ISRAEL’S ACTIONS IN PALESTINE ARE “MUCH WORSE THAN APARTHEID.” — NOAM CHOMSKY – Hideous. Sadistic. Vicious. Murderous.

Click for Noam Chomsky Interview on Democracy Now

“A Hideous Atrocity”: Noam Chomsky on Israel’s Assault on Gaza & U.S. Support for the Occupation

“In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel

l, at least if by ‘apartheid’ you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse. There’s a crucial difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce. … The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just don’t want them. They want them out, or at least in prison.”

— Chomsky

ISRAEL = MURDER AND OVERWHELMING MAYHEM = ONE OF WORST WAR CRIMINALS IN WORLD HISTORY = USA ONLY REASON THE LIKUD PARTY MEMBERS ARE NOT IN PRISON ALREADY!

BOB SCHIEFFER SPOUTING ISRAELI PROPAGANDA: In the Middle East, the Palestinian people find themselves in the grip of a terrorist group that is embarked on a strategy to get its own children killed in order to build sympathy for its cause—a strategy that might actually be working, at least in some quarters. Last week I found a quote of many years ago by Golda Meir, one of Israel’s early leaders, which might have been said yesterday: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children,” she said, “but we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”

CHOMSKY: We have to remember the USA is NOT a democracy; it’s a plutocracy. Study after study in mainstream academic political science shows that political decisions are made by a very small sector of extreme privilege and wealth, concentrated capital. For most of the population, their opinions simply don’t matter in the political system. They’re essentially disenfranchised (BY A FEW PRIVILEGED WEALTY)

CHOMSKY: “We don’t really have to listen to CBS, because we can listen directly to the Israeli propaganda agencies, which he’s quoting. It’s a shameful moment for U.S. media when it insists on being subservient to the grotesque propaganda agencies of a violent, aggressive state. As for the comment itself, the Israel comment which he—propaganda comment which he quoted, I guess maybe the best comment about that was made by the great Israeli journalist Amira Hass, who just described it as “sadism masked as compassion.” That’s about the right characterization.

CHOMSKY ON SHAMEFUL CBS ISRAELI PROPAGANDA COVERAGE OF GAZA MURDERS = ISRAEL PROPAGANDA = SADISM MASKED AS COMPASSION:

youtube.com/watch?v=HUSYKrX8GF4

CHOMSKY: Obama voted against a UN investigation of ISRAELI MURDERS OF NOW 2,2OO+ PALESTINIAN MURDERS = 80+% CIVILIANS! + USA STILL PROVIDES MORE MURDEROUS AMMO TO ISRAEL TO MURDER EVEN MORE INNOCENT PALESTINIANS USING USA SUPPLIED JET PLANES!

USA = FULLY COMPLICIT IN ISRAEL’S MASS MURDER AND VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAWS INCLUDING THE BOMBING OF UN SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS + FLATTENING OF ENTIRE CITY BLOCKS AND MURDER OF ENTIRE FAMILIES OF 15 TO 25 MEMBERS IN ISRAEL’S APARTHEID PALESTINIAN PRISON = LARGEST SINGLE PRISON IN THE WORLD!

USA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY! USA IS A PLUTOCRACY – STUDY AFTER STUDY PROVES ALL DECISIONS ARE MADE BY A VERY VERY SMALL GROUP OF WEALTHY PRIVILEGED EXTREMISTS — THE AMERICAN PEOPLES’ OPINIONS DON’T MATTER TO THESE (SCAMMING) EXTREMISTS (CRIMINALS)!

Hideous. Sadistic. Vicious. Murderous. = Noam Chomsky describes Israel’s 29-day OVERWHELMING DESTRUCTION OF GAZA MURDERING 2,2OO+ PALESTINIANS + 10,000+ injured.

Chomsky co-authored the book “Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians” with Israeli scholar Ilan Pappé – After Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. Chomsky is a world-renowned linguist, author, and Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught for more than 50 years.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/7/a_hideous_atrocity_noam_chomsky_on

CHOMSKY: “It’s a hideous atrocity, sadistic, vicious, murderous, totally without any credible pretext. It’s another one of the periodic Israeli exercises in what they delicately call “mowing the lawn.” That means shooting fish in the pond, to make sure that the animals stay quiet in the cage that you’ve constructed for them, after which you go to a period of what’s called “ceasefire,” which means that Hamas observes the ceasefire, as Israel concedes, while Israel continues to violate it. Then it’s broken by an Israeli escalation, Hamas reaction. Then you have period of “mowing the lawn.” This one is, in many ways, more sadistic and vicious even than the earlier ones.”

NOAM CHOMSKY: “As high Israeli officials concede, Hamas had observed the previous ceasefire for 19 months. The previous episode of “mowing the lawn” was in November 2012. There was a ceasefire. The ceasefire terms were that Hamas would not fire rockets—what they call rockets—and Israel would move to end the blockade and stop attacking what they call militants in Gaza. Hamas lived up to it. Israel concedes that.”

CHOMSKY: In April of this year Israel was horrified by a unity agreement between Hamas (GAZA) and Fatah (WEST BANK) = Israel desperately tried to prevent that for a long time. When the unity agreement came, Israel was furious + MORE FURIOUS as the U.S. endorsed it. Israel immediately launched a rampage in the West Bank based on a pretext of the brutal murder of three settler teenagers – Israel pretended they were alive (knew they were dead) to build a HUGE CASE against Hamas without a particle of evidence (done by a rogue clan in Hebron, the Qawasmeh clan = A thorn in the sides of Hamas for years).

FACT: U.S. PROVIDES EXTRA $BILLION for Israel’s apartheid in PALESTINE.

AMY GOODMAN: This is the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, criticizing the U.S. for its role in the Israeli assault on Gaza.

NAVI PILLAY: They have not only provided the heavy weaponry, which is now being used by Israel in Gaza, but they’ve also provided almost $1 billion in providing the Iron Domes to protect Israelis from the rocket attacks, but no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling. So I am reminding the United States that it’s a party to international humanitarian law and human rights law.

AMY GOODMAN: (1,400 MURDERED PALESTINIANS BY THEN AS) President Obama held a news conference and never mentioned Gaza. When asked about Gaza, he reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel + He resupplied ammunition ($220 Million) + RELOADED Iron Dome.

GOODMAN: AFTER yet another attack on a U.N. School Shelter where thousands of Palestinians took refuge and a number of sleeping children were killed. Even the U.S. joined with the U.N. in criticizing Israel.

CHOMSKY: The U.S. has blocked a UN investigation of possible violations of human rights = OBAMA-US was the one negative vote WHILE giving these polite comments. USA continues to provide, as Pillay pointed out, decisive support for Israeli atrocities. USA supplied Israeli jet planes bomb defenseless targets in Gaza with USA high-tech munition. So this is, again, sadism masked as compassion.

GOODMAN: What role does public opinion play in USA? Do you sense a difference in the American population on Israel and the Occupied Territories?

CHOMSKY: Very definitely over some years especially after Cast Lead hat MURDERED a HORRIFIC NUMBER OF PALESTINIANS, and it’s happening again now even in the NYT. The New York Times devoted a good part of their op-ed page to a Gaza diary, which was heart-rending and eloquent. + They’ve had strong op-eds condemning extremist Israeli policies. That’s new, and it reflects something that’s happening in the country.

FACT: Polls of young people below 30 have shifted substantially against Israel.

CHOMSKY: I’ve been giving talks on these things for almost 50 years. I used to have police protection even at my own university due to Israeli violence and enormous protests. For past decade that’s changed as now that Palestinian solidarity is maybe the biggest issue on campus. Huge audiences. That’s a tremendous change.

CHOMSKY: We have to remember the USA is NOT a democracy; it’s a plutocracy.

CHOMSKY: Public opinion can make a difference. Even in dictatorships, the public can’t be ignored, and in a partially democratic society like (USA), even less so. So, ultimately, public outrage will make a difference. Example of public pressure is in East Timor massacres and genocide with 25 years of USA strong support, finally, ended in mid-September 1999, under considerable international and also domestic pressure, Clinton quietly told the Indonesian generals, “It’s finished.” They pulled out within days and allowed a U.N. peacekeeping force to enter. + South Africa has similarities + There are others. Sooner or later, domestic pressure will compel the U.S. government to join the world on the (ISRAELI MURDERS AND VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAWS.)

GOODMAN: On BDS you were critical of the effectiveness of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Far from being critical of BDS, I was strongly supportive of it – I don’t worship it. I very strongly supported these tactics. In fact, I was involved in them and supporting them before the BDS movement even existed. They’re the right tactics. But it is second nature to activists to ask yourself what the effect is going to be on the victims. You pursue a tactic because it’s going to help the victims. You don’t want tactics that increase support for the violence. You have to be willing to think these things through. Raja Shehadeh, a leading figure in Ramallah, the founder of Al-Haq, the legal organization, a very significant and powerful figure, pointed out that the Palestinian leadership focuses on absolutes, and doe NOT pay attention to pragmatic policies for success in a popular movement, a nationalist movement.

