#clip Militantly pro-Israel views of Jane Fonda, wife of CNN owner Ted Turner. (Chomsky Fateful Triangle 1983) Does Jane Fonda, the wife of Ted Turner, currently influence the views of her husband and the editorial policy of CNN? book Chomsky, Noam The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians <city>Boston, MA <publisher>South End Press <year>1983 <pages>267-270 <quote> Few surpassed Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda in their support for the invasion [Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon]. Well before, Fonda had announced that "I identify with Israel unequivocally." This was on the occasion of her "special prize" from the Hebrew University "for her contribution to freeing the prisoners of Zion in the USSR and for the freedom of immigration for Jews there." Fonda announced on this occasion that she is "making every effort ... to explain to the government and the general population" in the U.S. that "world peace and certainly the security and future of Israel" are threatened by moves in the U.S. "to establish friendly relations with a state such as Saudi Arabia." "I operate according to my conscience, and am attempting to convince President Reagan that the U.S. interest is bound up with friendship with democratic Israel, and not with feudal Saudi Arabia." This is one aspect of her commitment "to continue with my work for human rights." The ceremony took place just at the moment when the Sharon-Milson oppression had reached its peak of violence; see chapter 4, section 5. If her "work for human rights" extended to those being shot, beaten, humiliated a few miles from where she was speaking, the fact remained unrecorded. In July 1982, Fonda and Hayden toured Israel and Lebanon as guests of the Israeli Organization for the Soldier (in effect, the Israeli USO), reaching as far as Beirut, where they "watched the shelling" from Israeli positions. Fonda "expressed her identification with Israel's struggle against Palestinian terror, and her understanding for the Israeli invasion in Lebanon, which would remove the terror, and her support for Israel's struggles for its existence and independence"--all feelings that naturally come to the fore as one travels past (probably not seeing) the rubble of Aim el-Hilweh and witnesses the bombardment of Beirut. "Israel has the right to defend herself from anyone who threatens to destroy her," she said, "and not only when they are attacking her." "Tom Hayden blamed the PLO for causing the 'Peace for Galilee' operation," presumably, by its regular and unprovoked shelling of the Galilee in the preceding year and its adamant refusal to consider a political settlement, despite Israel's enthusiastic efforts in this regard. "The couple Fonda-Hayden expressed their hope that the PLO would indeed leave Beirut; that further bloodshed would be avoided there and that the affair will lead to a solution of the Palestinian problem in the spirit of Camp David," thereby taking their stand in explicit opposition to virtually all the inhabitants of the occupied territories. Hayden laid the blame for the present crisis on the PLO, stating that the PLO, by "its tragic refusal to recognize Israel's existence as being compatible with Palestinian nationalism, by its repeated calls for annihilation of the Zionist state and by its use of terrorism, has made the current Israeli response inevitable"--compare the actual facts, discussed in chapters 3, 4 above--though he said that he did not "turn a blind moral eye to reports of massive and excessive civilian casualties" or the use of cluster bombs, the familiar stance of many liberal supporters of American aggression in Indochina. He further stated that a direct Israeli invasion of Beirut would be "understandable," thus lining up with Begin's Likud against the Labor Party, which opposed this final step; and he held that "Israel won't be able to ... pull back without a PLO withdrawal." As quoted, at least, he did not explain why the refusal of Israel to have any dealings with the political representative of the Palestinians does not justify Palestinian military action against Israel, given that the Israeli invasion is justified by the failure of the PLO to recognize Israel, putting aside the fact, which does not appear to be entirely irrelevant, that the PLO has long agreed to the establishment of a separate state alongside of Israel, a position rejected across the mainstream of Israeli politics. At a luncheon at the Beverly Hilton for the new president of a "fraternal organization which seeks to link American and Israeli Jewry," Fonda gave him "a small menorah she had bought in Hebron [that is, in Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank, the settlement of the Gush Emunim racist-chauvinist fanatics who at that very moment were carrying out the pogroms described in chapter 4] during her visit to the Jewish state." The new president then joined with Vidal Sassoon and a number of Rabbis in a strong endorsement for Hayden for State Assembly, noting the praise he had received from officials of the Begin government and the Labor opposition in Israel, and his views "against the PLO" and for Israel "as a Zionist and Jewish state"--that is, a state based on the principle of discrimination against the ethnic-religious minorities, a principle that is effectively applied in the Jewish state, as we have seen, though the facts have been equally suppressed in the country where one may make tax-free donations to these discriminatory programs. At a meeting in New York after the war, Fonda "announced her unqualified support for Israel and condemned the hypocrisy with regard to Israel in connection with the Lebanon war," which she attributed to anti-Semitism and to the subservience of liberals to third world states, both phenomena of great moment in the United States. "I love Israel," she said, "and I believe that Israel is a loyal ally of the United States," and thus deserving of support, apparently with no further questions asked. "She spoke with great emotion about the prisoners of Zion in the USSR"--but not, as reported, about those who might be called "prisoners of Zion" in another sense of the phrase: in Ansar in Lebanon or in the West Bank villages terrorized by the settlers who were selling her a menorah, Halhul for example (see p. 131). "Israel rarely makes mistakes," she said, "and when Israel makes a mistake--everyone, particularly Jews, shouts and screams." She asked: "Who ever made a criticism of Yasser Arafat, the head of the PLO?"--surely no one in the American press--"and who does he represent anyway?"--a question to which she might have heard some answers on her visit to Hebron, had she chosen to mingle with the local population, apart from her gracious hosts. She concluded "that it is easy to sit here, Jews and non-Jews, and to make criticisms." "But we do not live on the Lebanon border and we were not attacked for 12 years by the Palestinian terrorists," so we have no right to criticize. And by the same logic, those who have not lived in Palestinian refugee camps surely have no right to criticize the PLO. Not everyone in Israel is entranced by these observations, though most of the press, including the left-wing press cited, is quite pleased. The well-known Israeli dove Uri Avineri, for example, writes: "I have learned to despise Jane Fonda, who gained a reputation as a fighter for peace and human rights, and who now sells this name to various fascists, among them Israelis, in order to advance her career and that of her husband...," along with some far harsher comments. A "partial list of events in the vicinity of Hebron," about which Fonda could have learned with ease on her visit there, is presented by Rafik Halabi, who notes that "until now their perpetrators have not been revealed and no one has come to trial for any of them." Included are a 1976 incident in which "tens of [Arab] youths and students from Hebron" were held prisoner in Kiryat Arba, set upon by dogs so that several required hospitalization; the 1976 expulsion of a judge of a Muslim religious court by the Kiryat Arba settlers after they publicly humiliated him; killings, destruction of houses, etc.; alongside of events of the sort described in chapter 4, section 5. Chaim Bermant, an orthodox Jew himself, describes Fonda's Hebron hosts as orthodox Jews for whom "Hate Thy Neighbour" has become a "creed" and a general "philosophy": "The knitted <it>kippa</it> [skullcap; their symbol], in Arab eyes, has become the badge of the bully and the thug, and I'm afraid I'm beginning to see it in the same light myself." <topics> Fonda, Jane: Israel Hayden, Tom: Israel </o>