Fateful Triangle

Peace for Galilee501of the French Communist Party who recently took the familiar, and quiteshort step to the extreme right. Manor was cautious enough not to referin the English-language Post to her theory of the Sabra-Shatilamassacres, to which we return, fearing perhaps that this would be takenas some bizarre form of Parisian parody by an American audience (theHebrew press has, as usual, been less circumspect). Reading Manor’scommentary and the book on which it is based, one who shares Manor’sconception of the power of the International Communist Psy-War System(especially when allied with Wafa) might be tempted to conclude thatKriegel is still working as an underground Party agent, with the task ofmaking the enemies of the Kremlin appear to be utter fools.There were, however, those who felt that even Manor understated thecase, among them, Professor Moshe Sharon, chairman of the Departmentof History of Islamic Countries of the Hebrew University. Manorassumed that it was the Wafa-CP alliance that was responsible for thepogrom, or war, to which Israel was subjected in the summer of 1982,but Sharon points to a still more powerful agency: the U.S. government(presumably nothing is left but God). He suggests that it was “theAmerican delegation in Beirut” that was “responsible for the exaggeratednews reports that emerged” from the Sabra-Shatila massacres inSeptember. “One may also ask if the same delegation was notresponsible for sending to the camps representatives of the Americanand world media who were already pumped-up against Israel. Who, onemay ask, was responsible for spreading like wildfire through the worldpress the exaggerated and imaginative claim that thousands of womenand children were killed in the camps?” (no references are given to thesestories that flooded the world press; perhaps they were written ininvisible ink, a still more insidious psy-war device).Sharon explains that it is entirely natural for the U.S. government toengage in such anti-Israel operations. After all, “If one examines Ameri-Classics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky