In Boston, Chomsky calls out U.S. interference in Israeli election, affirms youthful U.S. shift
In his first public appearance in Boston since taking a professorship at the University of Arizona, MIT emeritus professor of linguistics Noam Chomsky joined progressive journalist and "Democracy Now" host Amy Goodman on April 11 at the Old South Church.
Chomsky’s many reflections covered the role of the U.S. in the recent Israeli election, Israel’s nationalistic development as part of a burgeoning ultranational Middle Eastern and global alliance, and how U.S. public opinion regarding Israeli policy has been shifting, especially among American youth.
The two spoke following a premiere of the new Chomsky film "Internationalism or Extinction, which outlines the grave threats of climate change and nuclear war upon our world.
It was filmed at the 350-year-old Old South Church, the church of Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, Phillis Wheatley and the Boston Tea Party founded by descendants of dissident Pilgrims, Puritan reformers, and Bay Colony merchants whose parents had fled oppression and limited opportunity in 17th century England.
The evening, which drew a capacity crowd of 700 with a wait list of 500, was organized by the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, Encuentro 5, Massachusetts Peace Action, Wallace Action Fund, and the Boston branch of the the Sunrise Movement, a youth movement that advocates for the Green New Deal.
Chomsky, who is now 90, has been wholly controversial in Jewish circles for his unabashed pronouncements on Israeli policy. His reputation in academia is world-renowned, and the prominent author and intellectual has long advocated for social and economic equality. The father of three was raised in a politically active Jewish family in Philadelphia. His first wife, Carol Doris Schatz, died in 2008, and he married Valeria Wasserman in 2014.
Like him or leave him, Chomsky often evinces enough truth to make both supporters and targets squirm. I have always chuckled at his summary of sports worship in America: "it occupies the population, and keeps them from trying to get involved with things that really matter."
But he delivers these biting synopses in rather a kindly, grandfatherly manner. Chomsky is noncombative, at most, he politely invites response. It may shock your sensibilities, but it draws you in. And that was very much the case in his conversations with Goodman that covered, among other topics, the recent arrest of Julian Assange, climate change, the global ultranationalist alliance, threats to democracy, and Netanyahu’s re-election to a record fifth term.
It was the second time I had met Goodman, an award-winning investigative journalist, syndicated columnist and New York Times bestselling author, and she is as gracious in person as she is hard-working.
The Harvard-educated New York native was a longtime news director of Pacifica Radio station WBAI in New York and co-founded "Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report" in 1996.
Goodman asked Chomsky about Netanyahu’s victory, and (following Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights), his announcement, right before the election, that he would annex Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Chomsky said that had Benny Gantz been elected instead of Netanyahu, the policy results wouldn’t have been substantial. But calling Netanyahu "somewhat more extreme," he quickly attributed the win to U.S. intervention. "The United States desperately wanted him to be elected," he said, adding that the Trump administration had been giving him gift after gift toward this goal. "It was enough to carry him over the…close to 50/50 election," he said.
One gift was to move the embassy to Jerusalem. "This was in violation of not only international law, but even Security Council resolutions that the U.S. had participated in," he said, calling this turnaround "a very dramatic change."
A second gift was authorizing Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights. "The Syrian Golan Heights are, under international law, occupied territory. Israel — every major institution, every relevant institution, [the U.N.] Security Council, International Court of Justice, all agree on this," he said. When Israel previously annexed the Golan Heights, Chomsky recalled, the Security Council, with the U.S. participating, declared it null and void, and it was likewise condemned internationally. "[But] Trump unilaterally reversed it [in] another gift to Netanyahu, ...demonstrating to the Israeli public that, with U.S. backing, he can get anything they want."
And just prior to the election, Netanyahu declared that, if elected, he would annex parts of the West Bank. "That was with tacit U.S. authorization," Chomsky said, telling the assembled that these were powerful means taken to actively interfere with a foreign election.
