Jeff Blankfort – Chomsky and Palestine: Asset or Liability?
By Guest Post • Jul 21st, 2010 at 9:51 • Category: Analysis, Biography, Hasbara Deconstruction Site, Internet and Communication, Israel, Palestine, Zionism
From PULSE Media: In a recent interview renowned linguist Noam Chomsky called the BDS campaign ‘hypocritical’. Jeffrey Blankfort, who is the author of an earlier important critique of Chomsky’s position on Palestine, responds:
When Noam Chomsky was stopped at Jordan’s Allenby Bridge and prevented from entering the Palestinian West Bank by Israeli occupation forces in May, the widespread condemnation of that action extended even into the mainstream media which in the past has paid little attention to his comings and goings and even less to what he has had to say.
Chomsky, who has visited Israel on a number of occasions and lived on a kibbutz in the 50s, had been invited to give a lecture at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah and had also arranged to meet with Salam Fayyad, the unelected prime minister of the Palestine Authority and a favorite of both Washington and Israel and, it would appear, of Chomsky.
The negative publicity arising from the incident caused the Israeli government to reverse its position, blaming its refusal to admit Chomsky on an administrative error. Chomsky was not mollified and decided to forego the trip to the West Bank and present his talk to the Bir Zeit students by video from Amman.
When interviewed by phone the following day from New York by Democracy Now! on which he is a familiar presence, Chomsky noted that “I was going to meet with the Prime Minister. Unfortunately, I couldn’t. But his office called me here in Amman this morning, and we had a long discussion. He is pursuing policies, which, in my view, are quite sensible, policies of essentially developing facts on the ground. It’s almost – I think it’s probably a conscious imitation of the early Zionist policies, establishing facts on the ground and hoping that the political forms that follow will be determined by them. And the policies sound to me like sensible and sound ones.”
Unfortunately, Chomsky was not questioned about his support for the nation building priorities of the earlier Zionists nor if he considered the Palestine Authority’s endorsement of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, of its attempts to suppress a UN investigation of the Goldstone Report, and of the role played by its US-trained militia in protecting Israel, to be also “sensible and sound.”
Missing from the discussion about what was made to appear a blunder on Israel’s part was a much more important issue: Why had Chomsky been invited to speak at Bir Zeit in the first place? For those puzzled by that question, be assured that it is meant to be taken quite seriously.
Once upon a time Prof. Chomsky was considered by many to be the most important spokesperson for the Palestinian cause. It was a position he attained largely on the basis of his writings and activism in opposing the Vietnam War and US intervention in Central America in which, unlike the case with Israel, he had no personal vested interest. That Chomsky has maintained that position despite the presence in the US of a number of distinguished Palestinian professors, among them the late Edward Said, who were and are more knowledgeable about the subject and could speak from personal experience that does not include prior service as “a Zionist youth leader”—Chomsky’s background– is a reflection of the political culture of the American Left which was and remains substantially if not predominantly Jewish, particularly in its leadership positions.
Support for Israel had become so ingrained and fear of anti-Semitism so deeply embedded in the psyche of American Jewish Leftists in the aftermath of World War 2, that if the Jewish state was to be criticized it had to be by someone from within the tribe who unequivocally supported its existence. Unfortunately, to the detriment of the Palestinians and the building of a viable Palestinian solidarity movement within the United States, that mindset persists to this day and largely explains why Chomsky maintains his reputation despite public utterances over the past half dozen years that have done more to undermine the Palestinian cause than to help it.
I examined Chomsky’s history in some detail in an article that I wrote for Left Curve in 2005 that called attention to the destructive role he has played regarding the Palestinian-based boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting Israel and the equally destructive impact of his dismissal of the pro-Israel lobby as an influential force in shaping US Middle East policy.
That he is still at it, and that his influence among what are considered “progressives” has lessened only imperceptibly, requires another look at the professor’s fierce and unyielding opposition to the BDS campaign launched by the leading organizations of Palestinian civil society. This movement has been gaining support in the world that exists outside of the United States, particularly among trade unions, a fact that is causing considerable concern within Israel and among its lobbyists/agents around the world who claim it is a campaign to “delegitimize” the Jewish state.
Within the United States, however, this campaign challenging Israel has frequently and in certain instances, intentionally, been confused with a vastly different, US-centered, campaign that avoids penalizing Israel while targeting US companies that provide goods and services that assist Israel in maintaining the occupation.
This latter campaign Chomsky does support as does the leading Jewish peace group, Jewish Voice for Peace which has recently been conducting a drive to get 10,000 signatures for its campaign to pressure Caterpillar to stop selling bulldozers to the Israel military which it has used to destroy Palestinian homes. While this is a worthy endeavor, does anyone seriously think that a refusal by Caterpillar to halt its sales to Israel would change the current situation for the Palestinians in any significant way? Or are we seeing something else here on the part of both Prof. Chomsky and JVP with their competing campaign, namely, damage control on Israel’s behalf?
One might certainly draw that conclusion from comments Chomsky has made over the past several years and most recently in interviews with Israeli television (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCtYecGbQz8) and with Alison Weir of If Americans Knew, the newly appointed president of the Council for National Interest (CNI), on Jerusalem Calling, the CNI’s online radio program. (http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk-radio.cfm/shows/CNI:-Jerusalem-Calling.html)
In the interview with Alison Weir, Chomsky not only repeatedly attacks advocates of an Israeli boycott as being hypocritical, he accuses them of doing damage to the Palestinian cause.
“What I have opposed,” says Chomsky, “is BDS proposals that harm Palestinians. If we are serious about BDS or any other tactic, we want to ask what the consequences are for the victims. We have to distinguish always in tactical judgments between what you might call ‘feel good’ tactics and ‘do good’ tactics. There are tactics that may make people feel good in doing something, but maybe they harm the victims.”
Pushed on the subject by Weir, he repeats that a boycott of Israel is “harmful to Palestinians and the reason is harmful is very obvious.” And what is obvious about it, Chomsky tells us in the very next sentence. “It is so hypocritical that it discredits the whole effort. I mean,” he says, “why boycott Israel and not boycott the United States? The US has a much worse record.”
When reminded by Weir that “Palestinian civil society issued a call, signed by dozens of diverse organizations calling for a boycott of Israel,” Chomsky was dismissive and condescending.
“There are groups who call themselves Palestinian civil society who are calling for a boycott,” he responds, “and I think they are making a mistake and I’ve explained why. I’m not going to take, adopt positions which have already been and will continue to be quite harmful to Palestinians.”
“If you want to, then do it,” Chomsky adds, upbraiding Weir and by implication, the Palestinian people themselves, “but it’s clear why the call for a boycott [of Israel] has been harmful for Palestinians and will continue to be.”
“The reason,” he repeated, “is very simple. It’s so utterly hypocritical that it’s basically a gift to the hardliners. They can say, ‘Look, you’re calling for a boycott of Israel, but you’re not calling for a boycott of the United States which has a much worse record, in fact, it’s even responsible for most of Israel’s crimes. (My emphasis)
“So therefore, if your position,” and from his tone of voice he is clearly jabbing a verbal finger at Weir, “is that hypocritical, how can we even take you seriously? That’s like giving a gift to the hard-line elements.
One might be forgiven for thinking that when Chomsky says “we” and refers to “hard-line elements” he is speaking of himself. He seems to confirm that later when, continuing his attack, he tells Weir:
“I find your commitment to harming Palestinians surprising. It is quite obvious why a call for a boycott of Israel is a gift to AIPAC. It’s a gift because they can point out that it is utterly hypocritical” and again, like a well rehearsed mantra he repeats, “We are not boycotting the United States, for example, which has a much worse record and is responsible for a lot of Israel’s criminal behavior.”
“I can give you cases if you want [but he doesn’t offer any] where the calls like the one you’re advocating have, in fact, for good reasons, harmed Palestinians, and he repeats once again that Weir’s “support for the efforts which are basically gifts to the hardliners…”
Let’s stop a moment before going on and ask ourselves some questions about what Chomsky has been saying.
One, shifting blame for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians to the US (the Nakba?, the 1967 capture of the West Bank and Gaza?) he argues that rather than calling for a boycott of Israel, Palestinians should be calling for a boycott of the United States. Apart from the failure patently inherent in such a campaign, what does Prof. Chomsky believe would be the response of the majority of Americans to a call by Palestinians for such a boycott? Or, for that matter, a call by supporters of the Palestinians in the United States for a boycott of their own country? Beneficial for the Palestinians, Professor Chomsky, or harmful? Or just plain stupid?
Since the answer to that question is obvious, genuine supporters of the Palestinian struggle who still see Chomsky as an ally need to ask themselves why he would call for a campaign that would bring further disaster down upon the heads of the Palestinians.
Now think about his main argument that boycotting Israel as opposed to the United States is hypocritical; that the “hardliners,” in which he specifically includes AIPAC—which otherwise he dismisses– will use this against the Palestinians by pointing out that the US has committed far greater crimes than Israel. While there are some Jewish American settlers who have taken this position, referring to the Vietnam and Iraq wars, does Chomsky seriously believe that AIPAC or any major American Jewish organization would make this argument and compare America’s crimes to Israel’s? Again, the answer is obvious. But why does Chomsky insult our intelligence by asking us to believe such a fatuous claim? Why do those who know better let him get away with it?
The answer to the first question was given by Prof. Chomsky to the interviewer from Israel’ Channel Two television station who paid him a visit in Amman on May 19, two days after he was turned back at the Allenby Bridge.
When challenged about statements he had made strongly criticizing Israel, Chomsky responded, “I don’t regard myself as a critic of Israel. I regard myself as a supporter of Israel.”
Chomsky, who, in certain circles likes to boast of his early Zionist activities did so for both his Israeli interviewer and for Alison Weir. Noting that he had opposed the notion of a Jewish state in favor of a bi-national state, “once Israel was formed in 1948, my position has consistently been that Israel should have all the rights of every state in the international system, no more and no less. “ He would repeat exactly the same words when speaking with Weir six weeks later.
Chomsky volunteered to his Israeli interviewer that up to five or six years ago, he had considered living there as an alternative to the United States and in the 50s, “we had considered staying there, in fact.” In other words, he seems to have no problem with the Jewish “right of return” to what, until 1948, was Palestine, but considers a similar demand by the Palestinians who were actually born there to be not only unrealistic but potentially dangerous.
Although presented with an opportunity in both interviews to do so, Chomsky made no mention of the plight of the 750,000 Palestinians made refugees in the period of Israel’s founding nor of the more than 400 Palestinian villages that Israel purposely destroyed to wipe out their traces. In fact, that history and the situation of the now millions of Palestinian refugees today, is something he rarely, if ever mentions, unless asked about it.
On one such occasion, when he was asked if the refugees would be obligated to give up their “right of return” under a “two-state solution,” Chomsky’s preferred outcome, he replied: “Palestinian refugees should certainly not be willing to renounce the right of return, but in this world — not some imaginary world we can discuss in seminars — that right will not be exercised, in more than a limited way, within Israel. Again, there is no detectable international support for it, and under the (virtually unimaginable) circumstances that such support would develop, Israel would very likely resort to its ultimate weapon, defying even the boss-man, to prevent it. In that case there would be nothing to discuss. The facts are ugly, but facts do not go out of existence for that reason. In my opinion, it is improper to dangle hopes that will not be realized before the eyes of people suffering in misery and oppression. (Emphasis added) Rather, constructive efforts should be pursued to mitigate their suffering and deal with their problems in the real world.” (Znet,3/30.2004)
What Chomsky is saying to the refugees is that if they persist with their demand to return to Palestine, and should that demand, support for which is currently undetectable in Chomsky’s eyes, actually grow to the point where Israel feels threatened with an avalanche of returnees, it is likely to use its nuclear weapons and blow up the planet. So, for the sake of the “real world” that has ignored them and to keep Israel, a country that he unhesitatingly supports, from exercising the “Sampson Option,” the refugees should forget about going home and await some nebulous “constructive efforts….to mitigate their suffering.”
I can imagine what most Palestinians would say to that but it is unprintable.
When Weir asked if he had been aware of the Nakba in the days when he had been a Zionist youth leader, Chomsky acknowledged that he had been “well aware of that,” but rather than offer any opinion on it, he referred to his membership in Hashomir Hatzair which had supported a bi-national state and that he lived on a kibbutz which, prior to 1948, called for “Arab-Jewish cooperation in a socialist state.” He did not come to live on that kibbutz, however, until 1953, five years after the Nakba.
In speaking with Weir, Chomsky did not hesitate to defend Israel’s legitimacy.. “Within Israel,” he said, “within the so-called Green Line, the internationally recognized borders, it’s a democratic state in the sense of Western democracies. There are laws and more than laws, practices that assign second class citizenship to Palestinians. In that respect it is not different from the US and other Western democracies.”
While there are few who will deny that racism exists in every Western (and non-Western) society and that it has often taken violent forms, Chomsky’s attempt to rationalize Israel’s ongoing discrimination of those Palestinians who remained after the Nakba, by lumping it together with the forms of racism practiced in the US and elsewhere, is too riddled with holes to analyze here but raises additional questions about on which side of the barricades he stands. The fact that he says “the occupation is simply criminal” as if Israel is not should not deceive us.
It should also be pointed out that Chomsky’s accusing Weir of harming the Palestinian cause is in keeping with the modus operandi he has employed when challenged from the Left regarding his stands on the Israel-Palestinian issue. With Alison Weir, it was the boycott of Israel, with Noah Cohen, in 2004, it was the latter’s advocacy of a single state and the Palestinian right of return. Chomsky accused Cohen of “serving the cause of the extreme hawks in Israel and the US, and bringing even more harm to the suffering Palestinians.”( Znet, 7/26/04))
I have also been not immune from such an attack. On November 12, 2004, before writing my article for Left Curve and after I had written the professor, asking him a number of questions that I hoped would clarify his positions he responded in a letter thusly:
“I have never really understood why you consistently take positions that so severely undermine any hope of justice for the Palestinians, find truth so offensive, and work so hard to evade our own responsibilities in favor of the much more convenient stance of blaming others [Israel]. But that’s your business. I don’t write or speak about it.”
What we are dealing with in the case of Prof. Chomsky is nothing less than intellectual dishonesty parading as its opposite and the boycott issue has brought it to the fore.
A glaring but little known example of that came in a speech that Chomsky made to the Harvard Anthropology Dept. in 2003 shortly after the MIT and Harvard faculties issued a joint statement on divestment. It was gleefully reported in the Harvard Crimson by pro-Israel activist, David Weinfeld, under the headline “Chomsky’s Gift”:
MIT Institute Professor of Linguistics Noam Chomsky recently gave the greatest Hanukkah gift of all to opponents of the divestment campaign against Israel. By signing the Harvard-MIT divestment petition several months ago—and then denouncing divestment on Nov. 25 at Harvard—Chomsky has completely undercut the petition.
At his recent talk for the Harvard anthropology department, Chomsky stated: “I am opposed and have been opposed for many years, in fact, I’ve probably been the leading opponent for years of the campaign for divestment from Israel and of the campaign about academic boycotts.”
He argued that a call for divestment is “a very welcome gift to the most extreme supporters of US-Israeli violence… It removes from the agenda the primary issues and it allows them to turn the discussion to irrelevant issues, which are here irrelevant, anti-Semitism and academic freedom and so on and so forth.” [Harvard Crimson, 12/2/2003] (Emphasis added.)
The following year, Chomsky clearly stunned Safundi, an interviewer for the Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies [5/10 2004] when in an exchange comparing Israel with the former apartheid regime, he again came to Israel’s defense and cast opposition to sanctions on Israel as a moral issue.
“One of the important tactics against the apartheid government was the eventual use of sanctions. Do you see that as a possibility?” asked Safundi.
“No,” Chomsky replied. “In fact I’ve been strongly against it in the case of Israel. For a number of reasons. For one thing, even in the case of South Africa, I think sanctions are a very questionable tactic. In the case of South Africa, I think they were [ultimately] legitimate because it was clear that the large majority of the population of South Africa was in favor of it.
“Sanctions hurt the population. You don’t impose them unless the population is asking for them. That’s the moral issue. So, the first point in the case of Israelis that: Is the population asking for it? Well, obviously not.
“So calling for sanctions here, when the majority of the population doesn’t understand what you are doing, is tactically absurd-even if it were morally correct, which I don’t think it is. The country against which the sanctions are being imposed is not calling for it.”
To which the bewildered Safundi understandably asked, “Palestinians aren’t calling for sanctions?”
“Well,” Chomsky responded, as if he had been asked a stupid question, “the sanctions wouldn’t be imposed against the Palestinians, they would be imposed against Israel.”
“Furthermore,” added, “there is no need for it. We ought to call for sanctions against the United States! If the U.S. were to stop its massive support for this, it’s over. So, you don’t have to have sanctions on Israel.”
It would seem from that exchange that Chomsky has more respect for the opinions of Israel’s Jews than those of his fellow Americans.
In applying double standards to Israel and the United States, Chomsky has been consistent.
After telling the Israeli interviewer that, speaking as an American citizen, “we are responsible for our own actions and their consequences,” in the very next breath he declares that “every crime that Israel commits is with US participation and authorization,” which, even if true, which it is not, presumably would make Israel culpable, but not apparently enough, in Chomsky’s eyes, to warrant a boycott.
At the end of the day, it is evident that Chomsky’s affection for Israel, his sojourn on a kibbutz, his Jewish identity, and his early experiences with anti-Semitism to which he occasionally refers have colored his approach to every aspect of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and explain his defense of Israel. That is his right, of course, but not to pretend at the same that he is an advocate for justice in Palestine.
That same background may also explain his resistance to acknowledging the very obvious power of the pro-Israel lobby over US Middle East policy which he, like many others who share a similar history, interpret as “blaming the Jews,” a most taboo subject. It is, without a doubt, far more comfortable for him and his followers to continue insisting that US support for Israel is based on it being a “strategic asset” for the United States even when an increasing number of mainstream observers who are not linked to AIPAC or the Zionist establishment have judged it to be a liability. Should not Chomsky himself, on the basis of his own statements, be judged as to whether he is an asset or a liability for the Palestinian cause? If they have not already done so, serious supporters of that cause, including Palestinians, need to ask themselves that question.
http://pulsemedia.org/2010/07/20/chomsky-and-palestine-asset-or-liability/#more-25884
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I support some form of a boycott of Israel, because it raises public awareness of what is happening – which will hopefully help bring about a change in US policy. But even I agree that it is somewhat hypocritical to single out Israel over the US. Israel can only do what it does because of the key economic, military and diplomatic support that it receives from the US. Israel can only act as far as the US allows it (take, for example, when Israel wanted to sell weapons to China about 5 years ago but was blocked and publicly humiliated by Washington). Nothing will change as long as US policy stays the same. As I heard Chomsky say before – during the late 80s when the leaders of white South Africa realised they had become a pariah state and (almost) everyone was voting against them at the UN, the South African ambassador said that they didn't care because there's only one vote that counts, namely that of the US.
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Ronnie,
Your comment was:
"the South African ambassador said that they didn't care because there's only one vote that counts, namely that of the US."
It seems this goes alot against Chomsky's claim why not boycott the USA?
Boycotting South Africa was effective DESPITE US BACKING, and so might a boycott of Israel be, DESPITE supposed hypocrisy, which EXISTED IN THE SOUTH AFRICA CASE.
Main thing that made me question Israel's occupation was the suffering of Palestinian Christians, which nobody even knows they exist. They are treated like "terrorists" and all the other Muslims, yet they are where our religion started! They are the descendants of the apostles, and now Israel treats them as terrorists?
What does bother me is that Chomsky, such a champion in my eyes, has turned out to be this way. It gives me alot of soul searching. Am I really so right about the conflict? How should this change my views? Were the champions of the best traditions of leftist radicalism in the US somehow secret chauvenists who put their ethnicity over other people's, and we never realized it? This leads to all kinds of antisemitic notions that SHOULD be completely unfair and rejected out of hand!
How could someone so devoted to world human rights be insensitive when it comes to a state that declares itself dedicated to his ethnicity? Or am I wrong and need to reassess Israel's actions. Maybe I need to say that reactionary, repressive Islam plays a big role, just as much as national liberation? But, knowing of what the mistreatment of Palestinian Christians really is, how can I make this reassessment to favor Israel? Their citizenship is revoked if they go abroad for a year, etc etc.
Or am I wrong and these champions of the American Left do understand? But they have the idea that Israel is Jewish homeland, but Palestinians are ARABS, whose home is the Arab desert elsewhere. On the other hand, they do disagree with expulsion of Palestinians.
There is a HUGE disconnect here that is VERY troubling.
I guess I have to conclude that Chomsky's experience on the ethnic-socialist Kibbutz warped his views in a way that many American radical champions haven't been affected. For alot of American radical champions, the ethnicity is meaningless. I couldn't give two hoots about my Welsh ancestry, and I assume that for them it's the same. Sue, Wales can be a country like any other, but I can't have any misunderstandings if British are persecuting someone AND I DON'T!!!!!!!!!
Ronnie,
Your comment was:
"the South African ambassador said that they didn't care because there's only one vote that counts, namely that of the US."
It seems this goes alot against Chomsky's claim why not boycott the USA?
Boycotting South Africa was effective DESPITE US BACKING, and so might a boycott of Israel be, DESPITE supposed hypocrisy, which EXISTED IN THE SOUTH AFRICA CASE.
Main thing that made me question Israel's occupation was the suffering of Palestinian Christians, which nobody even knows they exist. They are treated like "terrorists" and all the other Muslims, yet they are where our religion started! They are the descendants of the apostles, and now Israel treats them as terrorists?
