Fateful Triangle

Peace for Galilee449“purity of arms.It is worth noting that Peretz’s demonstration of Israeli adherence tothe doctrine of “purity of arms” is taken quite seriously in the U.S., evenamong liberal doves. Few have been so outspoken in criticism of Israeliexpansionism as Rabbi Balfour Brickner, a member of the AdvisoryCommittee of the peace group Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC) and apeace activist for many years. In the CALC journal he writes of hisanguish over what happened in Lebanon in 1982. but not beforeestablishing the ground rules:But, I believe every word of what others have reported reIsrael’s conduct of the war and PLO atrocity (the mostpersuasive of these reports was Martin Peretz’s “LebanonEyewitness”…)… I am persuaded that Israel’s soldierspracticed “tohar haneshek”—the morality of arms—withzeal and extreme sensitivity. I am convinced that they tookgreat care to avoid abusing the strength their weapons gavethem.Note that he remained “persuaded” even after the terror bombing andsiege of West Beirut, and that the “others” who have reported do notinclude Israeli soldiers returning from the front or Israeli journalists,some already cited. He also writes that within the PLO only “a smallmoderate element” is “prepared to support a two-state solution” (clearlyfalse) and that “though the cease fire was holding and had held for overa year, terrorists did continue to rain rocket fire on Israel’s northernborder communities”; the second of these two inconsistent statements isfalse, except with reference to the clearly retaliatory strikes of May andJune 1982, the first symbolic and after extensive Israeli provocation,including murderous bombardment, here unmentioned. As for the IDFClassics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky