Jay Knott – Faithful Circle – A response to Noam Chomsky’s book ‘Fateful Triangle’
By Guest Post • Sep 17th, 2010 at 9:59 • Category: Analysis, Biography, Israel, Middle East Issues, Newswire, Palestine, Religion, Zionism
Hypotheses and TestsJay Knott, August 2010
1. Hypotheses
“Dear Mr. President: We write to affirm our support for our strategic partnership with Israel, and encourage you to continue to do before international organizations such as the United Nations. The United States has traditionally stood with Israel because it is in our national security interest and must continue to do so. Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East and a vibrant democracy. Israel is also a partner to the United States on military and intelligence issues in this critical region. That is why it is our national interest to support Israel at a moment when Israel faces multiple threats from Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the current regime in Iran.” – Jewish Virtual Library [1].
This is the beginning of the resolution passed by the US Senate on June 21 2010, supporting Israel’s attack on a convoy of unarmed aid ships headed toward Gaza, which killed nine people.
It begins with four sentences, each one of which asserts that Israel is a strategic asset of the USA. But if Israel is such an ally, why the need to emphasise it? It’s as if the senators are arguing with someone who says that Israel is NOT as useful as we tend to believe. Whoever that is, it’s not Noam Chomsky. Both left-wing thinkers like Chomsky and establishment politicians reinforce the idea that US interests coincide with those of Israel, though they differ on how good US interests are. Sometimes, when people say something too stridently, it is because they secretly know that it is false.
This review was sparked off by an online critique of Noam Chomsky’s views on the Middle East by Jeff Blankfort, a reply to it, and the internet discussions around them [2], [3]. Several contributors to these discussions come from traditional anti-racist left-wing backgrounds, but, unlike most of the left, have taken it to its logical conclusion, opposing Jewish power as the most important form of ethnically-based oppression in the West today.
Chomsky fan Hammond [3] urges Blankfort’s supporters to read Chomsky’s “Fateful Triangle” [4]. So I did. I am not impressed by Chomsky’s fame nor by the book’s approximately two thousand references. I look at the arguments.
Professor Chomsky made one of the greatest discoveries in twentieth-century science, the language instinct, in a 1959 critique of psychologist B. F. Skinner [5]. Because he’s a genius, we expect more of him than unsubstantiated platitudes. But everyone makes mistakes. Einstein spent the better part of his career trying to explain why the universe is not expanding, and Chomsky didn’t figure out that there are genes for grammar [6].
He flayed Skinner on the vagueness of his terms, and for changing the meaning of words when convenient. Chomsky therefore knows that vagueness makes a hypothesis untestable, and therefore unscientific.
Chomsky brought clarity to the science of language development, but he is surprisingly contradictory on the politics of the Middle East, for a man with such a scientific, logical brain. For example, on the one hand, he denies the importance of the Israel Lobby. After all, if Israel is helping US ‘elites’ maintain their ‘hegemony’ in the ‘region’, they would hardly need a lobby to remind them of it. Universities and co-operatives are tentatively discussing a boycott of Israel. Chomsky argues against a boycott of Israeli produce, because the Lobby would call us ‘hypocrites’, unless we boycott the US too [7]. So he thinks this ‘unimportant’ Lobby could undermine a boycott of Israel by mere accusations.
By page 4, Chomsky already makes it clear that he defends the Jewish State. He criticizes its current policies, which he says are caused by American Zionists, who cause its “moral degeneration and ultimate destruction”. In my pamphlet “The Mass Psychology of Anti-Fascism” [8], I sarcastically cited Stephen Zunes [9] for claiming America was responsible for pushing poor little Israel into Lebanon in 2006. I didn’t realize how close Zunes’s attempt to make excuses for Jewish murderers was to Chomsky’s position until I read ‘Fateful Triangle’. Chomsky and his followers want us to believe that Israeli ethnic cleansing has ‘degenerated’ since 1948 because of American influence. This means the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948 was morally superior to those in Lebanon in 1982, but the Hannukah slaughter of 2008-9 was worse.
He says US ’support’ has blocked Israel trying more moral policies, to the ‘despair’ of progressive Israeli Jews, on page 442. There is a cruder version of this ‘corruption’ narrative. It is part of the almost universally believed story of Jews as eternal vicitims. It enables Jewish Americans to support apartheid whilst thinking of themselves as liberals. They blackmail the left into accepting a much softer attitude toward Jewish supremacy than toward white identity.
But Chomsky’s main weakness is his failure to scientifically test his assertion that Israel is an ally of the USA. On page 3, without evidence, he says that US policy favors “a Greater Israel that will dominate the region in the interests of American power”.
To this end, Chomsky assumes that Arab nationalism is anti-West, whereas Jewish nationalism is pro-West. The former was allied to the Soviet Union. But this is at root a circular argument – the US supports Israel because it is an ally, and Israel is an ally because the US supports it. The reason some Arab leaders temporarily turned to Russia is because they were rejected by America, and the main reason for that is the influence of Israel. Chomsky confuses cause and effect.
The phrase ‘control of the oil’ is thrown around by Chomsky and his circle as liberally as the word ‘region’. It’s a vague leftist feel-good dumbing-down designed to prevent us from thinking through exactly what ‘control’ means, why precisely cruise missiles are useful to oil companies, and if killing Palestinian children helps US interests.
At this point, I should define ‘US interests’. I mean the interests of the US capitalist class. Unconditional support for Israel is obviously against the interests of the majority of Americans, who belong to the proletariat. But in that respect, it doesn’t differ from other unethical US foreign policies. What differentiates Zionism is that it is opposed to the interests of most of the ruling class too.
I used a Marxist phrase there. Chomsky prefers saying ‘elites’ rather than ‘bourgeoisie’ in his bestselling books. Even if the ‘elites’ really do ‘perceive’ it is in US interests to throw seven million dollars a day into a black hole, they are mistaken, and Palestine Solidarity has the task of explaining that to them and to those who work and vote for them.
Chomsky claims that the US supports Israel because Israel supports US war crimes – “Israel showed how to treat third-world upstarts properly” (page 29). This puts the cart before the horse. Right after World War II, Zionists were third-world upstarts themselves, engaged in terrorism in Palestine against an imperialist power. President Truman supported these upstarts, and later, when they were no longer upstarts, president Eisenhower supported upstarts against them.
This shows two things:
1. America doesn’t automatically oppose upstarts, and
2. Israel persuaded America to support its fight against upstarts which
threaten Israel, rather than America supporting Israel because it
combats upstarts which oppose America.
Israel has never fired a shot in the defense of American interests. But its friends in the media make it look as if the two countries’ enemies are the same, by amalgamating very different Arab and Muslim causes and parties. Most of these oppose Israel in principle – only a very small subset are inherently anti-American. It is in America’s interests to divide them. It is in Israel’s interests to prevent this. And it is in humanity’s interest to divorce America and Israel.
Chomsky’s claim to be a Zionist means a binational state, with the right of ’self-determination’ of the two nations within Palestine. It’s clear which of the nations would dominate the other, but Chomsky appears to be unaware of this.
To his credit, on page 442 of his book, Chomsky predicted the defeat of the Israeli Defense Forces, which didn’t happen until seven years later, in Lebanon, in 2006. The Gaza flotilla massacre of 2010 was another disastrous error for Israel, leading to a split with Turkey, formerly its most important ally in the ‘region’. There is an opportunity to start to undermine Zionism, the only remaining example of serious racial oppression in the Western world. Is Chomsky on board?
Contradicting his view that Israel obeys America, Chomsky refers to the normal state of politics in the USA as ‘complete obedience’ to Zionist opposition to freedom of speech, on page 337, under the heading ‘The West Falls Into Line’. He also says how the allegation of ‘anti-semitism’ is used to blackmail the elite political spectrum in Western countries into supporting Jewish supremacy in the Middle East, but then he drops the ball, reiterating hackneyed rhetoric about US policy. It’s not really US policy. It is the policy of supporters of a foreign power pretending to be pro-American.
Note that my argument does not imply promoting patriotism. It means saying, in effect, IF you are a patriotic American, you should oppose your country’s ardent support for Israel. Neither does it imply anti-semitism. It means recognizing that the interests of most of the inhabitants of the USA would be served by reducing support to Israel. The interests of the Jewish minority would be served by increasing it. This should not be controversial. In particular, the American left, with its keen awareness of ‘privilege’, should be able to listen to this argument. But mostly, it cannot.
At one point, Chomsky discusses the hypocrisy of the Israeli leaders in using pogroms against Jews in Russia in the nineteenth century as an excuse for doing the same thing in Lebanon in 1982. But he doesn’t try to question the view that Jews have always been victims, wherever they have wandered. This myth was reiterated by Republican president George Bush Senior when he was trying to defend himself against the ‘anti-semitism’ slur by groveling to the Lobby in 1991.
On page 446, Chomsky describes young American Jews, raised on the handouts of the Anti-Defamation League, having a ‘corrupting’ effect on Israel. He must also be very aware of the corruption of Israeli teenagers effected by taking them to the ruins of German concentration camps and teaching them to hate [10], or the Hillel Jewish campus organization which teaches young American Jews that Israel is their homeland. He doesn’t go far enough in criticizing the obsession with ‘the’ Holocaust which gets more intense the further it recedes into history.
After complaining about Israel’s rape of Lebanon in the nineteen-eighties for a few hundred pages, Chomsky resorts to the ‘region’ trick to try to explain it. Page 442:
“The US has been more than pleased to acquire a militarized dependency, technologically advanced and ready to undertake tasks that few are willing to endure – support for the Guatemalan genocide, for example – while helping to contain threats to American dominance in the most critical region in the world, where ‘one of the greatest material prizes in world history’ [the Saudi oilfields] must be firmly held”.
On page 462, he regrets Israel’s “dependence on the US with the concomitant pressure to serve US interests”. One would expect that the USA would not give a country $7 million a day, more than all other countries combined – without demanding that it serves its interests. But the predictions of this hypothesis fail. Israel feels no pressure at all to serve US interests, and Israeli politicians boast of American subservience, whilst their American accomplices harrass those who state this simple truth. This is true whether you are a media mogul, a movie star, a politician, or an anti-war activist.
At the beginning of his book, Chomsky claims that Israel helps the US by protecting the Saudi oilfields. At the end, he says it blackmails the US by threatening to launch a nuclear attack on this great material prize. Iran could also greatly harm the Western world by blocking the Strait of Hormuz through which fleets of oil tankers pass – but somehow, America stands up to Iran. Why can’t it stand up to Israel? Because it’s an asset?
Chomsky expounds a deal of effort showing how the US media is biased in favor of Israel and against Palestinians, but he doesn’t call a spade a spade: the only serious racial prejudice left in America is pro-Jewish bias. That is why Israeli children’s deaths are reported at a rate seven times higher than those of Palestinian’s [11].
2. Tests
I propose testing Chomsky’s views using the time-honored methods of asking
There are two rival hypotheses:
Chomsky defends, with contradictions, the first hypothesis. Mearsheimer and Walt defend the second.
Let’s test each theory using scientific methods. Politics is not an exact science like physics, but we can at least try.
1. The basic principle of science: does Chomsky’s hypothesis [4] lead to a simpler explanation of events than Mearsheimer and Walt’s Israel Lobby theory [12]?
2. An abstract test. ‘Abstract’ does not mean ‘vague’, but is scientifically respectable. Without any concrete examples, one can test the Chomsky hypothesis as follows: it is reasonable to say that, for any two nations, they have areas where their interests coincide, and areas where they clash. The USA never acts against Israel’s interests, with some very minor exceptions. This means that, without giving any examples, we can say that America always supports Israel’s interests when their interests collide.
3. Falsificacion: ask what would be the case if Chomsky’s hypothesis is wrong. What would poor little Israel do if it were NOT serving US interests, if Americans ceased to corrupt it? Would it let the Palestinians back, decommision its nuclear weapons, and abandon its racial definition of citizenship?
4. Which of the arguments depends on the scientific methods outlined above, and which on vague, shifting definitions?
Chomsky makes, without argument, the assertion that if it were not for Israel’s ‘perceived geopolitical role’, a trite, content-free phrase, the Israel Lobby would ‘probably’ be unable to persuade the ‘elite’ to support Israel (page 22). So why do they bother, then? Why do Jews rant and rave in the media about ‘anti-semitic incidents’ whenever anyone in the US makes timid criticism of their country? It’s not that politicians perceive that Israel is an asset, it’s just that they know what happens to those who perceive otherwise – the Lobby makes some calls, and they lose their jobs [13]. Chomsky’s theory that Israel is an ally would predict the Israel Lobby would barely exist – real allies of the US like Japan don’t have energetic, well-funded lobbies in Washington DC, ready to call on hordes of faithful followers to phone politicians and write letters to newspapers defending their nations’ interests. They don’t need them. Chomsky’s theory fails the test.
There is more to it than just rich Jewish organizations like the ADL and AIPAC. There is social pressure not to mention the Lobby. Whereas no-one accuses Chomsky of racism for claiming that Jews suffer for the interests of other Western peoples, in complete defiance of the evidence, those of us who point out that the reverse is true, with the facts on our side, are accused of anti-semitism. If Israel were an asset, there would be no need for this manipulation of our Western European culture, which has a unique record of abandoning racism, despite what the left tells us.
The ‘Israeli Sparta’ argument put forward in the Wall Street Journal etc. by Jewish neo-conservatives posing as classical scholars can easily be disposed of. Sparta defended Greece. Israel does not defend America. On page 21, ignoring the evidence, Chomsky agrees with the pseudo-Hellenists, saying that the Israeli Defence Forces provides a backup for the US armed forces. In fact Israel has never been able to supply soldiers for any US operation in the region. In the Iraq crisis of 1990, Syria gave military support to the US, but not Israel. Israel was unable to respond even when Iraqi missiles landed on Tel Aviv, because it would have split the coalition invading Iraq. Chomsky’s argument fails the test.
Chomsky reviewed ‘The Israel Lobby’ [12] when it broke through the censors of the US liberal left [14]. “Another problem that Mearsheimer and Walt do not address is the role of the energy corporations. They are hardly marginal in US political life… How can they be so impotent in the face of the Lobby?” he asks [15]. Chomsky’s review of ‘The Israel Lobby’ implies the oil companies CANNOT be powerless in the face of a mere lobby. But the assumptions behind Chomsky’s question don’t stand up. Mearsheimer and Walt DO address the role of these companies, explaining how, if they had their way, US policy in the Middle East would change. Leftists in America half-adopt Karl Marx’s ‘materialist conception of history’ without naming it (they say ‘corporate greed’ instead). It is one of the few aspects of Marxism which can be tested, and it fails miserably to explain the US position on the Israel/Palestine question. The interests of big corporations do not lead to invading Lebanon, persecuting Palestine, and stirring up Islamic extremism.
Chomsky claims that one reason America supports Israel is because it is a ‘laboratory’ for US military and surveillance technology. This is easily tested by asking if any other country would be eager to take Israel’s place.
The argument that oil is the main reason for US support for Israel is too trivial to waste time on. When America attacks a Middle Eastern country, the left chants ‘no war for oil’. If the policy causes the price of oil to drop, capitalism benefits. If the price rises, the oil companies benefit. Either way, the left trumpets the evidence. The ‘oil’ explanation cannot be falsified. It is not wrong – it is not even a valid hypothesis.
In a similar violation of scientific methodology, Chomsky tries to use the fact that the USA approves of Israeli war crimes as evidence that the dog wags the tail, that Israel serves Uncle Sam. In fact, this ‘evidence’ contributes nothing at all to our understanding of the relationship between the two states. It is equally compatible with the two opposing arguments, so it is not a test which selects which of them are true. Chomsky does give some of the same examples of American subservience as Mearsheimer and Walt in ‘The Israel Lobby’ [12]
By means of the Lobby, the tail wags the dog. Its the simplest, clearest, and most economical explanation of the facts. This is how science progresses. A good example of why simpler is better can be found in a recent paper on the evolution of social insects such as ants and bees [16]. We should try to use the same criterion in the study of human societies.
Like everything else, the question of Jewish control of the media can be approached emotionally. I prefer the scientific approach. I approach the argument about Jewish control of the press, etc., on its merits, not on how much it reminds people of ancient Tsarist calumnies. Surely the most simple explanation of the fact that
“Israel has been granted a unique immunity from criticism in mainstream journalism and scholarship” (page 31)
is because Jews are overrepresented in mainstream journalism and sholarship, and quite a few of these Jews defend Jewish interests. This kind of statement is acceptable in Israel, whose inhabitants are mostly proud of what they call ‘the Jewish Lobby’ in America. It is acceptable in countries like Malaysia. Why is it so difficult for us?
The answer is obvious. We are afraid of being anti-semitic. I found a solution to this problem. I stopped caring about it.
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The utterly mendacious nature of this piece is revealed when he defends the openly pro imperialist viewpoint of Mearsheimer and Walt against Chomsky. Clearly he’s not trying to reveal the truth when he claims these open zionists are more accurate in their assessment of the lobby than Chomsky is.
Yawn..another attempt to discredit the leading intellectual anti-imperialist in the United States, with specious and deceptive rationales.
This article is totally unscientific and is in fact a collection of prejudices!
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Marc Parent, Moonshadow 月影. Moonshadow 月影 said: RT @mparent77772: Faithful Circle – A response to Noam Chomsky's book 'Fateful Triangle' http://bit.ly/9qXeLH [...]
Excellent analysis.
This is a brilliant dissection of the contradictions that Chomsky has been allowed to get away with for decades. Regardless of his motives, Chomsky’s faulty reading of the Israel-US relationship has well served the Zionist cause immobilzing any serious resistance against it in the US and abroad.. Knott’s article should be required reading for every activist concerned not only with justice for the Palestinians but actually doing something it about beyond holding conferences and shouting useless and ineffective slogans.
Thanks to Palestine Think Tank for publishing this logical, valuable analysis and to Knott for his principled decision to shed light on a disturbing reality.
Additional information about the history of the phenomenon he describes can be found, unfortunately a bit buried, in my piece, “My ‘Relationship With Tom Campbell: A Wrench in the Israeli Gears,” which touches on the Lobby’s manipulation of various sectors of US society, including Christian clergy.
http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-weir.html
A short blog entry, “Democracy Now: Please tell your audience about Israeli strip searches…” may also be of interest.
http://alisonweir.org/journal/2008/8/1/democracy-now-please-tell-your-audience-about-israeli-strip.html
Knott has produced an important deconstruction of a myth that many find comfortable to repeat. The problem, of course, is that while it may be more pleasant to speak falsehoods than truths, an inaccurate analysis of a problem prevents a solution. Knott has now given us an accurate one.
Examining the few areas where Jay Knott actually examines Fateful Triangle by actually citing the book:
Knott claims that “By page 4, Chomsky already makes it clear that he defends the Jewish State.” No evidence is provided. Instead, this conclusion is premised upon another, that Chomsky thinks “the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948 was morally superior to those in Lebanon in 1982″, which is itself a non sequitur.
Knott says Chomsky argues “US ’support’” prevents Israel from turning away from immoral policies. This is a lie. Chomsky does not say “U.S.”, but simply Israel’s “supporters”, which would include the U.S. but is not limited to it. From Chomsky’s statement: “Repeatedly, alternative paths have been blocked by the ’support’ that has been the despair of Israelis who had a different vision of what their society might become.” In other words, if it wasn’t for the massive support for Israel’s immoral crimes, such crimes could not continue. On the basis of this single statement, Knott projects upon Chomsky a view “of Jews as eternal victims”! Another non sequitur.
Knott says, “On page 3, without evidence, he says that US policy favors ‘a Greater Israel that will dominate the region in the interests of American power’.” Chomsky spends more than 500 pages documenting the evidence. This is one of the underlying theses of his whole book, and the assertion he offers no evidence for it is absurd and simply ignorant.
Knott quotes Chomsky saying “Israel showed how to treat Third World upstarts properly…” (elipses mine, not Knott’s) as supporting his claim that “Chomsky claims that the US supports Israel because Israel supports US war crimes. This is a pure fabrication. Chomsky was making no such point, as quoting the rest of that sentence demonstrates: “…winning the allegiance of many frightened advocates of the virtues of knowing one’s place.” Clear, that does not apply to the U.S., as Knott so dishonestly suggests.
Knott says that “Chomsky refers to the normal state of politics in the USA as “complete obedience” to Zionist opposition to freedom of speech. Chomsky in fact wrote nothing of the sort. He was referring to the obedience of the intelligentsia not to report the facts about Israeli crimes and thus cause a political problem for U.S. support for those crimes: “There had been some erosion of the automatic support for Israeli actions and neglect of its atrocities, a fact that aroused much outrage in circles accustomed to more complete obedience and committed to the doctrine that control over thought and expression must be total, so that even slight deviations, even more reporting of some of the facts, is an intolerable affront, evidence of a ‘double standard’ if not outright anti-Semitism.”
Knott quotes Chomsky on page 442 noting that the U.S. is “more than pleased” to establish a military relationship (read military industrial complex) with other countries and support their atrocities while containing “threats to American dominance”. But he says this observation is a “trick”, without explanation as to what the problem is with any of Chomsky’s stated facts or conclusions.
Knott concedes in quoting Chomsky on page 462 that it’s to be expected that if the U.S. is to offer such enormous financial support to a country, that that country serves the U.S. interests. Chomsky would undoubtedly agree with Knott’s observations that follow, whatever Knott’s point may be.
The rest proceeds along the same lines. In sum, this is a load of absolute nonsense.
I would again encourage people to pick up and actually read Fateful Triangle and see what Chomsky actually has to say in it for themselves, instead of taking the word of the likes of Blankfort or Knott, who so demonstrably mischaracterize.
I understand the reasoning in disseminating Noam Chomsky’s books, lectures and talking points as regards US Israel relations and middle east peace initiatives, His input is pertinent if not wholly accurate but that could be said of all of us, correct? Is any of us perfect in our minds eye views of the world around us, especially the murky waters of zionist intrigues ongoing for a century?
As Jay Cites Noam is fanatical about references and many of not most of them from books written on topics associated with his books assertions. This is an intelligentsia based academic always in the game of books, cannoned lexicons from the past building on past assertions of intellectuals to fortify ones ideas as sound.
Safety in numbers is why people cite supportive dialogs to their ideas as references, rather than think through the current state of reality, they gravitate to past academics for their opinion.
We all grow in knowledge and strength as speakers of truth by studying the intricacies of many opinions, not sticking close to home in comfort zones build by our life’s works, such as books written and read by fans which become scriptures to which we must adhere or recant from a perspective gained by our growth as human beings along lines of culture, knowledge and openness to new ideas.
Progression along the path of reform of old duplicitous tomes, toward honest evaluations made so by research, and acceptance of ideals we may not agree to but respect none the less as someones truth, ours or not it is there to be added to the general sentiments of humanity for assimilation or rejection as true or false or some variant in the grey area , yet to be decided by empirical evidences or voted upon by peers with stakes in the ideals at issue.
The stakes in the Middle East are great and many hands hold many cards , some weak and sure to fold, others a good hand to bluff and yet others a good hand to win, should the cards be accepted at face value and the game declrade free and fair by all players, which leads to the crux of Jay’s work, he wants to say something that is true, he believes and others feel is right, and this is his right.
To me, what is being covered are the reasons why even smart people with much experience and knowledge leading them in their writing, can side with fellows of kindred ethnicity as their right, way and belief system’s journey. Chomsky perhaps a traditional Jewish thinker, a bit socialist, seeking to correct a problem with Israel, and zionism by finding a cause of error, citing that causal effect and documenting his assertions. This is the basic Pollyanna personality seeking to find that rose colored glass wolds eye view of his youth with family and friends of Israel, a zionist seeking to clear the murkey waters surrounding his base of reference by showing how power can ruin idealistic purity, that power he says is the US behemoth and Diaspora Jewish false orthodoxy, they build settlements with their money but have no true affinity for Judaism, as is Chomsky’s problem, he believes in his childs vision of a wonderful life lived as free Jews in Agrarian bliss on the pastoral lands thought to hold such promise for his people. The ideal is there, he defends it, but abuses the blame game that exonerates Jews from culpability for their travesties of self promotion as God’s chosen people when most Jews dont even have a clue as to what God is or what true Judaism, which is the supposed new way of life in Israel, is all about.
