#fatefultrianglebook — Public Fediverse posts

I saw an FB post with the picture of a man with the number "17" on his forehead and the caption "Israel brands Palestinian detainees in West Bank with numbers on their foreheads" and was reminded of Noam Chomsky's Fateful Triangle book:

.> On Holocaust Day, the 27 of Nissan [the date in the Jewish calendar], the people who were arrested were ordered to write numbers on their hands with their own hands, in memory of the Jews in the extermination camps. --- Aharon Bachar , “Do not say: We did not know, we did not hear’,” Yediot Ahronot, Dec. 3, 1982 .

For Context:

.> Aharon Bachar writes of “the things that are being done in my name and in yours”: “we will never be able to escape the responsibility and to say that we did not know and we did not hear.” He describes a meeting between Labor Alignment leaders (including some of the most noted hawks, such as Golda Meir’s adviser Israel Galili) and Menachem Begin, where they presented to Begin “detailed accounts of terrorist acts [against Arabs] in the conquered territories.” They described the “collective punishment in the town of Halhul,” in these words:

.> .> The men were taken from their houses beginning at midnight, in pajamas, in the cold. The notables and other men were concentrated in the square of the mosque and held there until morning. Meanwhile men of the Border Guards [noted for their cruelty] broke into houses; beating people with shouts and curses. During the many hours that hundreds of people were kept in the mosque square, they were ordered to urinate and excrete on one another and also to sing Hatikva [“The Hope,” the national anthem of Israel] and to call out “Long Live the State of Israel.” Several times people were beaten and ordered to crawl on the ground. Some were even ordered to lick the earth. At the same time four trucks were commandeered and at daybreak, the inhabitants were loaded on the trucks, about 100 in each truck, and taken like sheep to the Administration headquarters in Hebron.
.> .> On Holocaust Day, the 27 of Nissan [the date in the Jewish calendar], the people who were arrested were ordered to write numbers on their hands with their own hands, in memory of the Jews in the extermination camps.

.> The report continues, detailing how prisoners are beaten, tortured and humiliated, how settlers are permitted into the prisons to take part in the beating of prisoners, how the settlers brutalize the local inhabitants with impunity, even in the case of a settler who killed an Arab, whose identity is known, but who is not arrested.[^113] All legitimate, presumably, by the standards of the New Republic. All legitimate, presumably, by the standards of the New Republic, as quoted above. The same correspondent reports similar stories a few weeks earlier, presented to top government officials who did not even take the trouble to check the information, provided by an Israeli soldier.[^114]

• [^113] Aharon Bachar , “Do not say: We did not know, we did not hear’,” Yediot Ahronot, Dec. 3, 1982.
• [^114] Aharon Bachar , Yediot Ahronot, Nov. 5, 1982 .
  
  #NoamChomsky #FatefulTriangleBook #AharonBachar #IsraelPalestine #TheNewRepublic #YediotAhronot

Before the pager and other digital device explosions as an innovative new form of terrorism warfare, the Isreali miliatry might also be credited with inventing the plane hijacking. And we've been led to think this sort of "retail terrorism" (not the "wholesale terrorism" of carpet bombing and state-sponsored death squads and torture regimes) is mostly driven by "non-state actors." A closer look might show that it's a case of "monkey see monkey do" with the "non-state actors" emulating their bigger already-a-state's violent militaries.

.> In the light of [USA]American beliefs about the history of terrorism, it should perhaps be observed that along with acts of piracy such as these, Israel has also resorted to hijacking of airplanes, and may indeed have initiated this practice. In December 1954, a Syrian civilian airliner was captured by Israeli military aircraft to obtain hostages for exchange with Israeli soldiers who had been captured within Syria. The Prime Minister of Israel, Moshe Sharett, states in his diary that he was informed by the State Department that “our action was without precedent in the history of international practice.” Note that this Israeli action is a direct precedent for much later PLO actions to capture hostages for exchange with captured guerrillas, as in the major terrorist incidents that were widely and properly denounced in the West; at Ma’alot in 1974, for example.


.> See TNCW{Towards a New Cold War], p. 458, citing Livia Rokach’s very important study, *Israel’s Sacred Terrorism (AAUG, Belmont, 1980), based largely on Sharett’s Personal Diary (Yoman Ishi, Hebrew, Ma’ariv, 1979).

#NoamChomsky #FatefulTriangleBook #MasheSharret #IsraeliPrimeMinister #PlaneHijacking #TerrorismHistory

Noam Chomsky's Fateful Triangle shows me that Supreme Court Justice embarrassment is not new. Arthur Goldberg was showing an example as a sorry excuse for a human being, he covers Samantha Powers ground as a sad, regulatory capture sort of example, for U.N. Ambassador too...