CHOMSKY: BDS very simply and successfully have directed actions against the occupation, and most have NOTHING to do with the BDS movement. The most successful is the European Union decision, directive, to block any connection to any institution, governmental or private entity that has anything to do with ISRAEL and the Occupied Territories. That’s a pretty strong move like the move taken in South Africa. The Presbyterian Church called for divestment from any multinational corporation that’s involved in any way in the ISRAELI occupation. That makes perfect sense.

CHOMSKY: So far there haven’t seen any sanctions by BDS Movement (BD but NO S). There’s an obvious way to proceed and that is an ARMS EMBARGO. If USA would debate, discuss, and pass ARMS SANCTIONS as a VIOLATION of USA and INTERNATIONAL LAW — that it would be a major contribution. That’s the most important of the possible sanctions. USA foreign assistance law bars any military assistance to any one country, unit, whatever, engaged in consistent human rights violations. = Israel’s consistent violation of human rights laws is so extreme that it can hardly be argued against. That means USA Military aid to Israel is in direct violation of U.S. law as UN’s Pillay pointed out. + USA is a high-contracting party to the Geneva Conventions, so it’s violating its own extremely serious international commitments by not imposing the Geneva Conventions to prevent a violation of international humanitarian law. So the U.S. is both violating its commitments to international humanitarian law and violation of U.S. domestic law.

GOODMAN: Nicholas Kristof of NYT wrote, “Palestinian militancy has accomplished nothing but increasing the misery of the Palestinian people. If Palestinians instead turned more to huge Gandhi-style nonviolence resistance campaigns, the resulting videos would reverberate around the world and Palestine would achieve statehood and freedom.” Your response?

CHOMSKY: That’s a total fabrication as Palestinian nonviolence has been going on for a long time, very significant nonviolent actions and I haven’t seen any success from what he’s describing. He should be preaching nonviolence to the USA, the leading perpetrator of violence in the world.

FACT: Gallop international poll last December asked: Which country is the greatest threat to world peace? TOP ANSWER: USA way ahead of #2 Pakistan (probably due to Indian vote).

CHOMSKY: Kristof should be advocating USA NONVIOLENCE. That would make a big difference in the world. + NONVIOLENCE by ISRAEL and Saudi Arabia’s and BIG OIL MONARCHS extreme, brutal, fundamentalist states = $10s of BILLIONS of military aid in ways that are NEVER discussed. That would make sense. Kristof’s preaching nonviolence to (MURDER AND APARTHEID) victims is (LUDICROUS).

CHOMSKY: That aside, nonviolence is correct and it’s been tried for 40 years and I consistently urge nonviolence as many people did. And, in fact, there’s been plenty of it. Not enough. But as I say, it’s very easy to recommend to victims, “You be nice guys.” That’s cheap. Even if it’s correct, it’s cheap.

CHOMSKY: What matters is what we say about ourselves – the USA internationally is viewed as the leading threat to world peace, and is the decisive threat in the Israeli case as well.

GOODMAN: Mohammed Suliman, a Palestinian human rights worker in Gaza, wrote during the Israeli assault, “The reality is that if Palestinians stop resisting, Israel won’t stop occupying, as its leaders repeatedly affirm. The besieged Jews of the Warsaw ghetto had a motto ‘to live and die in dignity.’ As I sit in my own besieged ghetto,” he writes, “I think how Palestinians have honored this universal value. We live in dignity and we die in dignity, refusing to accept subjugation. We’re tired of war. … But I also can no longer tolerate the return to a deeply unjust status quo. I can no longer agree to live in this open-air prison.” Your response to what Mohammed Suliman wrote?

CHOMSKY: The Warsaw Ghetto uprising is being discussed in Hebrew press now as to whether it was justified. A survivor, went through many details and argued that the uprising, which was sort of a rogue element that seriously endangered the Jews in the ghetto. That’s exactly the kind of question you want to ask all the time: What’s going to be the effect of the action on the victims? But nevertheless, the tactical question arises.