The contradiction to be highlighted here is this, God gave us this land, but we don’t believe in God, We just use the concept to steal land, which is a US tactical approach to colonialism, but not authored by the founding fatehrs, rather inserted by latter day infidels of false religion, Noam cant say that becuase he is an atheist,so the lie is not the US forcing Israel to be mean to Arabs from Ckimsky’s books but rather a half truth that clears zionism of a world of sins that need to be exposed, indicted and prosecuted if world peace is to be made and kept while Jews find their feet, yet of clay perhaps hardening in the heat of such trials and tribulations.
What do we glean from all of this? Maybe it’s time to cite news and not Jews as the current events of value.? Who cares what Noam thinks, every day is fresh and new, why grope through old mens minds for truth, it is before us every day, we need only to find it and share it , not denounce every falsity, which only cites the problem,we need solutions. The Two state bullshit is ruinous today where no possible freedom comes to Palestine from such a weak minded ruse of opportunity. Chimsky is wrong here, Jews need to grow up and realise that Jews only Israel is devoid of diversity to the point of guiding Jews away from self determination, rather than toward the light of self expressions that show tolerance understanding and basic human grace as ideals worthy chasing, the wind is never caught, but love we do find if we are able to give it freely from good hearts.
[...] Palestine Think Tank » Analysis Biography Israel Middle East … Chomsky prefers saying 'elites' rather than 'bourgeoisie' in his bestselling books. Even if the 'elites' really do 'perceive' it is in US interests to throw seven million dollars a day into a black hole, they are mistaken, and Palestine Solidarity has the task of explaining that 1. an elaborate charade to make it look as if the Lobby can determine US policy regarding Israel in order to cover up for white/US/capitalist hegemony, by diverting attention to the Jews, or . [...]
I have recently had the distasteful experience of viewing a 55 minute interview of Chomsky with Frank Barat of the Brussells Tribunal.. His patronizing, arrogant comments concerning those who support a single state and BDS against Israel that can be heard and seenin the latter part of the interview would not have been out of place coming from the lips of a Western colonial racist of a century ago who thought he knew what was best for “the natives.”
In this article, Jay Knott happily supplied an antidote and then some, continuing what promises to be an ongoing thorough exposure of the nonsense Chomsky has been peddling to the world about the nature of the Israel-US relationship which, whatever his motive, has provided vital damage control for the Zionist cause.
It also, as a useful, albeit toxic by-product, has exposed those in the movement whose idolization of Chomsky takes precedence over their concern for justice for the Palestinians. Jeremy Hammond is a classic example of this. Here is the link to the Barat interview. IMPORTANT: Do not watch it immediately before or after eating: http://vimeo.com/14835834
[...] The answer is obvious. We are afraid of being anti-semitic. I found a solution to this problem. I stopped caring about it. 1. – US Senate Resolution, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/ussen062110.html 2. – Jeff Blankfort, http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/07/21/jeff-blankfort-chomsky-and-palestine-asset-or-liability 3. – Jeremy Hammond, http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/07/rejoinder-to-criticism-of-chomsky-asset-or-liability 4. – ‘Fateful Triangle’, Noam Chomsky, South End Press, 1999 5. – “A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior”, Noam Chomsky, http://cogprints.org/1148/1/chomsky.htm 6. – ‘The Language Instinct’, Steven Pinker, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, November 2000 7. – Alison Weir, radio interview with Noam Chomsky – http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk-radio.cfm/shows/CNI:-Jerusalem-Calling/archives/date/selected/07-08-2010.html 8. – ‘The Mass Psychology of Anti-Fascism’, Jay Knott, 2008, http://pacificaforum.org/mass 9. – ‘How Washington Goaded Israel Into War’, Stephen Zunes, http://www.antiwar.com/orig/zunes.php?articleid=9605, August 2006 10. – ‘Defamation’ – a movie about the Anti-Defamation League – http://ishare.rediff.com/video/others/defamation-movie-trailer/888451 11. – ‘If Americans Knew’ media analyses, http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/ 12. – ‘The Israel Lobby’, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 2007 13. – “They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby”, Paul Findlay, Lawrence Hill Books, 1989 14. – ‘The Atlantic’ magazine rejected the original ‘Israel Lobby’ paper, on the transparently false grounds of ‘poor scholarship’. When it came out as a book, the authors toured the USA to promote it, but found that local papers didn’t send reporters to cover it. The Lobby demonstrated the authors’ hypothesis by trying to suppress it. 15. – ‘The Israel Lobby?’ – Noam Chomsky, 2006, http://www.zcommunications.org/the-israel-lobby-by-noam-chomsky 16. – “Natural selection alone can explain eusociality”, Nowak, Tarnita and Wilson – http://www.physorg.com/news201957206.html Source and worthwhile comments found AT [...]
For Heavens’sake, Noam Chomsky is a slippery slithery……….. h etaoks out of bothe sides of his mouth – very cleverly.
To say in breath that “Israel” is wrong to drive the people of Palestine out of their homes,off their land, but in the very next breath to say that it would be “immoral” to encourage them to thingk they could ever return – and you can all argue about whether or not he is a moral and whether he is intellectually hones, is absurd. It is just plain silly. You have all been fooled by this Jew, or “Zionist” if you must.
WAKE UP. They are really good at his sort of deception, this slipperiness and slitheriness.
Everyone also needs to be more awake about Norman Finkelstein! He too is a gatekeeper. He wrtite books about the “holocaust”, yet he says that his parents told him NOTHING about it – but he believes in it!!!
AS for Amy Goodman; if your blood does not run cold when you watch her interviewing the parents of
Rachel Corrie, there is something serious wrong with you instincts.
I’m using a pdf of the Pluto Press edition of the book which seems to be a photocopy page by page, but I’m confused about the page numbers. Jay Knott refers to a quote from P.4 but my pdf version doesn’t have a P.4. After Said’s intro there are a table of contents and Chomsky’s preface, then the first chapter begins on P 36. here’s the link to the pdf:
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres5/fateful.pdf
“please help”?
Trying to check Mr Hammond’s assertion that Mr Knott is a liar, I managed to find the text online in pdf format. Apparently the pagination as referred to by both is different from that of my pdf version (?) which may be why I can’t find the passage cited.
However, just a glance at Chomsky’s first few pages is enough for me to realize again why, when I first skimmed them in a bookstore in about 1983 or early ‘84, I immediately put the book down, and entered the title in my mental catalog in the Bourgeois BS section.
Here are a couple of his gems; please note his repeated use of his typical Liberal-speak spurious “we”:
>”…critics of Israeli actions have frequently been accused of hypocrisy.1 While the reasons advanced are
spurious,* the charge itself has some merit. It is surely hypocritical
to condemn Israel for establishing settlements in the occupied territories while we pay for establishing and expanding them.
Or to condemn Israel for attacking civilian targets with cluster and phosphorus bombs “to get the maximum kill per hit,”2 when we provide them gratis or at bargain rates, knowing that they will be used for just this purpose.3
Or to criticize Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombardment of heavily-settled civilian areas or its other military adventures,4 while we not only provide the means in abundance but welcome Israel’s assistance in testing the latest weaponry under live battlefield conditions-to be sure, against a vastly outmatched enemy, including completely undefended targets, always the safest way to carry out experiments of this sort. In general, it is pure hypocrisy to criticize the exercise of Israeli power while welcoming Israel’s contributions towards realizing the U.S. aim of eliminating possible threats, largely indigenous, to American domination of the
Middle East region.”<
I guess Chomsky's arguments might have seemed meaningful to a "Liberal" US Congresscritter or entry-level employee at Foggy Bottom, but since I never "welcomed Israeli contributions" toward any of the criminal goals he mentioned, I knew he wasn't talking to me.
More reading of passages from the book quoted by various Chomsky apologists have only confirmed my first opinion of it. Only Liberals with at least one foot firmly in the Imperialist camp can take this kind of **** seriously.
Knott says: “For example, on the one hand, he denies the importance of the Israel Lobby. After all, if Israel is helping US ‘elites’ maintain their ‘hegemony’ in the ‘region’, they would hardly need a lobby to remind them of it. Universities and co-operatives are tentatively discussing a boycott of Israel. Chomsky argues against a boycott of Israeli produce, because the Lobby would call us ‘hypocrites’, unless we boycott the US too.7 So he thinks this ‘unimportant’ Lobby could undermine a boycott of Israel by mere accusations.”
In what sentence of TFT does Chomsky deny the “importance” of the Lobby? Knott doesn’t say. It’s clear that Chomsky denies the alleged overwhelming power of the Lobby over U.S. Middle East policy. It’s also clear, on the basis of what Chomsky actually says–as well as the time he has taken to counter Lobby propaganda–that he does not deny its importance. Otherwise, why both to counter the Lobby’s claims?
As Hammond and Mark Richie say, a shameful performance. Blankfort & Weir are, in their own ways, utterly ignorant people when it comes to understanding U.S. history and politics.
I agree, an excellent discussion. Too bad it’s so long. Many activists won’t be inclined to read it what with everything else. As a reporter, it fits my favorite question ever asked an Israel official.
Sorry, don’t have reporter’s name. It was 7/02/09 at The Israel Project’s press conference with Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s media spokesman. The BBC reporter asks:
“Most of the World is wondering when Israel will recognize the State of Palestine and abide by its United Nations designated borders?”
David Green exposes the poverty of his outlook right from the jump when he cites “Mark Richie” as a credible source. It’s not just that Richie’s statements are nonsense; there is also the fact that Richie “enjoys” a reputation among Left and other activists as an Agent Provocateur reporting to a superior somewere in the “intelligence community”.
Blankfort has supplied details of Richie’s activities; I have yet to read anything from Richie or anybody else which would tend to absolve Richie of these allegations. Perhaps Mr Green will come to Richie’s defense?
Back to Green’s “comment”. Green accurately quotes what >”Knott says: “For example, on the one hand, he denies the importance of the Israel Lobby. After all, if Israel is helping US ‘elites’ maintain their ‘hegemony’ in the ‘region’, they would hardly need a lobby to remind them of it. Universities and co-operatives are tentatively discussing a boycott of Israel. Chomsky argues against a boycott of Israeli produce, because the Lobby would call us ‘hypocrites’, unless we boycott the US too.7 So he thinks this ‘unimportant’ Lobby could undermine a boycott of Israel by mere accusations.”"In what sentence of TFT does Chomsky deny the “importance” of the Lobby?”<
Could it be that the highly observant Mr Green could use a new pair of bifocals? Because the number 7 is plainly visible immediately following the penultimate sentence in the quoted paragraph, both in Knott's article and in Green's own cut&paste excerpt. I make no claim to being a pro journalist, but even I was able to figure out that the number indicated the existence of a footnote somewhere. Lo & behold, scrolling on down to the end of the article what greeted my ancient eyeballs but a roster of footnotes. On down to number seven: jackpot:)
Turns out that Knott wasn't quoting the Fakeful Tiredangle at all, but an interview Chomsky gave to Alison Weir. Anybody want to bet that Chomsky did NOT in this interview refer to The Lobby as "unimportant"?
Green himself admits that "Chomsky denies the alleged overwhelming power of the Lobby over U.S. Middle East policy." But follows that with: "…he does not deny its importance."
I have to hand it to Green for this one: tres slick, Dave. But you can't have it both ways, and neither can your hero. Either you accept the evidence which indicates that the Zionist Power Configuration decides when and along what vector US military and covert action assets will go into action, or you don't. If you don't, you can either try to deny the evidence altogether, or you can try your best to minimize by it taking the pooh-pooh adjustment.
It comes down to a question of which estimation of ZPC/Lobby power is more nearly reflective of the actual state of affairs. Blankfort/Walt-Mearsheimer/Petras/Bazian/Christisons and Mr Knott seem to believe that said power is enormous and in the last analysis determinative of US policy. (I myself believe they tend to underestimate it:) Is it not clear that Chomsky, Green, Hammond, Zunes et al do their best to minimize it?
Since we are dealing with entities that are not very susceptible to quantification, are hard to measure without examining the data in more detail than most people have time or inclination for, we have a debate.
