AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now!, the program that dares to ask the questions the corporate media won’t. I’m Amy Goodman.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the United States this week, where he met with President Clinton and addressed a joint session of Congress. Today, Netanyahu is in New York to meet with GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole, Mayor Giuliani and Governor George Pataki.

By the way, he has said that by the end of his term, there will be a Hebrew word for deregulation. Netanyahu has spent more time with American politicians than he has with Palestinian leaders. He has yet to sit down with Yasser Arafat. In Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian youths threw stones and bottles at Israeli soldiers after Netanyahu failed to follow through on a date — setting a date for withdrawing troops and asserted Israel’s nonnegotiable claims to Jerusalem. Netanyahu spoke the day before yesterday with President Clinton at a joint news conference, and this is what he had to say about Hebron.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: We have a commitment to maintain security. And the problem in Hebron is a serious problem of security. No government, including the previous government, could act precipitously in Hebron, because the potential for explosion there is immense, and it would be — it could entail the kind of tragedies that we saw in Hebron recently or, for that matter, a few decades ago, in 1929, when the entire Jewish community was massacred. We’ve had terrible violence directed at both sides. Hebron, to us, is also a subject of deep historical attachment. It’s the oldest Jewish community on Earth, 3,500 years old. So this has to be treated carefully. I’m looking into the problem. I explained to President Clinton in some detail our concerns and how we seek to reconcile these two — these two interests, fulfilling commitments, on the one hand, and maintaining security, on the other. This is something I’ll discuss with my Cabinet colleagues, and I assure you that I’ll be in touch with the president as we continue our deliberations.

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington this week at a joint press conference with President Clinton.

We’re now joined by Noam Chomsky from Massachusetts, Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of, well, too many books to mention, but certainly a well-known critic of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Welcome, Professor Chomsky.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Hi. How are you?

AMY GOODMAN: Good. And can you tell us your response to Netanyahu’s comments about Hebron and the occupation?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, you have to — one has to bear in mind that when he or, for that matter, any Israeli leader or commentator here use the term “security,” they mean it in the special racist sense of standard discourse here. It means security for Jews, not security for Arabs. So, for example, after the — there’s been big security problems, undoubtedly, in Hebron for years. The settlers have been rampaging, torturing, killing people. But that’s not called a security problem. A dramatic example was after the Baruch Goldstein massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs near — in Hebron, the massacre of Palestinians. And in fact, measures were taken against Palestinians in response to that. So, Hebron was — the Palestinians were, in Hebron, were subjected to a very severe closure. Their downtown market was destroyed by soldiers, and so on, out of concern for the potential security of the Israeli settlers. And Netanyahu is not differing much from others in Israel or the United States in what he said.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think about the new Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, overall, and what his tenure as prime minister will mean for the Palestinians? Do you think it’s going to be better or worse than Peres and Rabin before him?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Chances are it won’t be radically different. He’s — there has been a difference between the two major political groupings, Labor and Likud, over the years, but it’s mostly a difference in style. In fact, it became clear — I mean, it was clearly made quite clear in the discussions that were published about — in what was published about the discussion between Clinton and Netanyahu. They are supposed to have disagreed, in that Clinton wanted a restriction to expanding existing settlements, whereas Netanyahu refused to rule out establishing new settlements. Well, that’s mostly terminological difference.

In the past, expanding of settlements or thickening settlements has just been a term that’s been used to cover the extension of the whole settlement structure, which the U.S. substantially funds, incidentally. And the U.S. has much preferred, and American commentators have much preferred, the Labor style. It’s kind of more attuned to the norm, the more or less hypocritical norms of respectable discourse, in which you’re not supposed to concede what’s happening. You’re supposed to deny it, and then just notice later that it’s happened. The Likud — Likud has traditionally been more sort of in your face in its way of doing things, harder to ignore, and the U.S. didn’t like that. It led to some tactical differences between the Bush and Shamir administration. They’d much prefer the Labor style.

On the other hand, it’s very likely that Netanyahu will adopt the Labor style. He’s very Americanized. This is the most Americanized political leadership that Israel has ever had. There’s some ironies there, in that their constituency is poorer sectors, nationalist, religious and so on. But they themselves are — not only Netanyahu, but his main foreign adviser, Dore Gold, and others are — well, they could be running in an American campaign, and nobody would notice it particularly. And that’s a little different. And he will, I suspect, adapt probably easily to the preferred American style.

There also are some policy differences. How significant they’ll be, you know, you wait and see. But one of them was, in fact, an important one, pointed out accurately in The New York Times report a couple days ago that reported correctly that Gideon Ezra, who has been very heavily involved in what they call anti-terrorist activities — that is, control of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories — in the Secret Service, he pointed out — expressing Netanyahu’s long-standing views, incidentally, pointed out that the closures, which are devastating to Palestinians, don’t have any security purpose. They are just for the psychological measures for Israelis. Remember that these closures are instituted when there is any disturbance. It can be after a terrorist act by Palestinians, can be after terrorist act by Jews. Either way, the closure is against Palestinians, and other measures of repression are against Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, closure means that the Palestinians are not allowed out of the Occupied Territories?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Sometimes they’re not allowed out of their houses. For example, after the Goldstein massacre, the people of Hebron were subjected to a literal curfew. And that’s been done at other times. For example, a year later, in Hebron again, during the Passover holiday, they wanted to bring — they wanted the 500 or so Jewish settlers there and about 30,000 or 40,000 Israeli tourists to be able to have picnics and, you know, go around the city freely, not being disturbed by the presence of the 120,000 or so Arabs who live there, so they just subjected the inhabitants to a four-day house curfew. There wasn’t even any — in fact, there was plenty of security problems. The settlers and the tourists were rampaging and destroying, and so on and so forth, but that’s not a security problem.

And on the other hand, however, it is important that — it may be important that Netanyahu has held, and his now security adviser Gideon Ezra repeats, that the closures are of no security significance. They are for other reasons, and he’s been against them. A reduction of the closure could be a mild — mildly helpful to Palestinians who are suffering very badly. The economic situation, particularly in Gaza, but even in the West Bank, has deteriorated very substantially since the Oslo agreements were instituted, and this could relieve them somewhat. On the other hand, he’s much less likely to give the kind of rhetorical — vague rhetorical support for potential self-determination and so on. That was more the Labor style.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Chomsky, of course, the issue of terrorism has been raised over the last few days, both by President Clinton and by Netanyahu. It’s been harped on continually at their joint press conference, certainly in Netanyahu’s address to the joint session of Congress. I wanted to ask you about the Cabinet that has just recently been chosen by Netanyahu, and I wanted you to respond to a comment of Mike McCurry, the spokesperson for President Clinton, when I asked him about one of those new Cabinet members.

AMY GOODMAN: If the president is going to be consistent in speaking out on terrorism, doesn’t he feel any need to speak out on the appointment of Ariel Sharon, considering he was the only minister to be kicked out of the Cabinet because he presided over the killing of up to a thousand Lebanese refugees?

PRESS SECRETARY MIKE McCURRY: Well, the history of the Sabra and Shatila events in Lebanon has been well rehearsed. The views of the United States government, which have not changed, were eloquently spoken at the time on those incidents.

AMY GOODMAN: And that was presidential spokesperson Mike McCurry. Professor Chomsky, your response?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, he rather understates the point. Sharon is — his terrorist career goes way back before his decisive role in the Sabra-Shatila massacre. In fact, it goes back to the early 1950s, when he was — he directed the slaughter of about 70 people in the village of Qibya, another couple of dozen in the al-Bureij refugee camp right before that. In the early 1970s, he ran terrorist operations in the Gaza region and northeastern Sinai, which Israel was then occupying. That included expelling about 10,000 farmers into the desert, destroying their homes, bulldozing homes, mosques, graveyards, farmlands, preparing for Jewish settlement. The invasion of Lebanon itself was under his direction, and the terrorist attack on Beirut before the Sabra-Shatila massacre was much worse than Sabra-Shatila. It just wasn’t opposed by the United States, so it’s not considered terrorism. And in fact, throughout the invasion, there was massive terrorism. And it continues. He is a long — I mean, one of the leading terrorists of the region. It’s pretty hard to find a counterpart.

On the other hand, one should bear in mind that, say, Shimon Peres also has quite an extensive career as a leading international terrorist. So, for example, he was responsible for the terrorist bombing of Tunis, in which 75 Palestinian — Lebanese and mostly — Tunisians and Palestinians, mostly Tunisians, were killed. No credible pretext was even offered. The United States, in fact, supported that. He was responsible directly for the violent terrorist operations of the Israeli army in 1985, when they were being forced out of Lebanon by resistance. And they reacted under Peres with extreme violence, reported mostly overseas, but even sometimes here and extensively in the Israeli press, and on and on. So, it’s not that — while Sharon is unique, is unusual, in his dedication to terrorism in a career going back to the early 1950s, he’s not alone.

AMY GOODMAN: Rafael Eitan has also been — has been appointed to the Cabinet. And I guess Israeli papers have just been reporting, exposing the fact that during the Suez War, that he was responsible for ordering the killings of Egyptian POWs and Egyptian civilians.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yes, he’s also an old terrorist, goes back to the 1950s like Sharon. His own position has been perfectly clear. In fact, he made a famous statement some years — I think it must have been about in the early 1980s, when he and Sharon were responsible for pretty violent repression in the territory, that as the Jews continued to settle the West Bank, that the problem would be overcome, and the Palestinians who remain there would be like drugged roaches scurrying around in a bottle. And that expresses his point of view.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Chomsky, we only have a minute to go, but I wanted to end on presidential politics in this country. We often say that on foreign policy, President Clinton and Robert Dole have very little disagreement. What about on the issue of Israel and the Occupied Territories?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Notice that yesterday when Netanyahu repeated what has been, in fact, also the Labor position, that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s capital undivided, the Palestinians would have no rights, Republicans and Democrats jointly got up and applauded. On Israel, they don’t. Clinton, in fact, has been unusual, extreme. It’s been remarked in the Israeli press since he came in, in his extreme hawkish nature of his positions, which is without precedent even in the history of overwhelming U.S. support for extremist Israeli positions.

AMY GOODMAN: You know —

NOAM CHOMSKY: I don’t think Dole would be very different.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting. The only way we get our information on Israel and the Occupied Territories is often — I mean, the large population here in this country — is from the press. We had Ari Shavit on, who had a very critical piece — he’s an Israeli journalist — on Israel’s bombing of the Lebanese refugee camp. And he said, in his Israeli piece — apparently you noted this — that he said, “We have The New York Times in our pocket.” But when The New York Times ran the op-ed piece, they changed it to “the press.”

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, that’s right. They changed it to the — well, they said they had adapted it, and they changed it from The New York Times to the American media. There were other interesting changes.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to — I want to thank you very much for joining us, Professor Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of numerous books on the issue of the Israeli occupation, as well as many others. Thanks for joining us.

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