From Occupied Palestine

Road Map
EDWARD HERMAN
ZNET, 5 July 2003

There are three words or phrases that are not permissible in the U.S. mainstream media in application to the Israel-Palestine conflict: racism, ethnic cleansing and international law. This follows from the deep, deep bias of the media favoring Israel and hostile to the Palestinians. The evidence of Israeli racism is overwhelming, and criticism of that racism is a commonplace in Israel, but it is suppressed here. Israel is explicitly a "Jewish state," with special rights inhering in Jewishness, including the right to occupy land; it has engaged in a long-term systematic expropriation of Palestinian land and demolitions of Palestinian homes strictly for Jewish-settler benefit; and its occupation has long been characterized by brutal maltreatment of Palestinians, who have been publicly described by Israeli leaders as "lice," "grasshoppers," "two legged animals," and numerous other epithets.

Anti-semitism
EDWARD HERMAN
25 November 2002

Palestinians are "Semites," but the word antisemitism is never applied to prejudice against them, only to Jews. The restriction on the application to Jews, and failure to use it in reference to Palestinians, continues in the face of the fact that prejudice against Jews has sharply diminished in the West from the era of Hitler, and that the Arabs have displaced them as target of anti-"Semite" hostility. Thus the usage itself reflects power and deep-seated bias.

Ariel Sharon: From Sabra and Shatila to Jenin
EDWARD HERMAN
Z magazine, June 2002

The U.S. political and economic elite and mainstream media work like a very well-oiled machine in dealing with favored and unfavored genocidists. They loved Indonesia's Suharto, who was the only triple-genocidist of the post World War II era (killings in excess of 100,000 in West Papua and East Timor as well as a million or more in Indonesia), but a man who delivered the goods: eliminating any Communist (or democratic) threat in Indonesia, aligning it with the West, and opening the door to oil, mining, and timber interests on favorable terms, with only a sizable but bearable bribe cost. It followed that he was aided and protected by the United States and its allies, its deadly armed forces equipped and trained, and his mass murders overlooked.

Israel's willing executioners
EDWARD HERMAN
ZNET, 9 May 2002

It should be obvious that the above title is an oxymoron, because Israel is good, only a victim, not a victimizer, besides which Israel is a U.S. client and friend. So an invidious phrase like "willing executioners" can no more be applied to Israel than the words "terrorism" or "ethnic cleansing."

This is all internalized by mainstream politicians, journalists and editors, and intellectuals as part of an integrated structure of thought. Terrorism is what the Palestinians do and what Arafat is responsible for ending; the Israeli army and settlers, in clearing Palestinians off their lands to permit Jewish settlements, have only been--settling--and preventing terrorist responses to settling.

Israel's approved ethnic cleansing, Part III
EDWARD HERMAN
ZNET, September 2001

Part III: The American Media

The U.S. mainstream media have followed closely their government's agenda of giving Israel carte blanche in dealing with their Palestinian subjects, both within Israel and in the occupied territories. This has involved a major intellectual and moral challenge, given the facts of serious racist discrimination, the long Israeli refusal to exit the occupied territories as demanded by an overwhelming international consensus, Israel's daily violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention requirements on treatment of people in occupied territories--including a massive ethnic cleansing openly designed to benefit the "chosen people"-- and their clear intention to create a Palestinian system of dependent and poor bantustans in the occupied territories, organized strictly for the advantage of the ethnic cleansing state.

Israel's approved ethnic cleansing, Part II
EDWARD HERMAN
ZNET, September 2001

Part II: Official U.S Protection

When Milosevic dealt brutally with Kosovo Albanians, the United States claimed to find such actions so intolerable as to justify a war against the villain and his people and an occupation of Kosovo to terminate the process. Returning expelled Kosovo Albanians to their homes was an urgent priority--after NATO policy itself had produced the expulsions.

Israel's approved ethnic cleansing
EDWARD HERMAN
ZNET, August/September 2001

Part I: Facts on the Ground

Israel's treatment of the Palestinians has always presented a moral problem to the West, as that treatment has violated every law and moral standard on the books. Some 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in 1948-1949, and since then scores of thousands more have been pushed out by force, their houses demolished or taken over by Israeli Jews (not Israeli Arabs). Under the supposed "peace process" following the signing of the Oslo Agreement in September 1993, a UN Special Report of November 13, 2000, says that "In the past seven years...Israel's confiscation of Palestinian land and construction of settlements and bypass roads for Jewish settlers has accelerated dramatically in breach of Security Council Resolution 242 and of provisions of the Oslo agreements requiring both parties to respect 'the territorial integrity and unity of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.' Since 1993 the settler population in the West Bank and Gaza has doubled to 200,000 and increased to 170,000 in East Jerusalem." The report also describes and condemns the demolitions of Palestinian houses, the diversion of water to Israeli cities and settlements, the policy of closures that has damaged Palestinian social and economic life, and the "widespread violation of their [Palestinian] economic, social and cultural rights" both within Israel and in the occupied territories. It also assails Israel's use of excessive force against Palestinians and hundreds of Intifada killings, "most of them unarmed demonstrators."

Israeli apartheid and terrorism
EDWARD HERMAN
Z Magazine, May 1994

If Jews in France were required to carry identification cards designating them Jews (even though French citizens), could not acquire land or buy or rent homes in most of the country, were not eligible for service in the armed forces, and French law banned any political party or legislation calling for equal rights for Jews, would France be widely praised in the United States as a "symbol of human decency" (New York Times) and paragon of democracy? Would there be a huge protest if France, in consequence of such laws and practices, was declared by a UN majority to be a racist state?

Beyond hypocrisy: Decoding the news
EDWARD HERMAN and DAVID BARSAMIAN
Alternative Radio, 14 July 1993

David Barsamian: In 1973 you and Noam Chomsky wrote a monograph entitled "Counterrevolutionary Violence." It was to be published by Warner Modular Publications, a subsidiary of Warner Communications. 20,000 copies of "Counterrevolutionary Violence" were printed. An ad appeared in the New York Review of Books. What happened to the book?

Israel
EDWARD S. HERMAN
New York Review of Books, 17 March 1988

To the Editors:

In the past few weeks the policies and actions of the Israeli government in the occupied territories have moved to a new level of repression and terror against the Palestinian population. When Palestinian protest demonstrations against 20 years of occupation began in December, the Israeli army responded with lethal force but, after at least 38 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire (The New York Times, January 23, 1988, p. 1), the government officially adopted a new policy: ordering the army and the police to beat Palestinians. "The first priority is to use force, might, beatings," Defense Minister Rabin has said, and Prime Minister Shamir announced that this policy was "decided upon and instituted by the Government as a whole" (The New York Times, January 23, 1988, p. 6). The newspaper Haaretz, reporting on the army's actions in fulfilling this new policy, said that "army soldiers, among them officers, beat residents who were pulled from their homes by force without any reason that could be seen by the eye" (op. cit.). Israeli television showed an army captain who said, "You chase anybody you have to and beat him up, and altogether it works pretty well" (op. cit.).