The knife and the butter
Christopher Hitchens
Washington Afew years ago, after the collapse and destruction of the Allende government in Chile, the word 'destabilisation' entered the political vocabulary. It was meant to describe the range of policies — economic and diplomatic — used by the United States to replace left-leaning governments with rightist ones. (To replace them, that is, short of outright military intervention.) One of the main criticisms made of Jimmy Carter by Ronald Reagan was that he had let this powerful American sword sleep in his hand. From now on, the incoming con- servatives of 1980 indicated, regimes which gave the United States a hard time had bet- ter watch out.
Two years have passed, and there isn't
much to show for the new hard line. The Sandinistas still hold power in Nicaragua, though a number of ways have been found to inconvenience them. Messrs Mitterrand and Papandreou are still coasting along without even the sniff of a tank or the hint of an assault on their currencies. There is only one major government in the world which the State Department and the White House are jointly determined to remove and replace, and that is the government of Menachem Wolfovitch Begin.
On the face of it, this is an absolutely ex- traordinary state of affairs. Begin's govern- ment was until recently the only one in the West which really shared the outlook of the Reaganites. At home, it had appointed Pro- fessor Milton Friedman as its economic ad- viser. Abroad, it took a very stern anti- Soviet line and warned of Western com- placency about the Russian threat. In general, it despised the United Nations, the Third World and all the other means and avenues by which communist influence was advanced 'by proxy'. In El Salvador, Namibia and elsewhere it stood ever ready to lend a hand to the less fastidious elements of American foreign policy. Psychologically, too, Begin's Israel was im- portant to the American Right. Whenever Israel was challenged or threatened, in Iraq or Lebanon or anywhere else, it reacted. American conservatives watched enviously as Israel did what they yearned to do.
Yet now — no mistake about it — Presi- dent Reagan and the bulk of his advisers want this government replaced as quickly as possible with a government headed by a member party of the Socialist International. Irony is too feeble a word for this turn of fortune's wheel. Even granted that Shimon Peres is the most reactionary leader of any
Labour party anywhere in the world, it j5 still true that the Reagan/Shultz plan for the Middle East is cut from exactly the sang cloth as that of the Israeli opposition. This is going to have an unusual effect on the coalition of conservatives who make uP the intellectual basis of Reagan's suPP°11: Until now, the pro-Israeli ultras have work ed harmoniously with their American counterparts on everything from counter- insurgency to nuclear weaponry. But since the Israelis destroyed the Habib settlement in Beirut, and humiliated the White House to the tune of 'Onward Christian Soldiers, there is a deep and definite split betweeein those who think that Israel is a vital ally and those who think it is an arrogant an ungrateful menace. An example of this division is the recent public quarrel between Norman Podhoretz and William Buckley. Mr Podhoretz is the editor of Commentary, which is in turn th.e most distinguished magazine of Jewish Oci: nion in the United States. In the Past fen years, to the chagrin of many Amertc. Jews, Podhoretz has shifted the editorial line of the paper from a diffuse liberalisInd to a hard-nosed cold war conservatism, an has argued against the traditional allegiance of Jewish voters to the Democratic PartYt His most recent books are The Pr,. Danger, an argument for considering "'A Soviet Union as an insatiate aggressor, Why We Were in Vietnam, a case for hay ing that war taken off the list of dithi°5 American enterprises. Mr Buckley began his career as d defender of Senator Joseph McCarthy' be he represents those elements of .tnt American Catholic Church who have become corrupted by ideas about disarni; ment and a new deal for the Third WorL, Through his television programme, Fir": Line, and his magazine, National Revie he has for decades help up the banner of r old Right. There is nothing 'neo' about 111' conservatism — he is the nearest "'be Phalangist in public discourse and in elegantly bemoans the loss of AnterIc- will. In September, Mr Podhoretz wrote anal: tide for Commentary entitled `J'Accuseh; which attracted some stir, and in whichno accused the critics of the 'Peace rtt, Galilee' war of being motivated by ante semitism. Unlike Zola, he was circuntst,, about making the libellous allegation ve0'8' directly, but he did single out Nicholas v Hoffman for his Spectator articles, he Alexander Cockburn for his columns in tt. Village Voice. (I should add, for the sake o candour, that he also attacked le employers, The Nation.) The whole aftle.n, was very shoddily written, and made n° tor tellectual distinction between criticism Israel and dislike of Jews. But not Illan.it people would have guessed that its severer critic would be William Buckley. oh' Mr Buckley confined himself to the e vious, which is that only a fool 011_ paranoid can fail to make the distinction cs between feelings about Jews and P°Iictior towards Israel. He praised PodhoretZ joining the conservative camp, but warned that such arguments were simply incredible and would tend to discredit him. The Na- tional Review, meanwhile, published stern criticism of Begin. On the intellectual level, then, this was the moral equivalent to the dispute inside the Administration. It took place at a time when many senior right-wing commentators, such as William Safire and Joseph Kraft, were also calling for the departure of Begin, or at least Sharon. They did so, quite openly, not for Israel's sake but for America's. Someone must pay for the shame of Chatila, and William Safire, who defended Richard Nixon to the last ditch, was especially explicit in arguing that the sooner somebody resigned the bet- ter for the health of the wider conspiracy.
Yet there has not been one single act of contrition from Israel as a result of all this righteousness. True, an inquiry is to be held, but this is as much the consequence of democratic perturbation in Israel as anything else. On the substantial headings of the Reagan initiative — decolonisation of the West Bank and withdrawal from southern Lebanon as well as Beirut — the Begin coalition is firm. So much does this anger the Washington circles who, until a month ago, armed and encouraged the Israeli invasion, that they haven't yet realis- ed that Shimon Peres would be no dif- ferent. They simply want to show Begin who is boss.
Mr Begin has been through this kind of moral swamp before. He has very often done things which his allies denounce when they become embarrassed, but with which they were happy enough at the time. Presi- dent Reagan and his advisers might do worse than turn up the English edition of Begin's autobiography The Revolt, first published in 1951. Here he describes the notorious massacre of Arabs in the village of Dir Yassin in 1948. This was carried out by his own splinter organisation, the Irgun, and rather ostentatiously denounced by the authorised, establishment forces of the Haganah. Yet, as Mr Begin writes: 'All the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter. The Arabs began fleeing in panic, shouting: "Dir Yassin".' And, as Mr Begin records himself as saying in the same year on the radio: 'Whoever fails to recognise our right to the entire homeland does not recognise our right to any of its territories.'
_ On the first quotation, we may doubt that the Chatila and Sabra massacres were intended as exemplary, in order to induce mass Palestinian flight. We may doubt it, except that doubting it leaves the Israelis in the position of looking merely stupid which they are not. On the second point, there is no room for any doubt at all. Mr Begin means to have the whole of Palestine and he will not abandon a life's work to suit the convenience of President Reagan. So we have, in this mid-term year of grace, the in- triguing spectacle of the President gazing into an Israeli mirror of his own ideology and not liking what he sees. The ageing Caliban will, I think, not dare to break the glass.
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