But none of that justifies Green's intemperate final paragraph. It is that paragraph which moves me to assert that it is Green, Hammond, Richie et al who should hang their heads in shame. And go sit in the corner under duncecaps: anybody who thinks Blankfort and Weir are "ignorant" has a big surprise coming:)
Notice Jeff Blankfort responds with an ad hominem argument, rather than substantively addressing the facts I noted. The issue is not whether we agree or disagree with Chomsky. The issue is that if we are going to criticize his views, we should criticize his actual views, rather than willfully and deliberately manufacturing strawmen and attributing those strawman arguments to Chomsky. The issue is that the Blankfort dishonestly mischaracterizes Chomsky’s view, as I’ve repeatedly demonstrated. And now Knott does the same thing, as I’ve also just incontrovertibly demonstrated. Which brings us back to Jeff’s response, which, again, doesn’t address even a single point of fact or logic from my previous comment.
Chomsky has never, to my knowledege, so mentioned AIPAC in any of his writings about the Israel-Palestine conflict. In the brief space he allots to the “Israel Lobby,” which does not appear in the index, he suggests that those who speak of its power underestimate the popularity of Israel among the general public and “overestimates the role of political pressure groups in decision making” (p 13) Then, either naively or deceptively, displaying the “Israel Lobby” in quotes, as if its existence by that name is open to question, notes that it “is far broader than the Jewish community, embracing the major segments of liberal opinion, the leadership of labor unions, religious fundamentalists,” etc, failing to acknowledge that the major segments of liberal opinion have almost entirely been Jewish and the same goes for the leadership of the labor unions and those who haven’t been like former long term president Lane Kirkland, married to a holocaust survivor, bragged that he had “attended more Israel Bonds dinner than any man alive”
Speaking in Berkeley in Novemember, 1991, he said, in response to a question about the role of the lobby in fomenting the first Gulf War, which was significant, he said, “my own feeling is that the role of the Israeli lobby, in general, is pretty much exaggerated. That’s a matter of judgment. It’s not a simple factual question. In my opinion the Israeli lobby gets its input in large part because it happens to line up with powerful sectors of domestic US power.”
In a “debate”with a Palestinian post graduate student at MIT last year he said that discussion about the role of the lobby was an “abstraction,” a “diversion” from doing more important things but he didn’t say what those were.
His old friend, the late Israel Shahak, was quite clear about Chomsky’s denial of the lobby’s power as he wrote me in 1991 in response to my writing him of Chomsky’s downplaying of the lobby at his Berkeley talk and which I cited in my article: Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine Conflict:
Predictably, it drew applause from the supporters of Israel who were happy to have the distinguished scholar absolve organized American Jewry of any responsibility for what their co-religionists were doing to the Palestinians or for the lobby’s activities in support of the first war on Iraq. I decided to express my feelings to Professor Shahak. Here was his frank reply:
“I had the same, only greater, differences of opinion with Noam Chomsky, who is my personal friend for quite a time, on the subject of AIPAC and the influence of the Jewish lobby in general as you have. What is more, a number of mutual friends of Chomsky and me have also tried to influence him, in vain, on that point.
“I am afraid that he is, with all his wonderful qualities and the work he does, quite dogmatic on many things. I have no doubt that his grievous mistake about the lack of importance of AIPAC, which he repeats quite often, helps the Zionists very much as you so graphically described.”
http://www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html
For those who wish more proof of what Knott and I have said about Chomsky’s views on the lobby, they can be found in that article
Finally, I am sure it is out of ignorance that you couple Hammond and Richie together as legitimate critics of Knott and myself and I am sure that Hammond is not pleased with it You are probably not aware that Richie has a well documented history going back to the 80s of acting as an agent provocateur within the movement and most likely for the ADL For his shenanigans he has been booted from every Palestinian email list that I am aware of and he an unwelcome presence at any public Palestinian or Arab-American event in the SF Bay Area.
This link will give you some idea of who you have unwittingly praised and who will no doubt use you as a reference for his credibility: palestinethinktank.com/…/jeff-blankfort-chomsky-and-palestine-asset-or-liability/
If this isn’t convincing, David, check with your friend, Emma Rosenthal
This is a very well done deconstruction of chomsky’s expressed views and the “dog wags the tail” crowd. By one of those odd coincidences, the comparison between the Japan-america and israel-america relationships occurred to me when I started reading this piece and I was thinking this would make a good example to use discussing how much more powerful zionist/israeli influence is than that of the Japanese. Then I got to the spot where Knott brought up this comparison, as well. :D
The Japan-usa relationship is a very good example of sort that the zionists claim is the relationship between the usa and israel. The usa dominates the Japanese ruling class almost totally. In the last year, that has been very well shown, when some of the Japanese political class attempted to gain a little independence of american influence and respect what the people of Japan want.The zionist/american oligarchs used all their tricks to shoot them down. And did so fairly easily. That doesn’t happen against israel. In fact, when american and israeli policies are at variance, it is the american side now who always submit to israeli policy. Why is that if america rules israel?
What about the Japanese lobby? Where are they? (stop snickering, it’s rude) ;D If the usa controls israel, like they control Japan, then it’s only logical to expect the Japan would have an equivalent political lobby like israel does. Well, where is that Japanese lobby? What Japanese lobby there is, and I’m including corporate Japanese interests, is minuscule in comparison to the israeli lobby.
Apparently the american oligarchs don’t need an extensive Japanese lobby in the usa to control Japan, like they need an extensive israeli lobby in the usa so they can control israel. ;D
The usefulness of israel to the american capitalist oligarchy (and that of the Europeans, as well) has been debated quite a bit. A Japanese puppet’s usefulness to these oligarchs has never been questioned. Why would that be? So we got a Japanese puppet of unquestioned usefulness, while an israeli “puppet” of dubious utility, even in the most jaded, optimistic sense.
But who gets most of the goodies from the americans, Japan, or israel?
Who gets a free ride in the media, Japan, or israel?
Who gets the guv hand-outs, Japan, or israel?
Who has american military bases on their soil, Japan, or israel?
One could go on…..
The fact is the subservience of Japan to the american oligarchy is much more like that of america to zionist/israeli oligarchs than it is to any hypothetical israeli subservience to american oligarchs. No controlling country of another would tolerate a powerful lobby of that subservient country influencing its policies. Beyond that aspect of realpolitic, it is also inconceivable that the israel lobby serves any use to american oligarchic interests, both foreign and domestic, that their already deeply entrenched assets are already performing, and have done so for more than 100 years. In other words, the israel lobby is surplus, if they perform a service to american corporate/oligarch interests, there is no need for them at all. Can one see these people putting such an effort into an enterprise that is completely redundant and unneeded?
BTW, can someone direct me to the american lobby in israel? I cant seem to find it. ;D
Blankfort follows the narrative of Knott, who claimed that Chomsky “denies the importance of the Israel Lobby”. Blankfort cites page 13 in furthering this narrative. Well, both Knott and Blankfort must be perfectly well aware, assuming they actually read the book, that Chomsky states “there is some truth” to “the effectiveness of the American Jewish community in political life and in influencing opinion.” That is to say, Chomsky agrees that the so-called Israeli Lobby has an influence on U.S. policy.
As for Chomsky’s subsequent statement that this “is far from the whole story”, because “it underestimates the scope of the ’support for Israel,’ and second, it overestimates the role of political pressure groups in decision-making”, he discusses this at great length from pages 17 to 27. Blankfort doesn’t even so much as make an attempt to point to even a single error in fact or logic in Chomsky’s lengthy, 10-page argument supporting the statement quoted from page 13.
Notice again Blankfort feels it necessary to resort to ad hominem arguments consisting of baseless personal attacks against Mark Richie. That he finds such fallacies necessary to support his position is highly instructive.
As for Blankfort’s article, “Asset or Liability”, see my reply at www dot foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/07/24/criticism-of-chomsky-asset-or-liability/, in which I demonstrate incontrovertibly how Blankfort systematically and deliberately mischaracterizes Chomsky’s views, such as both Knott and Blankfort do with the above narrative.
One of Teafoe2’s above criticisms of Chomsky is interesting. Notice his assumption that it is somehow not hypocritical for Americans to condemn Israel for establishing settlements in the occupied territories while at the same time paying for establishing and expanding them, to criticize Israel for using cluster and phosphorus munitions provided by the U.S., to criticize Israel for crimes materially supported by the U.S., and so on.
In other words, Chomsky’s criticism of the U.S. for supporting Israeli crimes is itself worthy of criticism. That logic (or lack thereof) pretty much speaks for itself. This kind of mindset is in no small part what drives the “Israeli Lobby controls U.S. foreign policy” claim. This narrative serves to relieve the U.S. of all responsibility for its own criminal and immoral actions. Apparently, it somehow also exempts U.S. actions from meeting the definition of “hypocrisy”, which is a fascinating assumption.
In the end we have to look at the facts and he facts are that there is a genocide going on, that Palestinians are slaughtered, robbed of their land etc. In the light of all the facts only a one state solution with the People of Palestine re_installed in all their full rights including of course the right of return, including huge compensation paid to rebuild Palestine. To build in this Palestine in Jerusalem its capital a true museum of tolerance, Supporters of the 2 states solution do no favor to Palestinians and Jews but to zionists yes they do a big favor.
@Jeremy Hammond
you wrote: Blankfort follows the narrative of Knott, who claimed that Chomsky “denies the importance of the Israel Lobby”. Blankfort cites page 13 in furthering this narrative. Well, both Knott and Blankfort must be perfectly well aware, assuming they actually read the book, that Chomsky states “there is some truth” to “the effectiveness of the American Jewish community in political life and in influencing opinion.” That is to say, Chomsky agrees that the so-called Israeli Lobby has an influence on U.S. policy.
I ask you, do you know what a Lobby is?
There’s a gun lobby, a tabacco lobby, an abortion lobby, etc… with staffed people who WORK POLITICIANS. It’s their job. They get paid for it, they have a gigantic amount of financing behind them and they seek not only to influence opinion, but they want to MAKE POLICY and reward and punish politicians for making laws, jurisdiction and statements that will further their own causes and be detrimental to their opponents.
Just the fact that you seem to think the milquetoast statement of Chomsky is agreeing with a “so-called” as you call it, “Israeli Lobby” is admitting the importance of said lobby on US policy, makes it dubious that you even understand the terms of the discourse.
Mary, many people define the “Israeli Lobby” very broadly, well beyond the definition you just gave of a group paid to influence policy, such as AIPAC. Mearsheimer, for example, recently defined the “Israeli Lobby” at Foreign Policy as including Jewish American voters. Since you’re so familiar with the terms of the discourse, you must certainly be aware of the fact that it is so broadly defined as to become virtually meaningless.
Now Hammond has added the defense of Mark Richie to his stable of clients. Indeed, perhaps Richie and Chomsky do belong together since each has endeavored to confuse and hobble the Palestinian support movement albeit in different ways although Chomsky has obviously been more successful at doing so.
Hammond keeps harping on the accusation that I have misquoted or deliberately misinterpreted Chomsky and accuses me of dishonesty yet never offers an example of my alleged misdeeds. Maybe he’s getting paid by the word. Otherwise I can’t understand this obsession. If Chomsky believes that he has been misquoted or misinterpreted, one would think he might respond himself. He did, indirectly, one might say, in his interview with Frank Barat which I previously mentioned which revealed the colonialist Western white mindset that has long informed Chomsky’s view of the Palestinian issue. There is absolutely no question that he supported Jewish settlement in Arab Palestine despite the opposition of its indigenous inhabitants and then tries to cover that up by telling us that the Arabs supported a bi-national state when in fact like any other peoples who have been victims of colonization, they wanted the colonizers to go back where they came from.
There is also absolutely no question that he supports the existence of the state of Israel today whatever his prior opposition to a Jewish state, no matter how much he criticizes it actions and blames them on the US. If he did not support the existence of Israel as I and all genuine anti-zionists do not, he would support its transformation into a single state and targeting Israel directly with boycotts, divestments and sanctions. That he does not and adamantly so tells us all we need to know about Prof. Chomsky and by implication, his lapdog Jeremy Hammond.
I want to thank Mr Hammond for making it clear to all that while his rhetoric may be slicker than Mark Richie’s, he is proud to put himself in the same category as his fellow provocateur.
