28 July, 2005

About Noam Chomsky - reflections from Benjamin Merhav

Benjamin Merhav
See Benjamin Merhav’s homepage for his biography and more.


Born into and raised by a "deeply Zionist"(in his own words) family, Noam Chomsky has remained loyal to zionism* all his life, albeit under the cover and pretence of a "Left"guru in the West. This contradiction, between Chomsky's loyalty to zionism and his well publicised "Left views", is only one of several contradictory and absurd behaviours of his ,which merit the question: is Noam Chomsky an impostor? The other contradictions are related to the first one, but each of them is an absurdity/deception on its own. Thus, for example, while publishing books and articles which purport to criticise the USA foreign policies, its imperialist military interventions in other countries in particular, he had been holding for many years a well paid senior teaching position at MIT, which is the brain centre of the USA military-industrial complex under the control of and financed by the Pentagon. All of which expose another Chomsky absurdity, namely ,his persistent push into the ranks of Anarchist groups around the world by purporting to act as their guru, as if he himself has been nothing but a dedicated Anarchist all his life.

Since zionism has been central to Noam Chomsky's activities and views it would be necessary to take firstly a close (yet brief) look at zionism and at the zionist apartheid regime of Israel so that the implications are grasped correctly.

Zionism, political zionism, is a form of fascism. From its beginning it was looking for imperialist patronage in exchange for service to the British empire**. After the 2nd WW the patronage of zionism shifted to the world's centre of finance capital, the USA plutocracy. This job of spearheading the global rule (not just in the Middle East) for the huge USA transnational corporations has been undertaken by the Zionist apartheid regime of Israel with great zest (albeit with great secrecy), and to the grateful acclaim of the USA rulers. Hence their continued sponsorship of this racist regime, which in turn encourages further zionist impunity (like its production and deployment of WMD), and more perpetration of zionist war crimes and zionist crimes against humanity in Palestine and elsewhere around the world.

Acting as the spearhead for the USA transnational corporations does not, in itself, make the zionist apartheid regime of Israel a fascist regime, nor zionism a fascist ideology. Even their racist feature do not make them necessarily fascist, but combined with the militaristic worship of force/power, and with zionist aggressive territorial expansionism manifested by periodical invasions of neighbouring countries, and with a zionist political system in Israel where all political parties are zionist (with the exception of an Arab minority whose representatives are under constant threat ofexpulsion or arrest whenever they fail to toe the zionist line), and with fascist legislation like the Emergency Regulations(Defence), 1945, the zionist apartheid regime of Israel is a fascist regime with a fascist ideology and fascist policies. The judiciary there follows the zionist line too, of course, and the recent case of Tali Fahima, an Israeli woman peace activist of Jewish background, who has been detained without trial, tortured, incarcerated in solitary confinement, and only after one year in prison her trial begins in secrecy, proves the fascist character of the regime too. There is freedom there only for fanatical zionists, and only partial and conditional freedom for Israelicitizens who are not fanatical zionists.

A very impotant fascist episode in the history of zionism is the active collaboration of the top zionist hierarchy with the fascist regimes of Mussolini and Hitler before, during, and after the 2nd WW (when top Nazi war criminals were saved from the gallows due to the intervention of the zionist hierarchy). That collaboration began in the early 1920s by Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of fanatical zionism who befriended and supported Mussolini. This friendship culminated in themilitary training by the Black Shirts of Jabotinsky's youth followers (Betar), some 135 of them. However, the hierarchy of "mainstream Zionism" did not lag behind Jabotinsky. As soon as Mussolini imposed his rule in Rome, all the rest of the top zionist hierarchy went on a pilgrimage to Rome, to meet Mussolini. They continued to court Mussolini well into the mid '30s, even after his invasion of Ethiopia, and after his alliance with Hitler. Then, during the war, was the zionist collaboration with the Hitler regime which began with the Ha'avara agreement and culminated with the collaboration in the mass murder of Jews in Hungary, as would be revealed during the Kastner trial in Israel during 1954-1955.

So you would think that a person like Noam Chomsky, who claims to be anti-fascist and anti-imperialist, would condemn zionism, and the zionist apartheid regime of Israel, but he has not, and he never wrote a single sentence which condemns zionism or the zionist apartheid regime of Israel. Moreover, he has many zionist friends there in Israel, and he used to spend his vacations in his beloved zionist kibbutz there.

