Fateful Triangle

Aftermath644From the start of the Jewish state, there has indeed been atradition, tohar haneshek (“purity of arms” or “morality ofarms”), in the Israeli armed forces. Until now, Israelisoldiers had to be very, very careful about injuring civilians,let alone killing them. 118A Boston Globe editorial explains:There is little understanding of the way in which Begin’sright-wing revisionist Zionism differs from the Zionism of aDavid Ben-Gurion or even a military man like Moshe Dayan.Traditional Zionism sought peace between Arab and Jewand empathized with the Palestinian quest for ahomeland. 119Addressing the Knesset after the massacre, Shimon Peres stated:But the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister were struckdumb. Their silence thundered as it pained. The fate of“a Christian state,” with a legal and administrative structure of the sort thatdefines Israel as “a Jewish state.” To my knowledge, he has never addressedthis issue in his many writings on Israel and Zionism, a standard oversightamong civil libertarian supporters of Israel (not to speak of those who simplydeny the facts; see TNCW, chapter 9, for some examples). It is also noteworthythat Hentoff has expressed great admiration for committed opponents of civilrights—Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School, for example—as long as thisopposition is restricted to the Israeli context. See chapter 4, section 5.5 andnotes 145, 107.Classics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky