An Authority Who Does Not Need Power

昨日とおとといの夜に分けて、"The Color Purple"を見た。

It has been known for some time that [LEHI (the Stern Group), the terrorist force commanded by Yitzhak Shamir], an offshoot of Irgun, offered to cooperate with the Nazis against the British. The topic has recently been brought to public attention in Israel, where columnist B. Michael published a LEHI proposal of January 1941 to the Nazis (Ha'aretz, Jan. 31, 1983; also Feb. 6). The proposal expressed its sympathy for the "German conception" of a "New Order in Europe" and offered to cooperate in the formation of a Jewish state “on a national and totalitarian basis, which will establish relations with the German Reich” and protect Nazi interests in the Middle East. (Fateful Trianle, p. 95f)

One problem that [Palestinian workers in Israel] is that they are not permitted to spend the night within Israel. Since employers do not want to pay the costs of shipping workers back and forth, some have adopted the idea of locking them into factories at night, a practice that became public knowledge when several were found burned to death in a locked room after a fire in a small Tel Aviv factory... [T]he facts were not considered worthy of notice by those [in America] who were celebrating Israel’s advance towards democratic socialism. One might ask, incidentally, what the reaction would be if it were learned that Jewish workers were burned to death in a locked room in a Moscow factory or kept in factory detention camps because they are not permitted to spend the night in Russian areas. Praise for Russia’s march toward democratic socialism and its high moral purpose, perhaps? (p. 140)

この本終わるのに、まだ1週間はかかる……。 しばらく前に（シロウト作りの）"Power and Terror, Chomsky in Our Times"を見たけど、厳しい、trenchantな文章とはまったく違って、静かな話ぶりだった。こういう人こそ、"authority"と呼ぶにふさわしい。そう、"power"ではなく、"authority"。