Fateful Triangle

Peace for Galilee448would be right or wrong for Israel to move against West Beirut.” “Thearmy doesn’t fear these discussions,” Avineri informed Peretz, “eventhough it knows that the officers who conduct them, being mostlyintelligentsia, are mostly critics of the government or actually on theleft.” The fact that such a strong critic of Begin’s policies as ShlomoAvineri is invited to discuss such “vexing topics” as an invasion of WestBeirut surely demonstrates the uniquely democratic and open characterof the Israeli army, according to Peretz.Unfortunately, there are some problems in this demonstration, and inreliance on Avineri as an authority on “purity of arms.” Peretz neglects toreport the opinions of this critical dove. Others have, for example, MeronBenvenisti (see chapter 4, section 4.2), who, as an IDF lecturer, satthrough Avineri’s “training sessions” for these lecturers and reports theircontents in an open letter accusing Avineri of “lack of intellectualhonesty.” Avineri informed the IDF lecturers in July that “under the givenconditions there is no alternative to the conquest of Beirut by force,”thus joining the hawkish wing of Likud and setting himself in oppositionto the Labor Party. When asked about the political and human cost, heresponded that “this question is no concern of the lecturers.” He furthermoreexplained “that the Americans would agree after the fact to theconquest of West Beirut by force.” When participants objected to his“shocking presentation,” he “burst out and insisted that whoever isunable to go out and to encourage soldiers to perform their duty (that is,the conquest of West Beirut) is not entitled to appear before them.” 205Once again, the facts that Peretz suppresses are highly relevant to thepoint he is attempting to establish (recall the incident of the “vacuumbomb”; section 4.7). Knowing the contents of Avineri’s instructions tothe IDF lecturers one might draw a rather different conclusion about thesignificance of his being invited to discuss such “vexing topics” as theinvasion of West Beirut, and about his credibility as an authority onClassics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky