. I believe Chomsky considers himself more valuable as an information-resource than as an activist or even advocate

Chomsky writings, speeches, and books and his celebrations by the “left” makes him an advocate — unfortunately he’s one of Zionism’s best advocates.

“I very rarely, if ever, send out articles (even important ones), but this is a very incisive, intellectually urgent, and particularly important one for the left. — J.A. [Joseph Anderson]”

___________________________________________________________

Kudos! Excellent article, J.A. Miller!

I particularly note a sentence in your follow-up comment just above: “Near the end of his Sabeel speech after recounting some of Israel’s crimes he basically calls for inaction” — or ineffectual (anything the Lobby/Zionists *don’t* strongly object to) busywork.

Yyyep: *THAT’S* THE CHOMSKY WAY! — of *appearing* critical, at length, of Israel while UNDERMINING any *practical* methods of moral opposition.

Blankfort (and in their own similar words other _serious_ social & global justice, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and, thus, anti-Zionist Jews) called it correctly and frankly about Chomsky (and other, especially, also characteristically, Israel lobby deniers, dismissers and minimizers; boycotts, divestments and sanctions opposers; and, sometimes openly, ideologically, “Jewish state” advocates– some of the most well-known Jewish lecture circuit “progressives/leftists” in the U.S. and Canada):

“5TH COLUMN ZIONISTS”.

It’s time to call –or hold– them to account.

Chomsky stated quite baldly that the “genre” of apartheid has “only one example: South Africa”. Perhaps the Professor regards apartheid as merely some sort of school of artistic endeavor. Worse yet, these words were a direct slap in the face to Archbishop Tutu who spoke after him and who has stated on several occasions that Israeli apartheid is worse than the South African variety.

Chomsky also stated that there is “no clear answer as to the question of whether the apartheid paradigm applies in Israel or Boston” and that there is “little point” in debating the similarities of the two apartheids because the debate will “never be settled, we know that in advance.” Thus does Chomsky trivialize the issue by the irrelevant mention of Boston and then preempt and shut down debate about the very topic around which the Sabeel conference was organized.

Perhaps Chomsky is still the self-proclaimed “leading opponent for years of the campaign for divestment from Israel and of the campaign about academic boycotts”. Near the end of his Sabeel speech after recounting some of Israel’s crimes he basically calls for inaction: “The kind of popular measures that were effective against apartheid by the late 1980s are not only ineffective in the case of Israel-Palestine today, but in fact sometimes backfire in harming the victims”.

Please see the excellent three part article by Jeff Blankfort at voltairenet for further analysis and information:
http://www.reseauvoltaire.net/article143703.html

THE CONFEDERACY, ISRAEL AND PALESTINE

ABOLITIONISM , THEN, AND ANTI-ZIONISM, NOW

As an African American, I’M GLAD THAT NOAM CHOMSKY CERTAINLY WASN’T AN “ABOLITIONIST” back in the days of American slavery.

He would have monotonicly intoned at length against the *excesses* and abuses of slavery — but *OPPOSED* a *true* democracy and a singular, re-unified, truly democratic country with absolutely equal rights for all people.

He would have *OPPOSED* calling slavery _white-supremacy_, _racism_, _chattel apartheid_ or _(internal) colonialism_– “because there’s too much disagreement from the Confederacy”, the *oppressors*, which [quite naturally] *opposes* those terms.

He would have said that The Slave Plantation Confederacy Lobby *has no* power and doesn’t really even exist, so there’s no point in opposing and working against it, “except if you might stretchingly, in some wild imagination, call it a lobby in some vague, amorphous, highly abstract form” — that “there’s no point in using such terms (as the Confederate lobby, racism, apartheid, even slavery, as opposed to ‘certain excessively unpalatable and overly-exploitative employment abuses’)” — that “we have to recognize that there will be no clear answer as to the question of whether the slavery or chattel apartheid paradigm applies” — and that, in fact, it’s highly *offensive* to the Confederacy, the plantation system, the slave owners and slavery supporters themselves: the *oppressors*.

He would have condescendingly said that Confederacy-questioning, anti-*unequivocally*-slavery-centric academics, “deserved credit”, he off-handedly supposed, but are misguided: that, “they didn’t factor in *the windsail energy lobby* with its interests of thousands of windsails on our seafaring merchant ships necessary for any thriving internationally-oriented country!” [Actually, two highly-acclaimed and highly-appointed "Realist" imperialist establishment professors who realized that expanding chattel slavery and a predominantly agrarian economy throughout the expanding nation was incompatible with an industrially aspiring world power.]

He would have opposed any form of divestment, boycotts or sanctions against the Conferderacy or even against corporations that did business with the Confederacy or the Plantation plutocracy, and therefore would help to sustain it. He would have said that such measures against the Confederacy would merely hurt the *slaves* — “would merely hurt the very people you’re trying to help!”

He would have insisted that it was *world capitalism & imperialism* –*NOT* the Confederacy or its white-supremacist national slavery ideology– that was “the *real* problem”, and that we had to defeat world capitalism & imperialism FIRST! — the people from whch the Confederacy is *really* taking its orders. *Don’t* morally attack or call for sanctions against the boys in *Richmond*.

He would have said that the Confederacy doesn’t approve of divestments/boycotts/sanctions against it and that it would be _UNREALISTIC_ to just expect it to just let millions of Black slaves be free with equal rights! — that there would be the problem of “too many free Blacks” — and therefore “A NON-STARTER”.

He instead espouses the high-noon carillon concert call of deliberate, micrometic *grrrradualism* — or going for the Marxist/Anarchist utopia, *FIRST*, of abolishing ALLL capitalism, imperialism and, supposedly, ALLL states and borders, before abolishing the immediate suffering of millions of people. (Really, a “leftist” excuse to do, effectivey, *NOTHING* practical.)

[Well, the Palestinians have been held STATELESS for the past *60 years* and their land has no respected BORDERS, so I guess *that's* certainly in keeping with Chomsky's "Anarchism".]

He would have condoned slaveryism in the Confederacy — as long as the Confederacy agreed that those Blacks in the North could be nominally “free”.

He would have used his personal cottage industry “Unquestioned White Leftist Walk-on-Water Guru” status (still regularly homaged and promoted, who’s editors and groupies permit no serious expert/competent contention, on that ante-bellum broadsheet, ‘Democracy Now’) and otherwise carefully culitvated “leftist” promulgations to actually *OPPOSE* and *SUPPRESS* any demands to abolish slavery in *both* the Union and the Confederacy.

Finally, IN HIS, BY NOW, *BILLIONS* OF SPOKEN AND WRITTEN WORDS, he would have *NEVER* RENOUNCED the white-supremacist ideology and institution of SLAVERYISM–participated in by *both* white European Christians and, to a lesser extent by virtue of Anglo-American demographics, white European Jews.

Oh!!: And it would have turned out that Chomsky *himself* used to *live* in Ole Dixie, used to *be* a _pro-slavery_ “Marxist/Anarchist” — became a “daring”, *fully and senior tenured* academic given the high honorific, “University Professor” by one of the *establishment’s* most top academic institutions in the world — and *STILL HAS* old, feel-good, “Peace Now”, “liberal”, *PRO-SLAVERY* friends and, perhaps, even relatives still, then, living in the Confederacy!

And so it be’s…

Joseph Anderson,

Berkeley, CA

I too attended this conference in Boston October 26. Chomsky, as ever, was willing to take more questions from audiences. But unfortunately, that day’s proceedings were lagging behind schedule as Desmond Tutu was suppose to deliver the keynote address around 1:30pm. I don’t know about the one question which J.A. Miller is referring to. But I remember very clearly Chomsky did answer Miller’s question (check on youtube or sabeel’s web page for full video) about his controversial stand on Israel. He spoke about 15-20 minutes. All this happen when many of the audiences were already leaving for the lunch after the organizers had decided to skip the discussion following the panel’s talks. So the brief account which Miller gave about the conference in beginning of her article above is a near misrepresentation of what happened on that day.

Re-read “A Clean Break” written in 1996 by Zionist monster Richard Perle and his murdering Zionist pals for a stated prelude to the Zionist designs for murder in Iraq and Iran;

Ron Jacobs toils to obscure the clear causal chain of Zionism.

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/63/21831

Certainly they are being murdered, gs. But for Israel? In Iraq as well as in the Levant? In any case, it doesn’t follow that aiming one’s venom and efforts — after all, we all have limited amounts of both — against Israel is more likely to reduce the murder than aiming it at the Chimpunk’s America (I almost wrote, Amerika. Doubtless you remember that sixties’ spelling) . Ron Jacobs writes persuasively about this.

Watch, weep, rejoice, & hope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtRLtm507tQ

gerald. The word “working” is ambiguous in your question: are you asking if Joshua Frank is intentionally working to advance the Zionist agenda? Or do you intend to be ambiguous, presumably in order to not appear to be a fool?

Lloyd Rowsey

James Petras’s scholarly and detailed book, THE POWER OF ISRAEL IN THE UNITED STATES, documents the murdering power and intrigue of the murdering Zionist agenda.

Is Joshua Frank working to advance the murdering Zionist agenda?

Thank you, Ms. Miller. For what I’d term wry-JessicaMitford-reporting, but have never before encountered. I attended a book club discussion of The Devil in the White City, about 50 miles outside the SF Bay Area, a couple of years ago. But I hardly spoke a word, so parochial and narrow were the comments by the others.

And I’m still returning to this most enlightening description of protestant *world fairs* in the 19th century, with Palestine as their holy land.

And Joseph Anderson. Thank you for extending Ms. Millers’ opening comments regarding Professor Chomsky and confirming my conviction that the world and the resistance movement in America have passed this great beacon by. In my opinion we owe the man our thanks, however, not derision.

http://www.theunjustmedia.com/the%20zionist_plan_for_the_middle_east.htm

You won’t have to be bewildered about why there is never any peace in Palestine.

Fundamentalist Judiasm wants it all and will lie, distort, manipulate, and murder to get what they want.

“Israel from the Nile to the Eupfrates.”

“God likes us best!”

From: Joseph Anderson
Sent: Tue 11/27/07, 1:47 PM
To: Noura Erakat, Palestinian-American legal activist, 2007 Boston Sabeel Conference speaker

Dear Noura,

I was listening to Democracy Now this morning and Amy Goodman was playing the recorded October 26-27, 2007, Sabeel Conference speeches of Noam Chomsky and Desmond Tutu. I see from the program that you also spoke at –and perhaps helped to organize?– that conference. So, that is why I email you. I will share my thoughts with others in the CC.

(I was surprised that Amy played Chomsky’s speech first, since Tutu apparently gave the keynote address. If one didn’t know that, one would have assumed that Tutu followed behind Chomsky, and that maybe Chomsky gave the keynote address.)

In fact, Chomsky opened by saying:

“Well, I’ve been asked to talk about the apartheid paradigm and the proper response here, so I’ll do that, though not without some additional reservations. We have to recognize that there will be no clear answer as to the question of whether the apartheid paradigm applies in Israel or in Boston, right here, or elsewhere. The genre has, after all, only one example: South Africa. [I guess that Chomsky doesn't think that the almost century of legal and *Constitutionalized* American Southern Jim Crow, and little things like the American Black Codes, and various forms of American anti-miscegenation (anti-"race-mixing") laws, qualified as another example.] And there are similarities elsewhere in many dimensions, and it’s fair enough to bring them up, but there’s very little point debating whether they are close enough in one or another case to count as apartheid, because that will never be settled, we know that in advance.”

But, in fact, Tutu pointed out that what’s been going on in historic Palestine since Zionist colonialism has been *WORSE* than apartheid. So, *who* is Chomsky deferring to when he said that “there’s very little point” in making the comparison? I’ll offer my answer: Chomsky always *fundamentally* defers to the ultimate sensibilities, when not wishes, of Israeli/Zionist Jews (like some of his old Zionist Jewish friends living in Israel — where *he* used to live). The *oppressors* must morally approve of boycotts, divestments and sanctions; the *oppressors* must morally approve of the apartheid comparison; the *oppressors* must morally approve of a reunified state (even in theory). When it comes to Chomsky and *only* Israel, we must always consult the *oppressors* first, defer to their sensibilities, and the oppressors always gets the ulitmate moral veto: that is his determination of what is even moral “practical” support.

The recordings did not make the Democracy Now listeners privy as to whether there was any Q&A afterwards, but if Chomsky went unchallenged after his speech, then –in my most humble opinion– I think that’s pathetic that he can apparently just spoon-feed people his distortions, obfuscations, underminings and even outright lies. In fact, Chomsky’s got his own little propaganda machine going — to deceive progressives/leftists. Anyone supporting the Palestinian cause who is hanging onto Chomsky (or inviting him to speak) merely because he’s a white left guru will be taken to a *dead* end. Chomsky also falsified the history of the anti-South African apartheid divestment movement. It didn’t start only *after* some great international consensus was built up: it started as an educational and consciousness-raising tool to *build up* the consensus for divestment, as well as economic, cultural, and athletic boycotts, against apartheid South Africa.

I just wanted to express to you that, in my most humble opinion, I am surprised that someone like Chomsky would even be invited to speak — someone who seems to subtly work to actually *UNDERMINE* the Palestinian cause as a *practical* issue. Chomsky gives subtle cues to this whenever he speaks long enough. The reasons I hold this position can be exemplified by my FWD’d email below, as well as the articles I list below. (And aside from that, Chomsky has never *renounced* political Zionism as, indeed, a racist political ideology.) In fact, just as Chomsky said at the beginning of his speech, his response to the Palestinian struggle is, indeed, pretty abstract. I’d humbly suggest reading my email below first to get an additional overview of my intellectual and moral objection to his speech and then read the articles, as your busy time permits.

“Gnome Chomsky” — a *GREAT* little poem!
http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/133840/index.php

Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine Conflict — interview with Jeffrey Blankfort
http://www.voltairenet.org/article143519.html

Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine Conflict — by Jeffrey Blankfort
http://www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html

The Left and the Israel Lobby — by Joseph Anderson
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June06/Anderson08.htm

I hope you find this information of some interest:

Take care,

Joseph

Berkeley, California