A Discussion With Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Lawrence Davidson and Ilan Pappé
By Daniel Falcone and Noam Chomsky and Richard Falk and Lawrence Davidson and Ilan Pappe
Syria's civil
war that started in March 2011 continues to attract Western attention.
Although nearly half of the Syrian population does not support US
leadership in the world, the United States has shown a "resolve" to make
this one of our international priorities. For many citizens outside of
the public arena, Syria is an obscure and irrelevant geographic
location. Recent events in the diplomatic field have, however,
catapulted the country to headlines across the United States. I spoke
with four prominent public intellectuals to discuss the context of Syria
within our educational system. This is a roundtable format including
the eminent linguist and social scientist Noam Chomsky from MIT,
Princeton professor emeritus of international law Richard Falk,
professor of Middle East studies and author of the Middle East Reader Lawrence Davidson and Israeli historian and author of The Modern Middle East Ilan Pappé.
FALCONE: In
The New York Times, recent articles covering Syria keep mentioning the
importance of our "resolve." What is meant by American "resolve?"
CHOMSKY:
Alternatively, "credibility." What I've called "the Mafia doctrine" in
many publications: when the Godfather issues an edict, others must obey,
or else. It's too dangerous to allow disobedience. A leading principle
of world affairs - though, of course, officials and commentators put it
more politely.
FALK:
I think "resolve" is a coded way of discussing the willingness to use
force in support of what Obama calls America's "core interests." In this
sense, a lack of resolve would denote a weakness of political will that
would disappoint expectations of the Syrian rebel forces and indirectly
others as well, including Israel. In the end, resolve refers to the
credibility of American global leadership, which is especially subject
to doubt, given the negative outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan - and
given Republican obstructionism in Congress and the so-called war
fatigue of the citizenry.
DAVIDSON:
Within this context, what is meant is a resolve to be the world's
policeman. To right the alleged wrongs of those we regard as our enemies
(we are not similarly concerned with the wrongs of those we designate
our friends) even if we ourselves have carried out similar wrongs.
PAPPÉ:
I think what the NYT means by resolve is a stance that does not change
easily from day to day on the Syrian crisis. If you ask about what
should be the American resolve, then I would say that it cannot be
addressed only with regard to the present crisis in Syria. It needs to
have a wider conceptual and moral infrastructure. Unless this American
administration is willing to diverge from the conventional American
policy in the Middle East by changing its basic attitudes on crucial
questions, foremost of them Palestine, and support genuinely the rights
of people for independence, sovereignty and identity across the board,
the only "resolve" one would hope from the USA is to stay out of the
Middle East for a while.
FALCONE:
Also in conjunction with the articles, there is sort of an insinuation
that Iran's "nuclear threat" is being addressed when we address Syria.
Doesn't our sabre rattling only force Iran to entertain the idea of
advanced weaponry?
CHOMSKY: Definitely. ...
DAVIDSON:
... Absolutely. ... Threatening to attack a principle ally of Iran
(Syria) is not the way to encourage cooperation in terms of armaments.
However, what if the saber rattling is not designed primarily with Iran
in mind, but rather with special interests that want to hear threats to
Iran in exchange for their domestic political support? Then it makes
sense.
FALK:
It would seem to be the case that pressure on Iran to acquire nuclear
weapons is almost totally driven by their need for a deterrent
capability to avoid the fate of Iraq, Libya. The use of American
military force in Syria thus sends exactly the opposite message as
supposedly desired to the leadership in Tehran - and to others. North
Korea has been dealt with diplomatically because it has the bomb and
might use it if provoked.
PAPPÉ:
There was no need for the present charade on Syria to remind the
government in Iran that the American dog is wagged by the Israeli tail
to be more militant in its policy toward Iran. I am not sure to this
very moment that Iran's objective is to obtain "advanced weaponry." The
present rulers in Iran do not want to be seen as giving up the idea of
"advanced weaponry" due to Israeli and American pressure. The myth,
carried out from the end of the Second World War, that only "advanced
weaponry" - or even the horrific events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - can
produce unimaginable human catastrophes continues to blur our judgment.
The worst crimes against humanity in the last half of the previous
century and this century are carried out with conventional advanced
weapons, upgraded daily by a greedy arms industry, super power's apathy
and criminal ideologies. In the Middle East, Iran lags behind many other
military powers in this respect.
FALCONE:
When President Obama addresses the nation he keeps repeating the phrase,
"the international community." What is meant by the international
community?
FALK:
As Gandhi famously responded when asked about "Western civilization,"
"I wish they had one," the same applies to "international community": "I
wish there was one." Of course, its use is a convenient way of invoking
the collective actions of the world, as through the actions of the
United Nations. The misleading implication, however, is to divert
attention from the weakness of central institutions and procedures as
compared to the strength of leading states. We live in a state-centric
world faced with global-scale problems that cannot be met by the actions
of single states, no matter how powerful, if assessed from the
perspective of military capabilities.
CHOMSKY: The US and whoever goes along with it, often almost no one, as in this case.
DAVIDSON:
This is a bit of verbal sleight of hand. The "international community"
implies the world's nations. In fact what the president is actually
referring to is the US and its allies. And, as we have seen when the
British Parliament backed out of the potential attack on Syria, the
number of those allies is shrinking.
PAPPÉ:
The president probably means those governments which agree with US
policy. We can refer back to the UN charter, which saw the peoples, not
the governments, as providing the basis for an international opinion.
