I finally finished this one and have a comment:
Louis Proyect writes:>Chomsky leaned at early date toward the Israel kibbutz as some kind of "socialist experiment", long after the colonization intentions of the settlers had become obvious. He did turn against the particular kibbutz he worked on, but not because of any economic shortcomings. Instead, the racism of the settlers was the key factor. To this day, Chomsky still speaks positively about the Zionist outposts without really addressing concerns about the class nature of the Israeli state. (Guardian, May 14, 2001)<
One of the first articles I read by Chomsky was in the San Francisco-based journal SOCIALIST REVOLUTION (now called "Socialist Review," if it still exists) in the 1970s, about the class nature of the Israeli state -- or, more accurately, about the ethnic supremacist system prevailing there. The element of truth in the statements above is that Chomsky seems to frame all criticism of Israel by saying that something (the expansion of settlements, the occupation, Ariel Sharon, etc.) is bad for the Jews, not just for the Palestinians. (For him, the "Friends of Israel," e.g., conservative U.S. Jews who cheer-lead for Israel and accuse him of being a self-hating Jew, are not true friends.)
Jim Devine