What does bother me is that Chomsky, such a champion in my eyes, has turned out to be this way. It gives me alot of soul searching. Am I really so right about the conflict? How should this change my views? Were the champions of the best traditions of leftist radicalism in the US somehow secret chauvenists who put their ethnicity over other people's, and we never realized it? This leads to all kinds of antisemitic notions that SHOULD be completely unfair and rejected out of hand!
How could someone so devoted to world human rights be insensitive when it comes to a state that declares itself dedicated to his ethnicity? Or am I wrong and need to reassess Israel's actions. Maybe I need to say that reactionary, repressive Islam plays a big role, just as much as national liberation? But, knowing of what the mistreatment of Palestinian Christians really is, how can I make this reassessment to favor Israel? Their citizenship is revoked if they go abroad for a year, etc etc.
Or am I wrong and these champions of the American Left do understand? But they have the idea that Israel is Jewish homeland, but Palestinians are ARABS, whose home is the Arab desert elsewhere. On the other hand, they do disagree with expulsion of Palestinians.
There is a HUGE disconnect here that is VERY troubling.
I guess I have to conclude that Chomsky's experience on the ethnic-socialist Kibbutz warped his views in a way that many American radical champions haven't been affected. For alot of American radical champions, the ethnicity is meaningless. I couldn't give two hoots about my Welsh ancestry, and I assume that for them it's the same. Sure, Wales can be a country like any other, but I can't have any misunderstandings if British are persecuting someone. AND I DON'T!!!!!!!!!
Quick note: I think his words about Fayyad being sensible seem sensible. The opposition to BDS and right of return, assertions of support for Israel in the context of the occupation are bad. We should support Israel in the same way that we should support every other country in every other time. Heck, I a "German homeland" and a "Boer homeland". But I am not sure why we must assert our support for Germany, South Africa, or Israel, in the context of a discussion on whether Israel is in fact using Apartheid.
OK, I support Germany's right to exist. But do I support its "right" to dedicate itself to the "German people" at the expense of others? Um….
Can't we all be friends?
Doesn't Shalom mean peace?
Noam Chomsky always gathers a crowd, some supportive, others gnostic to his bland assertions concerning the US war crimes in many epics. The Gatekeeper of American left wing academics has traditionally not called for Israel to be bombed back to the stone age if it doesn't allow the right of return and end it's occupation of Palestinian lands . I guess he is not a militarist in this regard, but an intellectual, an atheist, a friend of Israel, a citizen of Israel and erstwhile detractor of the United States interventions.
Noam is an anarchist/Socialist at heart who made his fortune selling books about US war crimes and seditions perpetrated by the US and other superpowers, usually defeating socialists or communists with infiltration forces aided and abetted by US mercs and CIA seditiousness. Imperial capitalism seems to be Chomsky;s nemisis and the Kibbutz socialism of Israeli dreams, his fond remembrance of his childhood in Israel.
Is the US pushing Israel onto capitalist imperialism? Is that what Irks Noam? Are US plutocrats shoving the Jews only nation towards brash adventurism in Lebanon? Against Iran? Is the US responsible for the Jews in Israel becoming selfish to the point of a hard right shift that is disgusting to a leftist?
A rebuttale to Noam's assertions that the US should be harshly sanctioned comes not from any left wing group. I know of NO Palestinian who wouldn't love to see both Israel and the US wrapped in concertina wire and thrown overboard into the murkey depths of the deepest sea, so what's the real reason Chomsky fights the BDS movers and shakers? It's his disdain for justice done by Holy longsuffering of saints. He sees no God, No faith and no human spiritual strength, his faith is in words, and his words failed Palestine as they did the USA, words fall flat when no faith is attached to them, no passion, no spiritual authority based on morality, clear honesty and forthright indignation. BDS is a thorn in Israel's side and an embarassment for it's settlers, apartheid and Jewish pride in zionism, so it hurts to see it grow so effective to such a one as Naom Chomsky, this is Jewish dream socialism descending into forced isolation, agonizing self inspection and the admittance that Jews screwed up their shot at glory in the holy land and an atheists heart for agnostic Jewish bliss is broken… What about the Palestinians, are they dogs with no rights save for kissing Jewish butt and hoping for scraps? Evidently Naom is also a pragmatist with pessimism tucked in his shirt pocket instead of a hanky to wipe his tears for Palestine, His pessimism is Jewish pessimism, If Jews are taunted, challenged and sanctioned, they digress, curl up in balls on their floors and become hard right wing clusterfucks with no common sense. We are there Noam, Your people are ruining Palestine, and you cant blame it on the USA, in fact blaming Israeli zionists for the ruination of the US is now in vogue. It looks like Noam is wrong about a few things, one of them being that AIPAC is harmless and another being that the right of return should be left in the briefcases in Direct talks with Israel.
I dont feel as if Palestinians have ever gotten anything of substance from Jews in the US or Israel. What Palestine gets is sidlined, manipulated and frustrated by Jewish brains allways taking the pragmatic approach that lays Palestine down as the Sir Walter Raleigh Coat for Queen Jezebel to save her dainty feet on in traversing sludge puddles of zionist shit for brains. Jews fuck up the middle east by insereting their noses in every crack and crevasse of Palestinian life and Noam adds to the confusion by declaring BDS idocy because it makes Jews madder than hell to feel like criminals. Get with it Noam, war crimes done by Jews are war crimes, Murders done by Jews are murders, occupation, illegal and an affrot to basic humna rights, done by Jews is anathema to the Nuremberg protocols but not the protocals of the elder of zion, so what this is , is this……Chomsky needs to see justice from the eyes of an impartial judge, God so to speak, has these eyes, seeing no color of skin, no ethnicities, no religion, cultural bias or favored style of governing, what God sees is the truth, Right of return was promised and this promise was a lie told to get Arabs out of what Jews coveted, which is horrible fraud. The answer to such ingracious theft by armed robbery, massacre and slight of Jewish hand is to punish this behavior to the fullest extents of every law, not push Gaza aside to applaud the PA and Salaam Fayad for their reasonableness in the face of ceretain superior intellect and prowess. Jews are not better than anyone else and if they commit crimes, they should be prosecuted and punished, or they will become more lawless over time, not less so.
Noam is Noam, People, I like the guy for giving the planet a revolutiosts bible that reads like a judges litany against oppressors, so if he errs, which is human to love his pepes, should we be so surprised, or should we just take his bridges and walk over them, we know what we need for Palestine, if Chomsky provides it not, why ask him to change or diss his pepes? Palestine needs Palestinian leaders, not Jewish gatkeepers leading it to it's promised land.
The permanent link for Alison Weir's recent interview with Chomsky is at http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk-radio.cfm/shows/CNI:-Jerusalem-Calling/archives/date/selected/07-08-2010.html – then click on the links to "The Many Aspects of the Palestinian Israeli Conflict, with Noam Chomsky".
The best bit is where Alison exposes his contradictory position on the Lobby. On the one hand, he says it's not needed, because the bad guys who run US Imperialism know Israel is an asset. On the other hand, he says we must not do anything which would enable this non-existent Lobby to call us 'hypocrites', like boycott Israel.
How can this brilliant intellectual make such obvious errors of logic? A Palestine solidarity movement needs to be able to discuss 'ethnic interests' without fear. Most of the US left censors such discussion out of fear of 'anti-semitism' constantly stirred up by so-called 'anti-racists'. We need to emphatically reject this kind of politics.
All things considered I think that the Palestinians themselves should have the final say, this is their land which has been stolen this is the Palestinians who have been suffering. This is their absolute right to have their say and they should tell non Palestinians to not interfere in the way they decide to struggle against the invader, the foreign forces occupying their land killing them. Palestine and Palestinians will prevail and I am quite surethat one day in a free Palestine they will celebrate the Nakba the way the Jews celebrate the Holocaust. And will tell the world: never forget what you have done to us. One day in Al-Quds liberated there will be a monument to the marthyrs of the Nakba. This is tomorrow…
i can and do boycott products and services of U.S.A. in addition to Israel, whenever it makes sense to do so, though it is rather difficult due to Canada's entanglement. exceptions would be native goods or union-made goods or progressive publications. basically, wherever you are, reduce / reuse / recycle, then buy local / organic / fair trade / fair labour.
Ronnie brings up one of Chomsky's favorite straw men from his stable of straw men when he raises the issue of US opposition and anger about Israel's sale of strategic weapons to China. What he does not mention was not only was Washington upset but so was the Israel Lobby and, particularly it ziocon contingent which knew nothing about it and was publicly embarrassed about it. There is really no defined dividing line between Israel and its agents in the US AKA The Lobby, but it is the latter through its money, its unmatched organizational prowess its blackmail, its control of the media that pushes the policy not its role as a "strategic asset" which is a work of fiction jointly created by AIPAC and Chomsky although the two may not be in speaking terms.
Hi Jeff Blankfort –
I don't have your email address or I would have emailed this comment to you directly. Since I no longer read this website and came by only accidentally, please also reply to me directly via email if there is communication to share: humanbeingsfirst@gmail.com
In my view, regardless of why Prof. Noam Chomsky is against BDS, BDS itself has no efficacy. It is entirely a calculated red herring. See a cursory examination here:
http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/03/11/leaked-zionist-strategy-paper-to-counter-bds-must-read/#comment-15402
A House of Rothschild project cannot be even touched by BDS, never mind impacted. If interested, please see this:
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/04/resp-abusitta-rothschild-not-zabara.html
and this:
print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/03/davidicke-rothschild-connection-zionism.html
From the Balfour Declaration to the Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv (from where the state of Israel was declared), and to the Rothschild's built Knesset and the Rothschild's built Supreme court in Jerusalem – owned and operated by the machinery which runs the world's private central banks, all G-7 national debts, and all developmental loans worldwide through WB-IMF. The coordination of economies of all nations by controlling the interest rates (the discount rate) and availability of loans, through control of BIS in Basle – Bank for International Settlements located in the same city where Theodor Herzl Declared Der Judenstatd – can be understood in Carroll Quigley's 'Tragedy and Hope' (wherein, unfortunately, the imperial scholar calculatingly also tried to downplay the role of the Rothschilds).
Why does most everyone in the West ignore or outright downplay the Rothschilds' role in current affairs?
It's not like their role in modernity over the past several hundred years is a hidden well-kept state-secret!
What is even more absurd – well, I have done the following experiment countless times – asked Palestinians, Arabs, and Palestine Western sympathizers the question: to whom is Balfour Declaration addressed?
More often than not, they do not know the answer, never mind their asking the obvious question: why should the Balfour declaration be addressed to a Rothschild?
Valuable bandwidth spent focussing on red herrings like on my erudite professor Noam Chomsky's foibles and speeches, is valuable bandwidth spent not zeroing in on the real prime-movers of Zionistan.
Anyone seriously suggesting BDS as an antidote to Zionism and Israeli oppression of the beleaguered Palestinians, is either grossly misled (as I once was when I too questioned Noam Chomsky on his brazen hypocrisy – see here: humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2007/03/endless-red-herrings.html only to realize later that I had spent precious time on a red herring), or, is misleading others to focus on red herrings.
