The road to war in the Mideast

ELEVEN MONTHS since the beginning of what the Arabs call the Al Aqsa Intifada, hundreds of Arab and Jewish lives have been lost. It has been a year of great suffering for all. But for Noam Chomsky it has been suffering for the Palestinians, period. In a speech he gave at MIT last December 14, he was concerned over what he called "killings" and "atrocities," all of which, according to him, were killings of Arabs by Jews. Not a word whatever of the televised sickening lynchings, two months before Chomsky's speech, of Corporal Vadim Novesche and Sergeant Yosef Avrahami, which shocked the world. Not a word of any suffering by Jews, not a word of Arab violence. Instead, a repeated demand for a Palestinian "right to resist," and a criticism of Arafat for having signed away that right at Oslo. Arafat, as Chomsky has asserted many times before, is far too easy on the Jews. Nine months later, on August 13, Chomsky revved up his hysteria even more, this time charging Israel with "a repetition of Nazi crimes" (op-ed piece, Los Angeles Times).

Since I wrote my analysis of Chomsky’s relations with neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers in 1985 (updated 1995), Chomsky and his friends have attempted to rebut my conclusions by, a) calling me a liar, b) a Zionist, and c) accusing me of misquoting sources.

Insofar as these attacks are in any way concrete, they concern my disclosures of the political relationship between Chomsky and the French neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers. The basic documents, including Chomsky's own charming and typically understated "Cohn is a pathological liar," are now on line. I provide these links to the original materials, so anyone can determine exactly who is telling the truth and who is not:

The Chomsky Documents

As I have shown in my Partners in Hate (see below), the Chomsky-Nazi connection was documented by the ("left-wing") Nazis' leader, Pierre Guillaume, in a chapter entitled "Une Mise au Point," in a publication called Droit et Histoire (Paris, La Vieille Taupe, 1986). Until recently, this text by Guillaume, which includes a comment from Chomsky, was difficult to obtain. Now an anti-Semitic organization has put it on the Internet, at least for the time being, so all those who can read French can see for themselves (Une Mise au Point by Pierre Guillaume).

This text bears careful, attentive reading. There are some difficulties: it is in French, and it makes reference to fairly obscure details in French fringe politics. For these reasons it requires some effort. But for anyone willing to put in this effort, the rewards are a striking, detailed understanding of Chomsky's politics. Nobody who has studied this text, in my humble opinion, will ever again have any respect for Noam Chomsky.

After I publicized the existence of this document, Chomsky called me a "pathological liar" for my trouble. His own followers have now been incautious enough to put these comments by Chomsky on the web as well, at least for now. They are at least as interesting as Guillaume's original document, because, if read together with Guillaume's account, they give rare, direct evidence of Chomskyan veracity.

In this letter to the editor of a Communist Canadian Jewish publication ("Outlook"), Chomsky maintains that he has read the Guillaume piece and that this Guillaume piece contains nothing that concerns him. For example, says Chomsky, it contains "no hint of any collaboration" between Chomsky and Guillaume in its writing, as I had maintained. But if the reader will consult p. 170 of Guillaume, he will there find an explanation of how Guillaume had submitted an earlier version of his piece to Chomsky, who had made some corrections, and how Guillaume had corrected the piece in accordance with Chomsky's instructions. Moreover, Guillaume also reproduces a letter from Chomsky, in further comment. These items clearly show that Chomsky, to this anti-Semitic audience in France, vouches for Guillaume's accuracy. Of course when he writes to an audience of left-wing Jews in Canada, Chomsky denies all: no, Guillaume did not write what he did, no, Chomsky did not collaborate with Guillaume. Fortunately the reader can now check Guillaume in person.

Another incident, very important in the Guillaume essay, has to do with Chomsky's insistence that Guillaume and his Holocaust-denying organization "La Vieille Taupe" publish the French version of Chomsky's book "Political Economy of Human Rights" (written with E. Herman). Here Chomsky plays dumb. He insists that it was a mainline French publisher, Hallier-Albin, not La Vieille Taupe, that was to publish the book. But Guillaume explains in detail (p. 154) that he, Guillaume, was the director of the collection in H-T that published the book, and that Chomsky insisted on giving this plum to him out of a sense of solidarity with Guillaume's politics, that is to say with La Vieille Taupe.

Werner Cohn

August 2001

IT SEEMS THAT THE PRESS CAN’T GET ANYTHING RIGHT. In Minneapolis, The Star-Tribune refuses to call the Palestinian suicide bombers “terrorists,” because of what its ombudsman calls “the emotional and heated nature of that dispute.” Evidently, calling them what they are might offend those readers who supposedly view them as freedom fighters. More egregious are the stories in the past few days about those who have been described as “peace advocates,” the term being used to refer to the European and American “internationalists,” as they call themselves, who showed up in Yasser Arafat’s compound with food, medicine and expressions of support for his campaign against Israel. The April 3 New York Times, in two different stories, calls them “peace advocates” who are part of an “ad hoc” group that wants to protect Arafat “from the Israelis.” In another story in the same day’s paper, readers learn about the plight facing the parents of one Adam Shapiro, a Jewish member of this would-be “peace” group, who find they are facing daily threats in New York from furious supporters of Israel. In this article, the paper refers to Shapiro not as a peace activist, but this time as simply a “humanitarian worker.” Adam Shapiro himself told the Times that he only worked for the well-being of Palestinian civilians, and that fact was “getting lost because I got trapped in the presidential compound.” It was circumstance that led him to share a breakfast with Arafat, and not any sympathy with the PLO chief’s views.

