died a
slow death" in the media.  But Arafat's moderate image "has
remained part of the media's vocabulary" -- an absurdity, as
demonstrated by the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, Lederman notes
with derision (in contrast, Shimon Peres is a true moderate,
unsullied by the slaughter of 75 people when he bombed Tunis a
week earlier).  In the early '70s, Golda Meir tried "to entice
the media...at least to carry the Israeli version of events
_alongside_ that of the Arabs" (his emphasis).  But it was a
lost cause.  By 1976 Palestinians in the territories became "a
focus for foreign journalists' interviews," and the US media were
soon succumbing to the "Palestinian system of press co-optation."
The pro-Palestinian stance came naturally to journalists who "had
matured during the period of the civil rights struggle in the
United States," and hence viewed Palestinians "as the Middle East
equivalents of the blacks in the United States," Israel being an
Alabama sheriff.  By the mid-'80s, "the foreign press was
standing by, waiting to report, ready to become the Palestinians'
communications pipeline to the world."
 
Israel's efforts to gain at least some media attention had
suffered a further blow in 1977, when Sadat travelled to
Jerusalem, revealing an interest in peace for which Israeli
officials were "totally unprepared"; they had "merely scoffed"
when Lederman "told Israeli officials of my findings" after a
visit to Egypt in 1974, learning "to my surprise" that Egyptians
"wanted some sort of long-term political settlement with Israel."
After 1977, "Israel had to compete more than ever before for
newspaper space or broadcast time, for the privilege of having
its positions relayed to the world by the foreign press." When
the Intifada broke out in 1987, Israel was no longer even in the
competition, as the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel passions of the
media hurtled out of control.
 
This grim story of media bias includes some real horror stories,
for example, the "favored technique" of ABC's Bill Blakemore, who
regularly "took a classic Israeli symbol and either debunked its
traditional meaning or used it to create a visual false analogy."
Thus, he contrasted the living conditions of the Israeli settlers
in the Gaza Strip with those of the local populace in one of the
most miserable and oppressed corners of the world.  And he
revealed that "Israel's `redemption of the land' was predicated
on the destruction of Arab villages and the dislocation of Arabs
from their homes" 40 years earlier (not to speak of massacres).
"One must question whether the intent was not to delegitimize the
entity for which these symbols collectively stood -- in this
case, the State of Israel." Such journalistic dishonesty
illustrates the inveterate hatred of the media for the State of
Israel, and their long-standing sympathy for the oppressed
victims.
 
We now understand why the media have so insistently proclaimed
their enthusiasm for Arafat and a Palestinian state (if not a
"secular democratic state"), focused laser-like on the denial of
elementary rights to Israel's non-Jewish citizens and the racist
repression in the territories, denounced Israeli terrorism while
extolling Palestinian righteousness, and now revile the
Bush-Baker "peace process" for rejecting the national rights of
the Palestinians as a point of departure and barring their chosen
representatives.
 
Despite this somber record, Lederman urges a more nuanced view.
Israel has not been entirely without resources: "Both the
Israelis and the Palestinians had vocal supporters in Washington
with easy access to the media [and] active media watch groups..."
Furthermore, "A careful study of the nightly newscasts in the
United States proves fairly conclusively that there was no
universal, overt anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism in the
coverage...," and Israeli charges "that some camera crews
actually staged events never have been substantiated." "There is
no evidence of collusion or conspiracy by the television
networks." Though some journalists, notably Peter Jennings, used
the TV "medium to pursue personal political agendas" (pro-Arab,
anti-Israel), others, like John Kifner, were just "unprepared"
(which accounts for his exposure of the truth about Beita, for
example).  And some journalists are capable of real "insight,
analysis, and nuance," particularly _Times_ correspondent
Thomas Friedman.
 
Lederman's delivery is ex cathedra, untroubled by evidence except
of the kind just illustrated -- a wise move, given what the facts
would reveal; for example, about Friedman, whose record is
particularly astonishing (for a review, see _Necessary
Illusions_).
 
Sometimes, a ray of light breaks through.  Thus, before the
Intifada journalists had "dismissed or ignored...charges of
harassment or brutality by the Palestinians in the occupied
territories." That is not quite true; when brutality reached
extremes, as in 1981-2, there was some media attention,
occasionally at other times.  But this comment is essentially
correct.  To learn the facts, one had to turn to the Israeli
press (which Lederman falsely claims was more of an Israeli
government "partner" than the US media), human rights reports,
and other sources.  Lederman does not indicate how this brief
flash of insight conforms with the rest of the story just
outlined.
 
Facts are not part of this game.  The purpose, rather, is to
shift the burden of proof, in the manner of the man who cries
"Thief!, Thief!" when caught with his hands in your pocket.  The
importance of the task is illustrated by Lederman's tales about
the "peace process."  The officials who scoffed at his 1974
revelations were well aware that three years earlier, Sadat had
proposed a full peace treaty to Israel (with nothing for the
Palestinians); out of history for Lederman and his colleagues,
because the US backed Israel's rejection of it.  Also out of
history is the January 1976 Security Council resolution calling
for a two-state settlement, backed by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, the
PLO, and virtually the entire world, flatly rejected by Israeli
Prime Minister Rabin who stated that there would be no
negotiations with any Palestinians on political issues, and
vetoed by the US.  Also murdered are the PLO initiatives in later
years for negotiations with Israel leading to mutual recognition,
inconsistent with US-Israeli rejectionism and therefore largely
blanked out of the media.  And a host of other examples.
 
