Language and Institutional Perversions in a Time of Painful Birth Pangs (Kafka Era Studies, No. 2)

This internalized double standard also applies to word usage in reporting on the Israeli, Palestinian and Hizbollah conflict. Israel may openly acknowledge an effort to frighten and intimidate Gaza residents by violent attacks and threats of attacks, even including deliberate noise creation by jets producing terrifying sonic booms through the night ("I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza," Ehud Olmert)—and a planned increase in Palestinian hunger ("The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger," Dov Weisglass). [1]

Israel's systematic bombing of civilian sites in Lebanon has even been explained in part as an effort to cause the victim civilians to rise up against Hizbollah—a standard Israeli practice going back at least 25 years, when former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban admitted to having bombed civilians in the hope that the "afflicted populations would exert pressure for the cessation of hostilities." But even though this fits Benjamin Netanyahu's own definition of terrorism—"the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends"—the Israelis are not terrorists, they are fighting terror, by their own preferred usage and the double standard rule, which applies to U.S. clients as well as the United States itself.

It is possible to get around this seeming disconnect between the definition of terrorism and exemption of our side from designation as terrorist by claiming that those civilians our side attacks are not "innocent." This is based on the facts that large numbers of civilians frequently support the resistance, are the "sea" in which the terrorist "fish" swim, or are "willing executioners" supporting a government that we have declared evil and made into a target. In these cases the drying out of the "sea" or killing of the willing executioners can be made to seem reasonable, or at least acceptable—these civilians are "unworthy victims," so that treating them ruthlessly is nothing to get upset about.

And a good propaganda system will keep these victims largely out of sight and not display the indignation the media reserve for the victims of target states and "terrorists." This was true in the Vietnam War, where several million civilians were killed and seriously injured; and in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Lebanon (where the Israelis have sometimes "warned" civilians of imminent bombing, but sometimes bombed them in flight, or blocked their exit routes, and have made it clear that the civilians in South Lebanon are an intolerable "sea" helping the Hizbollah "fish" or are themselves all terrorists ("All those now in South Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hizbollah," Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon, July 27, 2006 ).

On the other hand, U.S. and Israeli civilians are always innocent and never willing executioners. Their governments may kill and terrorize vast numbers, and having nominally democratic governments these citizens could be said to have given their approval to the killing and terrorization (in contrast with civilians in say Afghanistan, who were living under a dictatorship). But in the propaganda system U.S. and Israeli citizens are still innocent because their governments only kill for good reason, in "self defense" against terrorists or to prevent people like Saddam Hussein from using his weapons of mass destruction or giving them to terrorists.

It is also always a part of the word usage and framing process that the "terrorists started it," by their past terrorist actions and more recently by "provocations." [2] The United States and its allies and clients never engage in "provocations," by media rule, but also because anything our side might have done which might be a provocation if done by the enemy is normalized. This is partly because being good and always in the right by patriotic assumption it is acceptable that we or our clients do things that the bad guys shouldn't do because they are bad.

The perfect illustration can be found in the events leading to the reinvasion and further devastation of Gaza by Israel from June 26, 2006. The excuse for the reinvasion was the Palestinian capture of an Israeli soldier, corporal Gilad Shalit, on June 25th. This led to an outcry and outrage by Israel at this clear provocation, and the U.S. mainstream media featured this seizure and created the Impression that it was a serious provocation indeed. They even followed Israeli usage in calling this a "kidnapping," although the victim was a uniformed soldier and member of an armed force that regularly attacks the Gaza population. Furthermore, on the previous day (June 24th), the Israelis had crossed into Gaza and seized two Palestinian civilians who they declared to be members of Hamas. Now arguably this was a genuine "kidnapping," and also a clear "provocation" that on provocation logic would justify the Palestinian capture (or responsive "kidnapping") of Shalit. But the media played this strictly according to the applicable double standard rules: (1) they mainly didn't even mention the Israeli action, leaving the seizure of Shalit as the only relevant fact; (2) they allowed Shalit to have been "kidnapped" rather than taken prisoner in a military conflict; (3) when on the rare occasion they mentioned the Israeli action of the previous day they failed to elevate it to "provocation" and even rationalized it as a legitimate "arrest" (Washington Post); the Israelis, engaged in an illegal occupation, violating scores of UN rulings and the Fourth Geneva Convention and committing war crimes on a daily basis, [3] have a right to "arrest" any Palestinian, but Palestinians have no right to reply in kind.