Evidently, The New York Times did not see the exclusive interview by Matt Lauer with Shapiro on “The Today Show.” (Available at http://www.msnbc.com) Shapiro described himself not in the neutral terms employed in the press story, but candidly as a “volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement,” a group of international activists who are struggling “against the [Israeli] occupation” and who are “trying to protect the Palestinian people.” In his breakfast talk with the Chairman, Shapiro said that Arafat “thanked us for our solidarity” and for showing the world “what is really happening here” and praised Arafat for his ongoing “struggle for freedom for the Palestinian people.” Shapiro ended his television interview by calling Arafat’s cause one of “freedom, dignity” and human rights, and by calling upon all Americans “to stand up with us to protect the Palestinian people and to demand an end to the occupation.”

Adam Shapiro and his group, the so-called International Solidarity Movement, is clearly not a human rights or peace group. The press is so used to describing international left-wing activist organizations as peace groups that once again it has fallen into the trap set by these left-wing fanatics. One can easily find out what they are about by going to the group’s own website, http://www.palsolidarity.org. Here they are completely honest about their goal---that of a mouthpiece for the PLO-Hamas-Hezbollah and company’s war against Israel. Their statement of purpose is a repetition of the worst anti-Israeli and pro- Palestinian propaganda, referring to the “Palestinian struggle for freedom,” demanding an “end to Israeli occupation” and referring to the methods undertaken by Israel against the constant wave of suicide bombings as steps taken by the “illegal Israeli occupation forces.” The actions of Arafat’s legions of terrorists are called simply actions meant to “resist” the occupation, and like the PLO propagandists, they demand “the right to return of Palestinian refugees and a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem.”

So biased is the ISM’s statement of purpose that it makes not even the slightest attempt to appear to be balanced. Israelis simply have no “respect for Palestinian human rights and human life,” it argues, and it calls for an international presence to support the “resistance.” In particular, they sponsor what they call “non-violent” actions to reinforce the Palestinian resistance, which of course, is not expected to be non-violent. They mention how last December, they worked in “key towns and villages” which Israel now finds itself moving into in order to root out terrorist cells, which they refer to instead as areas “recently hard-hit by the Israeli Occupation Army.” Nowhere do their members even seek to address the issue of suicide bombing, as well as Arafat’s decision to balk at accepting the most generous terms that would have been given his people if the concessions agreed to by Barak at the Oslo Peace Conference would have been accepted. These concessions, after all, offered the Palestinians almost all of the territories Israel occupied in 1967. As Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote on March 31, “the world must understand that the Palestinians have not chosen suicide bombing out of ‘desperation’ stemming from the Israeli occupation;” indeed, Yasser Arafat “walked away” from the very plan that would have ended the occupation they claim puts them in such a desperate condition. And those whom the internationalists support have in fact avoided anything slightly resembling the type of Ghandian non-violence the ISM purports to favor. Yet, somehow, any criticism of the Palestinian chosen method of “resistance” is not to be found anywhere on their website.

It is clear, but somehow not to these internationalists, that Yasser Arafat’s goal is not an end to occupation and a separate state living at peace with Israel, but rather, the total defeat and surrender of Israel itself. And the only way to deal with that threat is overwhelming military force that proves terror does not pay. By using themselves as part of Arafat’s propaganda apparatus, the would-be internationalist “peace advocates” prolong the war they claim to oppose, and give continued strength and sustenance to Arafat’s program of unmitigated terror.

Indeed, evidence accumulates that the group is composed of the same anti-globalists who sought to disrupt the IMF, the World Bank and other such agencies in Seattle and Washington, DC. A statement on the ISM site by Ed Mast, one of the demonstrators arrested in Jerusalem, tells us that “the Israeli police and military” were “acting no worse than police in Seattle,” responding to “peaceful demonstration with preposterous violence.” Evidently, Mr. Mast seems to think that standing in the way of troops acting to root out terrorist cells in a war zone can be dealt with the same way as a non-violent demonstration in a Western world city. Of course, Mr. Mast does not even acknowledge that the anti-globalist demonstrations in Seattle were also hardly “peaceful.”

The ridiculous nature of the ISM protesters is most clearly revealed in a photo appearing on their website of one of the protesters---who is holding a sign reading “Ethnic Cleansing in Progress.” These internationalists, in other words, are actually accusing the Israeli response to terrorism as being the equivalent of Slobodan Milosevic’s actions in Bosnia! Such a comparison, we might say, is just a slight bit of a stretch. Indeed, what it really shows is the sheer self-delusion of these Western supporters of terrorism, who seek to gain support posing as humanitarian workers and peace advocates. That some of our own newspaper reporters and television commentators are lending themselves to their goal is reason for great concern.

i must not think bad thoughts.....
i must not think bad thoughts.....
i must not think bad thoughts.....
i must not think bad thoughts.....
i must not think bad thoughts.....
i must not think bad thoughts.....

For all the right-wingers complaining about relatively light handling by SF IMC (linking spammed articles and hiding duplicates), tell me something. Many of you are from Free Republic, no? And didn't the management of Free Republic censor YOU when you, the readers, wanted to put up some posts questioning the official story behind September 11th?