Noam Chomsky speaks at Clark University, Worcester, MA (USA). April 12, 2011. Courtesy of Team Good. TVSBSC

Well, I was saying that I'll start with a couple of general comments on the topic and then we can throw it open to discussion.

It's quite usual these days to draw analogies between South Africa and Israel.

Most of them I think are questionable at best, but there's 1 that isn't discussed much, if at all, that is actually quite valid, I think, 1 analogy.

That has to do with the topic, with a matter of what's nowadays called legitimation and delegitimation.

That was an issue for South Africa for about the last 40 years of the white nationalist regime.

Back in 1958 the South African foreign minister called in the US ambassador to talk to him and said we know that we're becoming a kind of an international pariah.

Everyone's voting against us in the United Nations.

We're right but they don't understand it.

But it doesn't really matter because you and I both understand that there's only 1 vote at the United Nations, namely yours, and as long as you, the United States, back us up, we don't really care what the world thinks.

By the 1970s the United Nations did declare an arms embargo on South Africa.

South Africa by that point was reacted by becoming extremely aggressive and contemptuous towards the international community and in fact even the United States.

So for example, when President Carter and a group of international diplomats were about to present a plan for a South African withdrawal from Namibia, a UN protectorate which they were occupying, sending a population and so on, in violation of UN orders.

Just at that point South Africa attacked a refugee camp in Angola, a Casingo refugee camp killing 800 people, causing international outcry, but they basically didn't care.

Well fortunately for them, Ronald Reagan came along and he strongly supported the apartheid regime and continued to support it right through the 1980s.

That included its aggression and violence in neighboring countries which was quite lethal, killing over a million people, plus what was going on within South Africa.

In fact, US trade with South Africa increased.

That was in violation even of congressional sanctions by that time.

And the justification for it was the war on terror.

The war on terror was not declared by George W.

It was declared by Ronald Reagan when he came into office in 1981 announcing that international terrorism, plague of the modern age, would be the focus of US foreign policy.

So in the case of South Africa the justification was to defend the white nationalist regime against the terrorism of the African National Congress.

In fact, in 1988, the US designated, this is Mandela's ANC, he was of course in prison, The US designated the ANC as 1 of the more notorious terrorist groups in the world.

In fact, Mandela was just taken off the terrorist list about 2 years ago.

He can now come to the United States without a special dispensation.

Around 1989, 1990, the US policy shifted and within 2 or 3 years the white nationalist regime had collapsed and apartheid was over.

This is not the only time that's happened.

Incidentally, that was not the only factor.

Cuba which has played an enormous role in the liberation of black Africa, it's sort of well known by now to scholarship, but not to the general public.

They essentially drove South Africans out of Namibia, and as they had driven them out of Angola, and that was a big factor.

But the main change was just that the U.S.

Policy shifted, And exactly as the South African foreign minister had said 40 years earlier, when the US changed policy the regime collapsed.

Well, the problem for South Africa was its delegitimation in the international community, sustained by US support, so it didn't matter until US support was withdrawn, and the legitimation of its main enemy the African National Congress which by the late 80s had enormous international support Mandela was kind of a secular saint by now.

Those of you who follow Israeli affairs know that that's pretty much what they're discussing now with great concern.

This concern that the country is being delegitimated in the international arena.

At the same it's the Palestinians are being legitimated.

And they have 1 supporter, the United States alone.

In fact that has gone on for a long time.

You probably know that a couple of months ago in February, there was a Security Council resolution calling on Israel to pursue what in fact is official US policy, namely to stop settlement expansion, was vetoed by the United States alone.

That aroused some attention, but it really shouldn't have because the US had been vetoing some resolutions condemning Israel's actions for a long time.

The first 1 was in January 1976, 35 years ago, when the major Arab states brought to the Security Council a resolution calling for a two-state settlement, Israel and a Palestinian state, on the international border, so-called Green Line, and then It took up the wording of UN 242, which everyone recognizes to be the main diplomatic instrument.

So there would have to be added guarantees for the security of every state in the region and its right to exist within secure and recognized borders.

The US veto, again in 1980, will run through the rest of the record, but until the present that's been the pattern.

Things moved out of the Security Council because that was excluded by the US veto, but the General Assembly almost every year had regular votes, 150 to 2 or something like that, and that continues up to the present.

There will be another important vote, very likely, in the coming session of the General Assembly starting next September, as a winter meeting.

What's coming up Then is recognition of Palestinian statehood.

By now, well over 100 countries recognize Palestine.

That's about something like 80 to 90% of the world's population.