A study of intelligence assets, especially the Mighty Wurlitzers in the mainstream and alternate press, can go a long way in understanding the silence about the Rothschilds in the news media, press, infotainment, etc. Understanding the role of privately funded foundations and think-tanks in generating social engineering agendas and pop culture can go a long way in understanding why Rothschilds and the oligarchy are kept out of any reference in the pop culture – they fund the social engineering through the hundreds of tax-exempt foundations which are beneficiaries of the windfalls from the private central banks! Who owns the FED for instance? Who funds the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Endowments, and the CFR?
Is all this a kookish conspiracy theory? Or is it a verifiable fact?
While I can understand the silence of assets and sayanim, I don't quite understand the silence among the non-assets, like the victimized peoples, the Palestinian activists, genuine Palestinian scholars, and dissenting Western intellectuals – as noted in my response article to Salman Abu Sitta noted above.
Why this silence?
It's almost as if uber intelligent peoples have been brain-washed, or are willingly participating in a conspiracy of silence!
How comes?
The name Rothschild is almost a litmus test of co-option, at least to my mind. See who omits any analysis of the role of the Rothschilds; see who mentions them but not in current modernity context – only in past historical context like most anyone who dares mention their name today, including Quigley; and see who mentions them but also sullies their own punch – like the proverbial toad in a punch-bowl – by interjecting specious speculations and kookish conspiracy theories of blood-drinking lizards (David Icke). merovingian blood-lines (Grace Powers), gross generalizations of 'sky is falling' while blow-horning revolutions (Alex Jones), etc., as per the analysis disclosed in:
print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/03/anatomy-of-conspiracy-theory.html
thus causing all legitimate discussions of the role of the House of Rothschilds in creating Zionism and World Government to also be dismissed as kookish even for some inquiring minds pursuing alternate sources of information but still too lazy to think for themselves.
Then what does pass that "Rothschild" litmus test?
Well, very very few people in the entire Western World, and mostly those only living in history books in libraries. Who visits libraries anymore in these times of television, internet, and a fast world? The Eastern world of victims has already been neutralized/marginalized by getting them busy in 'waiting for Allah' who will deal with the devils of this world, while many among the Western world are kept occupied in various bread and circuses, especially when they are not being goaded into la mission civilisatrice upon the East, or in bringing on the devil sooner to hurry up with the Biblical Rapture to save the world from the Islamofascists.
So who are these very few people – and why aren't there more? How to create more? How to get people to stop wasting time on low order bits of the matter and get them to concentrate on the highest order bits?
In my view, unless these oligarchs are neutralized very soon by astute full spectrum "Mens et Manus” – Mind and Hand, MIT's motto – faits accomplis already long under construction will seal the fate of all of world's peoples for eons to come. Conversations like these will lead one to mental institutions if not outright to a concentration camp (see the revised DSM IV manual which labels non-conformance with status quo as "Antisocial personality disorder", "oppositional defiant disorder", "negativistic, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior toward authority figures", i.e., as mental illness).
I hope any near-future analysis on these matters by others, as well as your good self – before DSM IV can be legally put into practice as “1984” – will dare to probe deeper into the role of the real prime-movers in shaping modernity, its disaffections, its wars, its crimes, its manufactured consent as well as its manufactured dissent, and stop wasting precious time on has-been intellectuals like Noam Chomsky who, as paid assets from the same coffers, proudly adorn the mantle given them by empire's own instruments as "arguably the most important intellectual alive".
How many crappy books rehearsing the overt crimes of empire while staying silent on the prime-movers, has the intellectual been able to sell because of that New York Times benefaction and being an MIT professor? Witness it here: hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/6222 . Why waste time on him? As I wrote recently to another up and coming scholar of empire from MIT being set up as dissent-chief:
"This announcement is most impressive: web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/johnson-award-1217.html . However, I will share with you a piece of general folk wisdom which often guides me in matters of political science: when empire's instruments give out awards to dissent chiefs, run like hell."
That letter can be read here if there is interest, as it points to some of the omissions which are also characteristic of professor Noam Chomsky as well all the other lauded dissent-chiefs:
print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/03/lett-simonjohnson-mit-imf-zahirebrahim.html
The only contemporary to talk of this stuff freely, and whose every book I have read with much interest, was the late Eustace Mullins. We need a thousand more like him to take his place and carry the struggle forward. I have yet to find a single one among the Palestinians in Diaspora.
Thanks.
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
July 22, 2010
Comment for: palestinethinktank.com/2010/07/21/jeff-blankfort-chomsky-and-palestine-asset-or-liability
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Forgive me for not reading this all the way through but you give the House of Rothschild, now in its decline, far too much discredit for Israel's role and what might be called the Zionist International {ZI}–the combined organized Jewish communities too little. The latter represents perhaps 25 to 30% of those who identify themselves as Jews and the rest might as well be of some other religion for all the influence they have on the political scene. If you think this document is a red herring, a fabrication, you really know very little about the reality of the ZI which uses fear to control its own ranks and money and intimidation to control outsiders. It has successfully infiltrated and dominates to the degree necessary every critical segment of American society and is able to do so thanks to its money, its dedication, its organization, and that it has no opposition to speak of because it has successfully infiltrated that as well and a long time ago. Hence you have the leadership, self-appointed of the peace or anti-war movements ready to fight as fiercely as Chomsky against the notion that as I said in Washington recently, Washington is Israel's most important occupied territory.
As for BDS, at the moment it is a tool, a chisel if you will, where nothing but empty slogans such as "End the Occupation!" existed before, but that chisel is likely to become a jackhammer as Israel, now run by the Zionist equivalent of the Tea Parties embarks on one stupidity after another starting with either another unsuccessful attack on Lebanon or Iran, something the occupied peace movements do not, of course, have on their agenda. There is a sinister operation going out there but you have wrapped in a supernatural cloak which may appear to exist but in the end may cover the corpse of Zionism if it keeps going at its present rate.
[...] via Palestine Think Tank » Analysis Biography Hasbara Deconstruction Site Israel Palestine Zionism » J…. [...]
“The Jewish religion died 200 years ago. Now there is nothing that unifies the Jews around the world apart from Holocaust,” Yeshayahy Leibowitz, a observant orthodox Jew philosopher, quoted by Chomsky.
Professor Dr. Noam Chomsky made headlines when he was refused entery by the Israeli guards at the Allenby Bridge on his way from Amman (Jordan) to Ramallah (West Bank) where he was schedule to lecture on US foreign policy at Bir Zeit University.The “official” reason was that Chomsky is a ‘Self-Hating, Israel-Threatening (S.H.I.T)’ Jews and thus a threat to the Zionist entity. In fact, Chomsky in real life doesn’t even come closer to those ‘allegations”.
Noam Chomsky, although, is a strong critic of US foreign policy – but he has never supported armed struggle against Israel. He also favors the so-called ‘two-state’ solution and believes in Israel’s right to exist as ‘Jewish state’. Chomsky never publically questioned the Zionist version of the holocaust (‘Six Million Died’). Chomsky is against academic boycott of Israel. Chomsky doesn’t believe that the US foreign policy is controlled by the Jewish groups especially the AIPAC. Chomsky also doesn’t like Israel being compared with the apartheid South Africa.
Roger Tucker, Jew Editor/Publisher of “One Democratic State” website – in a recent article, titled “Open Letter to Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter”, claimed that none of them is friend to Palestinian victims of the foreign Zionist Jew settlers because in fact they themselves are ‘Crypto-Zionists’ hiding behind the facade of ‘humanism’.
According to Roger Tucker the the so-called “Two state solution” supporters are a bunch of odd bedfellows. It has Uri Avnery’s Gush shalom along with hardcore Israeli Zionist government officials, the ‘Israel-First’ American neocons, Republicans, the Christian Zionists, the puppet Fatah (Mahmoud Abbas) unelected government and somewhat reluctant European nations.
“Noam Chomsky’s analyses of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and shifting sands of the Middle East has been non-parceil. And yet he is another closet Zionist (like Uri Avnery and Jimmy Carter). What a shame,” wrote Roger Tucker.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/chomsky-a-crypto-zionist/
Chomsky is on the record as not supporting the idea of Israel as a Jewish state, nor its right to exist as one, but at the same time he supports Israel's legal existence in the same sense as any other state despite the fact it has no defined borders and no written constitution, that is a formal body of laws that are considered as such that would either provide the Palestinians within Israel with the equality they lack now or formally establish Israel as an apartheid state.
I think it is a mistake to lump Avnery, Carter and Chomsky together.Apart from the fact that they all subscribe to Israel's legitimacy, Avnery is at least willing to recognize the power of the Zionist lobby which Chomsky denies and as an Israeli Jew his sense of nationalism may be more understandable than that of Chomsky who professes to be primarily concerned with his responsibilities as an American but frequently acts and speaks as if he is an Israeli at the same time. Carter, on the other hand, is someone who has come quite far on this issue and has done more to identify Israel with apartheid than any other individual. It is a term, of course,rejected by Chomsky but not, I believe, by Avnery, who, in his late 80s,still believes that Israel can be something other than what it is. It takes some courage for him to take the stands that he does within Israel these days,even though I have written critiquely of him at times (re his opposition to BDS, etc.) , but none at all for Chomsky to say what he has to say within the US whereas his books have been best sellers.
Jeffrey,
Over at Dissident Voice, Jeremy R. Hammond, a quintessential Chomskyite in my book, wrote a rejoinder to your article. Can you please respond to his rebuttal?
Rejoinder to Criticism of Chomsky: Asset or Liability?
Thanks,
Deadbeat
Hammond's response to Blankfort's critique of the Great Leader is also published at 'Foreign Policy Journal':
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/07/24/criticism-of-chomsky-asset-or-liability/all/1
Hopefully, Dissident Voice and Foreign Policy Journal would grant Blankfort the chance to reply.
"Serious supporters of the Palestinian cause would do well to set aside such claptrap as Blankfort and his ilk see fit to spend their time and efforts writing on and go out and pick up Fateful Triangle or read any of Chomsky’s other countless writings on the subject, read it thoroughly and actually listen to what he actually has to say, and make an effort to actually comprehend it." says Hammond.
In spite of his tone, I am going to take his advice, so there'll be an unwonted silence from me for a spell…
There are so many comments already on DV that it's not worth replying other than to have provided links to my previous article on Chomsky as well as two others, A War for Israel and The Israel Lobby and the Left: Uneasy Questions. I think, by and large,anyone who reads what I have written and what Chomsky actually says, should have no difficulty in discerning the truth, unless that person is a Chomskyite, a serious disease that has long permeated what passes for the Left. Foreign Policy Journal is Hammond's personal publication or blog that I'm not sure has many readers.
Jeffrey Hammond on Dissident Voice thoughly demonstrates the dishonest portrayal of Chomsky deliberately concocted by Blankfort.
