Fateful Triangle

Israel and Palestine: Historical Backgrounds208counterinsurgency and the hunt for “subversives,” helping to implementan anti-guerrilla campaign that “is showing more signs of success thanEl Salvador’s, mainly because it is more brutal,” with thousands“tortured, mutilated and killed” and tens of thousands driven to Mexicowhile “many peasants are herded into protected villages, leaving thecountryside as a free-fire zone for the army,” a campaign that led to thekilling of “at least 5,000 Indians” in the summer of 1982. 63 In thiscase, unlike Argentina, there are no embarrassing questions as towhether it is “Good for the Jews.”Blitzer’s “lessons from the aid victory” emphasize the importance ofpreventing critical discussion of Israeli policies in the U.S., as when therevered moralist Elie Wiesel explains that it is improper to criticize Israeloutside its borders (but not improper to criticize others, e.g., the PLO),and in fact illegitimate to question its policies even within, since onlythose “in a position of power” possess the relevant information (seechapter 2, section 2.1). Apparently on the same assumptions, Israeliphysicist Gerald Horwitz of the Hebrew University, in a letter to the NewYork Times (Jan. 9, 1983), condemns Mattityahu Peled for an criticalOp-Ed on December 30. He contends that Peled’s article “represents ananti-democratic and nationally objectionable act” because there is nojustification “in a democratic society such as Israel—wheredisagreements with the Government can freely be brought to the press,to the polls, and even to the street—to turn to an external government,to an external voting population, to bring about by coercion a changewhich its proponent cannot succeed in persuading his own countrymento accept.” The very fact that Peled voiced a criticism outside of Israelshows that he “does not understand democratic procedures,” whichrequire that Israelis refrain from such “nationally objectionable acts” ascriticizing policies of the government—particularly, in the U.S., wherethe “external voting population” is expected to pay the bills. Apparently,Classics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky