Dershowitz vs. Chomsky
Alan Dershowitz recently wrote an op-ed attacking Noam Chomsky over a peititon that Chomsky is supporting that calls for universities to divest from companies that do business in Israel. Most of Dershowitz's op-ed is an ad hominem against Chomksy rather than an argument against that petition, but Dershowitz offers some interesting claims about the Faurisson affair (in which in essay by Chomsky appeared as the introduction to a book by a Holocaust denier.) Dershowitz rights [sic],
I first debated Chomsky in 1973, several weeks after the Yom Kippur War. Chomsky’s proposal at that time was consistent with the PLO party line. He wanted to abolish the state of Israel, and to substitute a "secular, binational state," based on the model of binational "brotherhood" that then prevailed in Lebanon. Chomsky repeatedly pointed to Lebanon, where Christians and Muslims "lived side by side," sharing power in peace and harmony. This was just a few years before Lebanon imploded in fratricidal disaster.
. . .
My next encounter with Chomsky revolved around his writing an introduction to a book by an anti-Semite named Robert Faurisson who denied that the Holocaust took place, that Hitler’s gas chambers existed, that the diary of Anne Frank was authentic, and that there were death camps in Nazi occupied Europe. He claimed that the "massive lie" about genocide was a deliberate concoction initiated by "American Zionists" and that "the Jews" were responsible for World War II. Chomsky described these and other conclusions as "findings" and said that they were based on "extensive historical research." He also wrote that "I see no anti-Semitic implication in the denial of the existence in gas chambers or even in the denial of the Holocaust." He said he saw "no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson’s work," including his claim that "the Jews" were responsible for World War II. He wrote an introduction to one of Faurisson’s book which was used to market his anti-Semitic lies.
In a subsequent debate at the Harvard Medical School, Chomsky initially denied having advocated a Lebanon-style binational state for Israel, only to have to back down upon being confronted with the evidence. He also tried to dispute the fact that he had authorized an essay he had written in defense of Robert Faurisson to be used as the forward to Faurisson’s book about Holocaust denial, but again had to back down. Chomsky took the position that he had no interest in "revisionist" literature before Faurisson had written the book. When confronted by Robert Nozick, a distinguished philosophy professor who recalled discussing revisionist literature with him well before the Faurisson book, Chomsky first berated Nozick for disclosing a private conversation and then he shoved him contemptuously in front of numerous witnesses.
Source:
Chomsky's Immoral Divestiture Petition, Alan Dershowitz, May 10, 2002.