Hammond doesn't delve into the motive for this, so I will. Prince Bankfort is part of an informal but well-organized network of liberal zionist, essentially all Jewish acronym organizations (MECA, ANSWER, UFPJ, etc.) very familiar to us in the United States.
What these networkers don't tolerate from Chomsky is his blistering portrayal of US imperial machinations, something they, as facilitatators for the Obama wing of the Democratic Party,attempt to silence with whatever pseudo-'progressive' rhetoric they can muster.
The absurdity of targeting Chomsky, whatever his ideological shortcomings, as some sort of 'hasbara; is absurd on its face.
The establishment press in the United States also informally blacklists Chomsky now, but the establishment is relatively honest about its motives. The acronyms above have to conceal their aims in order to throw sand in the eyes of people who dissent from US imperial policies.
Mark Richie says …
What these networkers don't tolerate from Chomsky is his blistering portrayal of US imperial machinations, something they, as facilitatators for the Obama wing of the Democratic Party,attempt to silence with whatever pseudo-'progressive' rhetoric they can muster.
What these networkers don't tolerate is Chomsky's duplicity and his adherence to a racist ideology — Zionism. It's a real shame that Chomskyites anointed an adherent of a racist ideology as its intellectual leader who uses the rhetoric of "U.S. Imperialism" as a cover and a distraction from American Jewish Zionist power. Essentially Chomsky is blaming ALL Americans (including American anti-Zionist Jews like Jeffrey Blankfort) for the evil deeds committed by the United States IN BEHALF OF American Jewish Zionist power and the Zionist Power Configuration.
We didn't anoint anyone. The many volumes of Chomsky's writings speak for themselves. Just as your ad hominem attacks are clearly motivated by your adherence to liberal zionist 'peace' organizations.
Chomsky isnt perfect, but unlike your leadership, Deadbeat, he admits that. You never hear admission of fallibility from MECA, ANSWER, etc.
And to some extent , most of us AREsomewhat responsible for the conduct of the government and administration. IncludingMOst of the leaders of ANSWER, MECA, etc., either openly called for voting for Obama, or took a hands off approach to him because of their commitment to the Democratic Party's liberal wing, which continues.
I wrote this five years ago about agent provocateur Mark Richie and people who read the crap he puts out ought to know it:
Those who are not familiar with the machinations of Mark Richey AKA Mark
Richie AKA POneill should be aware that he has been plying his divisive
wares, spreading the ink from his poison pen in the San Francisco Bay
Area for more than 25 years and has been so diligent in his attacks on
genuine anti-Zionists while either ignoring or patronizing actual
Zionists that I and others have concluded that he must be in the employ
of the Anti-Defamation League. In the late 80s, Richie, along with a man
named Roy Bullock, the ADL’s “top fact finder” (according to the late
ADL spy chief, Irwin Suall), infiltrated the SF Chapter of the ADC
(American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee) of which I had been a
founding member but was no longer active.
In 1987, I received information that Bullock, who had been at the
founding meetings of our Labor Committee on the Middle East, had been an
ADL spy for 25 years and when I and Steve Zeltzer, my LCOME co-founder,
called him on it, his responses convinced us that the allegation was
correct and we booted him out and did our best to inform other groups
about him. (The folks at ANSWER and Socialist Action did not appreciate
my warnings and Socialist Action even brought him in as volunteer to run
its office when it was organizing a major march in April, 1988)
In 1992, the SF Police Dept. arrested Tom Gerrad, one of its officers
when it learned he had been providing information for the ADL and South
African intelligence services. I put two and two together and gave a SF
Examiner reporter Bullock’s name which up to then had been kept out of
the papers. In an FBI deposition, Bullock, who was working in
partnership with the cop, said that he had six other people working
with him in the Bay Area but their names were never revealed. He also
mentioned, gratuitously, that he had infiltrated the ADC after a
previous spy had been exposed and that that spy had gone on to become a
lawyer. What was curious is that story wasn’t true. No spy had been
exposed by the ADC, but it turns out that Richie was a lawyer registered
with the California State Bar Assn., but who, apparently, has never
practiced and he has never responded to the question as to why he
hasn’t. (Maybe he will in a follow-up letter but I won’t hold my
breath). Readers can find out more about the ADL spy and the court case
that followed on http://www.counterpunch.org/adlspying2.html
According to others at ADC, Richie was relatively quiet at meetings and
was eventually promoted to the chapter’s board of directors while the
other infiltrator, Bullock, a weight-lifter “volunteered” to provide
the organization’s security. After differences with Palestinians in the
chapter, Richie left and proceeded to attack the remaining board members
and other anti-Zionist activists, using his former position as an ADC
board member as a badge of credibility.
When the entire Arab community boycotted Alan Solomonow, the openly
Zionist head of the Middle East Desk of the American Friends Service
Committee chapter in SF, because of Solomonow’s open discrimination
against Palestinian and Arab organizations and individuals, Richie
printed a handout defending Solomonow and criticizing the Palestinian
and Arab community for boycotting the AFSC official.
After an early attempt to enlist me on his side failed, and this goes
back over 25 years, Richie began attacking me as a “liberal Zionist
intellectual.” His attacks began in earnest after I was interviewed by
the SF Weekly in 1984 when the Democrats held their convention in San
Francisco in in which I criticized the control over the Democratic Party
exerted by the Zionist lobby. Those attacks have never ceased, the most
ridiculous being a message in which Richie kissed up to Noam Chomsky
after my article “Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine
Conflict” was published in Left Curve and began circulating on the net.
See http://www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html
While the evidence that Richie was an ADL agent is circumstantial, he
made a curious slip six years ago or so in an email exchange with me
about Bullock, revealing information about how the spy was exposed as
such by the Inst. for Historical Review, the holocaust revisionst group
whose meetings Bullock had also attended. That piece of information was
NOT part of the court testimony and has been otherwise publicly unavailable.
How did Richie learn about it?
There was another incident which also solidified by conclusions about
who Richie was working for when I encountered Bullock on day and said to
him, “Mark Richie says hello.” This seemed to fluster the ADL spy and he
stammered, “I don’t know who you are talking” about, even as his face
reddened
Richie once left a message on my answering machine, threatening to sue
me for calling him an ADL agent and I have since, on a number of
occasions, online and in person, invited him to do so, since there are
many questions that I would have my own lawyer ask him. How he knew
about Bullock’s exposure would be one of them.
It should be noted that Richie has never stopped his spying. Until at
least a few years ago, he had maintained his membership in the Arab
Cultural Center in SF, the people at the center being too polite to ask
him to leave. I happened to be there a about five years ago at a small
reception for a former Palestinian prisoner and his lawyer from the
West Bank when who should show up at the door but Richie. He was told
that the reception was private and he was not allowed in.
Before the internet, Richie had to rely on the postal service to do his
mud slinging, but thanks to cyberspace he has a world wide reach. In
August, 2005, I sent a copy of a similar letter to Richie, repeating my
invitation for him to sue me.
I sent it as well to Palestinian Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh, who spends most
of the year in Bethelem, Prof. Qumsiyeh forwarded my letter to his
mailing list and added ‘My own experience with Richey was when he
exploited a difference of opinion on tactics between some chapters of
Al-Awda to then claim Zionists manipulated Al-Awda and Zionists run
Middle East Children Alliance etc.” You can read Qumsiyeh’s excellent
reports from the West Bank on http://qumsiyeh.org/ and for more on the
Middle East Children’s Alliance, check out its site, http://www.mecaforpeace.org.
BTW, In all the many years I have known and observed this strange creature
he has never organized a single event or carried a single poster at a pro-Palestinian
protest. His sole occupation is attacking other movement activists and getting
them to attack each other, which is the job description of an agent provocateur.
Noam Chomsky is a 'hasbara'.
Mark Richie is an ADL agent, with NO proof, not even 'circumstantial.' Actually, somebody who keeps records on other activists for decades as Blankfort does is a lot more suspcious, no?
Does anyone see a pattern here?
Just one footnote to add to Hammond's exposure of Blankfort's typical dishonesty. To which of course Blankfort has made NO credible reply. He usually runs and doesn't reply when challenged in a forum liberal zionists like MECA and ANSWER don't control
I didn't leave the ADC because of differences with Palestinians there. The San Francisco ADC chapter, which had shrunk to a half dozen active members after the murder of Alex Odeh at ADC Los Angeles in 1985 frightened most people away, was taken over by a half dozen girls from MECA imported just for that purpose, with Blankfort as some sort of grandfather eminence grise for these MECA girls. Most of the existing Board of directors at San Frandisco ADC left in protest.
One thing is that Ihave been active for over 25 years in this area, and as Blankfortr well knows, any real agent would have simply disappeared, to be replaced by another.
So this outrageous accusation is not just a falsehood.
It's a DELIBERATE falsehood, just as his falsehoods about Chomsky are also DELIBERATE, not just in error, and Jeremy Hammond has so well demonstrated.
This is the sort of 'information' you can rely on from Blankfort.
The judgment of history: Today there is NO ADC Chapter in San Francisco. Good work, MECA
Just one more point! Look at Prince Bankfort's response !!! to Hammond's dismantling of his hit piece on Chomsky. With the smarmy arrogance of the zionist, he says Hammond 'doesn't have many readers.'
Well, yes. of course, Prince, 'we' own the media, don't 'we/'
That's how zionists usually response to criticism, on the rare occasions any gets into the media.
That atttitude speaks volumes to anyone willing to listen. Meanwhile, of course, he has NO ANSWER to Hammond in substance.
MECA or the Middle East Childrens Alliance has long been the most active pro-Palestinian organization in the Bay Area, with its founder Barbara Lubin continuing to speak out against Zionist injustices while raising money for Palestinian children when the Palestinian movement was in disarray. It has nothing to do with ANSWER nor do I and Agent Ritchie knows that. Notice that Ritchie has taken no position in support of boycotting, sanctioning and divesting from Israel, not a word of criticism of the Zionist Lobby nor does he call for stopping aid to Israel. All he is interested in doing is attacking those who do.
Another Blankfort lie. MECA is on the ANSWER steering committee. Or was, for quite some time, I don't keep up with these cozy networks every day. Just one more example! Also Lubin spoke at any # of ANSWER events (MECA is a one or maybe two-woman organization.)
It's nice to be Jewish on the US 'pwog' scene, where you can tell any lies you want and tag people as agents without proof, with fulll knowledge it's a lie, with no repercussions of any kind. That's why B'fort thnks he can get away with these deliberate falsehoods about Chomsky.
You can imagine the uproar if I, a non-Jew, were to say something like that about any Jewish person in pwogland. But being Jewish means you don't have to be sorry about setting people up for possibly being assaulted or worse with accusations of being an agent.
Although I think by now ol' Blankfort knows that 'this time, targeting Chomsky ' I went too far..'
There are too many smart people who instantly see the deliberate misleading and manipulation. Chomsky has too many readers for too many years for ol' Prince to get away with this.
Thanks to Jeremy Hammond for taking the time to document all these lies.
