Fateful Triangle

Peace for Galilee378of a “fascist tendency.” 90The New Republic devoted an article to deriding a UPI report (nopublication cited) that Israel had used a “vacuum bomb” to destroy thebuilding. The article, by Laurence Grafstein, alleges that UPI was “snookeredby a pro,” and that the vacuum bomb “exists only in the mind of[the Soviet news agency] Tass,” quoting an unidentified “Pentagonspokesman.” Editor Martin Peretz then used the UPI dispatch to showthat “it’s easy to get an anti-Israeli story published,” another example ofthe anti-Israel bias of the press, repeating that “there’s no such thing asa vacuum bomb” and that the “tale” that there is “had been exposed” inGrafstein’s article. 91 Both Grafstein and Peretz are careful to conceal thefact that a description of the nature of the device, reporting its use onthis occasion, and a condemnation of its use, appeared in themainstream Israeli press, which presumably is neither “anti-Israel” nor“pro-PLO” (I say “presumably,” because it is not clear that Peretz wouldaccept this conclusion, given that it is denied by extreme chauvinistelements in Israel, as we shall see). What the example shows, as usual,is not that the American press is “anti-Israel”—a charge too ludicrous todiscuss—but that it is highly protective of Israel, failing to reportatrocities amply covered in the Israeli press. It is interesting that the factis illustrated by the very example selected by “supporters of Israel” todemonstrate the contrary, once their deception is exposed.Returning to the U.S. government attitude towards the invasion, aftera briefing by national security adviser William Clark, Jimmy Carterrefused to divulge its contents but stated that “The only thing I can sayis that the word I got from very knowledgeable people in Israel is that‘we have a green light from Washington’.” Alexander Haig, who wasSecretary of State at the time, angrily denied this charge (“a grotesqueand outrageous proposition,” “totally untrue”) and then proceeded toconfirm it, saying: “The Israelis had made it very clear that their limit ofClassics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky