Chomsky and Palestine

That is all well and fine Fidel. The solution for the arable land problem from the Zionist perspective is about taking it from other people who need it.

Let's move on. No need to defend this chicanery.

No we aren't off Chomsky. You are.

Just because you or somebody else like you edited a wikipedia file on the NDP to name Noam Chomsky as a "supporter" of the NDP it does not mean that Chomsky is some kind of NDP sychophant, like yourself. Nothing that either you or Layton are saying has anything at all to do with What Chomsky is saying.

That is your fabrication. Feel free to talk all you want about Noam Chomsky, but at least stick to the facts of what he has actually said.

Please read the article above, nowhere does Chomsky, assert anywhere near the kind of mutual responsibility for the violence between Palestinians and Israelis, as Jack Layton does. In fact he smirks at such assertions. Chomsky clearly lays the responsibility and therefore the solution to the problem at the feet of Israel and the United States.

Nowhere does he suggest that the Hamas should stop firing rockets at Israel, as Layton does. Nowhere, does Layton call the attack upon Gaza an "attack upon Gaza" as Chomsky does, nowhere does Layton suggest that comparing the "fragments" created by Israel for the Palestinians to "Bhantustans" is unfair to South African Apartheid.

The word "rocket", as in "rocket attacks on Israel" doesn't even appear in the text of the ZNET article, even once.

Well I was just pointing out yet another instance where youve misled, or tried to mislead babblers. Yes, Chomsky supports the NDP just as Ralph Nader has in the past. Youre an obstreperous troll obssessed with the NDP and who doesnt appreciate it quite a lot when you're wrong, which is quite often by what I can tell.

I'm not going to let you drag me down to your level and pummel me with experience again, like that thread about oil and the Nazis. After calling me all sorts of derogatory names and made with the schoolyard banter, it was clear by your last post that you had no idea what you were talking about in that thread. I was embarrassed for you. I think you're full of shit as per usual but dont have time to prove it to you again.

Jeffrey Blankfort's crimes (both real and imagined) notwithstanding, my criticism of Chomsky stands.

There is no mystery as to why Chomsky refuses to call Israel an apartheid state. Chomsky recognizes, correctly, that calling Israel an apartheid state would tend to cut across his advocacy of a "two-state solution" - a solution that would transform apartheid de facto into apartheid de jure. It is a political disagreement, not a mere semantic one, and it places him squarely outside the activist movement for the defence of Palestine.

This is no surprise, as Chomsky is no activist, and never has been; he is an academic, plain and simple. He is not a tactician or strategist; he has no real perspective on how to build an international movement around specific slogans and campaigns. If he did, he would recognize immediately how useful the apartheid analogy is for giving a racial, geopolitical, and historical context to Israeli aggression.

Like most academics who shun the word apartheid, Chomsky opposes the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign, suggesting with no small hint of sarcasm that it would be more appropriate to boycott and sanction the USA. He fails to recognize the importance of building an activist campaign aimed at severing the international economic, military, and diplomatic support that enables Israeli apartheid to flourish. The academic Chomsky prefers tactics that do not confront Israel directly. His main proposal to combat US support for Israel is "democracy promotion" in the United States, by which, if his own example is anything to go by, he presumably means perpetual support for the Democratic Party.

These positions are all of a piece, stemming from a desire to deflect protest away from Israel and towards the United States. In furtherance of this perspective, Chomsky tries to depict all of Israel's actions as controlled by puppet strings from Washington. Hence his constant repetition of "US-Israeli attacks" on Gaza. It is a position every bit as preposterous as its opposite - the one that says the Israel lobby causes the USA government to place Israel's interests ahead of the "national interests" of the USA.

Chomsky is sometimes shameless in his efforts to block or blunt criticism of Israel. Last year Israel announced that it would boycott Durban II because "it will be impossible to prevent the conference from turning into a festival of anti-Israeli attacks." When asked about this in an interview with Frank Barat, Chomsky declined to condemn Israel's stance, saying only, "One can agree or disagree with these decisions, but they do not imply 'refusal to accept any sort of criticism towards its policies.' I doubt that these particular decisions will backfire, or will even receive much notice."