.> Some attempted more original arguments, for example, Arthur Goldberg, who offered this one:
> .> .> Free from the illusion, now demonstrated to be without foundation, that the PLO has the coherence, strength and support to act as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people,” and liberated from its terroristic acts and blackmail against Palestinian leaders, inhabitants of the West Bank, and other Arab countries, it should be possible to conclude an autonomy agreement with all deliberate speed.232
.> It is not entirely clear who is said to be now “free” and “liberated” in this semi-coherent statement, but the idea appears to be that by successfully employing its overwhelming military might to smash the PLO, Israel has demonstrated that the PLO cannot claim to represent the Palestinian people, specifically, those in Lebanon and the occupied territories who support it even though it is not the world’s fourth strongest military power....

  - 232. “Lebanese Hail Israel’s Action as Liberation”; see note 134.

.> ... With a bit more understanding of the facts, and a rather different moral stance, Meir Pail put the point in these terms, presenting what he suggests may have been “the real aim of the invasion,” conveyed in the following “message of vital import to the Palestinians” in the occupied territories:

> .> .> “Beware you Palestinians living under Israeli rule! All that we have done to the refugee camps, the cities and towns and villages of south Lebanon, on the coast of the Mediterranean between Rashidiye, Tyre and Beirut we can do to you in Gaza, Judea, Samaria...and even perhaps in Um-el-Faham and Nazareth [within Israel proper]. And we can do that now, especially, given that there is no P.L.O. or any other legitimate organized body that could be seen to represent the Palestinian cause. If you will bend down and follow our rules, it would be best that you accept the limited autonomy offered you as defined by Begin-Sbaron-Milson; if not, your fate will be that of Rashidiye (near Tyre), Ein-Hilwa (near Sidon), or Beirut.”233

- 233. Meir Pail, “A Military Analysis.”

.> This “message” is a more literate version of what Goldberg is apparently trying to say, stripped of the deceptive rhetoric that only barely conceals the true meaning of his words.
.> The former Supreme Court Justice and UN Ambassador has produced a most impressive contribution to contemporary thought: if some political entity can be destroyed by force, that demonstrates its illegitimacy and the right of the conqueror to determine the fate of those whom it had pretended to represent. This idea has not previously been advanced, to my knowledge, though its usefulness is evident; for example, to justify the Nazi conquests. Goldberg’s article would also delight structuralist literary analysts with its intriguing formal properties. Thus it begins by berating the media for joining the PLO in speaking of “an invasion” when “Israeli troops encircle Beirut” (how odd for them to do so), and it ends, with charming consistency, by referring to Israel’s “justified invasion of Lebanon.”

After reading this it's hard not to wonder if Arthur Goldberg just died of shame, or dedicated his life to saintly causes after this. But after seeing blurbs about the corrupt Supreme Court Justices of today it's easy to imagine them as brass-balled shameless psycopaths, murder-loving sycophants or something... Sometimes it's hard to follow Chomsky's sentences with the layers of sarcasm, it must be how he deals with the scorn and anger...

#NoamChomsky #ArthurGoldberg #IsraelPalestine #FatefulTriangle #FatefulTriangleBook #MeirPail #MilitaryAnalysis

Noam Chomsky's Fateful Triangle shows me that Supreme Court Justice embarrassment is not new. Arthur Goldberg was showing an example as a sorry excuse for a human being, he covers Samantha Powers ground as a sad, regulatory capture sort of example, for U.N. Ambassador too...

.> Some attempted more original arguments, for example, Arthur Goldberg, who offered this one:
> .> .> Free from the illusion, now demonstrated to be without foundation, that the PLO has the coherence, strength and support to act as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people,” and liberated from its terroristic acts and blackmail against Palestinian leaders, inhabitants of the West Bank, and other Arab countries, it should be possible to conclude an autonomy agreement with all deliberate speed.232
.> It is not entirely clear who is said to be now “free” and “liberated” in this semi-coherent statement, but the idea appears to be that by successfully employing its overwhelming military might to smash the PLO, Israel has demonstrated that the PLO cannot claim to represent the Palestinian people, specifically, those in Lebanon and the occupied territories who support it even though it is not the world’s fourth strongest military power....

  - 232. “Lebanese Hail Israel’s Action as Liberation”; see note 134.