The main trick here is to cut off "provocations" just at the point which justifies the actions of "our" side. If there is a steady flow of attacks and counterattacks, stop just at the helpful point. This process underlies the development of the convenient distinction between terrorism and "retaliation." The propaganda system rule is to stop at the violent action of the bad guys, make the responsive violence by our side "retaliation," and ignore any evidence that the bad guys were "retaliating" for something our side had done. There are thousands of illustrations of this cut-off process in serving to make the proper villains terrorists, of which the Shalit case just discussed is merely the latest example. One of my favorite illustrations is Paul Berman's analysis in Terror and Liberalism where he has everything starting with suicide bombing in Israel—"Our current predicament was brought upon us by acts of suicide terrorism"—leading to Israeli retaliation. The Israeli Elik Elhanan, formerly in the Israeli Special Forces, and whose sister died in a suicide bombing attack in 1997, says "She died because there is an occupation." For Berman, in contrast, the occupation, the prior several decades long racism, large-scale ethnic cleansing, a ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths of 20-1 or higher in the years before the suicide bombings, and the thousand Palestinian deaths in the first intifada during which there were no suicide bombings, all disappear as he makes the cutoff necessary to protect Israeli terrorism.

It was something of a surprise to see Condoleezza Rice and other U.S. and Israeli officials and experts speak of the need to get at "root causes" in the Middle East. This was in support of Israel's right to continue devastating Lebanon in a civilian-oriented attack and to create a million refugees: these were merely "birth pangs" for a new order that the United States and Israel were establishing in the Middle East. Usually, root causes are not on the Western agenda, and when it is suggested that they may be relevant in developing a rational response, as in the case of street crime, or the reasons for the 9/11 attack, officials and establishment pundits have regularly declared that this is intolerable—reference to root causes is a form of apologetics for actions that must be condemned in and of themselves without "excuses." But in the Lebanon case, where the large-scale violence comes from the United States and its client, an axis that for weeks resisted international calls for a cease fire, the need to address root causes is not apologetics, it is merely an explanation of why extreme violence is needed in this particular case (and of course in Iraq as well, and maybe Iran next).

And of course the "root causes" in Lebanon turns out to be Hizbollah and its strong position in southern Lebanon. By rule of affiliation Hizbollah is a "terrorist" organization that threatens Israel, [4] although it is in no way capable to invading or devastating Israel as Israel has done to Lebanon. But it can resist Israel, and in the case of a possible further U.S.-Israeli aggression—against Iran—a Hizbollah capability of inflicting damage on Israel might put a crimp in that further "birth pang" to bring the new order to the Middle East. It should be noted, though, that Hizbollah only came into existence in the wake of Israel's 1982 invasion and occupation of Lebanon, as a means of defense against Israeli brutality. This means that the "root cause" of the Hizbollah threat lies in Israeli policy. This line of thought on root causes violates the rules mentioned above: only the other side terrorizes, and we must carefully stop the tracing of cause and effect at the point where our side must retaliate to their "terrorism." The state terrorism of the IDF, killing a thousand civilians and putting to flight a million civilians does not make Israel a terrorist state, by rule of proper language usage.

As noted earlier it is also part of the language of power that the United States was engaging in "self defense" in attacking Afghanistan and Iraq, and that Israel is also just defending itself in its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon. However, in neither the Afghan nor Iraq case was the United States meeting the standards for an appropriate self-defense response laid out in the UN Charter, hence in both cases it was a legal case of aggression in violation of the Charter. It didn't meet any substantive case either, as neither country had attacked the United States or threatened to do so, and the basis for the attack on Afghanistan was the claim that bin Laden and Al Qaeda had attacked this country from a base in Afghanistan. No proof was offered to the Afghan government that this was so, and apparently none was available at the time of the attack. In any case, "self defense" was in no sense the basis for these attacks, but that didn’t prevent their support at home or eventual acceptance by the leaders of most states and the UN.

In accord with the power-language rules those attacked by the United States and Israel don’t have any right of self-defense; they are terrorists or pose an intolerable threat to the superpower and its regional client, so that what might appear to be their attempts to defend themselves are ominous, threaten U.S. and Israeli self-defense and are unjustified. These power-language rules are now being played out in the case of Iran, threatened with regime change by the United States and attack by Israel, both nuclear powers, but where it is absolutely out of the question for the "international community" to even suggest that, given these threats, the U.S. refusal to give Iran any security guarantees or to carry out its promises under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, and the ongoing aggressions in the region by both the United States and Israel, Iran has an urgent need for nuclear weapons as a means of real self defense.

The Institutional Counterpart of the Control of Language by the Powerful

The powerful control many levels of institutions (corporate, mass media, government, international), which is the source of their power and domination. I want to focus here, briefly, on their domination of UN responses to violence. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the UN's response was aggressive and armed force was soon employed to oust him, after which Iraq was subjected to deadly sanctions and forced to pay reparations. Yugoslavia was also subjected to sanctions and then a bombing war, and its leaders were brought to trial in a specially organized tribunal to deal with their alleged war crimes. [5] In these cases the United States and its allies opposed the parties subjected to these aggressive UN responses and supported harsh action.

On the other hand, when the United States invaded Vietnam and attacked Cambodia and Laos, killing millions and ravaging the entire Indochinese peninsula, the UN didn't lift a finger. The U.S. mass media never once referred to the U.S. attack on Indochina as "aggression"; it was a struggle to protect "South Vietnam"—a U.S. creation in which the indigenous population had to be crushed into submission to a U.S.-imposed "leader"—against an alleged North Vietnamese, or Chinese, or Soviet, or generalized "communist" aggression. The UN and "international community" never contested this Orwellian word usage nor did anything to contain the aggressor or protect his millions of victims.

In short, the de facto double standard antedates the collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of a superpower-dominated world. But now, without even the containing effects of a relatively weak and cautious rival, the superpower has been able to run wild: ignoring the UN Charter with serial aggressions, whip-sawing and making a laughing stock of the UN, but getting it to ratify its invasion-occupation of Iraq (Security Council Resolution 1511 of October 16, 2003), and while improving its own nuclear arsenal and threatening to attack Iran, getting the UN to issue deadlines to the threatened country that are similar to those given Iraq which set the stage for that earlier aggression. Its preeminent client, Israel, has also been freer to ethnically cleanse in its occupied territories, enlarge and consolidate its illegal settlements on the West Bank and take over Jerusalem, and terrorize and impoverish its Palestinian victims.

Focusing here on the Lebanon invasion and UN response, we may note that Israel was violating the UN Charter in attacking Lebanon, was openly attacking its civilian population and infrastructure, and was using cluster bombs in violation of international law—UN official Jan Egeland was especially outraged that it used them heavily in the 72 hours before the ceasefire; Human Rights Watch found the density of cluster bombs in southern Lebanon the greatest it had ever seen; and the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon stated in regard to the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war that "What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs." [6] But at no point has it been suggested that Israel be threatened under Section VII of the UN Charter for these gross law violations. Section VII, which allows the use of force to end threats to international peace and security, is what the United States regularly strives to bring into play for its targets like Iraq, Yugoslavia, Iran, or Hizbollah, but as regards Israel the matter isn't even up for debate given the double standard rules. Nor could a cease fire even be insisted on, despite the open attacks on civilians and deliberate creation of a huge refugee exodus (such as provoked hysterical outcries and calls for a more aggressive response by the media, NATO officials, and UN representatives during the 78-day bombing war against Yugoslavia in 1999). The cease fire was stalled because the United States and Israel wanted Israel to be able to achieve its military and political objectives in its aggression, which required a sizable quota of civilian killings and massive destruction.

The cease fire finally negotiated represented an almost complete accommodation to the interests of the aggressor and its partner, and tried to accomplish by the negotiated settlement what Israel failed to achieve by force of arms. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 does not condemn Israel for its major UN charter violation and assorted crimes, and does not suggest that Israel should pay reparations for its immense destruction, as Iraq was made to pay for its attack on Kuwait—1701 calls on the "international community" to help the stricken Lebanon! It doesn’t even insist that Israel immediately stop all action and get out of the invaded and severely damaged country—it must merely cease its "offensive" actions, which will allow continued Israeli offensive actions as Israel can always claim its operations to be defensive and based on "provocations." In fact, one month after the signing of the truce, "according to Alexander Ivanko, spokesman for the UN interim force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), there have been more than 100 recorded ceasefire violations by Israeli forces in the last month. These have been mostly over-flights and incursions by tanks, troops and bulldozers. Mr. Ivanko said that 24 Lebanese civilians—including four men from Aita al-Shaab—had been detained at gunpoint by Israeli troops. All were later released." [7] If Hizbollah someday reacts vigorously, as they surely will, and Israel wants to reinvade, they will once again have the needed "provocation," based on the language and cutoff rules.