The USA is happy to provide material and ideological support and diplomatic cover to Israel because it is in USian interests to have a strong bulwark for Western imperialism in the Middle East. (Canada is happy to do likewise, but nobody talks about "US-Canadian-Israeli" aggression in Gaza). It is precisely because of Israel's strategic importance and the strong support that it gets from the imperialist countries of North America and Europe that it has the power and the freedom to act on its own account. Israel will attack its neighbours and commit crimes against humanity, secure in the knowledge that its imperialist backers will cover for it. It doesn't need to get advance permission; there is no chance that Israel will be punished or cut loose by its imperialist backers for striking out on its own.

It is this assumption of perpetual economic and diplomatic security that the BDS campaign seeks to undermine. Chomsky's positions undercut that strategy.

Fidel, your efforts to leverage support for your political party by using Palestinian plight and distorting what leading figures like Noam Chomsky are saying is cynically opportunist, and about as sick as the leadership of Israeli politicians who are using the attack on Gaza to improve their own political fortunes.

 Please stop it.

I disagree, Chomsky, quite clearly said that Israel's treatement of Palestinian was worse than that of South Africs, in a direct comparison, which I highlighted above.

At this point we are arguing positional minutae. It is quite clear on what side of the struggle Chomsky is on, as was it when Yasser Arafat and the PLO called for acceptance of the two state solution. Support for the two state solution is not accepatance of Israeli hegemony.

For many it is a tangible legal position with traction in the political dialogue, just like the implimentation of Resolution 242 is a tangible legal demand in the context of the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. Asserting the validity of 242, something which can not be considered as anything but a stepping stone on the path to self-determination, compensation or repatriation, and whatever else one would consider to be a fair resolution to this conflict. Supporting it does not in anyway imugn the validity of larger objective, nor does supporting the 2 state solution, for the same reasons.

The two state solution is a valid and clear legal position that has been put forward, and accepted by a large amount of the Palestinian leadership, regardless of where it stands in the larger scheme of what should be done. There are in fact no other positions that in any way address Palestinian grievances, that have any legitimacy within the Palestinian leadership, and even many Hamas leaders have indicated acceptance of it on a provisional basis.

Whatever you may think of it, a great many Palestinians accept it, however grudgingly, as possible solution to the immediate problems confronting them, in their daily lives. You are making a big issue out of what is at most a tactical consideration, when in fact, neither you, or Chomsky really have the right to dictate to them what is best for them.

In my view, it is the latter point, which is most evident as the reason behind Chomsky's support for the two state solution, not any fraternal feelings he may have for Israel. The fact remains, that the two state solution is the only negotiated position upon which any signficant section of the Palestinian leadership has agreed is a possible way forward.

To support it, does not neccesarily, put you in the camp of those who object to Palestinian enfranchisement, at all.

It can mean that one is reluctant to sit in ones comfortable office at MIT and dictate to Palestinians the position that they should be taking in order to confront Israeli opression, over the top of articulated Palestinian policy.

Ya sure, and the Nazis shipped Balkans oil directly to the Russian front instead of Germany via the Danube. You were pretty smug in that thread for a while, too, kid. I'll tell you again that I didnt appreciate the derogatory remarks in that thread as well as this one, and several more along the way. If you dont appreciate your stupid arguments chewed up and spit back in your lap, then dont make them!

What both Chomsky and the NDP agreed should have happened was a UN ultimatum for ceasefire declared immediately and humanitarian aid delivered to Gazans.  

You want to paint the NDP as being the same vicious toadies to US imperialism and its proxy frontline state of Israel that our two stale old line parties have been so faithfully over the years. In which case, one may find the stomach to actually support those stale old line parties for vague and obscure reasons not related to their pro-USA and pro-Israeli Middle East policies.

And what you've said since inviting yourself to a squabble with moi is just not true, like the pure and unadulterated bullshit youve posted in so many threads on various other subjects beyond your comprehension.

I wont ask you to stop it, because for some reason the fourth political party in Ottawa taking votes away from some other party we know of has been the object of your disaffection for some time.

Heh. Who said criticism of Chomsky was off limits? What is off limits is bizzaro and belligerent and unfounded assaults of the kind which Blankfort engages is. As far as I can tell you are not engaging in a two penny hatchet job. Myself, I don't really have a lot of time for critiquing Chomsky, the most well known serious critic of Israeli and US policy, in the continental US despite his faults.

Its good enough for me, my disagreements amount to trivia over tactics, and semantics. I am not going to engage in microscopic dismemberment of wether or not Chomsky's exact words amount to categorizing Israel as an Apartheid when he is saying that the Bhantustan comparison is unfair to South African Apartheid, as if this distinction is significant.

It is not. He is an intellectual. Of course he is going to spend his time coming up with elaborate sociological and political analysis of the exact nature of the Israeli occupation. For one thing, that in itself is a distinction, Israel's racialist policy, mostly extend into occupied territory, whereas South Africa's apartheid policies extended throughout its domain.

So what??? This is semantics, Chomsky is a linguist. Get over it.

Chomsky, wisely articulates his position on the basis of standing international agreements, and policy intitatives coming from those who are directly involved, carefully supporting positions, which without exception are those put forward by legitimate Palestinian organizations and their Arab allies in the region, and opposes the imposition of Israeli and American dictates.

1. It's not my newly found thesis anymore than imposing genocidal sanctions against Israel was recommended by any of me, the NDP, or Chomsky - it wasnt. Jeez, jawing with you guys isa like-a watching a retro episode of Newheart.

2. take a number  

Cutting off military aid to a US proxy doesnt amount to genocidal trade sanctions.

Now now, he wasn't saying anything of the sort.  Open ended trade sanctions that include food, medicine and agricultural products, as I've said before in another thread, will increase the suffering of the Palestinians far beyond what we can see and imagine now.  Military hardware, technology, economic divestment, intellectual and political boycotts, things of that nature would be just as effective.

On that particular occasion when he made those remarks, it was to a US audience, and in the context of US politics. He opposes the BDS campaign there, and everywhere else in the world. His message is no different on that score when he is being interviewed for European or South American consumption.

In the same paragraph he says "I don't think divestment from Israel would make much sense, even if such a policy were imaginable (and it's not)." He does not acknowledge that the campaign for divestment from South Africa was not only "imaginable" but actually had an impact.

To end apartheid in South Africa it was not necessary for black South Africans to wait around until the USA changed its policy. Chomsky wants to tell the Palestinians "we'll support you not by a BDS campaign against Israel, as you ask, but by pushing for changes in US policy."

His recipe for changing US policy on Israel? As I have noted, his only strategy seems to be to vote for the Democratic Party.

It doesn't require consideration.  I am against sanctions on any country that would limit the distribution of food and medicine to the general population, and hinder the ability to maintain crops and livestock.  Having worked in countries that have been under international sanctions of this nature, and seeing it's effects, ghastly images of which are seared in my mind permanently it seems, I wish it upon no one.

Excelent, you seem to spending a lot of time creating the ideological background upon which Israel is allowed to impose those conditions upon Palestinian people by talking up "theoreticals" about imagined dire consequences of a supposed BDS program that will never take on the form that you are proposing, in terms of Israelis.

What this program will do, in the best case scenario, is make Israel pay for its intransigence, and make it not economincally feasible for it to impose those conditions upon Palestinians. Quite clearly our goverments are not going to take a stand on this issue, so any kind of civil boycott, will do little more than make Israelis uncomfortable. Again, I am stressing that this is the best case scenario, were the boycott even to be marginally effective.

No one is talking about starving Israelis the way Israel is starving the Palestinians. That is your fantasy. Even the term "geoncidal" is being bandied about freely as if this is legitimate comment, and not mere scaremongering.

I am talking about reality, here.