CHOMSKY: Suliman’s general point is accurate as Israel wants Palestinians to be nice and quiet and nonviolent, the way Nicholas Kristof urges. And then Israel will continue (THE APARTHEID ON STEROIDS) as long as there’s no resistance to it and KEEP taking land and building settlements leaving Palestinians in essentially unviable cantons, imprisoned = Separating the West Bank from Gaza in violation of the solemn commitments of the Oslo Accords. + Keeping Gaza under siege and on a diet + Taking over the Golan Heights annexed in violation of explicit Security Council orders + Vastly expanding Jerusalem way beyond any historical size + Annexing it in violation of Security Council orders + Huge infrastructure projects to make it possible for Jewish people living in the nice hills of the West Bank to get to Tel Aviv in a few minutes without seeing any Arabs. USA SUPPORTS ALL THESE CRIMES.

GOODMAN: Congress AGAINST AMERICANS’ GROUNDSWELL (AGAINST ISRAEL), UNANIMOUSLY passing a resolution in support of Israel.

CHOMSKY: That’s exactly what we have to combat, by organized action. Take South Africa again. It wasn’t until the 1980s that Congress began to pass sanctions that Reagan vetoed and then violated them when they were passed over his veto, but at least they were passing them. But only after decades of massive protests were developing around the world. There was never a BDS-style MOVEMENT, but USA demonstrations in the late ’70s really picking up in the ’80s. Decades of large-scale actions were taken inOTHER NATIONS AROUND THE WORLD which ultimately had an effect. We’re not there yet.

CHOMSKY: You have to recall that by the time Congress was passing sanctions against South Africa, even the American business community, which determines policy, had pretty much turned against apartheid — Wasn’t worth it for them.

CHOMSKY: Right now Israel is one of the top recipients of U.S. investment = Warren Buffett spent a couple $BILION on some factory in Israel and said ISRAEL is the best place for investment outside the USA (STINKING CROOK). Intel is BUILDING its major new generation chip factory there. USA Military (MIC) is closely linked to Israel. = TOTALLY different from South African case. A BIG BATTLE TO CHANGE THAT!

GOODMAN: You say the analogy between Israel’s occupation of the terrories and apartheid South Africa is a dubious one. Why?

CHOMSKY: Many reasons. “Apartheid” in the Occupied Territories = What Israel is doing is much worse than Apartheid = Apartheid is a gift to Israel = What ISRAEL is doing in the Occupied Territories is much worse because the South African Nationalists needed the black population as 85% of their workforce. South Africa did try to sustain them. They didn’t put them on a diet. They tried to keep them strong enough to do the work that they needed for the country.

CHOMSKY: Israeli relationship to the Palestinians is totally different – Israel just wants them out, or at least in prison. So Apartheid analogy is just a gift to Israeli violence. Look inside Israel’s repression and discrimination, but it’s not apartheid. ITS MURDER AND SLOW GENOCIDE!

GOODMAN: Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser to the NYT said, “You cannot win against an effective guerrilla organization when on the one hand, you are fighting them, and on the other hand, you continue to supply them with water and food and gas and electricity. Israel should have declared a war against the de facto state of Gaza, and if there is misery and starvation in Gaza, it might lead the other side to make such hard decisions.”

CHOMSKY: That’s the debate by Israeli top political echelon: Should we maintain them on a diet of bare survival, so stop chocolate bars and Cheerios?

CHOMSKY: Israeli experts calculated exactly how many calories Gazans need to survive using grotesque sanctions. Even John Kerry condemned them bitterly. They’re sadistic. Just enough calories to survive accounting or food coming in through the tunnels. Israel restricts medicines EXCEPT FOR A little trickle and the major hospital showed us they don’t even have simple medicines, but they have something — Applies to all aspects of life. “If they die, it’s not going to look good for Israel. We may claim that we’re not the occupying power, but the rest of the world doesn’t agree. Even the United States doesn’t agree. We are the occupying power. And if we kill off the population under occupation, not going to look good.” = USA EXTERMINATED the indigenous population in 19th century. But you can’t just exterminate the population in the territories that you occupy, but hawkish Eiland says: Let’s just kill them off (WITH STARVATION AND THIRST!)

CHOMSKY: BARE SURVIVAL will prevail, because Israel is already the (WORLD’S WORST) PARIAH pariah and internationally hated. Eiland’s MASS MURDER BY STARVATION would END USA $BILLION IN SUPPORT = $233 BILLION SINCE WW II.

GOODMAN: Arab dictators, most of them, have not spoken out strongly against what Israel has done in Gaza. But Latin American countries, one after another, from Brazil to Venezuela to Bolivia, have spoken out and some recalled their ambassadors to Israel. Bolivian President Evo Morales called Israel a “terrorist state.”

CHOMSKY: Remember the Arab dictators, our and Israel’s friends (who FUND ISIL AND OUR FAKED WARS THAT ROB OUR MIDDLE CLASS). Latin America is very significant = Our backyard NO LONGER do whatever we say and if they didn’t we installed a NEW military dictatorship with huge massacres and so on. THAT HAS CHANGED!

CHOMSKY: For the first time in 500 years, since the conquistadors, Latin America is moving toward degree of independence of imperial domination and also a degree of integration (WITH THE WORLD). = Critically important. Only a few Latin American countries have taken an honorable position on this issue: Brazil, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador have withdrawn ambassadors in protest. They join Bolivia and Venezuela, which had done it even earlier in reaction to other atrocities. That’s unique. THEY BDSed ISRAELIS AND THEIR GOVERNMENT!

CHOMSKY: LATIN AMERICA is not the only example = The Open Society Forum Studied support for rendition–The Most extreme form of torture – send people you don’t like to your favorite dictatorship to be tortured –Grotesque CIA program. Study found Syria + EGYPT (Mubarak) + LIBYA tortured. But UK + Sweden + Other EU countries used RENDITION for grotesque torture. One exception around the world is Latin American countries who refused to participate. = Shows their independence + While under U.S. control, they were the torture center of the world—not long ago, a couple of decades ago. That’s a real change.

USA + CANADA = Isolated in Western hemispheric conferences = USA and Canada didn’t agree with the rest of the hemisphere on major issues = Cuba + Decriminalization of drugs — a terrible burden on Latin Americans. These are very significant changes in world affairs.

GOODMAN: Charlie Rose interviewed the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in July. Meshaal called for an end to Israel’s occupation of Gaza.

KHALED MESHAAL: Since 2006, the world refused the outcomes of the elections, our people actually lived under the siege of eight years. This is a collective punishment. We need to lift the siege. We have to have a port. We have to have an airport. This is the first message.

The second message: To stop the bloodletting, we need to STOP the occupation. Netanyahu ignores our rights. Mr. Kerry tried to find a window through the negotiations in order to meet our target: to live without occupation, to reach our state. Netanyahu has killed our hope or killed our dream, and he killed the American initiative.

CHOMSKY: MESHAAL is reiterating a message for a long time — back to 1988 when their leadership, Sheikh Yassin was assassinated by Israel. Now, it’s quite overt –You can read it in The Washington Post the international consensus on a two-state settlement. But they don’t go on to say, “We’ll recognize Israel,” but they say, “Yes, let’s have a two-state settlement and a very long truce, maybe 50 years. And then we’ll see what happens.” Well, that’s been their proposal all along. That’s far more forthcoming than any proposal in Israel.

CHOMSKY: But that’s not the way THE MSM presents it = MSM LIES and says “all they’re interested in is destruction of Israel.” = Bob Schieffer’s repetition of most vulgar Israeli propaganda + CHARLEY ROSE’S PROPAGANDA.

GOODMAN: $6 BILLION SO FAR IN DAMAGES TO GAZA + 2,2OO+ MURDERED PALESTINIANS + Half a million refugees + 180,000 in school shelters??? Why?

CHOMSKY: Slogan used for years: Israel destroys, Gazans rebuild, Europe pays. = UNTIL THE NEXT “mowing of the lawn.” = USA POLICY since 2006! = No reason for ISRAELIS to stop, from their point of view. Keep robbing West Bank and integrate it into Israel = Isolate Palestinians into UNLIVABLE and unviable cantons, separated from Gaza + Keep Gaza on that diet and in PRISON siege + Keep the West Golan Heights to develop a greater Israel. NOT for security reasons as back around 1970 Ezer Weizman pointed out, correctly, that taking over the territories does not improve our security situation—in fact, probably makes it worse—but, he said, it allows Israel to live at the scale and with the quality that we now enjoy. In other words, we can be a rich, powerful, expansionist country.

GOODMAN: You hear repeatedly = Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel.

CHOMSKY: Hamas charter means practically nothing except to Israeli propagandists, who love it. — Charter was put together by a small group of people under siege, under attack in 1988 — Essentially meaningless.

CHOMSKY: The charter that means something is Israel’s governing party, Likud’s Charter that states explicitly that there can never be a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. Beyond the charter they call for the destruction of Palestine, explicitly call for it and they implement it. That’s quite different from the Hamas charter.