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“Impressions of Gaza”By Noam Chomsky, written following his trip to the Gaza Strip on October 25-30, 2012. http://chomsky.info/articles/20121104.htm 
(Ashraf Amra / APA Images)
Posted Wednesday, November 30, 2005 John F. Kennedy School of Government video debate between Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz, Israel and Palestine after Disengagement (November 29, 2005). UPDATE: The debate will air on C-Span on December 4 at 7:15 AM and at 7:00 PM (EST). The Harvard Crimson, Prominent Profs Spar Over Israel (November 30, 2005). An excerpt: In response to Dershowitz's claim that his knowledge of the peace process--including the 2000 Camp David summit--was based on what President Clinton had told him "directly and personally," Chomsky said that his own arguments were based on written and accessible evidence. "You can believe one of two things," Chomsky said. "The extensive published diplomatic record...or what Mr. Dershowitz says he heard from somebody." Delo (Sobotna priloga) interview, 'If You're Intending to Bomb a Country, You Don't Announce it for Three Years', with Marija Zidar (April 2, 2005). An excerpt: There's an old joke about Nato that goes back 50 years and says it was designed to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down. And now the Russians are out, the Americans want to be in, Europe has ambivalent feelings about it, and they definitely want to keep Germany, well, not just Germany but Germany and France, down. I mean Germany and France are the industrial, commercial, financial centers of Europe, and insofar as they dominate European Union policy, it can move in directions that the United States may not prefer -- as we saw during the Iraq war. The United States is hoping to dilute their influence by bringing in other smaller, peripheral countries that it hopes will be more subject to US will, and will therefore give the US more influence within Nato altogether. Chomsky will be debating Alan Dershowitz today at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The debate begins at 7 PM (Eastern Standard Time), and will be web-streamed live. UPDATE: The debate has concluded. rabble.ca article, The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, Newspaper-Style, by Heather Mallick (November 26, 2005). An excerpt: I read the centre-left British newspaper the Guardian online and pay $620 a year to get its Saturday paper airmailed. I've been reading it for 40 years. No, I am not 102. I am 46 but we got the Guardian Weekly when I was a kid. I think it's the best newspaper in the world; many Canadians read it. Every publication has a gormless reporter, often several. This person is stupid, but handy. The great advantage is that there's a certain kind of story even he can't screw up. If it's an interview with a model -- someone who walks short distances for a living -- Gormless can do it if you give him a list of questions first. The Sydney Morning Herald article on Chomsky, Balkan War of Words, by Jonathan Pearlman (November 26, 2005). An excerpt: The Australian journalist and Chomsky admirer John Pilger used the piece as an example of "disgraceful" journalism during a discussion about the media at London's National Film Theatre. Pilger called the piece a "hatchet job" and urged his audience to stop buying The Guardian.See also Brian Leiter's relevant blog post, Oliver Kamm, Marko Attila Hoare, and the Importance of Being Able to Read. CKUT audio interview, An Hour with Noam Chomsky (November 15, 2005). An excerpt: There's a very striking fact about the political situation in the United States now--so striking that many mainstream political commentators have pointed it out. The Bush administration and the Republican Party are in pretty serious straits. There is a lot of popular disaffection with them, they don't like what they are doing, they've got themselves in all sorts of domestic and international disasters. But the Democrats aren't gaining anything from it. The only thing that they are gaining is decline in the popularity of the Bush administration. Why aren't they presenting some alternative? Well, there's a reason. They don't have anything to present: they mostly went along with all of this. What are they going to say? MediaLens media alert, Smearing Chomsky -- The Guardian Backs Down (November 21, 2005). An excerpt: On November 4, we published a Media Alert, 'Smearing Chomsky', detailing the Guardian's October 31 interview with Noam Chomsky by Emma Brockes. The alert produced the biggest ever response from Media Lens readers - many hundreds of emails were sent to the newspaper. The Guardian has since published a "correction and clarification" in regard to Brockes' piece by ombudsman Ian Mayes, which we discuss below ('Corrections and clarifications. The Guardian and Noam Chomsky,' The Guardian, November 17, 2005; http://www.guardian.co.uk/corrections/story/0,,1644017,00.html). The Guardian editor has also sent a form letter advising of the paper's retraction and apology. [...] It is clear that the Guardian's distortions were so obvious on this occasion -- and so obviously damaging to its reputation - that the editors felt obliged to respond seriously to complaints. We are willing to accept the Guardian claim that Mayes - who deserves real credit for the newspaper's apology - would have published his correction if just Chomsky had complained. But the editor's additional reply to readers clearly suggests that mass public engagement +did+ raise the issue to a higher level of seriousness within the Guardian. For example, a number of correspondents wrote to the editor saying they had been buying the paper for many years - sometimes as long as 30 or 40 years - and would not be doing so again. This is something the Guardian could ill afford to ignore - a point well worth reflecting on for all who aspire to a more honest and democratic media. Latest news! The Guardian retracts, and withdraws the interview from its website: The readers' editor has considered a number of complaints from Noam Chomsky concerning an interview with him by Emma Brockes published in G2, the second section of the Guardian, on October 31. He has found in favour of Professor Chomsky on three significant complaints. Principal among these was a statement by Ms Brockes that in referring to atrocities committed at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war he had placed the word "massacre" in quotation marks. This suggested, particularly when taken with other comments by Ms Brockes, that Prof Chomsky considered the word inappropriate or that he had denied that there had been a massacre. Prof Chomsky has been obliged to point out that he has never said or believed any such thing. The Guardian has no evidence whatsoever to the contrary and retracts the statement with an unreserved apology to Prof Chomsky. The headline used on the interview, about which Prof Chomsky also complained, added to the misleading impression given by the treatment of the word massacre. It read: Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated? A: My only regret is that I didn't do it strongly enough. No question in that form was put to Prof Chomsky. This part of the interview related to his support for Diana Johnstone (not Diane as it appeared in the published interview) over the withdrawal of a book in which she discussed the reporting of casualty figures in the war in former Yugoslavia. Both Prof Chomsky and Ms Johnstone, who has also written to the Guardian, have made it clear that Prof Chomsky's support for Ms Johnstone, made in the form of an open letter with other signatories, related entirely to her right to freedom of speech. The Guardian also accepts that and acknowledges that the headline was wrong and unjustified by the text. Ms Brockes's misrepresentation of Prof Chomsky's views on Srebrenica stemmed from her misunderstanding of his support for Ms Johnstone. Neither Prof Chomsky nor Ms Johnstone have ever denied the fact of the massacre. Prof Chomsky has also objected to the juxtaposition of a letter from him, published two days after the interview appeared, with a letter from a survivor of Omarska. While he has every sympathy with the writer, Prof Chomsky believes that publication was designed to undermine his position, and addressed a part of the interview which was false. Both letters were published under the heading Falling out over Srebrenica. At the time these letters were published, following two in support of Prof Chomsky published the previous day, no formal complaint had been received from him. The letters were published by the letters editor in good faith to reflect readers' views. With hindsight it is acknowledged that the juxtaposition has exacerbated Prof Chomsky's complaint and that is regretted. The Guardian has now withdrawn the interview from the website.See also Brian Leiter's apt comments on the subject. UPDATE: David Peterson's reaction is of interest, too. Academic society for Chomsky studies launched: The Korean Society for Chomsky Studies held its launching ceremony and first academic conference at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in eastern Seoul on Saturday(Nov. 12). Around 200 scholars around the nation have joined the interdisciplinary academic society to cover the life and studies of the American linguist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is the creator of the theory of generative grammar and has written numerous influential books on the subject. A professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky is also known for his political writings and his criticisms of U.S. foreign policies.See also here. CounterPunch article, The Origins of the Guardian's Attack on Chomsky, by Diana Johnstone (November 14, 2005). An excerpt: Last Halloween, The Guardian ran an attack on Noam Chomsky that amazed many readers who had considered The Guardian to be one of Britain's more serious newspapers. The attack took the form of what Alexander Cockburn described in his article on this CounterPunch website as a "showcase interview"--"a showcase for the interviewer's inquisitorial chutzpa". In this art form, the interviewee is simply the prey for the interviewer who plies him with trap questions and then rewrites the whole thing to make him look like an idiot compared to her clever self. Open letter from Noam Chomsky answering The Guardian. An excerpt: This is an open letter to a few of the people with whom I had discussed the Guardian interview of 31 October, on the basis of the electronic version, which is all that I had seen. Someone has just sent me a copy of the printed version, and I now understand why friends in England who wrote me were so outraged. It is a nuisance, and a bit of a bore, to dwell on the topic, and I always keep away from personal attacks on me, unless asked, but in this case the matter has some more general interest, so perhaps it's worth reviewing what most readers could not know. The general interest is that the print version reveals a very impressive effort, which obviously took careful planning and work, to construct an exercise in defamation that is a model of the genre. It's of general interest for that reason alone. Haaretz interview, Master Mind, with Shira Hadad (November 10, 2005). An excerpt: "They have that paranoid image of me being the most influential person," he says with no little satisfaction, "but they hated me. I mean, if you want to know what American intellectuals, especially liberal intellectuals, think --take a look at the house journal of liberal American intellectuals, Cambridge intellectuals; it's called the American Prospect, and it's for people around here. It's really left-liberal. Now they had a very comical front cover ... [earlier] this year, depicting the embattled American liberals, and there are two snarling figures right at their throats. One is Dick Cheney. The other is me. They're caught between these two immense forces." Press Gazette article, Intellectual Claims Guardian 'Deceit' over 'Fake' Interview (November 10, 2005). An excerpt: Professor of linguistics and activist Noam Chomsky has locked horns with The Guardian after claiming it misrepresented him in an interview. Emma Brockes interviewed Chomsky for the paper after he was named as the world's number-one public intellectual by Prospect magazine. Chomsky dismissed Brockes' write-up of the interview as "fake", claimed he was misquoted and said the piece wrongly suggested he thought the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian war was exaggerated. FENA News --a Bosnian news agency-- has just issued a press release entitled 'Guardian's Media Hoax': After the Guardian's journalist, Emma Brockes, had made an interview with Naom Chomsky, in which he allegedly minimized the genocide in Srebrenica, Chomsky denied the allegations presented in this interview. The question asked by the Guardian's journalist, Emma Brockes, was as follows: Do you feel that you have overstated your support for those who claimed that the massacre in Srebrenica was exaggerated? The response that followed was "I only regret the fact that I did not support them strongly enough". "There is no debate on Srebrenica and they are perfectly aware of this. I never mentioned this, except that I have explained to Brockes on several occasions that I had opposed the withdrawal of Diane Johnston's book before dishonest attacks of the press, which were all untrue just as I said in my open letter. And this did not have anything to do with the massacre in Srebrenica, as they are all well aware", Naom Chomsky told Fena. Chomsky also criticizes the manner in which his interview with Emma Brockes was presented, when the word massacre was put under quotation without his knowledge or approval. He added that his support to the magazine Living Marxism came from the fact that a huge corporation extruded a small publisher from the market on basis of , as he said, the grotesque British laws on slander. "Although the poll of magazine Prospect was largely a joke, she called attention to the name of Naom Chomsky to thousands of people who otherwise would have never heard of him. However, everybody who reads the article by Emma Brockes in the Guardian can reach only one conclusion on Chomsky. Concretely, that he is an idiot--raging, strange fanatic, who gives himself the right to deny an obvious crime against the humanity. This is one of the most shocking hoaxes that we have ever seen--and we were shocked and flabbergasted many times in the past", Chomsky told Fena.UPDATE: Please note that the words attributed to Chomsky in the last paragraph are actually those of David Edwards and David Cromwell, whose MediaLens alert Smearing Chomsky -- The Guardian in the Gutter the article quotes. Today's edition of the Mail & Guardian --a South African newspaper partly owned by the Guardian Media Group-- has reproduced Emma Brockes' fraudulent opinion piece on Chomsky. UPDATE: A Mail & Guardian columnist takes Ms. Brockes' to task for refusing to use her head. Toward Freedom interview, Social Change Today, with Steven Durel (November 7, 2005). An excerpt: Whatever you thought about Saddam Hussein, it was a secular government. Now it's very likely that there will be a large theocracy. What's more, it's likely that the theocracy will be oriented with Iran. There are close connections between the Shiite south and Iran. A lot of Shiite leadership comes from Iran. Ayatollah Sistani, a large majority of the religious leaders and the main militia in the south, the Badr Brigades, are Iranian trained and armed. The effect of the American invasion has been to devastate the society. By last October, the best estimates we had were that about 100,000 people had been killed. By now it's got to be much worse. The level of malnutrition doubled. Child malnutrition is now at the level of Burundi. What does the population want? A couple days ago, the major Shiite party demanded that the British soldiers in the south stay in their barracks. The Sunni population obviously wants the American troops out. This Sadr group has announced that they want the Americans to leave. The parliament does have a national sovereignty commission, or something, and they have called, I think unanimously, for a strict timetable for withdrawal. Khaleej Times article, Intelligent Design? (October 6, 2005). An excerpt: President George W. Bush favours teaching both evolution and "Intelligent Design" in schools, "so people can know what the debate is about." To proponents, Intelligent Design is the notion that the universe is too complex to have developed without a nudge from a higher power than evolution or natural selection. To detractors, Intelligent Design is creationism --the literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis-- in a thin guise, or simply vacuous, about as interesting as "I don't understand," as has always been true in the sciences before understanding is reached. Accordingly, there cannot be a "debate." In the interest of fairness, perhaps the president's speechwriters should take him seriously when they have him say that schools should be open-minded and teach all points of view. So far, however, the curriculum has not encompassed one obvious point of view: Malignant Design. The Independent on the Guardian affair: Noam Chomsky and The Guardian are still at loggerheads over an interview with him the newspaper published on Monday. The American academic and activist was incensed at what he calls "fabrications" in the Guardian piece, and had a letter published on Wednesday in which he accused Emma Brockes of inventing "contexts". Chomsky denies saying that the massacre at Srebrenica has been overstated, as Brockes had claimed. But, to Chomsky's fury, the letter was printed next to one by a survivor of the massacre, both under the headline, "Falling Out over Srebrenica". Cue further letters to The Guardian's ombudsman, Ian Mayes, protesting that such a juxtaposition was further misrepresentation and stimulating a false debate. "As I presume you are aware, the 'debate' was constructed by the editors on the basis of inventions in the article you published," Chomsky wrote. Mayes, who is also president of the international Organisation of News Ombudsmen, is no longer replying to Chomsky's emails. He was unavailable for comment.A question for the thoughtful reader: Isn't the fact that the Guardian published an indignant letter from a Srebrenica survivor next to Chomsky's definitive proof that Brockes' interview had created the impression that Chomsky denied or minimized the massacre? Since he demonstrably hasn't, doesn't this conclusively establish the veracity of Chomsky's allegations? Why, then, does the Independent merely describe Chomsky's "incensed" "fury" instead of stating the objective facts that motivated it? Why, that is, doesn't this newspaper acknowledge that Brockes fabricated scare quotes around the word 'massacre', invented misleading contexts and deceptively mis-matched Chomsky's answers? Albany Democrat-Herald brief piece on Chomsky, Teen Scores Interview Coup with Noted Philosopher (November 6, 2005): "Nitchals enjoys the interview process, and is even considering a career in media. By interviewing Chomsky, she gained not only answers to some of her questions about his media theory but also realized that she’s got the confidence to talk to anyone. "'It put me at ease. Once you tackle the hurdle of talking to one of the great minds,' it’s easy to talk to anyone. "It wasn't hard to get the interview with Chomsky, either. She found his MIT e-mail on the university's Web site and wrote him. He responded quickly and agreed to do a phone interview, which she recorded in the studios of KBVR at OSU, and which will be broadcast later. CounterPunch weighs in: Storm Over Brockes' Fakery, by Alexander Cockburn (November 5 / 6, 2005): "Brockes is claiming that Chomsky had, in reference to Srebrenica, put the word massacre in quotation marks, thus deprecating the idea that it was in fact a massacre. There's no other way to construe the sentences. Here's "massacre" in its quote marks and then in the next sentence "Chomsky uses quotation marks to undermine things he disagrees with" Next comes Brockes' summary of Chomsky's position, identified by use of the "witheringly teenage" quote marks: "Srebrenica was so not a massacre." "Now this is no little parlor game Brockes is engaged in here. For Guardian readers, a man who denies that a massacre took place at Srebrenica is not one who deserves to be voted the top intellectual on the planet. The opening headlines set Chomsky up, and the quote marks round the word massacre knock him down. "But there's no sentence in which Chomsky has ever suggested with the use of those quotation marks that a massacre in Srebrenica did not take place. There are passages, easy to find , in which Chomsky most definitely says it was a massacre. Brockes is faking it." Another (unpublished) letter from Chomsky: [The Guardian] publish[ed] a truncated letter of mine (after insisting that I eliminate the word "fabrication"), and ran it under the heading "Fall out over Srebrenica," paired with a letter from a victim denouncing those like me who ridicule the claims of massacre, relying (naively) on the "quote" that they fabricated. Letting a reporter get away with slanders and lies is bad enough. When the editors go beyond and amplify them, consciously lying, it's much worse. Letters sent to Emma Brockes (emma.brockes [at] guardian.co.uk), Alan Rusbridger (alan.rusbridger [at] guardian.co.uk) and Ian Mayes (ian.mayes [at] guardian.co.uk) concerning the recent interview, here and here. The Guardian carries journalistic dishonesty and cynicism to new limits in this recent piece on Chomsky, Yes, this Appeaser was Once my Hero, by Norman Johnson. Just released (reprint, with a new foreword by Norbert Hornstein): Rules and Representations MediaLens media alert, Smearing Chomsky -- The Guardian in the Gutter (November 4, 2005): "Brockes's headline mis-matching of questions with answers in this way is a genuine scandal - a depth of cynicism to which even mainstream journalism rarely sinks. "Chomsky considers Srebrenica nothing less than a counterpart to crimes "for which the political leadership could be sentenced to death under US law". "These are not the words of someone who insists in "witheringly teenage" fashion: "Srebrenica was so not a massacre." They are not the words of someone who believes that the term massacre should be placed between quotation marks in describing Srebrenica. And yet this is what Brockes claimed in a national newspaper. "So why has Brockes not replied to our challenge? Is she unable to answer? If so, is the Guardian not morally obliged to correct this slur, or to allow it be corrected in full by Chomsky?" Just released: Soldiers in Revolt And here's a letter by Chomsky published in today's Guardian: Emma Brockes's report of her interview with me (G2, October 31), opens with the following headline: "Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated? A: My only regret is that I didn't do it strongly enough" I did express my regret: namely, that I did not support Diana Johnstone's right to publish strongly enough when her book was withdrawn by the publisher after dishonest press attacks, which I reviewed in an open letter that any reporter could have easily discovered. The remainder of Brockes's report continues in the same vein. Even when the words attributed to me have some resemblance to accuracy, I take no responsibility for them, because of the invented contexts in which they appear. As for her personal opinions, interpretations and distortions, she is of course free to publish them, and I would, of course, support her right to do so, on grounds that she makes quite clear she does not understand. Noam Chomsky Lexington, Mass, USA Here's a brief comment by Chomsky on the Guardian piece (see below): Begins just the right way for the Guardian. The answer she quotes from me is correct, but it was to an entirely different question, asking whether I regret supporting Diana Johnstone's right to publish when her book was withdrawn by the publisher after vicious and dishonest press attacks, which I reviewed in an open letter, as she knows. Continues the same way. Even when some words of mine are quoted more or less accurately, she concocts a context to fit the Guardian ideology, particularly on the Balkans, where they seem completely hysterical. As for freedom of speech, she obviously didn't understand a word I said, any more than her respected colleagues seem to. Don't read the Guardian regularly, but my impression is that it's rather typical of the way they deal with people a few mm to the left of what they regard as acceptable. Like left-liberal countparts here, they always seem to be looking over their shoulder to make sure they are respectable enough to be invited to the right dinner parties. Today's letters to the editor of The Guardian concerning Emma Brockes' "interview" with Chomsky: I've read some bad interviews with Noam Chomsky in my 30 years of following his work, but your ill-informed and supercilious exercise (G2, October 31) was one of the worst. Chomsky has never said that the Khmer Rouge were "not as bad as everybody makes out". He has said that they killed fewer people than the American "secret" bombing, which in turn laid the groundwork for the predictable rise of the KR. Remember that the Americans later supported the KR at the UN, fully aware of their crimes, when the Vietnamese attempted to remove them from power. As for Srebrenica, General Lewis Mackenzie wrote an article about it in the Globe and Mail. Maybe your writer could tell us why, then, he should be ignored on the subject. Going into an interview having already decided that the subject is a revisionist, but respected and revered, nutter is perhaps not the best stance if one wants to produce light rather than heat. Jill Abson Montreal, Canada The fact that Noam Chomsky has serious doubts about the validity of certain aspects of television reportage, particularly in relation to the inevitably controversial coverage of war, hardly places him on the lunatic fringe. In fact, as I'm sure the interviewer would acknowledge, he is Noam Chomsky: it's his job. Your writer's job, on the other hand, would seem to be to confuse the distinction between an interview and an opinion piece, and in the process to construct a spiteful attack on the views and opinions of someone with whom she has issues. Peter Jones Winchester |
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