http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20051.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/barat06062008.html
On the Future of Israel and Palestine
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky
By FRANK BARAT
Barat: Thanks for accepting this interview.
Firstly I would like to ask if you are
working on something at the moment that
you would like to let us know about?
Ilan Pappé:
I am completing several books.
The first is a concise history
of the Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip,
the other is on the Palestinian
minority in Israel and one on
the Arab Jews.
I am completing an edited
volume comparing the South Africa
situation to that of Palestine
Noam Chomsky:
The usual range of articles, talks, etc.
No time for major projects right now.
Barat: A British M.P recently said
that he had felt a change in the last
5 years regarding Israel.
British M.Ps nowadays sign E.D.M
(Early Day Motions) condemning Israel
in bigger number than ever before and
he told us that it was now easier to
express criticism towards Israel even
when talking on U.S campuses.
Also, in the last few weeks,
John Dugard, independent investigator
on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for
the U.N Human Right Council said that
"Palestinian terror 'inevitable'
result of occupation",
the European parliament
adopted a resolution saying that
"policy of isolation of the Gaza strip
has failed at both the political and
humanitarian level" and the U.N and
the E.U have condemned Israel use of
excessive and dispro****tionate force
in the Gaza strip.
Could we interpret that as a
general ****ft in attitude
towards Israel?
Ilan Pappé:
The two examples indicate a
significant ****ft in public
opinion and in the civil society.
However, the problem remained what
it had been in the last sixty years:
these impulses and energies are not translated,
and are not likely to be translated in the
near future, into actual policies on the ground.
And thus the only way of enhancing
this transition from sup****t from
below to actual policies is by
developing the idea of sanctions
and boycott.
This can give a clear orientation
and direction to the many individuals
and ngos that have shown for years
solidarity with the Palestine cause.
Noam Chomsky:
There has been a very clear ****ft in recent years.
On US campuses and with general audiences as well.
It was not long ago that police protection
as a standard feature of talks at all
critical of Israeli policies,
meetings were broken up,
audiences very hostile and abusive.
By now it is sharply different,
with scattered exceptions.
Apologists for Israeli violence now
tend often to be defensive and desperate,
rather than arrogant and overbearing.
But the critique of Israeli actions is thin,
because the basic facts are systematically
suppressed.
That is particularly true of the decisive
US role in barring diplomatic options,
undermining democracy, and sup****ting
Israel's systematic program of undermining
the possibility for an eventual political
settlement.
But ****trayal of the US as an "honest broker,"
somehow unable to pursue its benign objectives,
is characteristic, not only in this domain.
Barat:
The word apartheid is more and more often
used by NGO's and charities to describe
Israel's actions towards the Palestinians
(in Gaza, the OPT but also in Israel itself).
Is the situation in Palestine and
Israel comparable to Apartheid
South Africa?
Ilan Pappé:
There are similarities and dissimilarities.
The colonialist history has many chapters
in common and some of the features of the
Apartheid system can be found in the Israeli
policies towards its own Palestinian minority
and towards those in the occupied territories.
Some aspects of the occupation, however,
are worse then the apartheid reality of
South Africa and some aspects in the
lives of Palestinian citizens in Israel,
are not as bad as they were in the hey
days of Apartheid.
The main point of comparison to
my mind is political inspiration.
The anti-Apartheid movement, the ANC,
the solidarity networks developed
throughout the years in the West,
should inspire a more focused and
effect pro-Palestinian campaign.
This is why there is a need to
learn the history of the struggle
against Apartheid, much more than
dwell too long on comparing the
Zionist and Apartheid systems.
Noam Chomsky:
There can be no definite answer to such questions.
There are similarities and differences.
Within Israel itself,
there is serious discrimination,
but it's very far from South
African Apartheid.
Within the occupied territories,
it's a different story.
In 1997,
I gave the keynote address
at Ben-Gurion University in a
conference on the anniversary
of the 1967 war.
I read a paragraph from a
standard history of South Africa.
No comment was necessary.
Looking more closely,
the situation in the OT
differs in many ways from Apartheid.
In some respects,
South African Apartheid was
more vicious than Israeli practices,
and in some respects the opposite is true.
To mention one example,
White South Africa depended on Black labor.
The large majority of the
population could not be expelled.
At one time Israel relied on cheap
and easily exploited Palestinian labor,
but they have long ago been replaced by
the miserable of the earth from Asia,
Eastern Europe, and elsewhere.
Israelis would mostly breathe a
sigh of relief if Palestinians
were to disappear.
And it is no secret that the policies
that have taken shape accord well with
the recommendations of Moshe Dayan
right after the 1967 war :
Palestinians will
"continue to live like dogs,
and whoever wishes may leave."
More extreme recommendations have been
made by highly regarded left humanists
in the United States, for example Michael
Walzer of the Institute for Advanced Studies
in Princeton and editor of the democratic
socialist journal Dissent,
who advised 35 years ago
that since Palestinians are
"marginal to the nation,"
they should be "helped" to leave.
He was referring to Palestinian
citizens of Israel itself,
a position made familiar more
recently by the ultra-right
Avigdor Lieberman, and now
being picked up in the
Israeli mainstream.
I put aside the real fanatics,
like Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz,
who declares that Israel never kills civilians,
only terrorists, so that the definition
of "terrorist" is "killed by Israel";
and Israel should aim for a kill
ratio of 1000 to zero, which means
"exterminate the brutes" completely.
It is of no small significance that
advocates of these views are regarded
with respect in enlightened circles
in the US, indeed the West.
One can imagine the reaction
if such comments were made
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