UNIT 2: (MIS)REPRESENTATIONS - WITH MAEN HAMMAD, RUBA AKKAD, ZEYAD AL NABOLSY, and AUGIE FALLER

These two texts are both indexed to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, whose stated purpose was to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). But they also raise broader issues about truth, narrative, discourse, and propaganda (and the parallels to Israel’s war on Gaza in 2023 are uncanny). Chomsky’s chapter situates the invasion of Lebanon in the context of a history of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the attempt to drive them further and further away from the borders of Israel. He dismantles painstakingly and piece by piece the official Israeli justification for the invasion and the mass killing of civilians. With meticulous scholarship
drawing on dozens of sources, notably from the Israeli Hebrew press (which Chomsky often observes provides a more accurate and complete picture than mainstream Western media), he demonstrates through “a close look at the facts” that the reality of the invasion was systematically distorted in US coverage. In his essay, Said takes on a number of issues, including the ways in which western propaganda about Israel shapes perceptions and the Palestinian narrative is nearly absent from public discourse. Despite saying that US policy-makers are incapable of stating the “simple facts,” Said also insists that: “The facts do not at all speak for themselves, but require a socially acceptable narrative to absorb, sustain and circulate them.” Although broadly in agreement with Chomsky when it comes to his conclusions, he takes issue with him on a number of background assumptions.