From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   Noam Chomsky: Israel’s Actions in Palestine are “Much Worse Than   
   Apartheid” in South Africa   
   Web ExclusiveAUGUST 08, 2014   
      
   Noam Chomsky   
   world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author. He is   
   Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,   
   where he has taught for more than 50 years.   
   Part 2 of our conversation with famed linguist and political dissident   
   Noam Chomsky on the crisis in Gaza, U.S. support for Israel, apartheid   
   and the BDS movement. “In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is   
   doing is much worse than apartheid,” Chomsky says. “To call it   
   apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by 'apartheid' you mean   
   South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied   
   Territories is much worse. There’s a crucial difference. The South   
   African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their   
   workforce. … The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the   
   Occupied Territories is totally different. They just don’t want them.   
   They want them out, or at least in prison.”   
      
   Click here to watch Part 1 of the interview.   
      
   AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and   
   Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. And we’re continuing our conversation   
   with Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist,   
   author, has written many books, among them, one of the more recent   
   books, Gaza in Crisis. I want to turn right now to Bob Schieffer, the   
   host of CBS’s Face the Nation. This is how he closed a recent show.   
      
   BOB SCHIEFFER: In the Middle East, the Palestinian people find   
   themselves in the grip of a terrorist group that is embarked on a   
   strategy to get its own children killed in order to build sympathy for   
   its cause—a strategy that might actually be working, at least in some   
   quarters. Last week I found a quote of many years ago by Golda Meir,   
   one of Israel’s early leaders, which might have been said yesterday:   
   “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children,” she said, “but we   
   can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”   
   AMY GOODMAN: That was CBS journalist Bob Schieffer. Noam Chomsky, can   
   you respond?   
      
   NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, we don’t really have to listen to CBS, because we   
   can listen directly to the Israeli propaganda agencies, which he’s   
   quoting. It’s a shameful moment for U.S. media when it insists on   
   being subservient to the grotesque propaganda agencies of a violent,   
   aggressive state. As for the comment itself, the Israel comment which   
   he—propaganda comment which he quoted, I guess maybe the best comment   
   about that was made by the great Israeli journalist Amira Hass, who   
   just described it as “sadism masked as compassion.” That’s about the   
   right characterization.   
      
   AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to also ask you about the U.N.’s role and the   
   U.S.—vis-à-vis, as well, the United States. This is the U.N. high   
   commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, criticizing the U.S. for   
   its role in the Israeli assault on Gaza.   
      
   NAVI PILLAY: They have not only provided the heavy weaponry, which is   
   now being used by Israel in Gaza, but they’ve also provided almost $1   
   billion in providing the Iron Domes to protect Israelis from the   
   rocket attacks, but no such protection has been provided to Gazans   
   against the shelling. So I am reminding the United States that it’s a   
   party to international humanitarian law and human rights law.   
   AMY GOODMAN: That was Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner or human   
   rights. Noam, on Friday, this was the point where the death toll for   
   Palestinians had exceeded Operation Cast Lead; it had passed 1,400.   
   President Obama was in the White House, and he held a news conference.   
   He didn’t raise the issue of Gaza in the news conference, but he was   
   immediately asked about Gaza, and he talked about—he reaffirmed the   
   U.S. support for Israel, said that the resupply of ammunition was   
   happening, that the $220 million would be going for an expanded Iron   
   Dome. But then the weekend took place, yet another attack on a U.N.   
   shelter, on one of the schools where thousands of Palestinians had   
   taken refuge, and a number of them were killed, including children.   
   And even the U.S. then joined with the U.N. in criticizing what Israel   
   was doing. Can you talk about what the U.S. has done and if you really   
   do see a shift right now?   
      
   NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, let’s start with what the U.S. has done, and   
   continue with the comments with the U.N. Human Rights Commission.   
   Right at that time, the time of the quote you gave over the radio—that   
   you gave before, there was a debate in the Human Rights Commission   
   about whether to have an investigation—no action, just an   
   investigation—of what had happened in Gaza, an investigation of   
   possible violations of human rights. “Possible” is kind of a joke. It   
   was passed with one negative vote. Guess who. Obama voted against an   
   investigation, while he was giving these polite comments. That’s   
   action. The United States continues to provide, as Pillay pointed out,   
   the critical, the decisive support for the atrocities. When what’s   
   called Israeli jet planes bomb defenseless targets in Gaza, that’s   
   U.S. jet planes with Israeli pilots. And the same with the high-tech   
   munition and so on and so forth. So this is, again, sadism masked as   
   compassion. Those are the actions.   
      
   AMY GOODMAN: What about opinion in the United States? Can you talk   
   about the role that it plays? We saw some certainly remarkable   
   changes. MSNBC had the reporter Ayman Mohyeldin, who had been at Al   
   Jazeera, very respected. He had been, together with Sherine Tadros, in   
   2008 the only Western reporters in Gaza covering Operation Cast Lead,   
   tremendous experience in the area. And he was pulled out by MSNBC. But   
   because there was a tremendous response against this, with—I think   
   what was trending was “Let Ayman report”—he was then brought back in.   
   So there was a feeling that people wanted to get a sense of what was   
   happening on the ground. There seemed to be some kind of opening. Do   
   you sense a difference in the American population, how—the attitude   
   toward what’s happening in Israel and the Occupied Territories?   
      
   NOAM CHOMSKY: Very definitely. It’s been happening over some years.   
   There was a kind of a point of inflection that increased after Cast   
   Lead, which horrified many people, and it’s happening again now. You   
   can see it everywhere. Take, say, The New York Times. The New York   
   Times devoted a good part of their op-ed page to a Gaza diary a couple   
      
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