Then there is the other absurdity, namely, what was this "Left guru" doing at MIT, the USA brain centre of the military industrial complex, where he had been holding a teaching position for so many years? To answer this question we would need to take a brief look at MIT.

In an article titled, MIT Research Heavily Dependent on Defense Department Funding, D.J. Glenn, writes that "MIT is the number one non-profit Department of Defense contractor in the nation..." and he concludes by saying: "The fact that (MIT) chooses to devote less than 20% of research effort to things other than more efficient means to kill is more than disgusting, it is criminal." (seewww-tech.mit.edu/V109/N7/glenn.07o.html).

Another author, B. Feldman, writes under the title, MIT & The Air Force, that: "If an estimated 3,565 civilians were, indeed, killed between October 8, 2001 and Christmas Day 2001 as a result of the U.S. Air Force's military campaign in Afghanistan, then an argument might be made that MIT shares some moral responsibility for these Afghan civilian deaths. And if 2002 brings another escalation in U.S. Air Force military activity in Iraq, it might be productive for anti-racist/anti-war folks in the U.S. to again demand that MIT end its collaborative relationship with the U.S. Air Force, once and for all." (
www.questionsquestions.net/docs0209/1112 __mit.html) And in reply to a reader's question he states as follows: "Although MIT Professor Chomsky has been on the payroll of the 12th-largest recipient of US Air Force war contracts in recent years, the article isn't asserting "that Chomsky is a controlled person." But there is evidence that Z magazine was unwilling to print an article about MIT's links to the U.S. Air Force's space warfare preparations and to the Pentagon's think-tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses, a few years ago." (www.questionsquestions.net/docs0209/0920_response.html)

The question which begs itself again then is what is the "guru of the Left" doing in MIT? If the answer is that he had been just earning his livelihood, than it a manifestly false answer, not only because it was his choice (he could have gone to another university), but also because he had been there for many years as a senior lecturer, and the bosses of the institution had been very proud to have him there.

This cynicism is very typical of Chomsky. He says he supports the Palestinian cause, yet he makes best of friends with the zionists. Anything which suits his ego and his selfish interests is good, and if it does not he either ignores it or goes against it. Zionism is , presumably, part of his ego or else it suits his selfish interests, so why go against it?

All of which bring us to his contradictory attitudes to military draft (conscription) in the USA. In an article titled, Noam Chomsky Vs Noam Chomsky, Frank Speiser quotes Chomsky as follows: "I might add, for what it's worth, that although I was actively involved in organizing and supporting resistance (including support for draft resisters) in the 60s, and was saved from a likely prison sentence only by the Tet offensive, I was never opposed to the draft. If there is to be an army, it would be best, I think, for it to be mainly a citizen's army. In part for the reasons that the top command oppose that option."

In a plutocracy like the USA, the centre of world capitalism, there can be no "citizens' army", because the army - be they conscripts or mercenaries - is an instrument of the ruling class, not of the people. As a "guru of the Left" he certainly knows that, or is it, perhaps, his position with MIT that made him advocate compulsory military conscription to the USA army?

Let us return now to his attitudes to zionism. As I mentioned before, Noam Chomsky has been immersed in zionism from the day he was born, and he has never been willing to even attempt to reconsider his zionist outlook. Take, for example, the Zionist theory of the "Jewish nation". It never occurred to him, or to his cronies, that it is a plain zionist propaganda lie, and a big lie at that! There is no "Jewish nation", only a Jewish religion. The first efforts of T. Herzl, the founder political zionism, had not been directed towards the zionist colonisation of Palestine, but to convince his congress "delegates" that they are all part of the "Jewish nation". Why? Because Palestine could have been replaced by another geographic location (like Uganda, for example), whereas it was more important for zionism to show the world that there is a "Jewish nation" that needs a "homeland" where it can establish its own state. When Noam Chomsky visited Australia a few years ago he gave an interview to The Australian Jewish News, the local zionist rag, and this mouthpiece of zionism in Australia was very happy to give the interview a prominent place! Chomsky too was friendly to his zionist host because if it is "the Jewish news", then they are automatically his buddies, even if they fanatical zionists!

