In response to a question at the University of Florida recently, Noam Chomsky claimed that there were only “a miniscule number of architects and engineers” who felt that the official account of WTC Building 7 should be treated with skepticism. Chomsky followed-up by saying, “a tiny number—a couple of them—are perfectly serious.”
If signing your name and credentials to a public petition on the subject means being serious, then Noam Chomsky’s tiny number begins at 2,100, not counting scientists and other professionals. Why would Chomsky make such an obvious exaggeration when he has been presented with contradictory facts many times?
I’ve personally had over thirty email exchanges with Chomsky. In those exchanges, he has agreed that it is “conceivable” that explosives might have been used at the WTC. But, he wrote, if that were the case it would have had to be Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden who had made it so.
Of course, it doesn’t matter how many professionals or intellectuals are willing to to admit it. The facts remain that the U.S. government’s account for the destruction of the WTC on 9/11 is purely false. There is no science behind the government’s explanation for WTC7 or for the Twin Towers and everyone, including the government, admits that WTC Building 7 experienced free fall on 9/11. There is no explanation for that other than the use of explosives.
The obviously bogus “tiny number” statement from Chomsky is only one of several such absurdities the man uttered in his lecture response. Here are a few of the others.
“[Scientists seeking the truth about 9/11] are not doing what scientists and engineers do when they think they’ve discovered something. What you do, when you think you have discovered something, is you write articles in scientific journals [he admits to “one or two minor articles”], give talks at the professional societies, and go to the Civil Engineering Department at MIT, or Florida or wherever you are, and present your results.”
I’ve copied Chomsky on more than two peer-reviewed scientific articles in mainstream journals that describe evidence for demolition at the WTC. Therefore he knows that this statement is not true. And I’ve given dozens of talks around the U.S. and Canada that focused on the WTC demolition theory, many of which were at universities.
I’ve also pointed out that MIT’s civil engineering professor Eduardo Kausel made elementary mistakes in his public comments about the WTC disaster. Kausel claimed in Scientific American that the WTC towers were “never designed for the the intense jet fuel fires—a key design omission.” Kausel also claimed that jet fuel from the aircraft “softened or melted the structural elements—floor trusses and columns—so that they became like chewing gum.” At the risk of making a Chomsky-like exaggeration, I’ll venture that nearly everyone today knows that these statements are false.
Chomsky went on in an attempt to belittle, and downplay the sacrifices of, people seeking the truth.
“There happen to be a lot of people around who spent an hour on the internet who think they know a lot of physics but it doesn’t work like that.”
“Anyone who has any record of, any familiarity, with political activism knows that this is one of the safest things you can do. It’s almost riskless. People take risks far beyond this constantly, including scientists and engineers. I could, have run through, and can run through many examples. Maybe people will laugh at you but that’s about it. It’s almost a riskless position.”
Chomsky knows that I was fired from my job as Site Manager at Underwriters Laboratories for publicly challenging the government’s investigation into the WTC tragedy. He knows that many others have suffered similar responses as well, including Brigham Young University physicist Steven Jones and University of Copenhagen chemist Niels Harrit, who were forced into retirement for speaking out. And although everyone knows that researchers and universities today depend on billions of grant dollars from the government, Chomsky implies that such funding could never be impacted in any way by questioning of the government’s most sensitive political positions.
The “hour on the internet” nonsense is ludicrous, of course, and Chomsky knows it well. Jones and Harrit have better scientific credentials than some MIT professors and we have all spent many years studying the events of 9/11. I’ve spent over a decade, and have contributed to many books and scientific articles, on the subject.
Pandering to the hecklers in the crowd, Chomsky summarized his simplistic (public) position on the events of 9/11.
“However, there’s a much more deeper issue which has been brought up repeatedly and I have yet to hear a response to it. There is just overwhelming evidence that the Bush administration wasn’t involved—very elementary evidence. You don’t have to be a physicist to understand it, you just have to think for a minute. There’s a couple of facts which are uncontroversial:
#1—The Bush Administration desperately wanted to invade Iraq. (He goes on to say that there were good reasons, including that Iraq was “right in the middle if the world’s energy producing region.)
#2—They didn’t blame 9/11 on Iraqis, they blamed it on Saudis—that’s their major ally.
#3—Unless they’re total lunatics, they would have blamed it on Iraqis if they were involved in any way.” He continues to say that “there was no reason to invade Afghanistan” which “has been mostly a waste of time.”
Basically, these three “overwhelming” reasons boil down to one reason—Chomsky assumes that if the Bush Administration was involved it would have immediately blamed Iraq for 9/11. Of course, Bush Administration leaders did immediately blame Iraq for 9/11 and they did so repeatedly. That was one of the two original justifications given by the Bush Administration for invading Iraq.
Moreover, Chomsky most definitely received a response to his “deeper issue” when he received a copy of my new book Another Nineteenseveral months before his comments. The book gives ample reasons—meaning actual overwhelming evidence—to suspect that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and nineteen of their colleagues were behind the 9/11 attacks. After writing that he was “glad to learn about the new book,” he sent his mailing address for a free copy. Chomsky acknowledged receiving the book in August and wrote to me that he was “pleased to have a copy of the book, and hope to be able to get to it before too long.”
Therefore, Chomsky has either ignored the response to his one major concern for several months or he knows that his concern is no longer valid. What would make him feign ignorance in such a way? Perhaps it is the fact that he would lose a great deal of face if he were to finally admit that there is much more to the story of 9/11.
Regardless, when a tiny number begins at 2,100 and “just overwhelming evidence” to exonerate the Bush Administration boils down to one bad assumption, we are again reminded of the power that 9/11 holds. When presented with substantial evidence for complicity on the part of corporate and government leaders, the obvious becomes either undeniable or an emotional cue to dissemble.
The Jewish-American political analyst, professor Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928), knows how to cover his personal agenda behind literary smokescreen. That’s what he did in his recent article published at AlterNet on September 3, 2012, entitled ‘Why America and Israel Are the Greatest Threats to Peace.’ His article begins with the statement: “Imagine if Iran – or any other country – did a fraction of what Americans and Israel do at will.” However, after criticizing both the US and Israel for their warmongering policies toward the Islamic Republic – Chomsky drops the Zionist entity from his list of “brutal and repressive regimes” in the region.
“The Iranian government is brutal and repressive, as are Washington’s allies in the region,” wrote Chomsky. One wonders why none of the leaders from 120 NAM member countries and 23 non-NAM countries who attended the 16th NAM summit in Tehran last week – compared Iran with the United States in those categories!
Before, I quote Chomsky’s said article, I would like to introduce the ‘real Chomsky’ to my readers. Chomsky is a strong critic of US foreign policy. He believes in the discredited ‘official 9/11 story’. In his book, ’9-11′, Chomsky criticized US foreign policy in the Middle East and its invasion of Afghanistan – but never mentioned Israel’s complicity in the tragedy. Chomsky is against Palestinian military resistance. He also favors the so-called ‘two-state’ solution and believes in Israel’s right to exist as ‘Jewish state’. Chomsky never publicly questioned the Zionist version of the holocaust (‘Six Million Died’). Chomsky is against academic boycott of Israel. Chomsky doesn’t believe that US foreign policy is controlled by Jewish groups especially AIPAC. Chomsky also doesn’t like Israel being compared with the former apartheid South Africa.
American Jewish writer and blogger, Roger Tucker, in a 2010 ‘Open Letter to Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter,’ had claimed that they’re not friends of Palestine – because they themselves were ‘Crypto-Zionists’ hiding behind the facade of ‘humanism’.
Jeff Blankfort, Jewish former editor of the Middle East Labor Bulletin, a long time photographer and a frequent writer on the Israel-Palestinian conflict – had called Chomsky a Double Agentin one of his 2005 articles.
“A number of statements made by Chomsky have demonstrated his determination to keep Israel and Israelis from being punished or inconvenienced for the very monumental transgressions of decent human behavior that he himself has passionately documented over the years. This is one of the glaring contradictions in Chomsky’s work. He would have us believe that Israel’s occupation and harsh actions against the Palestinians, its invasions and undeclared 40 years war on Lebanon, and its arming of murderous regimes in Central America and Africa during the Cold War, has been done as a client state in the service of US interests. In Chomsky’s world view, that absolves Israel of responsibility and has become standard Chomsky doctrine,” wrote Blankfort.
Now, back to Chomsky’s ‘satirical article.’
The war drums are beating ever more loudly over Iran. Imagine the situation to be reversed.
Iran is carrying out a murderous and destructive low-level war against Israel with great-power participation. Its leaders announce that negotiations are going nowhere. Israel refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and allow inspections, as Iran has done. Israel continues to defy the overwhelming international call for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region. Throughout, Iran enjoys the support of its superpower patron.
Iranian leaders are therefore announcing their intention to bomb Israel, and prominent Iranian military analysts report that the attack may happen before the US elections.
Iran can use its powerful air force and new submarines sent by Germany, armed with nuclear missiles and stationed off the coast of Israel. Whatever the timetable, Iran is counting on its superpower backer to join, if not lead, the assault. U.S. defense secretary Leon Panetta says that while we do not favor such an attack, as a sovereign country Iran will act in its best interests.
All unimaginable, of course, though it is actually happening, with the cast of characters reversed. True, analogies are never exact, and this one is unfair – to Iran.
WHO ELSE IS ON THAT BOARD WITH HER? … Susan Rice and James Steinberg, The Honorable Dr. William J. Perry, Hoover Institution/ Dr. Madeleine K. Albright, Principal, The Albright Group LLC/Richard L. Armitage, President, Armitage International/ Norman R. Augustine, Lockheed Martin Corporation/Admiral Dennis C. Blair, USN (Ret.), Former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Command Dr. Richard J. Danzig, Sam Nunn Prize Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies/William J. Lynn, Senior Vice President, Government Operations & Strategy, Raytheon Company/Lt Gen Gregory S. Newbold, USMC (Ret.), Managing Director, Torch Hill Capital/John D. Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress (THATS THE CARR CENTRE DIRECTORS COHORTS)
NOW WHO ARE THE MAJOR SUPPORTERS OF CARR CENTRE FOR WICH CHOMSKY IS INTERVENING IN VENEZUELAS INTERNAL AFFAIRS?
BRACE YOURSELVES …
The Schooner Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Ford Foundation, McCormick Tribune Foundation, Sydney and June Barrows Foundation, Alchemy Foundation, Kathy and Gary Anderson, Greg Carr, John L. Eastman, Gail Furman, Tsutomu Kanase, Tristin and Martin Mannion, Robert McKeon, Sheila and James Mossman, Cynthia Ryan, and Vincent Ryan are listed in their 2003 / 2004 annual report. 2003/04
According to their http://www.hks.harvard.edu/cchrp/aboutus/annualreports/20022003_AnnualReport.pdf 2002/03 Annual Report, supporters included Fabbio Cappon, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Gregory C. Carr, Center for Public Leadership, Ford Foundation, Gail Furman, Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation, and Reebok Foundation.
NOW HOW AN ESTIMEED … (TO OTHERS NOT ME) SCHOLAR CAN INTERVENE ON THESE GROUPS BEHALF, SPEAKS VOLUMES …. AND CHOMSKY IS NOT JUST ACTIVE IN SUCH MATTERS AGAINST CHAVEZ, BUT ALSO WORKING TO ADVANCE WESTERN INTERESTS AND POLICIES IN NICARAGUA …
Noam Chomsky, Brian Wilson and Tom Hayden and their fellow signatories have helped the Bush regime recoup lost ground for unjust US and European militarist corporate domination in Latin America which they will bequeath to whichever US plutocrat dauphin is anointed in November.
CHOMSKY IS ALSO A CLOSE FRIEND OF HAMID DABASHI SPOKESPERSON AND A MOST VOCAL PROPONENT OF THE GREEN MOVEMENT OF IRAN
ITS NO SECRET CHOMSKY BACKS THE GREEN PARTY WHAT HE LEAVES OUT IS THEIR PRO MONARCHY, PRO SHAH, PRO NEOLIBERALISM, PRO WESTERN IMPERIALISM POSITIONS, THEIR VIOLENT ACTS, THEIR DISHONESTY IN COOKING UP VIDEOS OF BEING BRUTALIZED BY USING BOTTLES OF FAKE BLOOD AND MANY MORE CASES, LIKE WESTERN FUNDING BY THE US STATE DEPARTMENT AND CIA … AND EVEN ITS LEADERS WHO ARE BILLIONAIRES UNDER THE GUISE OF ”REFORMERS”!!!
Israel has never fired a shot in the defense of American interests
By Jay Knott | September 17, 2010
Hypotheses and Tests 1. Hypotheses
“Dear Mr. President: We write to affirm our support for our strategic partnership with Israel, and encourage you to continue to do [so] before international organizations such as the United Nations. The United States has traditionally stood with Israel because it is in our national security interest and must continue to do so. Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East and a vibrant democracy. Israel is also a partner to the United States on military and intelligence issues in this critical region. That is why it is our national interest to support Israel at a moment when Israel faces multiple threats from Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the current regime in Iran.” – Jewish Virtual Library [1].
This is the beginning of the resolution passed by the US Senate on June 21 2010, supporting Israel’s attack on a convoy of unarmed aid ships headed toward Gaza, which killed nine people.
It begins with four sentences, each one of which asserts that Israel is a strategic asset of the USA. But if Israel is such an ally, why the need to emphasize it? It’s as if the senators are arguing with someone who says that Israel is NOT as useful as we tend to believe. Whoever that is, it’s not Noam Chomsky. Both left-wing thinkers like Chomsky and establishment politicians reinforce the idea that US interests coincide with those of Israel, though they differ on how good US interests are. Sometimes, when people say something too stridently, it is because they secretly know that it is false.
This review was sparked by an online critique of Noam Chomsky’s views on the Middle East by Jeff Blankfort, a reply to it, and the internet discussions around them [2], [3]. Several contributors to these discussions come from traditional anti-racist left-wing backgrounds, but, unlike most of the left, have taken it to its logical conclusion, opposing Jewish power as the most important form of ethnically-based oppression in the West today.
Chomsky fan Jeremy Hammond [3] urges Blankfort’s supporters to read Chomsky’s “Fateful Triangle” [4]. So I did. I am not impressed by Chomsky’s fame nor by the book’s approximately two thousand references. I look at the arguments.
Professor Chomsky made one of the greatest discoveries in twentieth-century science, the language instinct, in a 1959 critique of psychologist B. F. Skinner [5]. Because he’s a genius, we expect more of him than unsubstantiated platitudes. But everyone makes mistakes. Einstein spent the better part of his career trying to explain why the universe is not expanding, and Chomsky didn’t figure out that there are genes for grammar [6].
He flayed Skinner on the vagueness of his terms, and for changing the meaning of words when convenient. Chomsky therefore knows that vagueness makes a hypothesis untestable, and therefore unscientific.
Chomsky brought clarity to the science of language development, but he is surprisingly contradictory on the politics of the Middle East, for a man with such a scientific, logical brain. For example, on the one hand, he denies the importance of the Israel Lobby. After all, if Israel is helping US ‘elites’ maintain their ‘hegemony’ in the ‘region’, they would hardly need a lobby to remind them of it. Universities and co-operatives are tentatively discussing a boycott of Israel. Chomsky argues against a boycott of Israeli produce, because the Lobby would call us ‘hypocrites’, unless we boycott the US too [7]. So he thinks this ‘unimportant’ Lobby could undermine a boycott of Israel by mere accusations.
By page 4, Chomsky already makes it clear that he defends the Jewish State. He criticizes its current policies, which he says are caused by American Zionists, who cause its “moral degeneration and ultimate destruction”. In my pamphlet “The Mass Psychology of Anti-Fascism” [8], I sarcastically cited Stephen Zunes [9] for claiming America was responsible for pushing poor little Israel into Lebanon in 2006. I didn’t realize how close Zunes’s attempt to make excuses for Jewish murderers was to Chomsky’s position until I read ‘Fateful Triangle’. Chomsky and his followers want us to believe that Israeli ethnic cleansing has ‘degenerated’ since 1948 because of American influence. This means the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948 was morally superior to those in Lebanon in 1982, but the Hanukkah slaughter of 2008-9 was worse.
He says US ‘support’ has blocked Israel trying more moral policies, to the ‘despair’ of progressive Israeli Jews, on page 442. There is a cruder version of this ‘corruption’ narrative. It is part of the almost universally believed story of Jews as eternal victims. It enables Jewish Americans to support apartheid whilst thinking of themselves as liberals. They blackmail the left into accepting a much softer attitude toward Jewish supremacy than toward white identity.