.> ... With a bit more understanding of the facts, and a rather different moral stance, Meir Pail put the point in these terms, presenting what he suggests may have been “the real aim of the invasion,” conveyed in the following “message of vital import to the Palestinians” in the occupied territories:

> .> .> “Beware you Palestinians living under Israeli rule! All that we have done to the refugee camps, the cities and towns and villages of south Lebanon, on the coast of the Mediterranean between Rashidiye, Tyre and Beirut we can do to you in Gaza, Judea, Samaria...and even perhaps in Um-el-Faham and Nazareth [within Israel proper]. And we can do that now, especially, given that there is no P.L.O. or any other legitimate organized body that could be seen to represent the Palestinian cause. If you will bend down and follow our rules, it would be best that you accept the limited autonomy offered you as defined by Begin-Sbaron-Milson; if not, your fate will be that of Rashidiye (near Tyre), Ein-Hilwa (near Sidon), or Beirut.”233

- 233. Meir Pail, “A Military Analysis.”

.> This “message” is a more literate version of what Goldberg is apparently trying to say, stripped of the deceptive rhetoric that only barely conceals the true meaning of his words.
.> The former Supreme Court Justice and UN Ambassador has produced a most impressive contribution to contemporary thought: if some political entity can be destroyed by force, that demonstrates its illegitimacy and the right of the conqueror to determine the fate of those whom it had pretended to represent. This idea has not previously been advanced, to my knowledge, though its usefulness is evident; for example, to justify the Nazi conquests. Goldberg’s article would also delight structuralist literary analysts with its intriguing formal properties. Thus it begins by berating the media for joining the PLO in speaking of “an invasion” when “Israeli troops encircle Beirut” (how odd for them to do so), and it ends, with charming consistency, by referring to Israel’s “justified invasion of Lebanon.”

After reading this it's hard not to wonder if Arthur Goldberg just died of shame, or dedicated his life to saintly causes after this. But after seeing blurbs about the corrupt Supreme Court Justices of today it's easy to imagine them as brass-balled shameless psycopaths, murder-loving sycophants or something... Sometimes it's hard to follow Chomsky's sentences with the layers of sarcasm, it must be how he deals with the scorn and anger...

#NoamChomsky #ArthurGoldberg #IsraelPalestine #FatefulTriangle #FatefulTriangleBook #MeirPail #MilitaryAnalysis

Noam Chomsky's Fateful Triangle shows me that Supreme Court Justice embarrassment is not new. Arthur Goldberg was showing an example as a sorry excuse for a human being, he covers Samantha Powers ground as a sad, regulatory capture sort of example, for U.N. Ambassador too...

.> Some attempted more original arguments, for example, Arthur Goldberg, who offered this one:
> .> .> Free from the illusion, now demonstrated to be without foundation, that the PLO has the coherence, strength and support to act as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people,” and liberated from its terroristic acts and blackmail against Palestinian leaders, inhabitants of the West Bank, and other Arab countries, it should be possible to conclude an autonomy agreement with all deliberate speed.232
.> It is not entirely clear who is said to be now “free” and “liberated” in this semi-coherent statement, but the idea appears to be that by successfully employing its overwhelming military might to smash the PLO, Israel has demonstrated that the PLO cannot claim to represent the Palestinian people, specifically, those in Lebanon and the occupied territories who support it even though it is not the world’s fourth strongest military power....

  - 232. “Lebanese Hail Israel’s Action as Liberation”; see note 134.

.> ... With a bit more understanding of the facts, and a rather different moral stance, Meir Pail put the point in these terms, presenting what he suggests may have been “the real aim of the invasion,” conveyed in the following “message of vital import to the Palestinians” in the occupied territories:

> .> .> “Beware you Palestinians living under Israeli rule! All that we have done to the refugee camps, the cities and towns and villages of south Lebanon, on the coast of the Mediterranean between Rashidiye, Tyre and Beirut we can do to you in Gaza, Judea, Samaria...and even perhaps in Um-el-Faham and Nazareth [within Israel proper]. And we can do that now, especially, given that there is no P.L.O. or any other legitimate organized body that could be seen to represent the Palestinian cause. If you will bend down and follow our rules, it would be best that you accept the limited autonomy offered you as defined by Begin-Sbaron-Milson; if not, your fate will be that of Rashidiye (near Tyre), Ein-Hilwa (near Sidon), or Beirut.”233

- 233. Meir Pail, “A Military Analysis.”