However after reading Hammond’s most recent post, I realize the above assessment may be too generous. I find it fascinating that Hammond is apparently so mired in his bourgeois intellectual/Cold War Liberal assumptions that he totally misunderstood the point I was making in the passage he quotes, then tries to discredit.
Hammond, talking about what I said:
>Notice his assumption that it is somehow not hypocritical for Americans to condemn Israel for establishing settlements in the occupied territories while at the same time paying for establishing and expanding them, to criticize Israel for using cluster and phosphorus munitions provided by the U.S., to criticize Israel for crimes materially supported by the U.S., and so on.<
Mr Hammond, I myself have never paid Isreal penny the first. If some of the taxes extorted from me by the Zionist-occupied US Congress have been transferred to Izreel, it has been done without my consent, in fact over my repeated objections.
So please don't try to libel me as Chomsky does by including me in the spurious "we" to whom he addresses his fallacious argument about "hypocrisy".
The first sentences of Chompsky's "Fakeful Tiredangle" reveal where he's coming from. He is a member of the Ruling Class addressing fellow members about certain differences he has with them about best to go about perpetuating the racist settler-colonialist Jewish State while continuing to rule over the rest of us.
But I am NOT a member of the US capitalist rulingclass, or even of the upper-middle "retainer" class; neither am I one of the brainwashed fools who have had their minds so colonized that they have internalized and now identify with and will fight to defend the pro-capitalist mythology running counter to their OWN interests they have been fed by the Zionist-controlled MSM. (money-stream mealymouths).
So don't call me "hypocritical". I'm consistent, and I know my enemy when I see him and hear him talk. I was opposed to Zionist crimes and to recognition of successful colonialist aggression before I ever heard of Chomsky, and I'm opposed to it now. I was actively opposed to US colonialism & Counterinsurgency before Chomsky got on record, and I'm still opposed to US foreign & military policies, especially to all forms of US "aid" to isreel, including the tax breaks given to Dr Moskowitz et al.
So where is the "hypocrisy"? Chomsky's criticism might be applicable if addressed to a Clinton, but it's clear he didn't have me or anybody like me in mind when he started his rap. Listen, Hammond, I may not be a great intellectual but I've been around the block once or twice, have been swindled several times by experts, and neither Chomsky's snowjob or yours are slick enough to fool me for a second.
Later with you, phonies.
Erratum: Inadvertently the word “how” was omitted from the following sentence, which should have read: “He is a member of the Ruling Class addressing fellow members about certain differences he has with them about how best to go about perpetuating the racist settler-colonialist Jewish State while continuing to rule over the rest of us.”
Calling people phones, calling people ‘brainwashed fools’, calling people a host of other names, only demonstrates you have no logical points to make and are just hysterically trying to undermine the leading anti imperialist US intellectual.
I have to ask, cui bono? Who benefits from this coordinated , lying, hysterical zionist media maven attacks on Chomsky?
Note that the establishment press, NY Times et al. has also been boycotting and blacklisting Chomsky for several years now. Israel denies him even entry into the West Bank.
That’s what makes these attacks on Chomsky absurd, Not just incorrect, as Jeremy Hammond for the 80th th time demonstrates on several crypto-zionist blogs where these attacks have recently been highlighted…
but just plain ABSURD…
Is that a coincidence? I doubt it..
[...] via Palestine Think Tank » Analysis Biography Israel Middle East Issues Newswire Palestine Religion Zio…. [...]
Jeff says I’ve offered no examples of where he deliberately mischaracterizes Chomsky’s views. Again, I would refer readers to my response to his article “Asset or Liability”, which I already provided the link for, and which Knott actually cites above, footnote 2. I would also direct readers to our discussion here: pulsemedia.org/2010/07/20/chomsky-and-palestine-asset-or-liability/ and here: cafeintifada.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/jeff-blankfort-and-the-tender-embrace-of-opportunism/ and here: chomskywatch.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/a-rejoinder-to-kim-petersen’s-‘the-legitimacy-of-boycotting-as-a-tactic’-jeremy-r-hammond/. No need to repeat the countless examples here.
As for Jeff’s claim that Arab’s did not support a binational state, that is false. The Arabs proposed a binational state in 1939 at the conference in London. They again proposed a binational state to the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) in 1947. They never took up the position that “they wanted the colonizers to go back where they came from”, as Jeff claims. They wanted the immigration that prejudiced their rights to stop, but they offered the existing Jewish minority full rights under their proposal for a binational state, including a constitutional guarantee of representation in the proposed democratic government.
As for Teafoe2’s defense against hypocrisy, the fact is Americans materially support Israeli crimes with their tax dollars. Americans’ elected representatives in Washington support Israeli crimes financially, militarily, and diplomatically. Teafoe2, like Pontius Pilate, wishes to wash his hands of this. Yet, so long as our tax dollars continue to pay for and so long as our elected representatives continue to support Israeli crimes, this is blood on our hands. We, as Americans, must act to end U.S. support for Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.
Surely we can all agree on that most elementary point.
you can read the entire book on pdf here
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres5/fateful.pdf
@Jeremy
How can something be discounted merely because it has a broad definition? The “Jewish Vote” is indeed overrated. If you have 2% of the population, even if all of you vote in the same exact way, does that change the dynamics all that much?
The problem is, the lobby doesn’t care where the voters put their votes, they oil the machine on all sides, Reps, Dems… there is no difference at all. The Lobby, the ones who reward and punish, are making sure that the voters will be getting what they want no matter where they put their vote. It’s what they are ORGANISED to do, with great collaboration of the other important elements such as the mass media and education.
If you want to diminish the concept, then I think we ought to ask yourself just why. Could it be that you don’t believe that there is a concerted effort that has basically kept any effective national interests from surfacing? All in favour of a perceived “alliance” with Israel? Now come on!
I used to be a fan of chomsky’s, but I grew up. :D
What I find most disturbing is recently I’ve noticed people defending chomsky’s views who are far from the left. There was even a nazi sympathiser at znet defending him. Several years ago, I wasn’t seeing this kind of support for chomsky by rightwingers, from liberals all the way over to fascists, like that znet guy, like I see now. I wonder why this has changed over the last 10 years or so. Chomsky hasn’t changed, and neither have liberals and fascists, except perhaps for moving still further to the right.
What has changed, though, is that people on the left, the real non-zionist left, have changed. They’re waking up and realising that a lot of people that they took for granted were working with them towards a better future, were in fact working against them, and working for israel’s future. And had been working against them for a long time in that capacity. People on the real left are now a lot more critical. This shift in the left to be more critical may in part explain the support people like chomsky now receive from the right. Not as many on the left agree with his views on many issues and they don’t give him a blank check any more. They don’t support zionism and they are not fooled by the propaganda. But for zionism,inc., it is important to have their guys manipulating the left, just as it’s important to have their guys running the right. It was the realisation that all these people I see fanatically defending chomsky are zionists that convinced me something was very, very wrong with this scene. One of the more amusing things about this is that most of them claim they are not zionists, and that chomsky isn’t zionist, but they mouth the “soft” hasbara talking points almost word for word.
Excellent analysis by Jay Knott.
Jay hit on all of the key points:
[1] Chomsky’s minimization of the Lobby’s influence.
[2] That Chomskyism enables Jewish Americans to support apartheid whilst thinking of themselves as liberals. They blackmail the left into accepting a much softer attitude toward Jewish supremacy than toward white identity.
[3] Debunking the “War for Oil ™” canard.
I see that Hammond and Richie are here to again carry water for the old Zionist after spending time on DV and PULSE. I guess they just can’t give up that old time racism cloaked in the rhetoric of “intellectualism”.
I particular find Hammond arguments particularly shameful as he desperately wants to accuse every American for the crimes of Jewish Zionism while turning Pastor John Hagee into its pasty. For Hammond to make such a bogus argument means that he believes the electoral system is complete democratic and not rigged. But I guess Hammond thinks that the American people are a bunch of fools.
Going back to [2], I think there is an interesting dichotomy going on there. On the one hand, Jews can consider themselves to be “white” in order to be accepted as “mainstream” America especially due to their control of the media but on the other hand are first to cry slander “goys” as racist.
For example I notice Ellen Lau is here defending Chomsky. She recently appeared on DV labeling 911 skeptics as racists. Ellen Lau’s appearance here confirmed my suspicion about desire of Chomskyites to not just blurt out the “anti-semitic” epitaph but to now also play the race card to shift focus away from any scrutiny that exposes Zionist power in the U.S.
Chomskyism has thoroughly corrupted the Left and we need more analysis like that from Jeffrey Blankfort and Jay Knott to help Americans obtain the truth so that they are not smeared with the crimes of Zionism and can defend themselves from the dreadful agendas of Zionists defenders like Mr. Hammond.
When Chomsky or Hammond write that the “Arabs wanted a bi-national state,” exactly what Arabs are they talking about? Certainly not those on the ground in Palestine who were already being dispossessed when wealthy Jews were buying the lands of absentee Arab landlords and evicting them. What those Arab negotiators saw was the writing on the wall and were trying to get the best deal they could out of it. The notion that the Palestinians preferred a binational state to an independent Arab state has promised by the Brits before Balfour is not only wrong it is an apology for Jewish colonialism, something that Chomsky has never questioned.
Thank you Mary for the link to the pdf of the book. the problem I had was in trying to correlate the page numbers cited by Mr Knott and Mr Hammond with the page numbers I saw on the pdf version. I think the pdf may be from a later or earlier edition issued by the publisher. I still think it might be useful to compare Chomsky’s actual words with what commntators/critics of commentators present. I hope I get chance to delve into that but today is Monday, full of “logistics” chores.
Actually, Mr Hammond it YOU who has blood on your hands!
Yes, it is you and your accomplices Green, Richie and Chomsky who, instead of following through on your injunction to “.. act to end U.S. support for Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people”, are acting instead to weaken support for BDS!
BDS, the only opening found so far which shows any promise of successfully weakening US support for Isreal!
(other than the Gaza Flotillas which are crucial to support the Palestinian capacity to resist, but which act on the consciousness of the US public less directly than BDS which bypasses the Zion-Stream Media by addressing local civil society and governmental bodies directly, and the voting public directly, face to face, by means of Initiative campaigns.)
Shame on you!
Let us discuss “We”. As used by Chomsky in the first pages of his “Triangle”, it is a FALSE AGGREGATE. In time honored Rulingclass fashion, Chomsky attempts to conflate the Ruling Classes with the Ruled Classes, and by attributing the actions of the former to the latter, tries to sustain his charge of “hypocrisy” against those who insist on targetting the weakest, most indefensible point in the capitalist empire’s defenses.
What kind of a mindset is it that begins a major political statement by annihilating class differences, by making poor class, working class, struggling lower-middle class people equally guilty of crimes committed by the US government as are the people who own and control the government?
Does Mr Chomsky really believe that the USA is a genuine democracy, that members of Congress really represent the interests and opinions of their constituents?
The “special relationship” is not something that arose from the grassroots to be instituted “by popular demand”; it was decided by a narrow stratum of powerholders at the very top of the US socio-economic power & status pyramid, then sold to the rest of the public by means of the most massive brainwashing campaign in history.
Well before Mr Chomsky’s book was published, I happened to read a book by Ralph Schoenman, “The Hidden History of Zionism”. Schoenman did not begin by arguing that workingclass Americans were just as responsible for imperialist crimes as the imperialists themselves. Since the early seventies I read many articles on the Izreal problem by Irwin Silber in the now-defunct National Guardian. Mr Silber did not try to conflate the poor and working classes with the imperialist rulingclass or its sycophant accomplices in the petit bourgeois and professional classes.
I never noticed any confusion about this point in work by Israel Shahak, Elmer Berger, I. Abu Lughod, Naseer Aruri, Daoud Kuttab, Lenni Brenner, H. Obenzinger or others I was reading in 1982.
In my experience, it is only Liberals who talk like this, who misuse the word “We” as if there is no difference between poor people and rich people. Liberals are people who at best might want to see some government policies adjusted to make them easier to defend against critics, but who basically support and are part of the Status Quo.