Chomsky is by no means the worst example of chutzpah in the left. He is contradictory rather than duplicitous. He exposes Jewish emotional blackmail. He is contemptuous of professional Holocaust survivors like Elie Wiesel. He is fearless and merciless at ridiculing the hypocrisy and hysteria for which American Jewish organizations are notorious, who claim that critics of the Lobby are anti-Semitic. Some on the left also harass and slander pro-Palestinian peace activists. Since Israel is the only beneficiary of these divisive tactics, we call them ‘crypto-Zionists’.
But Chomsky’s main weakness is his failure to scientifically test his assertion that Israel is an ally of the USA. On page 3, without evidence, he says that US policy favors “a Greater Israel that will dominate the region in the interests of American power”.
To this end, Chomsky assumes that Arab nationalism is anti-West, whereas Jewish nationalism is pro-West. The former was allied to the Soviet Union. But this is at root a circular argument – the US supports Israel because it is an ally, and Israel is an ally because the US supports it. The reason some Arab leaders temporarily turned to Russia is because they were rejected by America, and the main reason for that is the influence of Israel. Chomsky confuses cause and effect.
The phrase ‘control of the oil’ is thrown around by Chomsky and his circle as liberally as the word ‘region’. It’s a vague leftist feel-good dumbing-down designed to prevent us from thinking through exactly what ‘control’ means, why precisely cruise missiles are useful to oil companies, and if killing Palestinian children helps US interests.
At this point, I should define ‘US interests’. I mean the interests of the US capitalist class. Unconditional support for Israel is obviously against the interests of the majority of Americans, who belong to the proletariat. But in that respect, it doesn’t differ from other unethical US foreign policies. What differentiates Zionism is that it is opposed to the interests of most of the ruling class too.
I used a Marxist phrase there. Chomsky prefers saying ‘elites’ rather than ‘bourgeoisie’ in his bestselling books. Even if the ‘elites’ really do ‘perceive’ it is in US interests to throw seven million dollars a day into a black hole, they are mistaken, and Palestine Solidarity has the task of explaining that to them and to those who work and vote for them.
Chomsky claims that the US supports Israel because Israel supports US war crimes – “Israel showed how to treat third-world upstarts properly” (page 29). This puts the cart before the horse. Right after World War II, Zionists were third-world upstarts themselves, engaged in terrorism in Palestine against an imperialist power. President Truman supported these upstarts, and later, when they were no longer upstarts, president Eisenhower supported upstarts against them.
This shows two things:
1. America doesn’t automatically oppose upstarts, and
2. Israel persuaded America to support its fight against upstarts which threaten Israel, rather than America supporting Israel because it combats upstarts which oppose America.
Israel has never fired a shot in the defense of American interests. But its friends in the media make it look as if the two countries’ enemies are the same, by amalgamating very different Arab and Muslim causes and parties. Most of these oppose Israel in principle – only a very small subset are inherently anti-American. It is in America’s interests to divide them. It is in Israel’s interests to prevent this. And it is in humanity’s interest to divorce America and Israel.
Chomsky claims that to be a Zionist means a bi-national state, with the right of ‘self-determination’ of the two nations within Palestine. It’s clear which of the nations would dominate the other, but Chomsky appears to be unaware of this.
To his credit, on page 442 of his book, Chomsky predicted the defeat of the Israeli Defense Forces, which didn’t happen until seven years later, in Lebanon, in 2006. The Gaza flotilla massacre of 2010 was another disastrous error for Israel, leading to a split with Turkey, formerly its most important ally in the ‘region’. There is an opportunity to start to undermine Zionism, the only remaining example of serious racial oppression in the Western world. Is Chomsky on board?
Contradicting his view that Israel obeys America, Chomsky refers to the normal state of politics in the USA as ‘complete obedience’ to Zionist opposition to freedom of speech, on page 337, under the heading ‘The West Falls Into Line’. He also says how the allegation of ‘anti-Semitism’ is used to blackmail the elite political spectrum in Western countries into supporting Jewish supremacy in the Middle East, but then he drops the ball, reiterating hackneyed rhetoric about US policy. It’s not really US policy. It is the policy of supporters of a foreign power pretending to be pro-American.
Note that my argument does not imply promoting patriotism. It means saying, in effect, IF you are a patriotic American, you should oppose your country’s ardent support for Israel. Neither does it imply anti-Semitism. It means recognizing that the interests of most of the inhabitants of the USA would be served by reducing support to Israel. The interests of the Jewish minority would be served by increasing it. This should not be controversial. In particular, the American left, with its keen awareness of ‘privilege’, should be able to listen to this argument. But mostly, it cannot.
At one point, Chomsky discusses the hypocrisy of the Israeli leaders in using pogroms against Jews in Russia in the nineteenth century as an excuse for doing the same thing in Lebanon in 1982. But he doesn’t try to question the view that Jews have always been victims, wherever they have wandered. This myth was reiterated by Republican president George Bush Senior when he was trying to defend himself against the ‘anti-Semitism’ slur by groveling to the Lobby in 1991.
On page 446, Chomsky describes young American Jews, raised on the handouts of the Anti-Defamation League, having a ‘corrupting’ effect on Israel. He must also be very aware of the corruption of Israeli teenagers effected by taking them to the ruins of German concentration camps and teaching them to hate [10], or the Hillel Jewish campus organization which teaches young American Jews that Israel is their homeland. He doesn’t go far enough in criticizing the obsession with ‘the’ Holocaust which gets more intense the further it recedes into history.
After complaining about Israel’s rape of Lebanon in the nineteen-eighties for a few hundred pages, Chomsky resorts to the ‘region’ trick to try to explain it. Page 442:
“The US has been more than pleased to acquire a militarized dependency, technologically advanced and ready to undertake tasks that few are willing to endure – support for the Guatemalan genocide, for example – while helping to contain threats to American dominance in the most critical region in the world, where ‘one of the greatest material prizes in world history’ [the Saudi oilfields] must be firmly held”.
On page 462, he regrets Israel’s “dependence on the US with the concomitant pressure to serve US interests”. One would expect that the USA would not give a country $7 million a day, more than all other countries combined – without demanding that it serves its interests. But the predictions of this hypothesis fail. Israel feels no pressure at all to serve US interests, and Israeli politicians boast of American subservience, whilst their American accomplices harass those who state this simple truth. This is true whether you are a media mogul, a movie star, a politician, or an anti-war activist.
At the beginning of his book, Chomsky claims that Israel helps the US by protecting the Saudi oilfields. At the end, he says it blackmails the US by threatening to launch a nuclear attack on this great material prize. Iran could also greatly harm the Western world by blocking the Strait of Hormuz through which fleets of oil tankers pass – but somehow, America stands up to Iran. Why can’t it stand up to Israel? Because it’s an asset?
Chomsky expends effort showing how the US media is biased in favor of Israel and against Palestinians, but he doesn’t call a spade a spade: the only serious racial prejudice left in America is pro-Jewish bias. That is why Israeli children’s deaths are reported at a rate seven times higher than those of Palestinian’s [11].
2. Tests
I propose testing Chomsky’s views using the time-honored methods of asking
– what does the theory predict will happen, and does it actually happen?
– is the theory the simplest explanation of what happens?
– what would we expect to happen if the theory was not true, and does it actually happen?
– is there an alternative theory which better explains what happens?
There are two rival hypotheses:
1. The main reason for the USA’s unconditional support for Israel’s unique persistence in imposing apartheid is that it is in US capitalist interests
2. The main reason for this support is the power of American Jewish organizations
Chomsky defends, with contradictions, the first hypothesis. Mearsheimer and Walt defend the second.
Let’s test each theory using scientific methods. Politics is not an exact science like physics, but we can at least try.
1. The basic principle of science: does Chomsky’s hypothesis [4] lead to a simpler explanation of events than Mearsheimer and Walt’s Israel Lobby theory [12]?
2. An abstract test. ‘Abstract’ does not mean ‘vague’, but is scientifically respectable. Without any concrete examples, one can test the Chomsky hypothesis as follows: it is reasonable to say that, for any two nations, they have areas where their interests coincide, and areas where they clash. The USA never acts against Israel’s interests, with some very minor exceptions. This means that, without giving any examples, we can say that America always supports Israel’s interests when their interests collide.
3. Falsification: ask what would be the case if Chomsky’s hypothesis is wrong. What would poor little Israel do if it were NOT serving US interests, if Americans ceased to corrupt it? Would it let the Palestinians back, decommission its nuclear weapons, and abandon its racial definition of citizenship?
4. Which of the arguments depends on the scientific methods outlined above, and which on vague, shifting definitions?
Chomsky makes, without argument, the assertion that if it were not for Israel’s ‘perceived geopolitical role’, a trite, content-free phrase, the Israel Lobby would ‘probably’ be unable to persuade the ‘elite’ to support Israel (page 22). So why do they bother, then? Why do Jews rant and rave in the media about ‘anti-Semitic incidents’ whenever anyone in the US makes timid criticism of their country? It’s not that politicians perceive that Israel is an asset, it’s just that they know what happens to those who perceive otherwise – the Lobby makes some calls, and they lose their jobs [13]. Chomsky’s theory that Israel is an ally would predict the Israel Lobby would barely exist – real allies of the US like Japan don’t have energetic, well-funded lobbies in Washington DC, ready to call on hordes of faithful followers to phone politicians and write letters to newspapers defending their nations’ interests. They don’t need them. Chomsky’s theory fails the test.
There is more to it than just rich Jewish organizations like the ADL and AIPAC. There is social pressure not to mention the Lobby. Whereas no-one accuses Chomsky of racism for claiming that Jews suffer for the interests of other Western peoples, in complete defiance of the evidence, those of us who point out that the reverse is true, with the facts on our side, are accused of anti-Semitism. If Israel were an asset, there would be no need for this manipulation of Western European culture, which has a unique record of abandoning racism, despite what the left tells us.
The ‘Israeli Sparta’ argument put forward in the Wall Street Journal etc. by Jewish neoconservatives posing as classical scholars can easily be disposed of. Sparta defended Greece. Israel does not defend America. On page 21, ignoring the evidence, Chomsky agrees with the pseudo-Hellenists, saying that the Israeli Defense Forces provides a backup for the US armed forces. In fact Israel has never been able to supply soldiers for any US operation in the region. In the Iraq crisis of 1990, Syria gave military support to the US, but not Israel. Israel was unable to respond even when Iraqi missiles landed on Tel Aviv, because it would have split the coalition invading Iraq. Chomsky’s argument fails the test.
Chomsky reviewed ‘The Israel Lobby’ [12] when it broke through the censors of the US liberal left [14]. “Another problem that Mearsheimer and Walt do not address is the role of the energy corporations. They are hardly marginal in US political life… How can they be so impotent in the face of the Lobby?” he asks [15]. Chomsky’s review of ‘The Israel Lobby’ implies the oil companies CANNOT be powerless in the face of a mere lobby. But the assumptions behind Chomsky’s question don’t stand up. Mearsheimer and Walt DO address the role of these companies, explaining how, if they had their way, US policy in the Middle East would change. Leftists in America half-adopt Karl Marx’s ‘materialist conception of history’ without naming it (they say ‘corporate greed’ instead). It is one of the few aspects of Marxism which can be tested, and it fails miserably to explain the US position on the Israel/Palestine question. The interests of big corporations do not lead to invading Lebanon, persecuting Palestine, and stirring up Islamic extremism.
