from Arabian Sights....


“...a few years later [after the establishment of the state] I spent several very happy months working in a Kibbutz and for several years thought seriously about returning permanently. Some of my closest friends, including several who have had a significant influence on my own thinking over the years, now live in Kibbutzim or elsewhere in Israel and I retain close connections that are quite separate from any political judgments and attitudes. I mention all of this to make clear that I inevitably view the continuing conflict from a very specific point of view, colored by these personal relationships. Perhaps [??!!] this personal history distorts my perspective.”

Noam Chomsky

Protecting Israel: Chomsky's Way
Ghali Hassan
http://www.countercurrents.org/hassan050406.htm

I've been involved in this since childhood in the 1930s. I was part of the Zionist movement, in fact, a Zionist youth leader, but I was opposed to a Jewish state, and that was part of the Zionist movement at the time. It was not the main part, but it was considered within the umbrella, so I could be an activist Zionist youth leader-the main thing in my life as a teenager- but opposed to a Jewish state, up until 1948.

Noam Chomsky
http://ziomania.com/chomsky/chomsky%20admits%20his%20emotional%20attachm...

“Freedom is untidy...is messy...Stuff happens...Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that's what's going to happen here.”
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rhttp://jmhm.livejournal.com/1405852.htmlumsfeld

zfacts.com/p/298.html

Do you believe Israel should exist, why and in what form ? NICK HARRIS

Chomsky : As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states - no more, no less.Why should the US exist, sitting on half of Mexico, including Florida, conquered in a violent racist war carried out in violation of the Constitution?
And we can ask much the same about other states. State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome.

Would you describe the US as it is now as a fascist state? T SUMMERS, CORNWALL
Chomsky : Far from it. In many respects it is the most free country in the world.

Noam Chomsky: You Ask The Questions
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14727.htm

The Treachery of Noam Chomsky and liberal imperialist - zionism

Following are excerpts from an article by Zahir Ebrahim. Although the article is well researched, and an important contribution to the collective effort to expose the notorious "anti-imperialist" fraud Noam Chomsky and his cronies, it shows unjustified respect for Chomsky, and for openly zionist Uri Avnery. Proving their deceptive appearances, and pointing out their misleading activities, the author does not expressly condemn them for being the frauds that they are. They purport to be champions of justice and peace, when in reality they are the willing tools of the zionist apartheid regime of Israel, and loyal zionists.
Liz Burbank

The endless trail of red herrings - Part II
Zahir Ebrahim

parts of the article dealing with Noam Chomsky :
http://humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2007/03/endless-red-herrings.html

...Noam Chomsky ... supported the sanctions on Apartheid South Africa, he is against sanctions for Israel...
http://www.treacheryof.blogspot.com/

On Iraq and the heroic Iraqi resistance

Chomsky criticised the US because the US violated international law and the UN Charter and committed crimes against Iraq. The war was an illegal act of aggression, and the Occupation of Iraq is against the majority of the Iraqi people. However, Chomsky praised the invasion for it “removes Saddam and the sanctions”. As we know these are the views of Bush and Blair. Iraq is far worse today than before the invasion at all levels. On the Occupation itself, Chomsky is like his army of devotees; he is very surprised it didn’t work. Chomsky calls the premeditated and deliberate destruction of Iraq an “American incompetence”. The worst is that Chomsky praised the US-staged elections as “democratic”. Elections under foreign occupation are illegitimate and imperialist propaganda. The Iraqi elections were fraudulent elections designed to legitimise the imperialist Occupation and cement civil strife and fratricidal killings.
On the right of Iraqis to self-determination and national independence, Chomsky is flagrant. He called the Iraqi Resistance “bomb throwers” and follows the Bush-Blair line of labelling anyone resisting US terrorism as “terrorist”. The US war on Iraq is “creating more terrorists”, said Chomsky. On the Iraqi Resistance, Chomsky is emphatic. It is a “violent insurgency”, he said. Chomsky seems unaware of the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children needlessly slaughtered with “trigger happy” violent US forces and their mercenaries. The illegal mass arrests without charge, torture, abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi civilians is not the most flagrant violation of human rights. The daily bombardments – with cluster bombs, napalms, chemical and phosphorous bombs – and the destruction of Iraqi cities are not the most heinous war crimes in the history. How long will the American people remain silent in the face of injustice, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in their name?
Finally, Chomsky’s analysis of Middle East suffers from his tendency of demonising the Arabs, while covertly defending his own ethnic group. Chomsky’s earlier views are not different form his views today. People with moral consciousness and open mind should not fall into Chomsky’s trap."

Ghali Hassan
Protecting Israel: Chomsky's Way
http://www.countercurrents.org/hassan050406.htm

This [the excerpts below] shows Chomsky is a Zionist at worst and an apologist for Zionism at best. Even Ilan Pappe (an Israeli) is more critical of Israel than Chomsky is. Here, Chomsky distinguishes Israel from S. African apartheid; undermines boycott (which Palestinian civil society calls for!); advocates for non-violence... and tells Hamas to revise its charter and accept a two-state solution.

Saja Raoof
"Within Israel itself, there is serious discrimination, but it's very far from South African Apartheid…On the query, to repeat, there can be no clear answer as to whether the analogy is appropriate….

On Hamas, I think it should abandon those provisions of its charter, and should move from acceptance of a two-state settlement to mutual recognition…
proposals for a "one-state solution" are tolerated within the mainstream today, unlike the period when advocacy was indeed feasible and they were anathema. Today they are published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. One can only conclude that they are considered acceptable today because they are completely unfeasible -- they remain proposal, not advocacy. In practice, the proposals lend support to US-Israeli rejectionism, and undermine the only feasible advocacy of a bi-national solution, in stages…

Today there are two options for Palestinians. One is US-Israeli abandonment of their rejectionist stance, and a settlement roughly along the lines of what was being approached at Taba, The other option is continuation of current policies, which lead, inexorably, to incorporation into Israel of what it wants…

As a result, calls for boycott almost invariably backfire, reinforcing the harshest and most brutal policies towards Palestinians.

Today, for example, nothing is more welcome to Israeli and US hawks than Qassam rockets, which enable them to shriek joyously about how the ratio of deaths should be increased to infinity (all victims being defined as "terrorists"). I have also agreed all along with personal friends who had contacts with the Palestinian leadership (in particular, Edward Said and Eqbal Ahmad) that a non-violent struggle would have had considerable prospects for success. And I think it still does, in fact the only prospects for success….successful struggle for a settlement that takes into account the just demands of contesting parties..."
Naom Chomsky

FRANK BARAT
On the Future of Israel and Palestine
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky
http://www.counterpunch.org/barat06062008.html

Arabian Sights
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from the digest:
Zionist Nationalist Myth Of Enforced Exile
Shlomo Sand
http://mondediplo.com/2008/09/07israel
Le Monde Diplomatique

[According to Israeli historian Shlomo Sand] the diaspora was the consequence, not of the expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East..Until about 1960 the complex origins of the Jewish people were more or less reluctantly acknowledged by Zionist historiography. But thereafter they were marginalised and finally erased from Israeli public memory. The Israeli forces who seized Jerusalem in 1967 believed themselves to be the direct descendents of the mythic kingdom of David rather than – God forbid – of Berber warriors or Kha zar horsemen. The Jews claimed to constitute a specific ethnic group that had returned to Jerusalem, its capital, from 2,000 years of exile and wandering. This monolithic, linear edifice is supposed to be supported by biology as well as history....
At the end of the 19th century conditions began to favour their return to their ancient homeland. If it had not been for the Nazi genocide, millions of Jews would have fulfilled the dream of 20 centuries and repopulated Eretz Israel, the biblical land of Israel. Palestine, a virgin land, had been waiting for its original inhabitants to return and awaken it. It belonged to the Jews, rather than to an Arab minority that had no history and had arrived there by chance. The wars in which the wandering people reconquered their land were just; the violent opposition of the local population was criminal. This interpretation of Jewish history was developed as talented, imaginative historians built on surviving fragments of Jewish and Christian religious memory to construct a continuous genealogy of 'the Jewish people'.
Judaism’s abundant historiography encompasses many different approaches. But none have ever questioned the basic concepts developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Discoveries that might threaten this picture of a linear past were marginalised. The national imperative rejected any contradiction of or deviation from the dominant story. University departments exclusively devoted to "the history of the Jewish people", as distinct from those teaching what is known in Israel as general history, made a significant contribution to this selective vision. The debate on what constitutes Jewishness has obvious legal implications, but historians ignored it: as far as they are concerned, any descendant of the people forced into exile 2,000 years ago is a Jew. [...]