Kim Petersen
In a recent article, “On Israel-Palestine and BDS,” renowned anarchist professor Noam Chomsky describes the misery caused by Israel’s actions in the Occupied Territories. He says “the United States should also be condemned and punished for providing the decisive military, economic, diplomatic and even ideological support for these crimes. So long as it continues to do so, there is little reason to expect Israel to relent in its brutal policies.”
Yes, the US is the preponderant enabler of Zionist slow-motion genocide, oppression, and dispossession. However, the US is not to be condemned alone for supporting Israel. Canada, among other Zionist-supporting nations, should also be condemned and punished for providing military, economic, diplomatic, and ideological support for these crimes.
Chomsky notes the warning of Israeli scholar Zeev Sternhell: “The road to South Africa has been paved and will not be blocked until the Western world presents Israel with an unequivocal choice: Stop the annexation and dismantle most of the colonies and the settler state, or be an outcast.”
I submit Sternhell did not go far enough. He should have written dismantle allthe colonies. Acceding – even partially – to facts-created-on-the-ground is acquiescing to the perpetration of war crimes. What kind of message does this send in today’s world?
Writes Chomsky, “One crucial question is whether the United States will stop undermining the international consensus, which favors a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized border (the Green Line established in the 1949 ceasefire agreements)…”
At the outset, I must establish that any demands, strategy, and tactics pursued are the right of the oppressed people, the Palestinians, to decide upon. It is not for outsiders, especially those who might have vested interests in the outcome, to decide for the Palestinians. The solution identified by Chomsky rewards the seizure of territory through violence. And his justification: “the international consensus, which favors a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized border.” The borders of the 1947 Partition Plan were also created by an international consensus (if one can seriously refer to unethical western arm twisting to reach an outcome in the UN as a “consensus”1; why does Chomsky tout the 1949 “international consensus” over the 1947 consensus? What does elementary morality posit here? Bear in mind that the nation state of Israel was appropriated by European Jews from the indigenous Palestinians through “international consensus” (i.e., great power not-so-diplomatic arm twisting).