As Marx said long ago, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it”. Chomsky is great at interpreting historical events, at listing and describing them, but not so hot at analysing and getting to the causes behind them. And when it is proposed to actually try to do something about the evils he’s so good at describing, he turns himself into a massive roadblock, into a disruptive force, into what some in the labor movement used to describe as “a wrecker”.
In which he is aided and abetted by Mssrs Hammond and Green, and that other one I won’t mention by name for fear of violating this site’s obscenity guidelines.
My friend Bernie the Attorney says,
“The power of Zionism ends where people of character and integrity begin…”
I forwarded several pieces to him (Mr. Knott, Mr. Blankfort, Ms. Weir, and Ms. Rizzo) and he was excited to see such eloquent and convincing writing fully in line with what he’s been sharing with me for some time (he’s been on about Chomsky for some time – as Jeffrey stated, it’s not that he’s wrong on everything, but this glaring omission forces one to ask why) He also made note of the rest of the posters making contributions that he felt greatly added to the discussion and understanding.
Btw, does anyone know if Prof. Chomsky has commented on the GIYUS Megaphone project? If so, how effective and far reaching does he consider the distortions being inserted into public discourse. These distortions helping drown out all but the “official narrative” are what I think of whenever I hear a poll about US public support for Israel. I consider these numbers highly untrustworthy. As Alison Weir’s perfectly named website points out, “If Americans knew…”
If only.
Often when I see such transparent trolling, I’ll preface what I say with, “Megaphone much?”
The largest real ACTION taken in the United States were, I think most would agree, the electoral campaigns in Somerville, in which the ANSWER-MECA-etc. liberal zionists played almost ZERO role…standing aside, as these close Democrats always will when Israeli interests are really at stake…
Or, in my geographical area, the 1984 Measure E campaign, resembling the Somerville one, where all the liberal zionist left of the time stood aside, in solidarity with ‘public’ radio locally, which also essentially boycotted that campaign, refusing to cover it, and refusing to even take a stand on the electoral issue itself!
Lubin of MECA, and the NOv 29 Coaltion, an equivalent liberal zionist formation of the day, also stood played no positive role, other than to give counterproductive advice essentially trying to limit the campaign to the Jewish community! A losing strategy for us, of course.
BDS has won ONLY symbolic victories especially in the US, and while important, they are ONLY symbolic, and the above crowd has played little role in those, either. Local people have run those campaigns.
No sort of organizing that reaches large numbers of people has happened in regard to Gaza, either, as small groups of fairly wealthy people are involved in those campaigns, whatever we may think of their value.
And again, the usual liberal zionist public radio people play little role in THAT, either.
Bu this whole crowd has plenty of time and energy to devote to trying to discredit the leading anti-imperialist intellectual in the US.
What conclusions are we to draw?
Ohoh, stop, hold everything: Mr Chomsky has changed his mind! He no longer considers BDS “hypocritical”, in fact he has endorsed it!
The California BDS Initiative specifically targets Isreal, focussing on it to the exclusion of the rest of the Evil Empire, so it appears Chomsky has been convinced by the arguments advanced by Blankfort, Knott, Ms Rizzo and others that it is NOT a mistake to focus on Isreal!
That’s what I call progress! hmm, well, I notice the language of the Initiative seems to differ somewhat from the language of the original call by the Palestine Civil Society group. In fact seems qualitatively weaker.
The Initiative puts forth a list of demands which matches that of the JVP and others who equate “ending the Occupation” with legitimizing the Zionist Entity if it will only withdraw to the “Green Line”, which of course it will never do, since such an action is made surpurflous by the terms of the JVP-compatible Demands which contain the implication that Isreal itself is a legitimate national state worthy of everyone’s acceptance.
Well, just getting the topic of Isreal put on the table for discussion is probably worth putting up with some JVP-style weasely mealymouthing, but the question is, how long should we be willing to put up with what is in the finally analysis just a slicker version of the same old hasbara?
One conclusion is that you are still on the payroll of the ADL (the Arab Defamation League) doing your job as an agent provocateur attacking those who have been genuinely working for the Palestinian cause as opposed to pretending to..
Then we should consider the paradox that while Chomsky has been voted “the world’s top intellectual” and he is treated as a rock star wherever he goes, it is almost as difficult to find an anti-imperialist movement anywhere in the Western world as it is in the US where it is virtually lifeless.
Mary, your questions to me seemed premised upon an assumption that I’ve totally denied that there exists an Israeli Lobby and/or that it has any influence, which, as anyone who read my previous comment in that regard can see, is false.
Jeff asked which Arabs wanted a bi-national state, and suggested that Palestinians themselves did not favor this solution. That is false. Representatives from Palestine as well as the neighboring Arab states were at the London conference in 1939. Palestinians were also represented when that solution was reiterated by the Arabs again in 1947 to UNSCOM. I discuss and document this in my essay “The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination: The Struggle for Palestine and the Roots of the Israeli-Arab conflict”, which people can pick up from Lulu.com or Amazon.com.
@jerry, no you don’t deny it exists, but you claim that since it has the aspect of an empty container since it is too wide, that any kind of definition of it, however loose is “all okay”.
I tend to believe there is a striking difference between the Jewish/Israel lobby, which is a special interest group that works at times in a coordinated way, at times independently (depending on the target to pressure) and merely a sort of “Jewish consensus” that is loosely a lobby, though without any evidence that this basket-where-all-is-kept even has the same goals.
I consider J Street an uber zionist org. Though… to many they are a progressive leftwing group that seeks peace, full stop. They are a zio org because of their programme and their approach. The list is long of these groups, I won’t waste your time in compiling it.
I consider them equally as detrimental to promoting justice in the Middle East because their goal is to normalise apartheid and racism.
Now, one question before I engage with you ever again. You can also check your crib notes with Mark Richey, who has been given the courtesy (and for the last time) of airing his complaints here.
“Is the ethnic composition relevant in a person’s discourse, especially if they are Jewish? And if so, in what way, why and why do you determine it so?”
It ties in with this discourse, because you will find you sleep with racists (and wake up with fleas, as they say).
knott, hayate:
I’ll stick to one point that has not been addressed in the comments: Of course there is a “Japan lobby,” or rather a collection of interests tied to Japan who seek to influence US policy to their favor. In the main these interests are corporate. They don’t usually identify explicitly as Japanese, since Japan does not require US foreign aid to survive. But Japanese capital investment and trade are far more important in modern American life than Israel, but in a way that is pervasive and mixed up with capitalism generally (a company with a 30 percent Japanese share in ownership, for example, won’t be called “Japanese.”) The Israeli lobby appears disproportionately important because its central task is the very narrow one of drumming up support for Israel per se, which makes it easily identifiable as pro-Israeli. The issue makes for a lot more heat than your usual corporate lobbying. But Japanese-based (like those of other nations’) corporations, banks and real estate interests go to enormous lengths to influence US local politics, finance US campaigns, lobby lawmakers and regulators, and win US contracts. An obvious example of such influence would be the extreme anti-union stance of southern Republicans. The Japanese carmakers maintain large non-union plants in a number of southern States. The senators in these states have been vociferous in blocking the employee free choice act and opposed the recent bailouts of the unionized American carmakers. When they do this, they don’t need to talk about Japanese interests, which can be kept amorphous within the greater corporate interest. The fact that Israel’s supporters must constantly talk about Israel is an indicator of the relative precariousness of their cause.
Otherwise, beware those, imperialists and otherwise, who seek to give ready and easy definitions of “US interests.” While it’s true that US government policy to Israel is not in the interests of (most of) the country’s people (depending what we mean by “interest” in the first place), it’s equally true that US policy to Cuba has damaged the American people, and has been influenced by a lobby of Cubans who have been very influential on this one issue. By the ways that the majority of US foreign policymaking elites have defined their own interests (correctly or otherwise), support for the Israeli settler state as an assault on Arab nationalism and unity has always made sense.
Jeremy, from what you write, you obviously think Abbas and the PA truly represent the Palestinians today. The Palestinian fellahin were represented even less so by those Arabs who were supposed to represent their interests in 1939 and 1947 who were in varying degrees puppets of British and French colonial interests. Given that even in 1947 Jews owned but 6% of the land and were 30% of the population why would Palestinian Arabs consent to a bi-national state if not pressured to do so and why should they have in your opinion?
What is not usually known about your hero, Chomsky, was that he was consistently opposed to the notion of a single state well before the PLO genuflected to his and international opinion and agreed to give up the majority of the Palestinian homeland and accept Israel’s existence within the 1967 borders and condemned those resistance groups such as the PFLP and the DFLP as “rejectionist” when the real rejectionist was the Zionist Chomsky who insisted that the Palestinians recognize Israel’s existence as a legitimate state. I wrote about that in “Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine Conflict” which neither he or any of his admirers has ever attempted to refute. Maybe you should try a hand at it Again it’s at http://www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html
Nick would like us to think that absent the influence of Japanese auto makers, the Republicans in the South would be pro-union. Anyone with a head on their shoulders should be aware that the South has always been anti-union, whether it was being run by the Republicans or the Dixiecrats. The notion that the Japanese car makers have any influence in that arena is ridiculous. That they take advantage of the situation is something else and very different.
Nick warns us to “beware [of] those, imperialists and otherwise, who seek to give ready and easy definitions of “US interests,” a sly way of implying that Mearsheimer, Walt and others not of the Politically Correct [and totally ineffective] Left who write that US support for Israel is not in “US interests,” are really imperialists and not to be trusted. In the mindset of these political dinosaurs (and I refer to the PC Left), unless one is ready to go to the barricades and overthrow the system, they are not to be listened to. To that I say, bullshit! What is not to be trusted is the Zionist-Chomsky-infected PC Left.
If we need more evidence, Nick concludes by telling us “By the ways that the majority of US foreign policymaking elites have defined their own interests (correctly or otherwise), support for the Israeli settler state as an assault on Arab nationalism and unity has always made sense,” tells us that we have another Chomskyite in our midst, since there is no more evidence for this than for the Japanese dictating the Republican’s anti-union policy..
I need to correct what I said about the demands listed in original 2005 BDS call being a lot stronger than the demands listed in the California BDS Inititative, for which proponents are gathering signatures to put on the November ballot.
Actually the language in both is very similar. Both run the risk of encouraging hopes that the Two State Illusion will be transformed into flesh and blood.
It looks to me like we have entered a period wherein we anti-zionists will be trying to use the Liberal/Left/Soft zionists for cover vs hostility from the Right, while they use us to deflect criticism from the left. We’ll be hoping that the raising of the I/P issue in public forums will afford us an opening through which we can present more indepth information, while they’ll be hoping that by usurping the leading role in the effort to hold Izzy somewhat more accountable, they’ll be able to marginalize arguments and evidence that Izzy is and always has been a racist, monstrously criminal, anachronistic abomination that needs to follow the CSA and Dritte Reich into the dustbin of history.
Coalition Politics! Doncha luv it?
Mary, I certainly do not “claim that since it has the aspect of an empty container since it is too wide, that any kind of definition of it, however loose is ‘all okay’.” This is a strawman argument. In fact, my point was precisely the opposite, that it’s not okay to so loosely define the “Israeli Lobby” as to, to return to my example, include all Jewish American voters as ipso facto belonging to it simply on the basis of their religion/ethnicity. The fallacy here is all too glaring. Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, for example, or both Jewish American voters.
As for your question: No, not necessarily. A person’s views and positions is not determined by their ethnicity. There are Zionist Jews and anti-Zionist Jews, for example, to state the obvious, once again. To suggest otherwise, that a person’s views are determined by their ethnicity is actually to “sleep with racists”, as you put it. It’s an absolutely racist suggestion.
Jeff, I absolutely do not “obviously think Abbas and the PA truly represent the Palestinians today”, and I fail utterly to see how you could possibly have drawn that conclusion from anything I’ve said. Absolutely not. The Abbas government is totally illegitimate. This is your problem, you draw dishonest non sequitur conclusions and upon that fallacious premise construct a further strawman argument.
As for the early Palestinian position on a bi-national state, the democratic solution of a bi-national state was the one proposed by Palestinian representatives themselves. If you know of any evidence that the population disagreed with that solution proposed by those representing them, legitimately or otherwise, you’re welcome to present it. Why should they not have wanted such a solution? Yes, Jews owned 7% of the land, and Arabs owned 80%. Yes, Jews were the minority, Arabs the majority. Okay, hence the bi-national solution, and the Arab guarantee that under the proposed democratic state, the rights of that minority would be protected and representation in government guaranteed. I fail to see any problem with this solution, or why you seem to think it unreasonable. It is what the Arabs wanted.
