Regarding Noam Chomsky

This is not a pressing political issue.  If you want to read something “important”, read something else.

One thing that I have often been given grief for while blogging is my antipathy towards certain figures on the political left, notably Edward Said and Noam Chomsky.  Some people have deeply questioned my commitment to ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza because of it.

This post by David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy illustrates very well why I have long felt that Chomsky is not to be taken seriously on political issues:

First, I’ve located the original source cited by Chomsky. It’s Yossi Beilin, Mehiro shel Ihud 42-43 (Revivim, 1985), a Hebrew book, never translated to English, written by Israeli dove Beilin. It’s a secondary source that provides only the barest context for Dayan’s remark–all the book tells us is that Dayan’s comment illustrates an extreme attitude toward Palestinian refugees, and was made during a meeting with other leaders of the small RAFI party, which was composed of hawkish defectors from the dominant Labor Party. Apparently, Chomsky couldn’t be bothered to look up the original transcripts, which are footnoted by Beilin.

Second, Dayan didn’t make this remark in the “early 1970s,” he made it in September 1967, just three months after the Six Day War.

Third, he didn’t say it to his “cabinet colleagues,” or in any official government capacity, but at meeting of the leaders of his small party, and his statement on that particular day may or may not have reflected his more general, or his longer-term, views regarding the Palestinians.

Fourth, according the book, Dayan was addressing the situation of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, not all Palestinians, or even all Palestinians in the West Bank.

Fifth, and by far most significant, Chomsky leaves out the next few sentences uttered by Dayan: “For now, it works out. Let’s say the truth. We want peace. If there is no peace, we will maintain military rule and we will have four to five military compounds on the hills, and they will sit ten years under the Israeli military regime.” Thus, rather than this quote reflecting a long-term “plan” by Israel, it reflected Dayan’s view of the alternative if a peace deal with Jordan (Beilin notes on the same page that Dayan was willing “to divide authority on the West Bank with Jordan”), could not be reached. Moreover, even in the absence of an immediate peace deal, Dayan was not speaking of a permanent occupation, but of a ten-year Israeli presence.

The first reason why this rhetoric by Chomsky has always bothered me is because it is an old, mendacious, and cheap debate team trick: reference an obscure and rather meaningless quote, and then dare one’s opponent to disprove it.  I did it a lot.  When I was sixteen.

Second, it is not only a cheap trick, but one without actual historical importance.  For example, Thomas Jefferson once said, “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”  I can easily use that quote to imply that Jefferson supported John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts, so long as no one points out that Jefferson actually held them to be unconstitutional and repealed them as President.  The actual historical case is that whatever Dayan believed, he was not the head of state of Israel, nor able to pronounce official policy.  The best analogy is that of Gen. MacArthur; a well-respected national hero who nonetheless was not granted the power to dictate policy on military matters in disagreement with the civilian government.

Finally, Chomsky here speaks to one of my greatest complaints about intellectual processes in the present era.  This particular comment was part of a debate with Alan Dershowitz.  Dershowitz is both an idiot and a particularly pernicious one.  Certainly, were we forced to choose between which side of that debate to sympathize with, all of us would likely side with Chomsky.  But the most likely truth in most circumstances is that we are simply watching two idiots argue.  A debate between Pat Buchanan and John McCain would no doubt show many areas of disagreement.  We would likely sympathize with Buchanan’s arguments, particularly regarding the Iraq War, over those of McCain.  But this would hardly suggest that the case of Buchanan’s is true, or right, simply because he is less horribly wrong than McCain.  Indeed, this should be the argument that is most sympathetic to bloggers; we have few more persistent complaints than that the media tends to report what is declared by various politicians as if there are two sides to the argument, rather than an objective truth which may be championed by only one or often neither side.

Chomsky is often less wrong than many others when it comes to politics.  As Bernstein demonstrates, this does not mean that he is usually, or even often, right.