Under 1701 only Hizbollah is required to terminate all military actions entirely: it is implicitly the aggressor (1701 says that the violence has escalated "since Hizbollah's attack on Israel on 12 July, 2006"); no differentiation is made in the scale of violence (which "has already caused hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides") and no party is named responsible for "extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons." These evasions help the authors of 1701 make Israel the victim requiring protection.

The UN Resolution calls for the "unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers," but it is only "encouraging the efforts aimed at urgently settling the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel," in accord with the power rules on provocations and the locus of root causes.

Only Hizbollah, an "armed group," is required to disarm under 1701, and UNIFIL is only authorized to take "all necessary action" to ensure that the areas under its mandate are not the source of "hostile activities." Israel is not an area within its mandate. There will be no international forces placed in Israel to assure that no "hostile activities" are begun there, and the aggressor that has invaded Lebanon on a regular basis since 1978 does not have to disarm. The Resolution calls for an international arms embargo, but only for supply to "armed groups" in Lebanon, and UNIFIL is to help enforce that arms embargo. Kofi Annan has already visited Syria to try to persuade that country's leaders to terminate any supplies sent to Hizbollah, but there is no hint anywhere that he or anybody else is concerned with the U.S. resupply of Israel's cluster bombs and other weapons that it might use in a further attack on Lebanon.

In short, the parallel between the effect of power on the perversion of language and institutional behavior is very close. For the powerful, in this case Israel and its sponsor, aggression entails no penalty, in accord with the power-language rule that their attacks are only "self-defense," nor do Israel's massive war crimes elicit any action—only plaintive cries of the victims and some human rights organizations, whose cries do not translate into meaningful action. As regards the resistance, however, as "terrorists" and by power-language rule provokers of the violence, they are the "root cause" and 1701 is designed to provide the basis for disarming them and protecting Israel from their violence. As 1701 is vague, if its implementation does not result in the actual disarming of Hizbollah, this will justify the aggressor country's renewed attack on Lebanon.

So the UN and "international community" are doing their Kafka-era work once again, failing to contain or punish blatant aggression when this is done by the powerful, as it so frequently is in the new world order, and even allowing these perpetrators of violence to shape the international response. That response is zero penalties for major crimes and a mobilization of the UN and international community to facilitate further violence by the criminals.

Edward S. Herman is Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and has written extensively on economics, political economy and the media. Among his books are The Real Terror Network, Triumph of the Market, and Manufacturing Consent (with Noam Chomsky).

Endnotes:

1. When Weinglass told this joke to a group of officials assigned the duty of responding to the Hamas victory, and who all agreed that it called for an economic siege of the Palestinians, "the participants reportedly rolled with laughter." Gideon Levy, "A Chilling Heartlessness by Israel's Hamas Team," Counterpunch, Feb. 20, 2006.

2. For a satirical analysis of the Israeli misuse of "who started it" and "provocations," such as you will never see in the New York Times, see Gideon Levy, "Who started?," Ha'aretz, July 10, 2006.

3. In an Oral Statement of March 2002 dealing with the "Question of the violation of human rights in the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine," Amnesty International stated that "they can never justify the human rights violations and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions which, over the past 18 months, have been committed daily, hourly, even every minute, by the Israeli authorities against Palestinians. Israeli forces have consistently carried out killings when no lives were in danger."

4. Because the Nicaraguan contras were organized by the United States to attack Nicaragua they were officially designated "freedom fighters," and the mainstream media did not treat them as they treat Hizbollah. The same is true of Jonas Savimbi's UNITA in Angola, a truly terrorizing organization, but supported by apartheid South Africa and its U.S. ally, hence "freedom fighters" rather than terrorists, by rule of affiliation.

5. Other leaders in Yugoslavia whose armies and paramilitaries killed large numbers of civilians in ethnic cleansing operation, such as Izetbegovic and Tudjman, were never indicted or brought to trial, nor were Clinton and Blair whose armed forces killed many hundreds of innocent civilians. Elsewhere also, major killers such as Indonesia's Suharto or Haiti's Constant or Chile's Pinochet have not been subject to extradition and prosecution because they were on the right side and were thus official freedom fighters by rule of affiliation. For a compelling analysis of this process, Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder (London: Pluto, 2004).

6. Meron Rappaport, "IDF Commander: We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon," Ha'aretz, September 12, 2006.

7. Clancy Chassay (in Aita al-Shaab), "One Month On, Uneasy Truce Holds In Battle-Scarred Border Villages; Hizbullah Fighters Patrol Hills While Israeli Forces Commit Daily Violations," Guardian, September 14, 2006.