Chomsky Catfight?
OK, I might have reacted too quickly to a message on an email list by someone who offered a YouTube video of a speech by Noam Chomsky on the 14th amendment. I asked why, since the list description “rejects all anti-Semitism” and is “also opposed to all other forms of racism”, the writer is promoting the voice of Chomsky, given that he
– lived on an early settlement (euphamism: kibbutz)
– carried weapons to impose Jewish racism upon Palestinians
– has never renounced his contribution to Zionism (found to be racism by the UNGA in 1975)
– opposes the BDS movement
[he also diminishes the effect of the Jewish Lobby in the US …hh]
Even PeaceMonger didn’t take my side on this one, and that pushed me to reflect that my criticism was hasty. Yes, I admitted later, we can learn from even those who hold political positions different than ours, and hoped that my comment did not indicate any move to censor.
BUT …
What about the words of Nahida Izzat, which also crossed my desk this week:
Bottom line is: Almost all the so called “anti-zionist†Jewish groups who “support†the Palestinians, have exactly the same aims and objectives as their zionist “enemy†; i.e. enabling, supporting, and securing the Jewish-zionist project and their permanent illegal, and immoral colonization of Palestine, be it as it may under a different name and altered regime…This troubling conclusion urges to scrutinize how these facts have been translated as strategy on the ground. It appears that the strategy is manifested in three main aspects: diversion, holding back and steering:
AND …
What about a response to Paul Eisen’s observation:
The crime against the Palestinian people is being committed by a Jewish state with Jewish soldiers using weapons displaying Jewish religious symbols, and with the full support and complicity of the overwhelming mass of organised Jews worldwide. But to name Jews as responsible for this crime seems impossible to do.
We ask the question: Is Noam Chomsky part of the solution or part of the problem? He is Jewish. He is an iconic leader in the peace movement. But he diverts our attention from issues like Israel’s legitimacy, holds back his opinion on Israel’s claimed right to exist as a Jewish state, and steers us away from possibly effective strategies like BDS. And his behavior lends confirmation to the observation that holding Jews responsible for the crimes in Palestine seems impossible to do.
Activists need to hold their leaders’ feet to the fire, especially Jewish activists in the Palestine Liberation Movement. Our answer is that Chomsky is without doubt part of the problem. What do you think?
Comments?
Eight vigilers
Saying “No” to Jewish Supremacism
Henry Herskovitz
Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends
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December 29th, 2013 - 5:21 pm
Hi hh,
I think your comments/reservations are valid. Why not send them to Noam and ask for his thoughts?pp
December 29th, 2013 - 5:37 pm
I’ve just made the mistake of writing a comment and then clicking on the comments policy link below. This deleted my comment, so I’ll start again! Maybe this will give me the opportunity to simplify what I said.
Following the cast-lead operation, I wrote a comment online holding ‘all Jews’ responsible for what was happening. I came to regret having said this, particularly in view of the fact that I lost too quite close friends as a result. They were both liberal Zionists, but instead of arguing against my anti-Zionism, they chose to regard my admittedly provocative generalisation as anti-Semitic, and to cut me off from further friendship with them on this account.
But their action very nearly proved my point. It is the super-sensitivity of almost all Jews to a supposed irrational and uncaused prejudice against them by gentiles which is the most effective support for Zionism there could be. For Zionism rests on the ideology that gentiles are endemically anti-Semitic.
Francis