Why has the US consistently supported Israel, and inconsistently supported Arab nationalists? Egypt’s Nasser, Iraq’s Hussein and Syria’s al-Assad all had a pretty good record of keeping down ‘upstarts’, particularly radical Islamic ones, so why not, according to Chomsky’s logic, ally with the radical Arab nationalist states? The US has allied with various Middle Eastern states at various times, but only its support for Israel is invariant. Again, these questions constitute a test of Chomsky’s hypothesis. You try to figure out what the hypothesis would predict, then try to find counter-examples, where the actual events are incompatible with the predicted ones. It isn’t difficult, particularly in this case.
Chomsky claims that one reason America supports Israel is because it is a ‘laboratory’ for US military and surveillance technology. This is easily tested by asking if any other country would be eager to take Israel’s place.
The argument that oil is the main reason for US support for Israel is too trivial to waste time on. When America attacks a Middle Eastern country, the left chants ‘no war for oil’. If the policy causes the price of oil to drop, capitalism benefits. If the price rises, the oil companies benefit. Either way, the left trumpets the evidence. The ‘oil’ explanation cannot be falsified. It is not wrong – it is not even a valid hypothesis.
In a similar violation of scientific methodology, Chomsky tries to use the fact that the USA approves of Israeli war crimes as evidence that the dog wags the tail, that Israel serves Uncle Sam. In fact, this ‘evidence’ contributes nothing at all to our understanding of the relationship between the two states. It is equally compatible with the two opposing arguments, so it is not a test which selects which of them are true. Chomsky does give some of the same examples of American subservience as Mearsheimer and Walt in ‘The Israel Lobby’ [12]
– US presidents mildly criticize Israel building settlements on Palestinian land
– Israeli politicians express open contempt for the supposedly most powerful man in the world, bragging of how ‘The Jewish Lobby’ (their words) will bring this uppity goy into line
– And so it comes to pass
but Chomsky doesn’t ask the obvious question – is this all
1. an elaborate charade to make it look as if the Lobby can determine US policy regarding Israel in order to cover up for white/US/capitalist hegemony, by diverting attention to the Jews, or
2. is the most elegant/economical/likely explanation that Jewish power trumps Western European interests in the USA?
By means of the Lobby, the tail wags the dog. Its the simplest, clearest, and most economical explanation of the facts. This is how science progresses. A good example of why simpler is better can be found in a recent paper on the evolution of social insects such as ants and bees [16]. We should try to use the same criterion in the study of human societies.
Like everything else, the question of Jewish control of the media can be approached emotionally. I prefer the scientific approach. I approach the argument about Jewish control of the press, etc., on its merits, not on how much it reminds people of ancient Tsarist calumnies. Surely the most simple explanation of the fact that
“Israel has been granted a unique immunity from criticism in mainstream journalism and scholarship” (page 31)
is because Jews are overrepresented in mainstream journalism and scholarship, and quite a few of these Jews defend Jewish interests. This kind of statement is acceptable in Israel, whose inhabitants are mostly proud of what they call ‘the Jewish Lobby’ in America. It is acceptable in countries like Malaysia. Why is it so difficult for us?
The answer is obvious. We are afraid of being anti-Semitic. I found a solution to this problem. I stopped caring about it.
“I don’t regard myself as a critic of Israel. I regard myself a supporter of Israel … I think the U.S. should continue to support Israel”. [1] – Noam Chomsky
The American linguist Noam Chomsky is often described by Western media as “arguably the world’s most influential intellectual today”. To his friends, Chomsky is a “relentless thorn” in U.S.-Israel Zionist policies. But reading between the lines of his repetitive and recycled propaganda, Chomsky is an opportunistic hypocrite.
On May 16 2010, Noam Chomsky was illegally denied entry to the Israel-Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank. Chomsky was scheduled to meet with members of the Palestinian Authority (PA), including the unelected U.S.-imposed and Israel-backed collaborationist “Prime Minister”, Salam Fayyad.
We know that the Israeli military controls all the borders of Israel-Occupied Palestinian Territories, and subjects Palestinians to prison-like living conditions. Thousands of Palestinians, pregnant women, the elderly, and the sick are denied free movement every day. While Chomsky failed to condemn this Israeli illegal behaviour, he could have entered via Tel Aviv (as he did many times in the past) and gone on to meet Salam Fayyad in Ramallah. Israel has since apologised to Chomsky.
In an interview with Democracy Now on May 17, 2010, Chomsky said:
“I was going to meet with the [unelected] 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. The question, of course, is whether – the extent to which Israel and the United States, which is a determining, factor – the extent to which they’ll permit them to be implemented. But if implemented, and if, of course, Israel and the United States would terminate their systematic effort to separate Gaza from the West Bank, which is quite illegal, if that continues, yes, it could turn into a viable Palestinian state.”
Noam Chomsky sounds like Shimon Peres.
Chomsky’s argument does not withstand the slightest scrutiny. How could Chomsky, who claims to defend the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, be prepared to meet with an unelected stooge of a Vichy-like collaborationist regime? To present Fayyad as a saviour for the Palestinian people is to ignore his despicable record of collaboration with the criminal oppressors of the Palestinians.
The PA is a corrupt administration and has no significant support among the Palestinian population. Its security apparatus is a brutal militia acting to enforce the Occupation on behalf of Israel. Fayyad was a U.S. servant at the World Bank from 1987 to 1995 and remains so in a different capacity. He is known in Israel as “the Palestinian Ben-Gurion”. David Ben-Gurion – a criminal Zionist much admired by Noam Chomsky as a “great statesman” – was the architect of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes and lands in 1948. This period of Palestinian history has come to be known as al-Nakbah (Arabic for ‘The Catastrophe’) which was, according to Chomsky, a “war of independence”. More than 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes, thousands of defenceless Palestinians were murder in countless cold-blooded massacred by Jewish terrorists, and more than 500 villages were destroyed. The same continues today.