On the USA invasion and occupation of Iraq, a colossal war crime against the Arab people of Iraq, Noam Chomsky expressed his support for the zionist-USA plan of "elections". Ghali Hassan, in his excellent article, Iraq Elections And The Liberal Elites: A Response to Noam Chomsky, (
www.countercurrents.org), quotes Chomsky as follows:"In Iraq, the January elections were successful and praiseworthy. However, the main success is being reported only marginally: The United States was compelled to allow them to take place. That is a real triumph, not of the bomb-throwers, but of non-violent resistance by the people, secular as well as Islamist, for whom Grand Ayatollah Al Sistani is a symbol".
(Khaleej Times Online, 4 March 2005)


Commenting on Chomsky's statement Ghali Hassan wrote:"Mr. Chomsky is either completely out of touch with reality in Iraq, or simply ignorantof the legitimate rights of the Iraqi people to self-determination. Firstly, the elections were a farce. The majority of the 14 million eligible Iraqis to vote have boycotted the elections. Since the invasion and Occupation of Iraq, Iraqis have protested and requested immediate free and fair elections, however, the Bush administration ‘stifled, delayed, manipulated and otherwise thwarted the democratic aspiration of the Iraqi people’. The US administration turned down the idea of elections, claiming that technical problems would permit elections in two years at the earliest.Prominent Iraqi politicians and patriots, and UN officials who are familiar with the conditions there immediately refuted this argument. (See note [1] for detail). According to Joachim Guilliard of German Campaign against the Embargo on Iraq, "Another important element of the US strategy was that the elections took place under the 'Transitional Administrative Law (TAL)'" drawn up by pro-Israel US jurists, such as the 32-year old pro-Israel Noah Feldman of New York University."

However, the most obvious zionist orientation of Chomsky can be seen in his attitude to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Thus, for example, his treacherous support for the "Geneva Accord" has been exposed last year by Noah Cohen, in his article, Noam Chomsky and "Left" Apologetics for Injustice in Palestine, (
www.ifamericansknew.org) as follows:

"Chomsky's concept of "realism" has a striking resemblance to the colonial discourse of "manifest destiny": Good or bad, right or wrong - so the argument goes - these are the facts on the ground; this is the way of history. In the name of this "realism," activists and intellectuals in the international community have simultaneously asserted themselves as pro-Palestinian, and yet taken it upon themselves to concede every fundamental right to which the Palestinian people lay claim. In pointing to the Geneva Accords as a legitimate compromise, Chomsky concedes all of the following rights on their behalf:

the right to reclaim sovereignty over the land stolen from them in 1948;

the right of refugees even to return to this land;
the right to reclaim the most densely settled land in the West Bank;
the right to freedom of movement within the new Palestinian "state" (since the West Bank settlements - to be declared permanently a part of "Israel" - cut that territory into isolated cantons, and these cantons are in turn separated from Gaza);
the right to full sovereignty over borders and airspace;
the right to maintain an independent military capable of self-defense;
the right to full control of resources.

In general, this means that the "best possible compromise," that promises to "lead to something better," requires first that Palestinians officially concede all of the material conditions on which the right to self-determination depends. It's hard to see how these concessions could possibly lead to "something better."

I had some personal experience with Chomsky's treachery too, when his loyalty to zionism and to the zionist apartheid regime of Israel was exposed to me for the first time. It happened during 1986-7, when the Israeli nuclear whistle-blower, Mordechai Vanunu, was kidnapped by the zionist Gestapo from Europe, where he presented full proof of Israel's underground nuclear bombs factory in Dimona to a London newspaper. Knowing the vengeful methods of the zionist Gestapo I feared for Vanunu's life, and I immediately began to sound the alarm bells by contacting people and organisations to alert them to the impending danger. Soon I managed to make contact with Vanunu's girlfriend, Judy Zimmet, who lived in Boston, and I advised her to contact Noam Chomsky, who lived not far from her place, and ask for his support for Vanunu by demanding his immediate release from the Israeli prison. She reported back to me that she was very disappointed following her meeting with him because he refused to commit himself to do anything for Vanunu. In fact, Noam Chomsky has not done anything to help Vanunu to this day!

Isn't it time the people on the Left, all over the world, wake up to the treachery of Noam Chomsky and his cronies before they inflict more damage on the Left?

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*I do not spell zionism with a capital Z for the same reasons that I do not spell fascism with a capital F.


**In his address to the fourth zionist congress in London, 1900, T. Herzl, the founder of political zionism, stated :"It is of increasing importance to the nations of civilization that on the road to Asia - the shortest road to Asia - there would be set up a post of civilization, which would be at the service of civilized mankind. This post is Palestine...and the Jews will be prepared to defend this post with blood and substance." (The Balfour Declaration, by Leonard Stein, London, 1961, at p.19).

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