*[Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His most recent book is "Masters of Mankind." His web site is www.chomsky.info. The views expressed in this commentary are solely his.]
After the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, which killed 12 people including the editor and four other cartoonists, and the murder of four Jews at a kosher supermarket shortly after, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared "a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity."
Millions
of people demonstrated in condemnation of the atrocities, amplified by a
chorus of horror under the banner "I am Charlie." There were eloquent
pronouncements of outrage, captured well by the head of Israel's Labor
Party and the main challenger for the upcoming elections, Isaac Herzog,
who declared that "Terrorism is terrorism. There's no two ways about
it," and that "All the nations that seek peace and freedom [face] an
enormous challenge" from brutal violence.
Noam Chomsky
The
crimes also elicited a flood of commentary, inquiring into the roots of
these shocking assaults in Islamic culture and exploring ways to
counter the murderous wave of Islamic terrorism without sacrificing our
values. The New York Times described the assault as a "clash of
civilizations," but was corrected by Times columnist Anand Giridharadas,
who tweeted
that it was "Not & never a war of civilizations or between them.
But a war FOR civilization against groups on the other side of that
line. #CharlieHebdo."
The scene in Paris was described vividly in the New York Times
by veteran Europe correspondent Steven Erlanger: "a day of sirens,
helicopters in the air, frantic news bulletins; of police cordons and
anxious crowds; of young children led away from schools to safety. It
was a day, like the previous two, of blood and horror in and around
Paris."
Erlanger
also quoted a surviving journalist who said that "Everything crashed.
There was no way out. There was smoke everywhere. It was terrible.
People were screaming. It was like a nightmare." Another reported a
"huge detonation, and everything went completely dark." The scene,
Erlanger reported, "was an increasingly familiar one of smashed glass,
broken walls, twisted timbers, scorched paint and emotional
devastation."
These last quotes,
however -- as independent journalist David Peterson reminds us -- are
not from January 2015. Rather, they are from a report by Erlanger on April 24 1999,
which received far less attention. Erlanger was reporting on the NATO
"missile attack on Serbian state television headquarters" that "knocked
Radio Television Serbia off the air," killing 16 journalists.
"NATO and American officials defended the attack," Erlanger reported,
"as an effort to undermine the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic
of Yugoslavia." Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told a briefing in
Washington that "Serb TV is as much a part of Milosevic's murder machine
as his military is," hence a legitimate target of attack.
There
were no demonstrations or cries of outrage, no chants of "We are RTV,"
no inquiries into the roots of the attack in Christian culture and
history. On the contrary, the attack on the press was lauded. The highly
regarded U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, then envoy to Yugoslavia,
described the successful attack on RTV as "an enormously important and, I
think, positive development," a sentiment echoed by others.
There
are many other events that call for no inquiry into western culture and
history -- for example, the worst single terrorist atrocity in Europe
in recent years, in July 2011, when Anders Breivik, a Christian
ultra-Zionist extremist and Islamophobe, slaughtered 77 people, mostly
teenagers.
Also
ignored in the "war against terrorism" is the most extreme terrorist
campaign of modern times -- Barack Obama's global assassination campaign
targeting people suspected of perhaps intending to harm us some day,
and any unfortunates who happen to be nearby. Other unfortunates are
also not lacking, such as the 50 civilians reportedly killed in a U.S.-led bombing raid in Syria in December, which was barely reported.
One
person was indeed punished in connection with the NATO attack on RTV --
Dragoljub Milanović, the general manager of the station, who was
sentenced by the European Court of Human Rights to 10 years in prison
for failing to evacuate the building, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia considered
the NATO attack, concluding that it was not a crime, and although
civilian casualties were "unfortunately high, they do not appear to be
clearly disproportionate."
The
comparison between these cases helps us understand the condemnation of
the New York Times by civil rights lawyer Floyd Abrams, famous for his
forceful defense of freedom of expression. "There are times for
self-restraint," Abrams wrote,
"but in the immediate wake of the most threatening assault on
journalism in living memory, [the Times editors] would have served the
cause of free expression best by engaging in it" by publishing the
Charlie Hebdo cartoons ridiculing Mohammed that elicited the assault.
Abrams
is right in describing the Charlie Hebdo attack as "the most
threatening assault on journalism in living memory." The reason has to
do with the concept "living memory," a category carefully constructed to
include Their crimes against us while scrupulously excluding Our crimes against them -- the latter not crimes but noble defense of the highest values, sometimes inadvertently flawed.
This
is not the place to inquire into just what was being "defended" when
RTV was attacked, but such an inquiry is quite informative (see my A New
Generation Draws the Line).
There are many other illustrations of the interesting category "living memory." One is provided by the Marine assault against Fallujah in November 2004, one of the worst crimes of the U.S.-UK invasion of Iraq.
The assault opened with occupation of Fallujah General Hospital,
a major war crime quite apart from how it was carried out. The crime
was reported prominently on the front page of the New York Times,
accompanied with a photograph depicting how "Patients and hospital
employees were rushed out of rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit
or lie on the floor while troops tied their hands behind their backs."
The occupation of the hospital was considered meritorious and justified:
it "shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the
militants: Fallujah General Hospital, with its stream of reports of
civilian casualties."
Evidently, this is no assault on free expression, and does not qualify for entry into "living memory."
There
are other questions. One would naturally ask how France upholds freedom
of expression and the sacred principles of "fraternity, freedom,
solidarity." For example, is it through the Gayssot Law, repeatedly
implemented, which effectively grants the state the right to determine
Historical Truth and punish deviation from its edicts? By expelling
miserable descendants of Holocaust survivors (Roma) to bitter
persecution in Eastern Europe? By the deplorable treatment of North
African immigrants in the banlieues of Paris where the Charlie Hebdo
terrorists became jihadis? When the courageous journal Charlie Hebdo
fired the cartoonist Siné on grounds that a comment of his was deemed to
have anti-Semitic connotations? Many more questions quickly arise.
Anyone
with eyes open will quickly notice other rather striking omissions.
Thus, prominent among those who face an "enormous challenge" from brutal
violence are Palestinians, once again during Israel's vicious assault on Gaza in
the summer of 2014, in which many journalists were murdered, sometimes
in well-marked press cars, along with thousands of others, while the
Israeli-run outdoor prison was again reduced to rubble on pretexts that
collapse instantly on examination.
Also
ignored was the assassination of three more journalists in Latin
America in December, bringing the number for the year to 31. There have
been more than a dozen journalists killed in Honduras
alone since the military coup of 2009 that was effectively recognized
by the U.S. (but few others), probably according post-coup Honduras the
per capita championship for murder of journalists. But again, not an
assault on freedom of press within living memory.
It
is not difficult to elaborate. These few examples illustrate a very
general principle that is observed with impressive dedication and
consistency: The more we can blame some crimes on enemies, the greater
the outrage; the greater our responsibility for crimes -- and hence the
more we can do to end them -- the less the concern, tending to oblivion
or even denial.
Contrary to the
eloquent pronouncements, it is not the case that "Terrorism is
terrorism. There's no two ways about it." There definitely are two ways
about it: theirs versus ours. And not just terrorism.
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