Chomsky is said to be “encouraged” by Fayyad’s recent ranting that “the birth of a Palestinian state will be celebrated as a day of joy by the entire community of nations … it will come around August 2011”. It is a repackaged Camp David proposal, which was concocted in 2000 by Bill Clinton and his Zionist handlers and courageously rejected by the late Yasser Arafat. According to Fayyad, the new state will:
recognise Israel as a Jewish “biblical country”;
allow Israel to build Jewish colonies ‘within the valleys and hills of the West Bank’;
suppress – using U.S.-trained and Israeli-approved Palestinian militias (Keith Dayton-trained death squads) – all forms of resistance to Israel’s Zionist colonisation of Palestine; and
relinquish the Palestinian people’s right of return to their homes from which they were ethnically cleansed in 1948.
The so-called “two-state” solution, which Chomsky supports, is a Zionist fraud. It has been around for decades. Israel and the U.S. use this fraud to manipulate the world’s public opinion and to continue forcing more Palestinians out of their homes and land. Most of the Palestinian arable land and water resources have been stolen and colonised by illegal Jewish colonists (‘settlers’) from the U.S., Poland, and the former Soviet satellite states. The new Palestinian “state” will be just a collection of Nazi-like ghettoes similar to the South African Bantustan hemmed in by Jews-only highways and the Apartheid Wall. Like the “peace process”, the “two-state” solution enables Israel to stall for time and continues the ghettoization of the Palestinians.
The largest of these ghettoes, Gaza, is now complete. Gaza is a state of the art Concentration Camp. It has been under complete Israeli military blockade since 2006, essentially imprisoning 1.5 million men, women, and children, and denying them food, medicine, and essential materials for building their demolished homes. Even the pro-Israel Western humanitarian agencies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Amnesty International (AI), described the Israeli blockade is an illegal collective punishment , and an economic warfare aimed at terrorising the civilian population and toppling the democratically-elected administration of HAMAS. Even the Nazis wouldn’t resort to such wholesale brutality against 1.5 million innocent civilians. Instead of bragging about his meeting with Fayyad, Chomsky should call for an immediate and total end to the Israeli-imposed blockade and the withdrawal of the Israeli army and the illegal Jewish settlers from Palestinian lands.
For his support of the Palestinians, Chomsky opposes pressure to force Israel to behave according to international law and civilised norms. For example, Chomsky is against the peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Campaign against Israel. Chomsky believes the boycott will hurt Israelis. The Campaign is based on the international boycott campaign used to end South Africa’s Apartheid rule. The BDS Campaign is a call by Palestinian and international civil societies, human rights organisations, unions, and NGOs to boycott Israel and expose Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinians. The Campaign is calling upon people of conscience around the world to boycott Israeli products and Israeli institutions that are complicit on Israel’s brutal oppression and war crimes. Successive Israeli regimes have violated international law and committed more crimes against the Palestinians. Without international pressure, Israel will not end the Occupation.
The Campaign is part of peaceful international resistance to force Israel to end its Occupation of Palestinian land and end Israel’s apartheid system. Chomsky is against boycotting a state with a regime that is enforcing an apartheid system worse than that of South Africa. “Under Israeli military occupation, repression is worse than South Africa’s. It’s a sophisticated form of social, economic, political and racial discrimination, strangulation, and genocide, incorporating the worst elements of colonialism and apartheid as well as repressive dispossession, displacement and state terrorism to separate Palestinians from their land and heritage, deny them their rightful civil and human rights, and gradually remove or eliminate them altogether”, writes the American writer, Stephen Lendman. Chomsky’s objection to the Campaign only underlines the hypocrisy and doublespeak of his alleged support for the oppressed people of Palestine.
For all Israel’s crimes and flagrant violations of international law, Chomsky blames the U.S., precisely the White House and the President. Chomsky has no quarrel with the powerful U.S. Congress, where the Zionist Jewish Lobby (the ‘Lobby’) exerts complete control. Indeed, the U.S. Congress is far more pro-Israel than the Israeli Knesset. For example, the recent premeditated barbaric murder of at least nine defenceless humanitarian aid volunteers on board the Free Gaza-bounded Mavi Marmara Flotilla by Israeli commandos is unconditionally defended by U.S. Democrat and Republican congressional leaders as an act of “self-defence”, not an act of state terrorism. Chomsky rejects the role of the Lobby and Zionist Jewish Organisations controlling U.S. foreign policies, particularly in the Middle East. Chomsky argues fiercely that the U.S. supports Israel because of Israel’s strategic position (close to the oil-rich region) and is “a reliable pro-Western military force protecting Arab dictators”. This argument is flawed and its aim is to deflect attention away from Israel and the Zionist Jewish organisations defending Israel’s terror. Credible research by respected scholars shows that Israel is unconditionally supported – financially, militarily, and politically – by the U.S. and European governments because of pressure from wealthy and powerful Zionist Jewish Organisations who are also in total control of nearly all mainstream media outlets, including the Internet, TV channels, and the print media. Indeed, Zionist control over the mainstream media is clearly demonstrated by the biased reporting through an Israel-Zionist lens [2, 3, & 4].
The U.S. does not need Israel to control the oil-rich region of the Middle East. For decades, the U.S. directly dominated the region through its massive military bases in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The U.S. does not need to pay Israel more than $3 billion a year in order to commit war crimes. It is true: Israel doesn’t act and commit crimes without the approval of its allies, particularly the U.S. government. They are accomplices to murder.
On Iran, Chomsky is very unclear. While he rightly argues that the U.S. and Israel are seriously threatening Iran, Chomsky has yet to show any evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Quoting Martin van Crevel, the Zionist military historian at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and adviser to the Israeli military, Chomsky argues that Iran is developing nuclear weapons to deter any U.S.-Israel aggression. If not, the Iranians “are crazy”. There is absolutely no evidence that Iran is enriching uranium for military use. Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. The rest is anti-Muslim Zionist warmongering propaganda. Iran has broken no agreement and is fulfilling all its obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The real violator is Israel which stands in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and IAEA safeguards obligations. To date, Israel is refusing to open its nuclear facilities for inspection and threatening to use nuclear weapons against Iran.
Furthermore, Chomsky’s attack on the Iranian Government is unjustified. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the choice of the majority of the Iranian people (3-1), according to an analysis of multiple polls of the Iranian public conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). [5] Like most Western “Leftists”, Chomsky believes the elections were rigged and supports the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who was complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity at the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. Chomsky’s reliance on anti-Muslim propaganda organs, such as the BBC, FOX News and CNN shows that he is a propagandist.
Given Chomsky’s defence of freedom and democratic principles, it was ironic that in 2005 Chomsky and his leftist friends supported the U.S.-staged fraudulent elections in Iraq to install a puppet government as “democratic” and “worthy of praise”. If people like Chomsky fail to condemn fraudulent elections staged by foreign military occupation, then the U.S. will continue to manipulate democracy to serve U.S. imperialist interest. He called the murderous Occupation “incompetence” and attacked the Iraqi Resistance as a “violent insurgency”. It is sad that Chomsky, a leading critic of U.S. imperialism and injustice, could have ignored U.S. imperialist motives.
Furthermore, according to Chomsky, Iraq has become ‘an incubator or a university for advanced training for terrorists’. Where is the evidence? And since when is legitimate resistance to illegal aggression called terrorism? Instead, Chomsky and his leftist friends should condemn the Occupation and demand the immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. troops and mercenaries from Iraq.
It is important to remember that while Chomsky protested against the criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq, he later justified the illegal invasion on the basis that it has “removed” not only Saddam Hussein but also the genocidal sanctions. Seven years after the criminal U.S. invasion, Iraq is far worse today than under Saddam Hussein and the genocidal sanctions. An entire nation has been deliberately destroyed. More than 1.5 million Iraqis have been killed and at least 5 millions Iraqis are refugees, including 2.7 million internally displaced Iraqis. According to the U.S. think-tank, the Brookings Institute, only 20 per cent of the Iraqi population have access to proper sanitation, 45 per cent to clean water, 50 per cent to more than 12 hours a day of electricity, 50 per cent to adequate housing, and 30 per cent to health services. A quarter of Iraq’s population is living in extreme poverty. Iraq remains under murderous U.S. military Occupation. The motive remains conspicuous; defending the Zionist state of Israel and enforcing long-lasting imperialist-Zionist control of the region.
It is important to acknowledge that despite Chomsky’s contradictions, he is a respected scholar. In addition to his contribution to the field of linguistics, Chomsky has on many occasions provided useful analyses of U.S. terrorism, propaganda, and U.S. imperialist foreign policy. However, his contradictions are not possible to redress.
As a scholar, Chomsky has admitted that all intellectuals (including Chomsky himself) are propagandists who serve power by manipulating the public. “Chomsky feeds our need for truth by providing analysis, an intellectual framework that resides in inaction. [He] feeds the false notion that one can understand the world and one’s place in it and oneself by reading books”, writes Denis Rancourt, a former professor of Physics at the University of Ottawa.
Finally, in an opinion poll conducted by the European Union Commission in Brussels between 8 and 16 October 2003 (published in the El Pais and the International Herald Tribune newspapers), a majority of 7,500 Europeans polled from 15 European Union countries (500 citizens from each EU member) said that Israel posed the most serious threat to regional and international peace, ahead of North Korea, Iran, and Afghanistan. The poll proved to be accurate. On 02 March 2010, Martin van Crevel, the Zionist military historian and adviser to the Israeli army, told the Western media: “We [Jews] possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force … The Palestinians should all be deported … The people [Israeli Jews] who strive for this are waiting only for the right man and the right time. Two years ago only 7 or 8 percent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago [January 2010] it was 33 percent and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent”. The comment shows that Israeli Zionists and those who defend their crimes lack morality and respect for international law.
How can any progressive-minded person support a state that was built on the ruins of Palestinian villages, genocide, and dispossession? How can anyone support a state that openly espouses a racist and fascist ideology and is in flagrant violation of international law and civilised norms?
“I don’t think there is one moral person in the world that supports what Israel stands for”, said Ilan Pappé, a Haifa-born Jewish history scholar at the University of Exeter in the UK and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. It is not unfair to describe Chomsky as the most influential pro-Israel propagandist.
Steven Kull, Clay Ramsay, Stephen Weber & Evan Lewis, An Analysis of multiple polls of Iranian Public , The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), WorldPublicOpinion.org, Washington DC, February 2010.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
In his 1998 book The Common Good, Noam Chomsky describes the key role that managed disagreements play in modern politics…
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate…”
This remains true despite the increasingly obvious fact that Chomsky himself is part of that function.
What he’s describing is the “fake binary”. The imposition of the idea that Viewpoint A is the official approved narrative and that Viewpoint B is therefore its antithesis.
Points C through Z can therefore be ignored.
The fact hidden in plain sight being that both Viewpoint A and Viewpoint B actually reinforce the overarching narrative being sold and both lead to the same place.
It’s an incredibly effective management tool. … continue
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