In contrast, Kosovo, which is now accepted as in the United Nations is supported by a tiny fraction of that.

But the crucial difference is the US does not join the 80 to 90 percent recognizing Palestine and the US does recognize Kosovo.

So that's basically the South African minister's insight into how world affairs works and he's correct.

But anyway this is going to come up, it's very likely going to come up in September and it'll pose another dilemma for the United States.

Will it stand virtually alone in the international system in blocking the kind of settlement for which there is simply an overwhelming international consensus?

Hard to find anything like this in world affairs.

But for years there's been an overwhelming agreement on approximately the January 1976 Security Council proposal that the US vetoed.

By now it includes essentially everybody, at least formally.

All the non-aligned countries, Europe, Latin America, the Arab League, which has an even more forthcoming proposal, the Organization of Islamic States, which includes Iran, in fact essentially everyone.

The only holdouts are the United States and Israel and the South African ministers principle still applies.

There's only 1 vote, and that's the United States.

The consequence of having overwhelming power.

So the world can say what it wants, but if the United States objects, nobody can do anything about it.

And that, of course, shapes commentary and discussion and so on, at least in the United States, to some extent elsewhere, lesser extent.

Well that's basically the situation and it's as far as Israel's delegitimation is concerned, they're getting much more concerned.

For example, Human Rights Watch, which is a very conservative organization, they don't take strong positions on policy, They recently came out with a declaration which I don't think was even reported here, at least I didn't see it, which called on the United States to terminate aid to Israel, any aid to Israel, up to the level of what Israel spends in the occupied territories because as they point out correctly all of that is in violation of international law.

They also call on the United States government to investigate foundations, organizations, others in the United States which have a tax-free status and are giving aid to anything in Israel that involves discrimination and repression.

So that would include everything in the occupied territories plus more.

That cuts quite a wide swath if you look at it.

They also called upon Europe and of course the United States as well to boycott goods from the settlement and to refuse in any way to participate in activities in supporting Israeli activities in the occupied territories, all of which are illegal.

I mean, that's not been in question for years.

It was actually recognized by the government of Israel back in 1967.

Any transfer of population into the occupied territories is in violation of the Geneva Conventions, core of international humanitarian law as I say that was recognized by Israel's top legal authorities back in 1967, including the Attorney General, including the official in charge of the occupied territories, General Moshe Dayan, who simply pointed out, sure, it's illegal, but states violate international law.

And they can as long as the big boys in Washington support them, basically the South African principle.

Most recently the February 2011 Security Council resolution of which the core was supporting official US policy, that is, calling for an end to settlement expansion.

But the US vetoed it in accord with the traditional pattern.

We'll see what happens this September, but it could be quite significant.

Amnesty International, which also very rarely takes strong positions on policy issues, had already called for an arms embargo on Israel directed to the United States.

Because this is the time of the Gaza invasion, because Israel was using the arms in violation of international law.

They could have but didn't add that the arms that the United States is sending to Israel are also used in violation of U.S.

Domestic law, which conditions arms transfers on, or very specifically, on particular uses only, defense and internal security, and of course, anything.

The Gaza war was obviously not that, nor any of Israel's actions in the occupied territories.

While Israel's reacting to all of this, pretty much the way South Africa did, a lot of hysteria, a lot of anger circling the wagons, and carrying out actions, very brutal and arrogant actions, which are almost, it's almost as if they're being carried out in purposeful defiance and contempt of international opinion, like the Gaza attack or the attack on the flotilla last May, which Israeli commandos landed on a ship in international waters that was trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza and killed 9 people, including an American citizen.

Which Both of those actions caused an international furor.

But again, the 1 vote that matters didn't go along with international opinion.

And In fact, if you read the Israeli press, they're quite surprised that there is any international reaction, because they're so obviously right in everything they do, just like South Africa.

Since they're obviously right, it must be that the world is therefore wrong, and there has to be some explanation, you know, anti-Semitism or whatever it might be.

And the internal reactions in Israel are kind of like South Africa too, imposing pretty harsh legislation, Some of it so pretty extreme, so much so that the head of the Israeli Bar Association, Shlomo Cohen, a pretty conservative figure, recently had an article lamenting what he called Israel's drift to fascism.

He ran through the legislation that led him to that conclusion.

In many respects, it is reliving the pattern of South Africa, particularly the reaction to the delegitimation that they perceived in the sanctions movement, the boycotts, other protests, and correspondingly, the legitimation of their enemy, which will come to a head in just a few months in the case of Israel-Palestine, which will be a sensitive and interesting moment.