.> This “message” is a more literate version of what Goldberg is apparently trying to say, stripped of the deceptive rhetoric that only barely conceals the true meaning of his words.
.> The former Supreme Court Justice and UN Ambassador has produced a most impressive contribution to contemporary thought: if some political entity can be destroyed by force, that demonstrates its illegitimacy and the right of the conqueror to determine the fate of those whom it had pretended to represent. This idea has not previously been advanced, to my knowledge, though its usefulness is evident; for example, to justify the Nazi conquests. Goldberg’s article would also delight structuralist literary analysts with its intriguing formal properties. Thus it begins by berating the media for joining the PLO in speaking of “an invasion” when “Israeli troops encircle Beirut” (how odd for them to do so), and it ends, with charming consistency, by referring to Israel’s “justified invasion of Lebanon.”

After reading this it's hard not to wonder if Arthur Goldberg just died of shame, or dedicated his life to saintly causes after this. But after seeing blurbs about the corrupt Supreme Court Justices of today it's easy to imagine them as brass-balled shameless psycopaths, murder-loving sycophants or something... Sometimes it's hard to follow Chomsky's sentences with the layers of sarcasm, it must be how he deals with the scorn and anger...

#NoamChomsky #ArthurGoldberg #IsraelPalestine #FatefulTriangle #FatefulTriangleBook #MeirPail #MilitaryAnalysis

Noam Chomsky's Fateful Triangle shows me that Supreme Court Justice embarrassment is not new. Arthur Goldberg was showing an example as a sorry excuse for a human being, he covers Samantha Powers ground as a sad, regulatory capture sort of example, for U.N. Ambassador too...

.> Some attempted more original arguments, for example, Arthur Goldberg, who offered this one:
> .> .> Free from the illusion, now demonstrated to be without foundation, that the PLO has the coherence, strength and support to act as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people,” and liberated from its terroristic acts and blackmail against Palestinian leaders, inhabitants of the West Bank, and other Arab countries, it should be possible to conclude an autonomy agreement with all deliberate speed.232
.> It is not entirely clear who is said to be now “free” and “liberated” in this semi-coherent statement, but the idea appears to be that by successfully employing its overwhelming military might to smash the PLO, Israel has demonstrated that the PLO cannot claim to represent the Palestinian people, specifically, those in Lebanon and the occupied territories who support it even though it is not the world’s fourth strongest military power....

  - 232. “Lebanese Hail Israel’s Action as Liberation”; see note 134.

.> ... With a bit more understanding of the facts, and a rather different moral stance, Meir Pail put the point in these terms, presenting what he suggests may have been “the real aim of the invasion,” conveyed in the following “message of vital import to the Palestinians” in the occupied territories:

> .> .> “Beware you Palestinians living under Israeli rule! All that we have done to the refugee camps, the cities and towns and villages of south Lebanon, on the coast of the Mediterranean between Rashidiye, Tyre and Beirut we can do to you in Gaza, Judea, Samaria...and even perhaps in Um-el-Faham and Nazareth [within Israel proper]. And we can do that now, especially, given that there is no P.L.O. or any other legitimate organized body that could be seen to represent the Palestinian cause. If you will bend down and follow our rules, it would be best that you accept the limited autonomy offered you as defined by Begin-Sbaron-Milson; if not, your fate will be that of Rashidiye (near Tyre), Ein-Hilwa (near Sidon), or Beirut.”233

- 233. Meir Pail, “A Military Analysis.”

.> This “message” is a more literate version of what Goldberg is apparently trying to say, stripped of the deceptive rhetoric that only barely conceals the true meaning of his words.
.> The former Supreme Court Justice and UN Ambassador has produced a most impressive contribution to contemporary thought: if some political entity can be destroyed by force, that demonstrates its illegitimacy and the right of the conqueror to determine the fate of those whom it had pretended to represent. This idea has not previously been advanced, to my knowledge, though its usefulness is evident; for example, to justify the Nazi conquests. Goldberg’s article would also delight structuralist literary analysts with its intriguing formal properties. Thus it begins by berating the media for joining the PLO in speaking of “an invasion” when “Israeli troops encircle Beirut” (how odd for them to do so), and it ends, with charming consistency, by referring to Israel’s “justified invasion of Lebanon.”

After reading this it's hard not to wonder if Arthur Goldberg just died of shame, or dedicated his life to saintly causes after this. But after seeing blurbs about the corrupt Supreme Court Justices of today it's easy to imagine them as brass-balled shameless psycopaths, murder-loving sycophants or something... Sometimes it's hard to follow Chomsky's sentences with the layers of sarcasm, it must be how he deals with the scorn and anger...

#NoamChomsky #ArthurGoldberg #IsraelPalestine #FatefulTriangle #FatefulTriangleBook #MeirPail #MilitaryAnalysis