Those of you wanting a discussion space not dominated by Blankfort and his ilk, we have USQuagmire@yahoogroups.com. Please check it out!
Folks, please check out MECA's web site and see for yourself what the organization is about. Sure, Barbara Lubin has spoken at ANSWER events as have a number of other important activists. Her main interest is doing something matetrially valuable for the Palestinians will speaking out against US aid to Israel and supporting BDS, something you will notice, Ritchie does not do, just like Chomsky. As for Mark's Quagmire list, he started that after being kicked off of every Palestinian list and he is has some very strict rules for members or did the last thing I heard.Notice he has not denied or tried to explain any of the allegations I made in by dossier on him.
Mark Richie, you have had your chance to rant and complain and even to plug your group, which I also belong to and wonder a bit why.
I have never met either you or Jeff Blankfort, but I HAVE followed activism for Palestine for decades. I too, like all of us, witness the various twists and turns it takes, and at the end of the day, I have compiled a listing of those who never betray the cause and who always have incredible amounts of integrity and insight. Jeff is on the top of the list. There is no doubt in my mind that he has the clarity and the courage and the ability to know what the issue is and to be there to point the direction. I trust his instincts and admire his analysis and commitment to truth.
As to you, Mark, let me publicly say what I said privately to you several weeks ago. I wonder how you manage a listserve! It is NOT the most numerous one, as you claim, but it is managed in such a way that it is a near disaster. You received a smear article about PTT full of unsubstantiated crap, plugged on six sites, three of them managed by someone we outed as a FAKE beyond all compare and the other by an anonymous person who takes his turn (between some good work) harassing one Palestinian site or another, it's PTTs turn now – some of it so ridiculous it was merely laughable, for instance, since Kawther has Israeli friends, she MUST be a collaborator! It was even insinuated that she was not Palestinian! It was insinuated she was an infiltrate and more besides. Haitham was put down because he expressed his views that were contrary to dragging activists around the world without honestly keeping them informed of the procedures and what was going to be allowed and that you can't change things without having plan B, C and D and then, it must be for a major gain… I was put down because I am secular that pushes for Arab unity above all else and do not see Palestine as a religious issue, but an issue that is Arab/Palestinian against the European invader, as if my secular and Arab nationalist attitude towards it is something that others have the right to judge!
Now, this thing was sent to the mailing list because the author simply sent to every address Khalid Amayreh had on his mailing list, unsolicited, that is called SPAMMING. He sends his work to 20 people and we publish him or translate him. He also had USQ on the list, so, the email went there and ended up in your mail, and could not go up, because she was not a member, but what do you do? You respond to it to the entire list, who was not reading it, because she was not a member. Not that I care that they read it, it's BS anyway and anyone can see that by taking a look, however, it is the act YOU did. YOU publish a smear piece against someone on the list by someone not on the list! Y O U… Do you even understand this? could it be just a little mistake, bad judgment, or more???
So, giving you the benefit of the doubt, I asked you what kind of judgment this was, since this person had been spamming and harassing for months at that point with the same thing that we just ignored because it was little more than baseless smears, and you tried to justify it, without being able to answer the question as to why you post a smear piece from someone not on the list.
when I complained, you were saying you censor no one! (Not even those not on the list., evidently, just allow that they are smearing someone who is not you or Jeff B or MECA?)
Then, I merely wrote why I had not published this person for a long time, before her decision that she didn't want to be published anymore, and she wrote to YOU saying I was her dear and beloved friend and my response hurt her so…..
You were trying to pass a peace pipe, when it's not necessary. You were telling me we were friends. She's not my enemy, she's not my friend either. I simply have ceased being interested in anything she or her husband who harassed me with insulting emails have to say. I simply ignore them, because, while I would have gladly listened and discussed before seeing the drive to smear like a Zionist does, based not on fact, but on prejudice and lies, now I am not interested in what they think, because it is not consistent. They ignore some facts in favour of others that suit them. They actually kiss up to Pretend Muslims, because they seemingly can't seem to understand that some claim to be Muslim to manipulate those who are practicing that faith. But that's them and I don't mind. They can think what they want!
I can decide who is my friend and who I want to read.
YOU, on the other hand, if you manage a list, you have be careful to not publish smears that are from those not on the list, or smears of those on the list too, when they are not substantiated with anything!
so, I will take my name off the USQ, or you will, either way is fine.
I generally give people three chances to clean up their act, or even four if they apologise, I never saw one or the other from you.
Mark Richie writes …
We didn't anoint anyone. The many volumes of Chomsky's writings speak for themselves. Just as your ad hominem attacks are clearly motivated by your adherence to liberal zionist 'peace' organizations.
My arguments are motivated as an anti-RACIST. Zionism is a racist ideology and as a racist ideology I'm intolerant of racist. Chomsky is a PROFESSED Zionist. To be such an adherent for Chomsky to label himself a "Libertarian Socialist" is defies CONTRADICTION. That is downright deceitful for an "intellectual".
I'm sure if this was a discussion about David Duke, Mr. Richie would be the last one to accuse my remarks as being "ad hominem". What I expect especially from the Left is a consistent stance against racism.
Chomsky isnt perfect, but unlike your leadership, Deadbeat, he admits that. You never hear admission of fallibility from MECA, ANSWER, etc.
Interestingly that Mr. Richie brings up ANSWER. As I recall International ANSWER took a lot of heat from the Chomskyites for raising the Israel/Palestine issue during the anti-war movement. So much so that United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) along with Chomskyite Phyllis Bennis SPLIT from ANSWER which badly weaken the anti-war movement.
And to some extent , most of us ARE somewhat responsible for the conduct of the government and administration. Including MOst of the leaders of ANSWER, MECA, etc., either openly called for voting for Obama, or took a hands off approach to him because of their commitment to the Democratic Party's liberal wing, which continues.
Applying your standard you are "somewhat responsible for the conduct" of Chomsky and his corruption of the Left. A Left that could now be strong and in solidarity challenging Zionism and Capitalism but unfortunately is totally impotent and useless and in need of massive purging and rebuilding.
Evaluating chomsky's rejection of ROR and BDS from implicatory structure of any language, his objections are not factual but inferential statements.
And inferences [or hebrew and chomsky's 'ability' to prophecy] are much less valuable than facts.
And we would know facts only after expellees or fleers for dear life from palestina return to expalestine.
It's an ancient ruse to supplant wild and often wooly guesses for facts.
Our second-dearest panhuman right, RIGHT OF RETURN, regardless why people left their habitat, is unconditional. There is no ifs, buts, maybes, or invocation of perils about ROR.
How often must US and israel be saved? Nakba had been carried out to save israel. Then came more terrorism, land stealing, aggression of '67, gaza raid, killing civilians on ships, mass jailings, child-women military hunts, etc.
US also had been saved about 50 times. From panama, cuba, grenada, hawaii, germany of '17 and '43.
Then came the greatest peril ever prior to '01: afgh'n. Followed by even greater terror: iraq. And now it-isr might need saving from the greatest ever peril: iran.
Suppose some european lands which now hover midway between and idyllicly-structured society and an indian or american one, go even further in the 'wrong' direction, wolud that represent even still greater peril to 'zionism' and to america numero uno class: the actual rulers of US.
It should be noted that hopis, zunis, crees, mohawks, utes et al had no concept of people ownership as had old egypt, akkad, persia, babylon, rome, UK, Russia, US et al.
And the exemplum had to be destroyed. Would this also be fate of some european lands if they finally form an ideally sane structure of society? Or will they be prevented in achieving that?
Curioso appears, that present israel's and american enemies {made, tho], the muslims, just may become the greatest asset to US because muslim structures of society and thus governance is a replica of that of US! TNX
From the analyses above, the greatest threat to 'civilized' { cleansed of ownership of land, water, air, people, wife beatings, etcetc } world: the iran, seems a bit funni.
Iran's society is structured just like that of US and israel. So, is nato-isr just pulling our leg?
I think that the greatest threat to cosa nostra gangs anywhere is an enlightement of the people. It is how many indigenous ethnoses had lived: in pristine societies; in which all were respected, wanted, listened by others and listened to others; in short, lived in a society with all having about equal econo-military-educational power.
How about israel, US, jordan, afgh'n, UK, et al? With their chasmic differences in such powers. tnx
Tezozo left a comment that says that in my rant to Richie, I smear a respected writer. That I should reprint the very article that is full of innuendo, accusation and nastiness, so that I can prove it is false. The reason is that it doesn't insult me, but it attacks others and the "direction of the site".
Obviously, if we gave space to anyone who wants to attack us, any complaint about us not being what someone wants, and dictating clearly what we are supposed to do, as if they themselves have built this site and work hard on it, ( they basically criticise publishing pieces that are critical of idols and ones that promote the values that some of us adhere to strongly, that is, Palestinian unity within Arab unity, and rejection of any forces looking for divisionism, smears based on claims that the writers, if they are secular Palestinian are "infiltrates" or attacking Palestine), we would be satisfying the drive for attention that serves our enemy.
our enemy is Israel, and anyone who shifts the blame to someplace else, someone else, is helping the enemy and keeping us busy with time wasting things.
Just because "I" was not attacked, I am not going to allow Kawther and Haitham to be, as they are true patriots who themselves have suffered and still suffer the pains of their own exile and many years of mistreatment and abuse. That they should accept the accusations that they are "working for Pharaoh" is a joke. That they are "israelis" because they spell "Nakba" in a way our critic doesn't approve of, as though this is the sign! That they knew and still trust a handful of Israelis is the other sign… that they protest equally the human rights abuses made by ANY faction, not just the PA is proof that they are "evil"…
forget it!
They were able to spam their stuff for weeks, not even allowing any of my own comments in, and creating some smear campaign against me that, frankly, is infantile and abusive and serves their own interests,,, whatever those may be. They are no longer worth my time.
However, seeing as how this person liked the Geneviève exposès, he or she will have more to look forward to, as a few more reports (not about her, but about those who use the Palestinian struggle for their personal gain) will be forthcoming.
There seems to be a bit of double standard here. Somehow, calling me an agent with zero proof, just because I disagree with the liberal zionists, is not a smear…
Mark Richie AKA Ritchie AKA Richey may or may not be working for the ADL but his history as an agent provocateur within the Israel-Palestine movement had become so well known in the SF Bay Area that he is considered to be one by everyone in the Palestinian and Arab community. For his attacks on movement activists, and that is his only "contribution" to the struggle for Palestinian rights, he has been booted from every Palestinian email list, one after another, until he was forced to open his own.