Keeping to the rules, Lederman offers us a "history" in which the
US earnestly seeks political settlement, Palestinians insist on
violence, and Israelis advocate "land for peace" -- which
Lederman identifies with "Israeli withdrawal from the occupied
territories"; in reality, the phrase refers to the Labor Party's
rejectionist Allon Plan and its descendants, which leave Israel
in control of the resources and useful land of the territories.
The PLO, he tells us, held firm to their "rejectionist positions"
and "unwillingness to compromise" or to put forth any "political
agenda," insisting on "snatching all of the cake" as all other
"constants in the Middle East" became reasonable, and silencing
any local voice by terror.  The facts are dismissed to the proper
oblivion.
 
The PLO bombings of Israel in 1981-2 were in part "a war of
attrition against the Israelis," but even more, "a military
campaign against an idea," the idea of peace.  Given doctrinal
requirements, it is irrelevant that it was Israel that was
regularly breaking cease-fires with heavy bombing while the PLO
observed them, leading finally to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon
to shut down the irritating PLO pursuit of peace -- as one can
readily learn from mainstream Israeli sources.  Lederman's
account does have one merit: it reflects most US media coverage,
then and since.
 
Lederman tells us that the media missed the real story of the
Intifada.  True, Palestinians threw stones at Israelis, but that
was only because they were there.  They were "symbols of
authority"; the real target was the PLO and the traditional
society.  Furthermore, the PLO "strangled" the Intifada and rang
its "death knell" with its violent suppression of local
organizations and initiatives and "old and bankrupt"
rejectionism.  This war between the Palestinians and the PLO (and
traditional authority generally) is the real story, missed by the
media.
 
In fact, every competent observer agrees that 20 years of
Israeli repression and its "creeping annexation" were "what
finally sparked the Intifada" (Israeli journalist Danny
Rubinstein).  But at least in this case there is an element of
truth embedded in Lederman's useful tales.  The Intifada was,
indeed, a social revolution, crushed by Israeli violence that was
motivated in part by long-standing fears of secular nationalism
and moderation.  The story was indeed missed in the mainstream,
though covered in the independent media, another unstateable
fact.  As for conflicts between local elements and the PLO
leadership, they are as "surprising" as the Egyptian interest in
peace, though the same local leaders who quite freely denounce
the PLO tell you that for better or worse, it remains the
political representative of the Palestinians.  The popular
committees and other local initiatives were real and important,
but they had been organized by the PLO and the Communist Party,
and repressed by Israel (for serious discussion, see Joost
Hiltermann, _Behind the Intifada_ (Princeton, 1991)).
Throughout, the PLO continued to propose the "political agenda"
that the US and Israel reject and that Lederman-Friedman, et al.,
therefore cannot hear.  To murder history, we must "mobilize
every conceivable weapon" against the cancer of truth.
 
The true commitments of the media are illustrated by the award to
_Times_ columnist and former chief editor A.M. Rosenthal of the
Defender of Jerusalem Award for his "extraordinary devotion to
the protection of Jewish rights" as "a proud Jew, unafraid to
speak his mind," serving "as a calm, reasoned and yet passionate
voice on Jewish and Israeli affairs" (_Jerusalem Post_, Nov. 7,
1991).  Or by the frank statements of its chief diplomatic
correspondent, Lederman's hero Thomas Friedman, who tells us that
"For me [Israel] is like an old flame... We're in love -- there's
no two ways about it"; and his call for Israel to run the
occupied territories by terror and repression, in the manner of
South Lebanon, though if "Ahmed has a seat in the bus, he may
lessen his demands" for national and human rights (_Jewish
Post_, Dec. 18, 1991; see _Necessary Illusions_).  Or by the
casual contempt for "Palestinians...and other Third World
detritus" (Joe Klein, _Esquire_, Nov. 1986), eliciting no
comment.  Or the regular use by quite witting journalists of the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy to cloak Israeli
propaganda as "objective reporting." But more significantly, by
the actual practice, of which Lederman's constructions are
typical.
 
Lederman also offers a general theory of the media. "Free
democratic societies" value the press "as a public watchdog...,
raising issues for public debate" in a "competitive information
marketplace." Americans "choose to buy their information" in
"media department stores," so every niche is filled.  As proof,
he offers the debate over the Gulf war, when "dissenting voices"
were freely heard and "a full-fledged national policy
debate...carried out," ensuring that "most of the domestic
political positions and points at issue had been brought to the
fore for discussion before the final decision to go to war was
made." "This slow, media-directed process played a critical role
in unifying the vast majority of the American public around the
war's aims and objectives." The miracle of the market could not
be more wonderfully revealed.
 
We see again the utility of confident pronouncement untroubled by
disruptive fact.  Clearly, the basic question was whether to
pursue the peaceful means required by international law, or to
resort to violence.  The President had announced at once that
diplomacy was excluded.  Accordingly, the "media-directed
process" simply suppressed the diplomatic options that had opened
from mid-August 1990, lauding the President for rejecting
negotiations because "there can be no reward for aggression," and
barring discussion of the most crucial issue.  Even the Orwellian
invocation of High Principle, which should have evoked ridicule
from a literate teenager, was greeted with awe and acclaim.  As
for "the American public," by about 2-1 its "choice" was the
diplomatic option (negotiated Iraqi withdrawal with "linkage")
rejected by the President, hence excluded by the media.  One can
only guess what the proportions would have been had people known
that the position they advocated had been proposed by Iraq and
rejected flatly by the US.  The basic facts could be found in the
independent media and Long Island _Newsday_, and there was
occasional slippage elsewhere.  But the public was effectively
shielded from discordant facts or thoughts.  In comparison with
this episode of murder of history, the topics that dominate
critique of media performance (Pentagon control, atrocity
fabrication) pale into insignificance.
 
Recall that this is the example that Lederman himself selects to
demonstrate his free market theory of the media in a democratic
society.  History may Rest in Peace.
 
Sincerely,
 
 
 
Noam Chomsky


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