Fateful Triangle

Peace for Galilee436backed Phalange was more brutal than anything attributable to the PLO,it nevertheless remains true that the PLO behaved in a disgraceful andstupid fashion in southern Lebanon, alienating much of the population.6.3 IsraelisIt is, then, a shade less than obvious that Lebanese were uniformlycelebrating their liberation through the summer of 1982. As for Israel’sreactions, the war had initially received overwhelming support there,including many critics of the drift towards religious-chauvinist fanaticism.For example, Amnon Rubinstein, a Knesset member from theShinui (“Change”) Party and a civil libertarian of sorts, * wrote after amonth of war that “only a small radical minority demands immediatewithdrawal” from Lebanon, an accurate appraisal apart from the term*As for many others (notoriously, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz),Rubinstein’s civil libertarian commitments quickly fade in connection with Israelidissidents. See TNCW, p. 434, and p. 142 and note 107. The point illustratedby Dershowitz, et al., is familiar enough. Thus, many Stalinists really didstruggle courageously for civil rights in the United States, while taking a ratherdifferent stance with regard to their Holy State. The same is true, to a lesser butnonetheless quite substantial degree, of supporters of the murderer of Kronstadt,the man who called for the militarization of labor in a “labor army,” whodismantled the Soviets and factory councils and destroyed the anarchistmovements after they were no longer needed to defend Bolshevik rule whileassisting in establishing the institutions of the Soviet dungeon. It is a curiousfeature of the contemporary intellectual scene in the U.S. that former Trotskyitesare now commonly described as having fought the good fight against totalitarianoppression.Classics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky