Noam Chomsky's
Fateful Triangle shows me that Supreme Court Justice embarrassment is not new.
Arthur Goldberg was showing an example as a sorry excuse for a human being, he covers Samantha Powers ground as a sad, regulatory capture sort of example, for U.N. Ambassador too...
.> Some attempted more original arguments, for example, Arthur Goldberg, who offered this one:
> .> .> Free from the illusion, now demonstrated to be without foundation, that the PLO has the coherence, strength and support to act as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people,” and liberated from its terroristic acts and blackmail against Palestinian leaders, inhabitants of the West Bank, and other Arab countries, it should be possible to conclude an autonomy agreement with all deliberate speed.232
.> It is not entirely clear who is said to be now “free” and “liberated” in this semi-coherent statement, but the idea appears to be that by successfully employing its overwhelming military might to smash the PLO, Israel has demonstrated that the PLO cannot claim to represent the Palestinian people, specifically, those in Lebanon and the occupied territories who support it even though it is not the world’s fourth strongest military power....
- 232. “Lebanese Hail Israel’s Action as Liberation”; see note 134.
.> ... With a bit more understanding of the facts, and a rather different moral stance, Meir Pail put the point in these terms, presenting what he suggests may have been “the real aim of the invasion,” conveyed in the following “message of vital import to the Palestinians” in the occupied territories:
> .> .> “Beware you Palestinians living under Israeli rule! All that we have done to the refugee camps, the cities and towns and villages of south Lebanon, on the coast of the Mediterranean between Rashidiye, Tyre and Beirut we can do to you in Gaza, Judea, Samaria...and even perhaps in Um-el-Faham and Nazareth [within Israel proper]. And we can do that now, especially, given that there is no P.L.O. or any other legitimate organized body that could be seen to represent the Palestinian cause. If you will bend down and follow our rules, it would be best that you accept the limited autonomy offered you as defined by Begin-Sbaron-Milson; if not, your fate will be that of Rashidiye (near Tyre), Ein-Hilwa (near Sidon), or Beirut.”233
- 233. Meir Pail, “A Military Analysis.”
.> This “message” is a more literate version of what Goldberg is apparently trying to say, stripped of the deceptive rhetoric that only barely conceals the true meaning of his words.
.> The former Supreme Court Justice and UN Ambassador has produced a most impressive contribution to contemporary thought: if some political entity can be destroyed by force, that demonstrates its illegitimacy and the right of the conqueror to determine the fate of those whom it had pretended to represent. This idea has not previously been advanced, to my knowledge, though its usefulness is evident; for example, to justify the Nazi conquests. Goldberg’s article would also delight structuralist literary analysts with its intriguing formal properties. Thus it begins by berating the media for joining the PLO in speaking of “an invasion” when “Israeli troops encircle Beirut” (how odd for them to do so), and it ends, with charming consistency, by referring to Israel’s “justified invasion of Lebanon.”
After reading this it's hard not to wonder if Arthur Goldberg just died of shame, or dedicated his life to saintly causes after this. But after seeing blurbs about the corrupt Supreme Court Justices of today it's easy to imagine them as brass-balled shameless psycopaths, murder-loving sycophants or something... Sometimes it's hard to follow Chomsky's sentences with the layers of sarcasm, it must be how he deals with the scorn and anger...
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