dave dorkin <ddorkin1 at yahoo.com> wrote: I followed the posts a bit but must admit that the significance eludes me. The main complaint seems to be that some feel that Chomsky's move may or may not have been principled (I feel it was but feel that no one will be convinced either way with the type of evidence offered) and that either way he should have known better and should admit to it.
ED: Yes, but there were two moves. The first was signing the petition, which has garnered no attention here. The second was his defense offered for signing the statement and certain statements made there.
Notably: "...[elsewhere] I was asked whether the fact that a person denies the existence of gas chambers does not prove that he is an anti-Semite. I wrote back what every sane person knows: no, of course it does not."
Well, that is bull and Noam knows it. Sure, sure, as a purely logical matter there is no a priori connection between "the denial" and "anti-semitism." But, Noam is either disingenuous or naive (which given the body of his work is impossible). There is an undeniable empirical connection which "every sane person knows." Now, Noam knows the Zionists would look for anything to denounce him given the work he has done on the "Palestinian question," and he knows that he cannot blithely say things that others can. Further, I do not think this was a little misstep. I think Naom gave his Zionist enemies a way to marginalize him far superior to any substantive attack on his work.
Thus, our debate here focused on the extent to which Noam created some of this tempest by not saying more forcefully that this particular historical revisionism was vulgar and an abomination and patently anti-semitic.
This is not an indictment of Noam, nor does it affect how I view the content of his work, but I Noam messed up and it amazes me that some people have a reluctance to say so. I will be the first to acknowledge that Noam has forgotten more about East Timor than I have learned about the whole of the world.
--------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Sign-up for Video Highlights of 2002 FIFA World Cup -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20020620/34e08545/attachment.htm>