Well, that's not true. In fact, I dare say I've talked more about Israel in the public sphere than you or just about anyone here. Alan Nairn and I filled in for Chomsky at the Palestinian Academic Conference in Alexandria, VA during the first intifada. Alan detailed Israel's ties to the Guatemalan death squads -- Alan could work Guatemala into just about everything -- and I went into the media's coverage of Israel and the Palestinians. We spoke to over a thousand Palestinians from all over the Diaspora, and it remains one of the highlights of my adult life (we did well considering we had to follow Edward Said -- not an easy act to follow). I also engaged the head of the Israeli consulate in Chicago over the history of Israeli rejectionism: I had dates and facts, he had nothing (and I've no doubt my name went into a file after that). During my years with FAIR, especially during the first Gulf War, I spoke to dozens of Middle East groups (and went on dozens of talk radio shows, receiving my fair share of death threats) about the Palestinians and how they were portrayed in the US mass media. And I was the only person during a live, ABC News special who brought up the PLO's overtures to Israel. Chomsky wrote about it in his book "Necessary Illusions":
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/ni/ni-c10-s22.html
And I've knocked Israel more than a few times on LBO, even the other day, when I mentioned how they benefited from (and supported) Iraq's invasion of Iran. So Joanna, and Justin, you are simply wrong about my stance regarding Israel, a country that, for all its crimes, has a pretty free press, a combative one at that, something you don't see in Iraq, and in parts of the US itself.
DP