Well, what are the options given these circumstances?

1 option is that the US will shift policy, as it did in the case of South Africa, and decide to join the world.

That is, to join into the longstanding, quite overwhelming international consensus and accept a two-state settlement.

The general form of that settlement is pretty well known.

You can argue about details, but there are basic guidelines are quite clear.

And in fact, it actually came quite close to realization once.

There has been 1 month in the last 35 years when a US president was willing to tolerate a settlement in terms of the international consensus.

That was Bill Clinton's last month in office, January 2001.

Clinton, there had been negotiations in the summer before at Camp David and they broke down.

And Clinton recognized that the position that the US and Israel had proposed there could not be accepted by any Palestinians, no matter how moderate.

So in December of 2000, Clinton proposed what he called his parameters, the general guidelines for settlement, which were somewhat vague but more forthcoming.

He then made a speech in which he said that both sides had accepted the parameters, both sides had reservations.

The 2 sides, Israel-Palestine met in Taba, Egypt in January 2001.

We have no very detailed record of those negotiations.

There was international observers, detailed Israeli sources and so on.

And they came pretty close to a settlement, close enough so that in their last press conference, jointly the group said that if they had a little more time, they could have settled everything, all the details.

Well, Israel called off the negotiations prematurely and didn't continue.

There were informal high-level negotiations that did continue, came out with proposals.

The course was presented in Geneva in December 2003 by the 2 sides.

It was welcomed by the world, the Europeans sent envoys and so on.

Israel rejected it, the US didn't even, refused even to comment on it, barely mentioned here in the press.

But that was an extremely detailed proposal.

You can think it was right or wrong, you can argue about it, but the facts are it was very close to the international consensus that has been accepted for a long time and that happens to be exactly in accord with international law.

It's been reiterated over and over, most recently even authoritatively, by the International Court of Justice with the US justice agreeing in a separate declaration a couple of years ago, 2004.

1 possibility is that the US will make the same kind of move that it finally made in the case of South Africa, and then would come the task of implementing it, but it's really not a big problem.

Now, most of the discussion of this topic Assumes that there's a choice between 2 options 1 the 1 I just described and another that Israel takes over the whole territory And then the Palestinians carry out a civil rights struggle internal to the now unified Israel-Palestine on the anti-apartheid struggle.

You look at most of the debate about the topic, that's what it is.

Israel, in Israel it's objected that this would create what they call a demographic problem, meaning too many non-Jews in a Jewish state, so that'll be a problem.

Two-state settlement is out, so we'll have a one-state settlement in which we'll have an anti-apartheid struggle.

This discussion, it's omitting the third option, the realistic option.

Israel will never agree to this, nor is there any reason to expect them to.

What they'll do is the third option, namely continue doing exactly what they're doing.

And if they have US support, they can continue to do it.

And we know what that is, because it's happening under our eyes.

Since the early 90s, the US and Israel, and just about everything Israel does, should be called the US-Israel because they work in tandem and Israel cannot go beyond what the US will support and permit it to do.

So there's, the US and Israel since the early 90s have been committed to separating Gaza from the West Bank in strict violation of the Oslo agreements which declare them to be a territorial unity.

It's been done in many ways, closures and so on and so forth.

So if a person in Gaza, say it's a young person in Gaza who wants to study in West Bank University, they can't do it.

If somebody in Gaza needs medical attention that they can get in a Jerusalem hospital, they can't go.

If somebody wants to see their family, you know, not very many miles away, they can't do it.

The second, with regard to the West Bank, is to take over Israel.

The US and Israel want to take over essentially what's valuable in the West Bank and to let the rest kind of rot.

And we know exactly what it is because you can see it happening.

And in fact, it's the plans are developed, have been developing step by step over the past 20 years.

Sometimes it's called the Sharon Plan, sometimes something else, but it's always essentially the same.

Israel takes over everything that's inside what's called the separation wall.

It's a wall which snakes through the West Bank, leaves on the Israeli side, arable land, major water resources, the pleasant suburbs of the major cities like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, takes over the Jordan Valley, which essentially imprisons the rest, and then cuts corridors through the remaining area, 1 east of Jerusalem, and I should say, Jerusalem is now about 5 times the size of what it was in 1967 annexed illegally in violation of Security Council orders.

So it's a huge greater Jerusalem than corridor extending to the east, which pretty much bisects the West Bank.

And 2 other corridors in the north, which separate the rest.

And what's left amounts to roughly 50% of the West Bank.

And 42% at the moment probably will expand.