Now I have accused Richie of being an ADL agent and I will continue to do so on the basis of circumstantial evidence that I have accumulated over the years and if he follows through with his threat to sue me for it,made over 10 years ago, I will be happy to present it in court. One thing that I have forgotten to mention about Agent Richey is that while he was still connected to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, he asked for and was accidentally given a roster of all the chapter's members containing all their contact information, addresses,etc., and despite a request to return it, he never did. When ADL spy, Roy Bullock,who I helped to expose, was depositioned, he admitted that he had six others in the Bay Area working for him. I couldn't begin to guess who might have been the other five but it certainly appears the sixth was Ritchie who was his buddy when both infilitrated the porus ADC SF chapter. In all the years that I have known and observed him he has never attempted to organize a single action or write a flier (apart from one attacking other activists) that contributes anything to the Palestinian struggle. Before the internet he was forced use the US mails for his poisonous work. Now he uses the internet and there fools out there like Tezozo, if he was referring to Richie as "a respected writer," who apparently think he has something important to say.
no, Jeff, the respected writer is Nahida Yassin/ Izzat. A former close (internet) friend of mine, until she decided that there was something acceptable in making all manner of swoops at anyone who disagrees with her, (if they are secular), and stooping to some very offensive things against people who work night and day to liberate their people, costing them great sacrifice, publicly and accountable. A few clever types fake to love Islam so that they can appeal to this kind of person's temperament. I would have liked to have engaged Nahida in discussion, but my normal letters were responded to by her husband who used all kind of vile accusations and abuse. It is not something I allow. Even if they don't like PTT anymore, that is NOT my problem! They should tend to their own garden.
I am sure that deep down, Nahida is a good person, but she allowed herself to smear others in a dishonest way, something that I believe is against whatever Islam is supposed to be, and Islam is her most important value. The abusive letters from her converted husband were what made me become determined that I would not yield to that kind of pressure, especially when it was insinuating that anyone here has anything to do with favouring Israel, when we have purged the site of the only suspect, and the site she is left to be published on seems to have an obsession with smearing us rather than facing some other unpleasant evidence. Like they say, do not feed the trolls.
In normal, non-cult media, this sort of accusation with NO proof would not be tolerated.
Imagine that! Agent Richet/Ritchie/Richie, who does nothing but make unfounded accusations against others, is objecting when someone makes an accusation against him that is based on years of accumulated evidence. When he exposes himself as he has on this list and others, he becomes little more than a punching bag and I am only too happy to seize the opportunity to take a swing.
Normal people who don't think of themselves as Chosen don;'t make such accusations. Common sense and civility.
I understand you think you're above all that., Prince.
I don't understand why an Italian American allows that on her site, though. She complains about Nahida smearing her, but Nahida never said anything this obviously false and offensive about HER. It baffles me Mary can't even object to this sort of slander. I expect it from the Chosen, but an Italian American,,…
Here in the Bay Area, even B'fprt fellow liberal zionist Jewish friends often cluck their tongues in private about this sort of accusation; essentially, he says the same thing about Chomsky as he does about me, that he's a liability to the 'movement", which of course someone, we don't know who, has decided to make B fort the spokesperson for…
But B'fort doesn't quite say chomsky is an agent, of course…not quite.
But while I've overheard the other libby zionists whisper comments and shake their heads about these sorts of accusation,s they of course are Jewish first, most of them, and won't say a word of criticism of him in public.
Mark Richie , I obviously ignored the 20 or more smear posts about PTT, Haitham, Kawther, Paola, Steve , Yousef, Sami and any of the others that were "selected" to have to endure them on "Uprooted Palestinians" by the anonymous "UP". Does not seem to be noticeable, and I have relegated it to little comments blocks in threads that engage only a handful. I don't spam them to people's mailing lists, to those who I suppose are the friends and collaborators of the anonymous person. That he takes our material, uncredited, I ignore that as well. I see he does some good work, and spreading our documents is not necessarily bad. He simply engages in his own selective abuse and some tolerate it coming towards our site, good for them!!! However, that Richie decides to publish the piece (not respecting any kind of rules about lists and security of members!) this is when I responded. Months later, and to Richey.
That Michel Iffrig decides to email a list of folks who have written here in the past or who are my close friends and affiliates speaks volumes. He accused Kawther of being a spy because she knew his email and name… well, he commented on her thread and she moderated his comment! All the info he gave himself. And seeing as how she had the right to know who was insulting her, she looked up the name, saw it on only 2 petitions or something (whole lot of activism there!). this is the logic of the investigations. Things taken out of context, insinuations and condemnations of the secular position of a person (who in her personal life upholds the principles of Islam to the highest degree).
that they protest that Kawther condemns random arrests and torture of political enemies, whether they come from Fatah, Hamas or anywhere, is seen as her not being on the right side!
This kind of stuff IS bullshit, but it's not worth even writing an article about. Kawther herself has other things to do. So do others.
Nor did I publish the abusive letters from Michel. But, I got them.
So, to end this "controversy", Richie does not know how to run a list. He decides to also stoop to insulting women and ethnic profiling because he knows what he did, and got caught out. That Jeff is right about him goes without saying! There are about 5 people I REALLY trust, Jeff is on top of that list.
There will be further exposès, as the fake Muslims abound, believe me. The fake Pro-Palestinians abound as well. But, these things do require time, and in this period, I am very busy editing a book and have less time than usual.
jfyi, WRITING the multiple smear posts is not considered "divisional" but waiting months and responding in a very limited way to the attacks "is"..
shame on Michel Iffrig who is busy sowing dischord!
just because they do not attack "me", I am supposed to be OK with that?
Kawther is my sister, Haitham is my brother. They are Palestinians, in case the person who wants to create havoc didn't notice, and they have been in the heat of things for so long, that their integrity is beyond discussion. PTT is also theirs and it is not going to be used to satisfy the strange vendetta of some people who have nothing better to do.
Talk about running a list, Mary. On non-cult media, accusing people of being agents with NO proof wouldn't be tolerated. Praising people who are proven liars (plenty of proof of THAT just in this article about Chomsky.) is also a cultish practice. It reminds me of the Manson girls here in California, or Jim Jones.
About two months ago i left Dissident Voice because it did not enforce own guidance for proper discourse; i.e., sans personal attacks, ridicule, etc.
I have my own system of dealing with people who are out to destroy the last bits of trust amongst us.
Trust is our greatest wealth or one among our greatest wealths. We had it once in abundance. That's why we survived!
That wealth had been by now almost utterly destroyed by shamans at first and later by priests and still later clerico-noble class of people.
Many of the posters are out for one goal only: erode the last vestiges of trust.
Knowing this, i no longer even attack what these people say let alone their personality; i posit my own facts; reach conclusions, and finally suggest what we can do to become trustworthy ad in turn trust others.
That's all we have to do. Why waste time and nerves dwelling on real or imagined traits-faults of others; including what they say?
In short, a piece or post has no instructive value if it does not contain: all salient facts that pertain to any event [so cast the widest and longest look possible]; then form a conclusion and offer a solution.
We can see that even chomsky doesn't do that. He goes on and on about what he's against [but narrower look than the one i observe from] and eschews to say what he had been for. I.e., until very recently!
And we know now what he is for now: Vote for greater evil [in effect], saving israel by barring return of expelles, etc.
OK i am naming chomsky because he's so influential, but i am not calling him names! tnx
Yesm bozh, Chomsky doesn't bother with personal attacks on others. He told me he hasn't answered Jeff Blankfort's mendacious e mails in years. We should follow his example.
"Mendacious e-mail" begs clarification. Are these chomsky's words or yours?
If chomsky's we still need to know why call name a person's writing?
A dysphemistic or euphemistic label has zero instructive value. I avoid them like plague.
Chomsky does not want to receive nor answer my e-mail. He said that to me in his fourth and final e-mail to me.
He was polite about it; so i thank him for that by saying it this post.
I have read many of his books; noting that he never said what he's for in ME. Around '91 i began to suspect that he differed from my position. [it might be better to have said our position: one state solution and return of the escapees and expellees]
I did not know about his rejection of ROR until blankfort suggested a few months ago on DV i ask him about it! tnx
Sorry if it hurts your feelings. Bozh, but spreading deliberate falsehoods that someone is an ADl agent requies more than a euphemistic reply.
Chomsky hasn't answered Blankfort's e mails n years, and since all he ever does is make ad hominem attacks like this on people, it's a little hard to accept your acceptance of his style when you criticize other people for personal attacks!
The 'mendacious' part, i added.
Sorry if it hurts your feelings. Bozh, but spreading deliberate falsehoods that someone is an ADL agent requies more than a euphemistic reply.
Chomsky hasn't answered Blankfort's e mails n years, and since all B ever does is make ad hominem attacks like this on people, it's a little hard to accept your acceptance of his style when you criticize other people for personal attacks!
The 'mendacious' part, i added.
Where on earth do you get rejection of the Ror? B. I supose. That's just one more lie from him!
Just for your information, Agent Richey, I recently have had two exchanges with Chomsky this year, the last a month or so ago over our disagreements whether or not Israel has benefited from the US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. He said it hadn't. I said it had. .I had objected to his characterization of Georgetown professor and committed Zionist Amitzi Etzioni as a "respected analyst." Etzioni had written an article calling on the US to bomb Iran. Unstated, of course, was that it would be for his beloved Israel. Etzioni is only respected by other Zionists. Hey, he sounds like you're kind of guy.
I'm very surprised. Chomsky told me over a year ago he had stopped answering all your e mails years before.
I'm sure he regrets not sticking to that decision. No point debating a liar.
Mark richie,
You haven't hurt my feelings. And i do not [dis]approve of what blankford has written to date. I have read couple of his pieces, but do not recall a word he said; so, i can't comment on his writing.
I am glad that you said that "mendacious e-mail" was an insert by you and not chomsky's label. tnx
Mark,
You can ask chomsky about his advice that children and grandchildren of the original escapees and expellees would not be allowed to return to their ancestral homes and homeland.
I did and he said just that in the fourth and final response to me. I hope he has changed his mind about it.
ROR appears as our second-dearest panhuman right. Chomsky had also publicly stated that he's for a two-state solution in spite of the fact that ?all observers know that what was taken by war can only be regained by war.
Thus, it is a fact that one can only be for two-state solution, after a war and via it establish the second state as it had been prior to israeli aggression of '67. tnx
If someone were to describe YOU as a respected commentator, Prince, I couldn't really argue with it; as a Jewish person, you're privileged to lie and slander and still have radio shows, the adoration of even Italian Amerians like Mary who's never even met you, be exempt from criticism on DV, Pulse, etc.,
But that doesn't mean you're not a lying water boy for the MECA liberal zionists in the SF area, people who are openly zionist (Rosenwasser) or covertly (Lubin.)
Chomsky and I don't dominate the media, we don't get to decide who is respected.
This fellow Etzioni has published something like 20 books, was the head of the American Socilogical Association, is considered overall a liberal. I can't deny he's a respected commentator, etc., even though he is a zionist and an imperialist, taking your word for that….most respected commentators in US media and academic circles ARE zionists and imperialists.
