Fateful Triangle

Peace for Galilee4672, section 1. In short, considerable unity, across the board.Jane Fonda is, of course, not alone in her contention that criticism ofthe war in Lebanon is an expression of anti-Semitism. NormanPodhoretz, among many others, makes the same allegation. * Critics ofthe invasion, he holds, deny to the Jews “the right of self-defense,”which they exercised by invading Lebanon: “What we have here is theold anti-Semitism modified to suit the patterns of international life. Whyshould Americans lend themselves to this disgusting maneuver?” 230 OrIsraelis; for example, those who pointed out the absurdity of appealing*Podhoretz is the editor of Commentary, which I have avoided discussing here.For an example of what it contains, see Robert W. Tucker, “Lebanon: The Casefor the War,’ October 1982, which begins by denying that Israel had any “welldevelopedplan” to destroy the PLO presence in Lebanon (rather, the IDF was,“one might almost say pulled” to Beirut by unexpected lack of “effectiveopposition”), carefully avoiding extensive and quite compelling evidence to thecontrary from Israeli sources, some cited earlier, and continuing at the samelevel of concern for fact. Tucker rejects the “moral critique” of Israel’saggression, writing that “what has so often been presented as hard-headedpolitical analysis is, when its surface is once scratched, moral preferencemasquerading as political analysis.” He gives no examples, but the judgmentholds of his affectation of “hard-headed political analysis,” a largely muddleheadedexpression of his “moral preference” for the doctrine that “there isnothing in reason or morality that enjoins a government to refrain from takingaction against a threat to the state’s security,” that is, to engage in aggressivewar, even in a case such as this, where “the threat that united virtually allIsraelis” turns out to be the threat “of a PLO state in the West Bank.” Hisposition is a familiar one; Hitler and Goebbels, for example, gave a similarjustification for their resort to force. See p. 372*. It is not unusual for this moralstance to be represented as “hard-headed political analysis.”Classics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky