Fateful Triangle

The Origins of the “Special Relationship”76role as a principal supplier of arms to Central America,” Leslie GeIbwrites that “from every indication, the Israelis are not there, as are mostof the others [Americans, PLO, Cubans, East Germans], as participantsin a form of East-West confrontation or to engage in revolutionary orcounterrevolutionary intrigue.” These “indications” turn out to bestatements to this effect by Israeli and American officials, none of whom“said that Israel was in Central America to do Washington’s bidding or tohelp out in countries such as Guatemala where the Administration isbarred from providing military aid because of civil rights abuses.”Naturally, one would expect Israeli and American officials to proclaimany such arrangements openly, so their failure to do so suffices to provethat there is nothing to this canard. A State Department officialcomments that “we’ve indicated we’re not unhappy they are helpingout” in places like Guatemala and Honduras, “but I wouldn’t say we andthe Israelis have figured out together what to do.” 54 Elaborate “figuringout” would seem to be superfluous, given the shared perceptions andinterests, not to speak of the extremely close relations at all levels,including the military itself, military industry, intelligence, diplomatic,etc.It is striking that Gelb assumes as a matter of course that while Israelmight be pursuing its own interests (as it no doubt is, one of these beingto render services to U.S. power), this could not be true of, say, Cuba,which surely has no reason to feel threatened and therefore could not betrying to break out of its “isolation” (as Israel is, he reports) bysupporting friendly governments. One might have expected Gelb,perhaps, to be sensitive to this issue. He was the director of thePentagon Papers study, which contained the astonishing revelation thatU.S. intelligence, over the 20-year period surveyed, was so completelyindoctrinated by Cold War propaganda that it was unable to conceive ofthe possibility that the North Vietnamese might have been motivated byClassics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky