[lbo-talk] Palestine Think Tank: Jeff Blankfort - Chomsky and Palestine: Asset or Liability?

C. G. Estabrook galliher at illinois.edu
Wed Jul 21 18:14:03 PDT 2010


Anyone who has read what Chomsky has written about the Middle East for 40 years will hardly suggest that he will "flippantly ... dismiss the consensus of Palestinian civil society." You can't say that if you've read, e.g., "Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians."

I suspect the kicker here is the "consensus of Palestinian civil society," which Blankfort and perhaps some others want to equate, without evidence, to their own views. --CGE

On 7/21/10 7:35 PM, Joseph Catron wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 3:18 PM, Joel Schalit<jschalit at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Eric, pardon me, but you misunderstood me. My point was that problematizing
>> the American Jewish left, this way, at this point in time, is clueless, in
>> addition to be prejudiced. Blankfort's position betrays an increasingly
>> anachronistic outlook, demonstrating how unfamiliar he is with this
>> monolithic Jewish bloc, as well as how much it has changed.
>>
>
> I'll admit to a relative ignorance of Blankfort, who may very well be a dick
> and worse things than that. But I liked this article because it demonstrates
> how flippantly Chomsky will dismiss the consensus of Palestinian civil
> society. It's also telling how many of Blankfort's accusers here skip right
> over this main point of his thesis in their headlong rush to defend Chomsky.
> How is it that, "factually speaking, he couldn't be more wrong"? Did he make
> up his Chomsky quotes from whole cloth?
>
> Also, I see no indication that he believes in anything so farfetched as "the
> American Jewish left" (as if such a thing could exist in the absence of a
> broader left), or that his aim is to "stir up resentment against American
> Jewish progressives" (unless that category consists of Chomsky).
>



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