This is another example of you taking facts our of context, relying on most people not knowing Etzioni, so that what you say amounts to nothing but ad hominem attacks. In fact, your collected works amount to nothing but these sorts of ad hominem attacks on me, Chomsky, and numerous other people. Even your fellow liberal zionist activists cluck their tongues about you, but of course, being Jewish first, won't say a word publicly. As you said, these people dominate the existing organizations on the 'pwog' scene in the US.. I can't think of one Irish American or Italian American that' s not gay, and therefore somewhat accepted in your circles, who has any prominence in any of these organizations. That's about 70 million people in the US, more than 10 times the Jewish population, and probably more than 20 times the presence among the working class.
Sorry you weren't in San Francisco yesterday when I gave a talk on the ADL suit. Somehow your name came up when in a discussion about agent provocateurs on the internet. If you had been, I would have been happy to point you out and ask you to say a few words. Maybe next time.
Agent Richey, if you want the name of one Irish-American who is more than accepted in my circles, I offer you my friend, Alexander Cockburn, and we'll step across the sea to a British friend who has a home in Ireland, Robert Fisk,who will be speaking for the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA) in Berkeley this coming September 22nd, as I am sure you are aware. It will be the fourth or fifth time he has spoken for MECA. I'll be there. Will you?
Gee, Prince, I'm on EVERY e mail list there is, but I never got word about this talk. It must have been a small select group of nearly all Jewish 'activists' there. I'll bet ZERO Irish Americans, ZERO Itlaian Americans, ZERO Spanish speaking people, and probably heterosexuals in the minority. A scene out of a Phiip Roth novel. He's one of the greates modern US writers, don't you think? Describes your milieu so well.
Nor have I read any reports even on your friends' websites about this talk. Even your friends don't think it has any importance.
Really it's long past time to cut off this thread, Mary. it's just Prince and i trading insults. It's just that I would never dream of accusing him of being some sort of 'agent' with no proof. Not that I think that anyway.
But not being Jewish, I could never get away with it. NOt for a second, and we all know that
You print things like that, just because B'fort is Jewish, won't print the rejoinders from Hammond and Tarnapol….and then you complain people accuse of pro Western bias
This thread is truly pathetic. Such squabbling over personal political, religious and ethical preferences concering Palestine are fodder for discussion, for this is what blogging is about, but when is it a good ideal for this blog to squander valuable resources that could be engaged in meaningful discourse on such drivel?
Discipline, people, discipline! These are personal differences between disparate groups of advocacy for Palestinian rights, freedoms and prosperity. What Palestinian right is furthered by disputing our personal squabbles in public forum? The right of meaningless pettiness?
Divisions between popular culture and the lessor acknowledged splinters and roots of any social/geo-spatial or religious/political movement are are critical to the self expression, free and unabated of any free society. It is allowed that difference of opinion is the order of the day for enlightened peoples with diverse personalities and preferences; sexual, religious, political and ethnic. Why do we find such time to widen, deepen and exacerbate these differences rather than finding some cause to celebrate our similarities, or have fun discussing our funny foibles. Is school yard tit for tat note passing the way of nations in their fledgling state to honor their causes and emblems?
Some people are very sensitive as regards their affinity for faith, politics and ethnicity, others less so. We all should try to recognize whom among us is sensitive about their affinities and whom less so and able to tolerate critique. This is empathy that sees others rights and acts to protect them as well as our own, Self determination is important , but equally vital to any social or political movement if a solid platform of unified support for the basic rights of Palestinians.
If we cannot work together to build rights for secular thinkers alongside Islamic adherents, gnostic s, Christian, Jewish and any non Abraham discipline as well as atheists, what Palestine do we build but a version of other failed states based on selfish infighting and one upsmanship that divides and conquers ,rather than represents and defends equal rights for all as the national face of Palestine?
Totalitarian Palestine is an awful thought.Food fight Palestine, even worse, US/Israeli Brit Palestine a horrid concept that repeats the mistakes of zionism in New Jerusalem and continues the epic of distractions from the needs of the people of this place and time. To put ego and false pride above getting work done to foster the good wills of the world in support of the good people of Palestine is a failure of the site and of it's inceptors to be inclusive, humble and thoughtful of every Palestinians heart, to include Hamas, West Bank seculars, Diaspora intellectuals and every Palestinian man woman and child.
Palestine is not a hobby for an enthusiast to claim as their own efforts aside from the efforts of others. Palestine is not obeisant to one group's thinking or owing it's life to the outside world's thoughts and ideals for these people. Palestine is Palestine, warts and all, cults and cliques, seculars and religious, farmer, doctor, fisherman and women and the whole of it's fullness and scope as it is, not what some would prefer it to be.
For such a squabble as we have here to dominate the discourse of ideals is truly regrettable and if we are wise and honest, what this is is group thinkers and individuals, each with egos to defend and paradigms to hold dear, unable to agree that the failure of Palestine is their failure to unite the people instead of giving them reasons to be divided.
Please stop accentuating the negative aspects of the movement and find room at the Palestine Think Tank for love, mutual sharing and inclusive, respectful surrendering of the floor to every aspect of Palestinian life. Today is the first day of the rest of Palestine's lives. How will we spend it for the betterment of Palestine's peoples?
Jerry, you might want to direct your fine thoughts that i happen to share with the person who decided to dedicate most of her efforts at smearing another Palestinian woman. We have "protected" her identity, and some criticise us for it! We do not run the smear piece and will not be bullied to run it, and we are criticised by some who want to see the claws come out.
We won't satisfy the strange whim of someone who must care so little about Palestine she tries to libel Kawther and to smear Haitham and me, bringing our site "down"….
sorry, I do believe your critique is directed in the wrong direction, though your intention is good.
Did you enjoy the CAfe Intifada post by Elise Hendrick? I sure did.
Funny, I'm on every mailing list and didn't hear about your talk. Even your friends must not have thought it was very important.
As for Fisk, it's really imperialist of you to think that having a home In Ireland is enough to make a British person Irish.
[...] Blankfort, described as growing up in a "non-Zionist Jewish home" is most put out by Chomsky's insufficiently anti-Israel fulminations. Khalil Bendib conducted [...]
Jerry,
To me the three cults are the greatest bane that had befallen us. This situation is THE FIRST CAUSE for suffering of palestinians.
We can talk forever and have for the last 10 k yrs and catastrophy after catastrophy keeps raining on our heads because priests, 'nobles' [such as amirs, aghas, beys, beks, boyars, lords, kings, earls, princes] keep engineering them!
Thus anyone who talks to me as a 'jew', christian, and muslim only or first of all, aids and abets the greatest criminal minds: the clerico-noble parasitic class of life.
From which all evil emanated and would emanate, but in greater ferocity than ever unless we remove the FIRST CAUSE.
So, let's cease with sensationalism without causationalism. If we continue with not positing OR EVEN POSTULTING the FIRST CAUSE for al ills that befall us we will, i am certain, reap more and greater evil than ever. tnx
Hey guys – why don't you let Master Chomsky tell who he really is?
Israeli Channel 2 News TV reporter conducted an interview with Dr. Noam Chomsky in Amman (Jordan) on May 23, 2010 after he was not allowed by Israeli authorities to travel to the West Bank to deliver a scheduled lecture at Birzeit college. In the interview, while he debunked Israeli claim that Chomsky is a “Self-Hating, Israel-Threatening (S.H.I.T)” Jew and restated his true relation with the Zionist entity: “I regard myself as a supporter of Israel” (watch the video below).
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/chomsky-i-regard-myself-as-a-supporter-of-israel/
jerrygates writes …
This thread is truly pathetic. Such squabbling over personal political, religious and ethical preferences concering Palestine are fodder for discussion, for this is what blogging is about, but when is it a good ideal for this blog to squander valuable resources that could be engaged in meaningful discourse on such drivel?
This is not a "squabble". This is a matter of exposing the deception that is very much a part of the American Left. The heart of the rising power of Zionism and the continuation and expansion of Middle East policy that favor Israel and does harm to the Palestinians has very much to do with the fact that the American Left aided and abetted the rise of Zionism in the U.S. Thus Noam Chomsky has for decades plays an instrumental role in diverting attention from Zionism. And as a professed Zionist clearly it is in his interest to do so. The irony is that Chomsky admits to that but the "Left" denies Chomsky honest admission and elevates him as its intellectual leader.
Discipline, people, discipline! These are personal differences between disparate groups of advocacy for Palestinian rights, freedoms and prosperity. What Palestinian right is furthered by disputing our personal squabbles in public forum? The right of meaningless pettiness?
Discipline is staying focus on confronting Zionism and exposing the poseurs of the Left. Again jerrygates you misrepresent the intensity and viciousness of the "Left" to maintain their facade. You need to join the fight. Passivity jerrrygates will only further advance the Zionists goal and continue to do damage to the Palestinian cause and the fight for justice everywhere.
If we cannot work together to build rights for secular thinkers alongside Islamic adherents, gnostic s, Christian, Jewish and any non Abraham discipline as well as atheists, what Palestine do we build but a version of other failed states based on selfish infighting and one upsmanship that divides and conquers ,rather than represents and defends equal rights for all as the national face of Palestine?
This issue goes beyond Israel/Palestine jerrygates. It goes directly to the heart of ZIONISM. Zionism extends beyond Palestine jerrygates. It is right in your own backyard and you need to fight it. What you're doing jerrygates is trying to disarm those who are battling it. It's shocking that you're too blind to see it.
Totalitarian Palestine is an awful thought.Food fight Palestine, even worse, US/Israeli Brit Palestine a horrid concept that repeats the mistakes of zionism in New Jerusalem and continues the epic of distractions from the needs of the people of this place and time. To put ego and false pride above getting work done to foster the good wills of the world in support of the good people of Palestine is a failure of the site and of it's inceptors to be inclusive, humble and thoughtful of every Palestinians heart, to include Hamas, West Bank seculars, Diaspora intellectuals and every Palestinian man woman and child.
Again jerrygates. This is about more than just Israel/Palestine.
Palestine is not a hobby for an enthusiast to claim as their own efforts aside from the efforts of others. Palestine is not obeisant to one group's thinking or owing it's life to the outside world's thoughts and ideals for these people. Palestine is Palestine, warts and all, cults and cliques, seculars and religious, farmer, doctor, fisherman and women and the whole of it's fullness and scope as it is, not what some would prefer it to be.
Again jerrygates. This is about more than just Israel/Palestine.
For such a squabble as we have here to dominate the discourse of ideals is truly regrettable and if we are wise and honest, what this is is group thinkers and individuals, each with egos to defend and paradigms to hold dear, unable to agree that the failure of Palestine is their failure to unite the people instead of giving them reasons to be divided.
Are you that naive? The Left will betray your ASS if they suspect that you are going to confront Zionism. This is why the Left betrayed the anti-war movement. You've got the confront the ROOT jerrygates and the root is Left-wing AMERICAN Zionism whose intellectual leader is Noam Chomsky.
Please stop accentuating the negative aspects of the movement and find room at the Palestine Think Tank for love, mutual sharing and inclusive, respectful surrendering of the floor to every aspect of Palestinian life. Today is the first day of the rest of Palestine's lives. How will we spend it for the betterment of Palestine's peoples?
Again jerrygates. This is about more than just Israel/Palestine.