Jeremy,
I find your statement that the Palestinian Arabs preferred a bi-national state to having a state of their own, free of Jews, who are least Jewish political power, mind boggling Do you seriously believe that those who were there to “represent” the Palestinians were any more legitimate in that capacity than those who purport to represent Arab countries today? Do you have confirmation of that from any Palestinian historian? If so, I would like to see it If not, then you, like Chomsky are simply talking through your hat
Today, you are able to see the role that Abbas is playing and how the world is told he is representing the Palestinians How do you know that the situation in the late 30s and early 40s with regard to the “leadership” of the Palestinian community was any more representative of the Palestinians than is Abbas today? Certainly, the man who had been considered their leader, the Mufti al-Husseni, was not among them and we know he did not want a bi-national state
Jeremy, you wrote: “As for your question: No, not necessarily. A person’s views and positions is not determined by their ethnicity. There are Zionist Jews and anti-Zionist Jews, for example, to state the obvious, once again. To suggest otherwise, that a person’s views are determined by their ethnicity is actually to “sleep with racists”, as you put it. It’s an absolutely racist suggestion.”
Well, sir, your biggest defender here is either an out and out racist himself, or he sleeps with them. Thought you may be concerned .. this is part of his harassment email exchanges. Not only was he showing his hatred of Jews and his ideas of “the goyim” needing to suck up to them, he put down people with the adjective “lesbians”… and tried to defend that one… some slips you simply can’t hide, especially if you live in an area where being lesbian is like having blonde hair or being Polish. One simply “is” and it is curious that such a thing could come into conversation as a putdown. (but then again, he engages in the sexist language that Greenstein engages in, calling women “groupies”… He went on in a previous email trying to insert me into the profile of his mother, an Italian-American who “tagged behind a rich Jewish woman”… I think the guy has issues…..
after a particularly harassing note where he kept asking me my NATIONALITY and if I’m “really Jewish” which would “explain a lot!”
here is the exchange:
Mark Richey: Excuse me, but I can’t help wondering if you are really Italian? Clearly I’m just going by your name and location for that. Please enlighten me if that assumption is wrong. Is that perchance your married name, and you’re really Jewish? That would explain a lot!
Of course, as a groupie of the Jewish network of ANSWER-MECA-etc., your nationality becomes unimportant to you.. Just as Raja’s becomes secondary, he’s first of all a media groupie of Jews…but nationality is important to me!!
I wrote:
there you go, racially profiling! Don’t you know that someone can be Italian and Jewish (and a number of other things) at the same time? Is this news to you? Did you know that the way you word things is precisely the way Zionists think? Dividing the world into chosen and un-chosen.
It doesn’t really matter what I am, it has ZERO bearing, and in fact, nobody I know cares at all what chance made me born as unless someone is either a zionist or a jewphobic. those are the only ones who NEED to know because it EXPLAINS THINGS, and it is evidence of something! So, who is the one kissing up to Jews or putting them down as if they are a special category? sure isn’t Raja or me. You are the one who is obsessed. Others of us don’t give a toss and we’ve said it for decades. Though it seems you let Chomsky off the hook precisely for that reason!
it’s actually VERY funny!
I already told you my nationality. I am an Italian. It has nothing to do with my husband, who is an Italian. Rizzo is my maiden name, and if you claim you know how Italians are, you should have known that Italian women don’t ever take their husband’s surname.
lay off with the word “groupie” too, you are starting to really sound like an idiot with your sexist words that you then try to hide behind.
Mark Richey wrote:
Well, you are Italian-American, I presume, and those do change their names when married most of the time! I’ve seen Jewish women hide behind other ethnic names before in the ‘activist’ world.
I take it you’re Jewish, anyway, even though also Italian. That explains a lot, in fact just about everyting, your blind adherence to the lies of someone yu haven’t ever met, and who on three other blogs is being called a liar and an asshole by people with long histories of activism.
There are of course divisions among Jews, three of blankfort’s critics I mentioned, just for example..but in this infomral US jewish network of MECA=ANSWER-etc. to which Blankfort belongs, there have only recently surfaced any divisions publicly, because althoough they also love him, they can’t stomach him calling Noam Chomsky the ‘2010 equivalent of the JDL’, etc. although they of course dont’ object when he calls a non Jew an ADL agent in an obvious smear campaign. Only a matter of time before he started the same methodology on the leading US opponent of imperialism, of course. Their own fault for indulging him for years in this sort of behavior, as you still do.
This is cleary a veiled threat..as I’m sure you know, you just won’t admit it.
Goodbye Mary. Please don’t bother replying, I won’t read anything more from Jeff..er..I mean, you.
******************
Though that was FAR from his goodbye note!
he came back with this GEM! which he sent to A GROUP OF PEOPLE, judging by the prose:
When i introduced myself to her as Italian American, she needed to say she was jewish..just common courtesy, exchanging information in an introduction. She quite deliberately concealed it. But oh I forgot, Jews are above common courtesy and basic honesty.
This is called ‘lying by omission’ in English. Something only the sophisticated, the manipulative, the dishonest, the Blankforts and ‘Rizzos’, will ever do.
*******
then THIS one went out to more people
**********************
AFter quite a bit of research, I discovered that Mary Rizzo is indeed Jewish. As an Italian American, this suprised me since they are such a small portion of the Italian population.
WE had an exchange for months on articles on PTT and a Jewish American liar who posted slanderous and deliberately false articles there about Noam Chomsky, without her mentioning this to me, and even now when I directly asked her, she wouldn’t answer clearly.
I had to research the question on the Internet for quite some time.
She comes on with the usual mendacious ‘my ethnicity isn’t important’ line, but of course she is part of the informal Jewish ‘activist’ network based in US organizations.
I find that Jewish people who more or less deliberately conceal their Jewish identity on their blogs or other ‘activist’ sites are very deceitful–and, more importantly, they  always are also concealing their adherence to this informal but quite well organized Jewish ‘activist’ network, e.g.  her posting  and defence of articles by Prince Blankfort, noted MECA-Demo Party liberal zionist media maven.
She refuses to even mention or ALLOW mentioning of some other bloggers, several of them also Jewish, Â who have thoughly demonstrated Blankfort’s lying tendencies on other blogs such as Cafe Intifada.
******
then my partner Haitham Sabbah replied to him:
Mark,
BCC’ing me in all your WASTE OF TIME emails will not help. Go research something useful, read more, specially what Mary and Jeff post around and pray that you learn the TRUTH.
to which Mark Richey replied:
If you sleep with Jewish cobras, Haitham, you can expect they will eventually bite you.
and, for completeness, Haitham replied:
Not if I’m a King Cobra myself :)
So Jeremy…… How is that for the views of your favourite supporter. And I’ve even spared some of his most inane ones asking “which Jew I was going to grovel to” since I couldn’t grovel to both of them…
I think I rest my case. But I also hope this is a warning. Those using emails to harass, insult and put down people, be prepared that your bullshit is going to be exposed. I am like a cobra, I give a warning, and if someone does not back off, they will be bitten.
Remember, it was Richie who said I was a Cobra, as it is synonymous to Jew in his book.
That second line should read “or at least Jewish political power:”
and Jeff, JH is advised to inform himself on the fallacy. Yesterday we published a good paper on the refusal to lower the bar and settle for less. It was the lack of support of the legitimacy of resistance that allowed this to happen, and some call it being pragmatic and settling for the best they can get. (Burning into the Conscience, it’s on the homepage)
returning only for a moment to the racist discourse of MR (as this is all about activists, it is not out of place in the discussion though it is diverting to the true cause)… Richey believes it is a “common courtesy” to campaign as a Jew or even make some kind of big deal of being a Jew. I honestly in my entire life never saw a Protestant come out and say, “Hi, I’m George and I’m Protestant”. Not even in Italy where they are an absolute minority. I mean… what parallel world does our Richey live in? and.. more to the point… since Jews are given the red carpet treatment in activism, as if they are far more relevant, and the Jew du Jour is never absent from the centre of discourse, wouldn’t it have been EXACTLY THE BEST TACTICAL THING for me to campaign as a Jew? Wouldn’t that have turned my work into “another powerful Jewish voice speaking out” kind of stuff?
Thank God that people read my work and the things I support and consider close to my own work not because of the race, sex, religion, or any other personal thing about the person writing it.
I do have a prejudice though.. I want the Palestinians to lead their own struggle. I want them to guide the discourse. Yes, Palestinian voices mean 50 times more to me than any other voice.
nick on September 21st, 2010 at 15:14:
Jeff Blankfort has already demolished your arguments so there is no need for me to add anything more (thanks, JB, nice job, btw :D) .
I regret to see this discussion being carried on in terms of the “Israel Lobby”, when the Zionist Fifth Column in the US is much much more than a “lobby”. I don’t know why there is so much reference to Walt & Mearsheimer, and none to James Petras, whose identification of the problematic entity as the Zionist Power Configuration is so much clearer and descriptive.
Also, I think the quotes you have supplied from correspondence with Mk R make it absolutely clear that his only purpose in posting on PTT is to distract, divert, and disrupt, to confuse, inject extraneous issues, waste our time, all in the interest of preventing a meaningful discusssion of Mr Chomsky’s political role.
I think allowing Hammond to state his case might serve a useful purpose by affording an opportunity to criticize erroneous notions readers might also come across elsewhere. But as far as I am concerned, no useful purpose is served by extending “free speech” privileges to this Richie character.
Jeff,
Your argument that Arab Palestinians were opposed to a bi-national state and wanted one “free of Jews” has absolutely no merit. The Arab Palestinians were opposed to Zionism, not to Jews, and prior to the advent of Zionism, Arab and Jewish Palestinians got along fine as neighbors. Even after the advent of Zionism, indigenous Jews and non-Zionist Jewish immigrants got along fine with their Arab neighbors.
As already noted, Arab representatives, including from Palestine, proposed a bi-national solution in 1939.
As the 1919 King-Crane Commission report noted, Arab Palestinians (and indigenous Jewish Palestians, too, for that matter) were opposed to Zionism, not to Jews.
After the 1929 riots, the Shaw Commission observed that “For 80 years before the first of these attacks there is no recorded instance of any similar incidents.” Representatives from all sides testified to the fact that before WWI, “the Jews and Arabs lived side by side if not in amity, at least with tolerance, a quality which today is almost unknown in Palestine.” The Commission concluded that the cause of the violence was Arab resentment of Britain’s immigration policy and denial of their right to self-determination: “The Arab people of Palestine are today united in their demand for representative government.”
The 1937 Peel Commission report noted the later Arab rebellion was rooted in the same cause, “namely, the demand of the Arabs for national independence and their antagonism to the [Jewish] National Home”. Note, “antagonism to the National Home”, not “antagonism to Jews”.
The 1940 Hope Simpson report noted the remarkable difference between Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish settlements: “All the cases which are now quoted by the Jewish authorities to establish the advantageous effect of Jewish colonization on the Arabs of the neighborhood, and which have been brought to notice forcibly and frequently during the course of this inquiry, are cases relating to colonies established by the P.I.C.A., before the Keren Heyesod [JNF] came into existence. In fact, the policy of the P.I.C.A. was one of great friendship for the Arab. Not only did they develop the Arab lands simultaneously with their own, when founding their colonies, but they employed the Arab to tend their plantations. . . . It is also very noticeable, in travelling through the P.I.C.A. villages, to see the friendliness of the relations which exist between Jew and Arab. It is quite a common sight to see an Arab sitting in the verandah of a Jewish house. The position is entirely different in the Zionist colonies.”
The report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry noted explicitly that Arab grievances were not based on anti-Semitism, and “indeed, they are Semites themselves.” On the contrary, Arabs professed “the greatest sympathy for the persecuted Jews of Europe, but they point out that they have not been responsible for this persecution and that it is not just that they should be compelled to atone for the sins of Western peoples by accepting into their country hundreds of thousands of victims of European anti-Semitism.” The report also noted that some of the Arab representatives even expressed a willingness to provide for Jewish refugees on a quota basis if the U.S., Britain, and other Western countries would to the same.