More often than not, there is inconsistency between the two.
FALCONE: I
have noticed a lot of teachers using an article from The Washington Post
that has gone viral: "9 Questions About Syria You Were Too Embarrassed
to Ask" by Max Fisher. The author admits the piece has a limited scope
of information. Do Westerners get a cheapened version of Near East
affairs in our educational system?
FALK:
I think it is less the limited amount of information than the filters
that information about the Middle East must pass through before being
fairly addressed in the mainstream media. In more intellectual and
geopolitical terms, the perceptions of the region are distorted by a
combination of Orientalism and the priorities of the state of Israel,
including the refusal to discuss the relevance of Israel's nuclear
weapons arsenal in the context of addressing Iran on its nuclear
program.
CHOMSKY: Hopelessly. ...
DAVIDSON:
... Most of the time, teachers who talk about the Middle East do not
know the history, culture or present context of the problems they are
discussing. So they go to the media, which quote government or academic
"experts" (who often are no such thing) or journalists who, by virtue of
working for the media, are supposed to know what they are talking
about. In the end they know little or nothing beyond a standard line
that reflects the perceptions of the US government and its
special-interest supporters. That is what the students get. Indeed, that
is what we all get.
PAPPÉ:
While in the American academia the knowledge production on the Middle
East in general and Syria in particular has been considerably
transformed in recent years, the dissemination of these more updated
views fails to reach the conventional educational system. For two main
reasons: Politics can still subdue and censor views that are not
endorsed ideologically, and academics have still not learned how to
write openly, directly and, one should say, courageously about these
issues.
FALCONE:
Can you recommend articles, authors and book titles that can help
teachers break the traditional mold of textbook teaching that tend to
conceptualize the Near East narrative incorrectly?
DAVIDSON: Well, the best textbook on the market is the one I co-authored with Arthur Goldschmidt, the Concise History of the Middle East (Westview
Press). Students and teachers also now have access to web sources that
often give an alternate point of view, such as Al Jazeera English and
Electronic Intifada. One can balance the standard line on events if one
does a bit of searching.
FALK:
The literature on the region is generally not very good. The writing on
individual countries is far better. There are some books edited by the
Iraqi scholar teaching in Canada Tareq Ismael that give good and
balanced overviews of regional issues, and I would suggest Edward Said
for the cultural underpinnings of misperceptions relating to the region.
FALCONE: Another observation in US media is the marriage of the word terrorist with Muslim.
In other words, after last week's shooting at the D.C Naval Yard, news
anchors would say, "We still don't know if the suspected killer is a
terrorist." What kind of impact might this habitual commentary have on
our educational system?
CHOMSKY:
The intended meaning is clear: Demonize Muslims, and deflect attention
from the obvious but unutterable fact that the US has been the leading
terrorist state in the world for many years.
DAVIDSON:
The continual linking of the notions of terrorist and terrorism with
Muslims and the Middle East is, essentially, an act of propaganda that
cannot help but promote "Islamophobia." Shooting down a dozen innocent
people (as happened in Washington, DC, last week) at random is an act of
terrorism, no matter who does it. What possible justification can there
be to restrict the definition to adherents of a particular religion? If
the reply is 9/11, the counter fact is that 99.5 percent of the world's
Muslims were as appalled at that event as everyone else.
PAPPÉ:
Similar demonization of Muslims was done in Norway in the first hours
after the massacre carried out by a white supremacist. The demonization
has been in the US, long before 9/11, as Edward Said's Unveiling Islam
has shown. Films, media, educational system and arts portray Muslims in
a racist and negative way. The more interesting question, for which we
have no time right now, is who is behind these images.
FALK: There is no doubt that this fusion of terrorist and Muslim
feeds virulent forms of Islamophobia, which is also encouraged by such
incidents as the Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi and the Anglican
Church bombing in Pakistan. 9/11 greatly intensified this tendency
toward fusion, but it had also been nurtured by Israeli propaganda that
portrayed their Palestinian and Arab adversaries as "terrorists." In
fact, the US government approach after 9/11 was modeled in many of its
features on Israeli tactics developed during the long occupation of
Palestine.
FALCONE: Have you ever been invited to speak at a high school on the Muslim world? Why might this be so unlikely to happen?
CHOMSKY:
I think you know why it's unlikely. I've occasionally been asked to
talk on Israel-Palestine. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it elicits
hysteria in the community.
DAVIDSON:
I have not been invited into a Muslim high school, but I have been
invited to speak to college classes in the Muslim world. I think this is
simply because I am better-known in college and university circles.
There is no inherent reason why I would be unwelcome at the high school
level.
FALK:
I have been invited a few times over the years, usually at the
initiative of student groups, not the school administration or faculty.
This seems unlikely to happen both because of bias and fear of
controversy.
PAPPÉ: Yes, but mostly because those who invited me did not know who I was.
FALCONE: Do you read the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs? What are your thoughts on the publication?
CHOMSKY: Not trustworthy in my opinion, though I often agree with their conclusions.
DAVIDSON:
Yes, this is a very good source of information. It is one of those
sources that people should use to get an alternative view of what is
going on in the region and what are the consequences of US foreign
policy.
PAPPÉ: Excellent and informative publication.
FALK:
I believe that the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs is a
valuable resource, probably the best offset to the mainstream treatment
of the region. It consistently publishes insightful commentary on
delicate issues of US foreign policy bearing on the Middle East and also
interprets developments in the region in a more illuminating way.