The rest, if Israel just takes that over, there's no demographic problem, because that region is kept free of Arabs, virtually.

I mean, there's a couple of scattered Arab settlements, but essentially free of Arabs, So no demographic problem.

Israel gets the valuable territory, the valuable land, whatever it likes.

And the Palestinians are left in unviable cantons, pretty much separated from 1 another.

That's the alternative to having a two-state settlement.

Now, notice I say settlement, not solution.

I don't think a two-state settlement is or should be the end of the road.

It could lay the basis for what seem to me better settlements, but you have to get there in stages.

You can't just say, I want the world to be the way I like it.

And there are possible ways to get there, but I have heard nothing that has any option but this 1.

Join the world on this issue or won't it?

There are many factors that keep the United States separate from world opinion, just as there were in the case of South Africa, many other issues.

The United States is an outlier and it's so powerful that it gets its way, but it gets its way in a violation of a global opinion on many, many issues.

That relates, I'll just say 1 word about this, to another major phenomenon that you're all familiar with, major events that have been taking place in the past few months, the so-called Arab Spring, the democracy uprisings in the Arab world.

The background is not discussed much, but it's pretty easy to find out.

So take, say, Egypt, the most important country, the biggest, most significant, and so on.

The uprising, the January 25th movement, was led by a group of, initiated by a group of fairly young, kind of tech-savvy professionals, pretty much, who called themselves the April 6th Movement.

Because on April 6th, 2008, there was a major labor action organized by what has been quite a militant labor movement at the Mahalla textile conglomerate, 1 of the biggest industrial conglomerates in Egypt.

They were going to have a labor action calling for minimally decent working conditions, wages, and so on.

And along with it were to be solidarity actions in the cities.

Well, that was crushed by force, crushed by the US-backed dictator, Mubarak.

So therefore, we don't know about it, but they know about it.

And that was reflected when the popular movement burst out again a few months ago, led by the April 6th movement.

The same is true in Tunisia and the other places where things are happening.

In any event, in the past couple of months, it's been quite spectacular.

There've been major developments in the Arab world.

There are moves towards, there are efforts to try to construct some kind of, to overthrow the brutal, repressive regimes, and to bring about some sort of degree of freedom and democracy.

And if you look closely, you'll find that the U.S.

Is pretty isolated on this, to an extent, along with Western Europe.

There happens to be a very good reason why the United States and its allies cannot tolerate a democracy in the Arab countries.

Just take a look at the polls of Arab public opinion.

Now, they don't get reported in the press here, but they're known, and surely planners know them.

The polls are taken by the most prestigious US polling organizations, they're released by major institutions, brooking institutions, so on.

So they're perfectly public and certainly in the eyes of planners are thinking about them.

And what do you find when you look at them?

Well, say take Egypt again, the most important country.

In Egypt, 90% of the public thinks the worst threat they face is the United States and Israel, which they don't distinguish much from the United States, rightly.

About 80% think the region would be better off and more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons.

A small percentage, roughly 10% in the region, think that Iran is a threat.

These figures extend in a little variation over almost the entire region.

Well, if you have anything like a functioning democracy, then public opinion is going to be reflected in policy.

That's what a democracy is supposed to be.

So the idea that there could be a democratic uprising in the Arab world is just a nightmare for Western planners.

And they will do whatever they can to prevent it.

And if you look closely, that's pretty much what's happening.

Israel has relied on the Arab dictators to suppress their populations and to enter into arrangements with it.

And if public opinion manifests itself in policy, That's going to be a huge problem and they know it.

That's why they're so strongly opposed to the democratic uprisings.

The same is true here, though it's not put that way.

Well, that's going to have an effect too.

So far the uprisings have been fairly well controlled.

They've changed the names but not really the regimes.

So say in Egypt the military still runs the show.

But probably you can't keep the lid on that forever.

We don't read about it, but certainly planners know it.

So again, go back about 50 years, and President Eisenhower in the late 50s was discussed in internal discussions.

It's all been declassified for years, so it's public.

He discussed with his staff what he called a campaign of hatred against us in the Arab world, and not from the governments, they're more or less okay, but from the people.

And right at that time, the National Security Council, which is the main planning body, they came out with a memorandum discussing the Arab world, and they explained it.

They said there's a perception in the Arab world that the United States supports the harsh and brutal dictators and prevents democracy and development, and that we do this because we want to make sure we can maintain control over their energy resources.

And I went on to say that the perception is more or less accurate, and furthermore, that's pretty much what we should be doing.

And so it continues right to the present.

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Noam Chomsky: Israel and Palestine (Full Lecture)