And, as already noted, again in 1947, the Arabs proposed a bi-national solution.
Your argument that they wanted a Palestine “free of Jews” is not only contrary to the documentary record, it moreover shamefully projects and attitude of absolute racism upon the Palestinian people.
***
Mary,
You wrote, “JH is advised to inform himself on the fallacy”. What fallacy? Please explain.
JH, the fallacy that Arabs/Palestinians were willing to accept the division of their homeland. That they were able or about to make deals. This may be comforting for someone like you to persist in, but please read the paper published about resistance here the other day and the Palestinian historical position on the question is spelled out plainly.
PS, how very interesting that you completely ignore the communications about me being a Jew coming from your top cheerleader. Could you make a comment on that please?
PPS, this is what he’s got circulating NOW
Mary Rizzo, the alter ego of PTT, has now banned me and one Jerry Gates from posting ANY comments on the site. I’m sure there are many others who are similarly banned; largely the same people appear in comments on both PTT and their sister blog, Dissident Voice, and teh same people are banned!
I recommend BDS against Jewish zionist blogs, beginning with these two: Palestine Think Tank, and Dissident Voice
*****
LOL! just like I didn’t know I was in secret affiliation with MECA-ANSWER (i barely know what Answer IS, I don’t live in the USA and it’s an American Org if I understand it correctly, I didn’t Know DV was my “sister blog!” I didn’t know I banned Jerry Gates, but I should have, since he has gone on another site to libel this one and the contributors, including the accusation that PTT (and I personally) reject western aid to Palestine. As a matter of fact, just yesterday I met with the Viva Palestina 5 convoy to salute them as they left Italy. I would think that someone opposed to them would never do such a thing. I also remind people that absolute solidarity with the Palestinians is essential and that critical solidarity with solidarity movements is required. They, like any other activists, are required to never lose the focus and to never engage in acts that will sell out the cause or endanger human lives out of bad coordination or planning. Shit happens, as they say, but strategy exists so that the worst effects will happen. We remain critical of all and sundry, and solidial to the final breath with the Palestinian people. If an org or a solidarity person believes they are beyond criticism they need to leave the game. No one knows all the answers.
errata corrige. worst effects will NOT happen.
I think that Jewish Communities must be strong. And than they cope this problem
Mary, the Arabs proposed a bi-national state solution, as I’ve already documented.
Jeremy, “the Arabs” is not a term that I think the Palestinians use. I’d abstain from using it too.
Now, what one party proposes is but one of the options available. If you really are carefully researching, you will find that the struggle is not about a bi-national state. This is a solution that is a compromise solution. It never was even taken seriously in consideration by the Israelis.
ps, why so much difficulty addressing the harrassment and racist insult I have been subjected to by your number one supporter? Does this not give you cause to ponder about this individual? Unless in an abstract way your ideas of what racism are easy to express, a concrete example under your nose seems to rush straight past you.
You are a guest here, and you’ve been asked about this abuse to me. Why are you avoiding responding to this? Is it unimportant?
Jeremy, I have asked you if you have ANY evidence from Palestinian historians that Palestinians on the ground favored a bi-national state? All you can do is repeat the Chomskyist line. I guess you can’t come up with any. Perhaps you could tell us who appointed the representatives of the Palestinians? Whatever one might think of Mufti, he was the acknowledged leader of the Palestinians and we know that he would not have supported a bi-national state. Frankly, Jeremy, the more you write, the more you expose yourself as a Zionist like your idol, Chomsky.
Jeff Blankfort replying to me writes: “Nick would like us to think that absent the influence of Japanese auto makers, the Republicans in the South would be pro-union.”
Certainly not. How sad that you should wave a strawman so obviously. You seemed to claim there is no such thing as a “Japanese lobby” in US politics. I gave an example of Japanese corporate interests that do lobby in US politics. They use money to influence politics. The degree to which this is effective, or results in positions by politicians that are different from what they might have otherwise been, is a separate question.
JB wrote: “Nick warns us to ‘beware [of] those, imperialists and otherwise, who seek to give ready and easy definitions of “US interests,”‘ a sly way…”
Again, none of what follows. A very straightforward way of pointing out that most foreign policy discourse is poisoned with an undefined central term in which the identity of interest of 300 million people is implied, although nothing of the sort exists.
You resort all too readily to low-grade insinuation and labelling strategies, seeking to call people “Chomskyites,” etc. without actually addressing what is written. You’re a smart guy, what’s stopping you from trying to address what I write soberly and in logical or factual terms?
If you don’t mind a PS after that,
your piece is predicated on a false dichotomy.
JB wrote:
“There are two rival hypotheses:
1. The main reason for the USA’s unconditional support for Israel’s unique persistence in imposing apartheid is that it is in US capitalist interests
2. The main reason for this support is the power of American Jewish organizations”
Whereas:
These are not rival but complementary theses, about allied and not “rival” interests. (Insofar as “US capitalist” isn’t broken down into its many components.)
In addition, neither “US capitalist interests” nor “American Jewish organizations” should be equated with “US interests.”
There is no evidence that Chomsky or anyone with similar opinions has produced that demonstrates that US’s de facto support for Israel’s continuing occupation and settlement expansion serves either US global or capital interests as defined by the normal criteria for evaluating such interests. Every president since Nixon has made an effort to some degree to end Israeli occupation, not for the benefit of anything but US regional interests as perceived by the White House and each effort has been shot down when whoever happened to be the Israeli PM, called on his agents in the US to get their trained seals in the US Congress to sabotage whoever happened to be president. Obama is just the latest to be humiliated but it also happened to Dubya and Clinton.
Mary, of course the solution of a single independent Palestine respecting the rights of the minority Jews proposed by the Arabs was not seriously considered by the Zionists (which is I presume what you mean by “the Israelis”, since Israel was not yet in existence). That goes without saying.
Jeff, the Palestinians did not seek a Palestine “free of Jews”, as you falsely claimed. They were opposed to Zionism, not to Jews.
For example, once again, at the London Conference in 1939, representatives of the Palestinians proposed an independent Palestine in which the minority rights of the Jews would be recognized. Although the British-appointed Mufti was denied attendance, his brother Jamal al-Husayni, founder and chairman of the Palestine Arab Party and its delegate to the Arab Higher Committee.
Arab representatives, including from Palestine, proposed something similar again to UNSCOP in 1947, a single Palestinian state with a democratic constitution guaranteeing full civil and religious rights for all citizens and an elected legislative assembly that would include Jewish representatives.
I’ve already also reviewed and cited other items from the documentary record clearly establishing that the the Arab Palestinians lived peacefully with their non-Zionist Jewish neighbors, and otherwise establishing that what they were opposed to was not Jews, but Zionism. This is absolutely non-controversial, and I see no point in denying this fact and insisting on dishonestly projecting upon the Palestinians the racist attitude of desiring a Palestine “free of Jews”.
Jeremy, Neither you nor I can speak for “the Palestinians” nor should we try for reasons I should not have to explain to someone who at least has pretenses of being “progressive.” I have no doubt that Palestinian opinions concerning European Jews (as opposed to the indigenous Mizrahim Jews ) ranged from wanting them all to leave to collaboration with them both open and covert. History has more than adequately demonstrated that those who wanted them to leave were both prescient and correct. Those who think otherwise should be considered as Zionists, don’t you agree, Jeremy? Or do you think the Palestinians are better off that the European Jewish settlers not only didn’t depart but forced the Palestinians to leave? Do you think that those Palestinians who opposed European Jewish settlement were racist? Better answer this one, Jeremy, without accusing me, yet again, of being “dishonest,” because I’m inclined not to let it go.
Thank you, Nick, for reinforcing my point about Chomsky’s spurious “We”:) Nick writes:
(Insofar as “US capitalist” isn’t broken down into its many components.)
In addition, neither “US capitalist interests” nor “American Jewish organizations” should be equated with “US interests.”
////
39.teafoe2 on September 20th, 2010 at 18:41:
Let us discuss “We”. As used by Chomsky in the first pages of his “Triangle”, it is a FALSE AGGREGATE. In time honored Rulingclass fashion, Chomsky attempts to conflate the Ruling Classes with the Ruled Classes, and by attributing the actions of the former to the latter, tries to sustain his charge of “hypocrisy” against those who insist on targetting the weakest, most indefensible point in the capitalist empire’s defenses.
What kind of a mindset is it that begins a major political statement by annihilating class differences, by making poor class, working class, struggling lower-middle class people equally guilty of crimes committed by the US government as are the people who own and control the government?
As one who, while not of Japanese ancestry myself, has had considerable involvement with the Nisei/Sansei/Shisei community, I have to weigh in on Nick’s misleading comments about a “Japan lobby”.
While I think we can assume, at least for the sake of argument, that Japanese corporations who sell to or manufacture in the USA maintain some kind of a lobbying presence in Washington, as well as in the capitals of the West Coast states heavily involved in Japan/US trade, it’s ridiculous to claim that this lobbying activity is anything near to comparable with the Zionist Power Apparatus in the US.
When was the last time tens of thousands of Japanese-American citizens were mobilized to deluge Congress & the White House with letters, emails, phone calls demanding special favors for Japan or for Japan-based firms? When was the last time anyone’s employer was contacted by agents of the Japanese Government demanding an apology for mentioning in public how much they admired the Japanese-Americans for achieving a good deal of affluence and professional status in America?
There is no Japanese equivalent of the ADL/JCRC/Standwithus Thought Police apparatus. The Japanese-American Citizens League/JACL has lobbied and mobilized their members effectively behind the demand for Compensation for the WWII internment in FDR’s concentration camps, but at this point now that at least a token level of compensation has been paid to former internees, I haven’t heard of any organized demand to increase the amount already paid.
One indication of the weakness of Japanese American, Chinese American and Korean American lobbying is that Oriental Medicine, Acupuncture and Herbology, are still not covered by Medicare. I don’t think I need to spell out what this implies?
Another test of the Israel Lobby’s power is to contrast the USA’s treatment of the conflict between Britain and Irish Republicans and its approach to that between Israel and Palestinian Muslims.
Both situations had
1. An important US ally fighting a group which it hypocritically called ‘terrorist’
2. An American interest and desire in resolving the conflict
3. Sympathizers of both sides in the conflict in the USA
Obviously, British interests are well represented in DC, but there was also a significant Irish Lobby, and even major politicians who openly sympathized with the IRA. The Brits didn’t like Ted Kennedy’s Republicanism, but they couldn’t do much about it. They couldn’t call on the British Lobby to get him fired. As a result, the USA arm-twisted Britain into talking to the IRA, and peace was achieved.
Compare this with Israel. Again, a powerful country, but nowhere near as powerful as America. Again, hypocritical whining about ‘terrorists’. Again, both sides have their supporterss. The average American is vaguely aware that there are two sides to the issue, and would like to see peace.
No chance. Whereas Hilary Clinton could visit Northern Ireland and talk to both sides, if she did that in Palestine she’d not only lose her job, but under new legislation which bars talking to Israel’s opponents, even to persuade them to take a non-violent course, she could be imprisoned!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29abunimah.html?_r=2
It’s the Lobby, stupid.
Right on cue…Shell Oil defies Lobby and increases trade with Iran…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/27/shell-buys-more-oil-iran
“But its trades with the state-owned oil company, a major contributor to the finances of a government which has made its nuclear program a priority, are likely to expose Shell to growing political pressure.”
What kind of ‘political pressure’ could affect oil corporations? Professor Chomsky asks “How can they be so impotent in the face of the Lobby?”. I can only humbly suggest that we amend our theories so that they more accurately explain reality.
Nick on September 24th, 2010 at 19:25:
“You resort all too readily to low-grade insinuation and labelling strategies, seeking to call people “Chomskyites,” etc. without actually addressing what is written. You’re a smart guy, what’s stopping you from trying to address what I write soberly and in logical or factual terms?”
Actually, Blankfort quite accurately addressed your troll which you wrote originally to get a reaction from me. As with all hasbarats, once your strawman was deflated, you invent new wind-up to again waste people’s time. That’s how all of you ziobots operate on every board that allows you to post on it.