"Have you heard something about how terrible it is to interfere in foreign elections?" he asked them, to laughter. "I think maybe that you noticed that somewhere," he continued. "Here, it’s done radically. It’s considered fine."
And yet, Chomsky, said, the Golan Heights annexation was declared null and void by the Security Council and condemned by the ICC -- but nothing happened. "...[D]id anybody do anything about it?" he asked. "Has any move been made to prevent Israel’s development of the Golan Heights, [its] establishment of settlements, enterprises, development of ski resorts on Mount Hermon? Anything? No, nobody lifted a finger." That, he said, was for a simple reason: "The U.S. won’t allow it. Nobody says that, but that’s the fact. Well, now it’s formally authorized, instead of just happening."
Netanyahu’s proposal to annex parts of the West Bank, he said, had been going on for 50 years, since right after the ’67 war. "Both political parties, both major groupings in Israel— the former Labor-based party, the Likud-based conglomerate — essentially ... have been carrying out a development program in the West Bank [to create] what will be a kind of Greater Israel, in which Israel will take over whatever is of value in the West Bank, [and] leave the Palestinian population concentrations— like in Nablus and Tulkarm — leave them isolated."
Chomsky said that while Jewish settlements are developed In the rest of the region, there are about 150 small, checkpoint-encircled Palestinian enclaves, often cut off from their fields, and barely able to survive.
A major city, Ma’ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, was constructed mostly during the Clinton years. "The road to it essentially bisects the West Bank," Chomsky said, adding that there were further ones up north, all linked by infrastructure development. "Jerusalem itself is maybe five times the size of what it ever was historically," he said. "This is basically creating pleasant suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the West Bank. You can travel from Ma’ale Adumim to Tel Aviv on a big highway, restricted to Israelis and tourists, not Palestinians, more easily than you can get from the South Shore to Boston — never seeing an Arab."
Behind it all, he said, is tacit U.S. support -- diplomatic, economic, military. "And meanwhile, the government says, “''We don’t like it. Stop doing it,' but providing the means for it.'"
The Netanyahu victory, he said, consolidates an alliance of the most reactionary Arab states: "...primarily Saudi Arabia, one of the most reactionary states in the world; Egypt, under the Sissi dictatorship, the worst dictatorship in Egypt’s history; the United Arab Emirates, similar; Israel, right in the center of it."
He deemed it part of a global, right-wing network coalescing with the U.S. leadership, and said that South America, under [recently-elected Brazil President Jair Messias] Bolsonaro, is another part of it.
But Goodman proposed a hopeful note: "And yet, in the United States, there’s this growing awareness," she said. "For example, the Democratic-Republican vote against Saudi Arabia-UAE’s war in Yemen, fueled by the United States."
Chomsky said this interesting development had been fueled by the legislative actions of Sen. Bernie Sanders. "The Saudi-United Arab Emirate war in Yemen has been a hideous atrocity," he said. "There’s probably—nobody knows—maybe 60,000, 70,000 people killed, half the population barely surviving. The U.N. describes it as the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. It’s a real monstrosity."
He said Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had been using both U.S. and British weaponry, and U.S. intelligence, in order to target bombings and other war maneuvers. With no protest, until the brutal killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
"Then Bernie Sanders came along, with a couple of others, and initiated the legislation, which put some crimps in the direct U.S. support for the war," Chomsky related, while adding dryly, "I think we can be pretty confident that the Trump-Pompeo-Bolton triumvirate will find a way around it and keep the war going —unless the public seriously protests."
He then noted a very significant change in U.S. public opinion with regard to Israeli policies.
"The support for Israeli expansionism, repression, the whole alliance that’s developing, that support has shifted in the United States from the more liberal sectors — roughly, the Democratic Party — to the far right." Not that long ago, he explained, support for Israel was a passionate Democratic cause based within the liberal segments of the population.
"It isn’t anymore," he said. Now, Chomsky said, support for Israel is centered in what he called the most reactionary parts of the population: evangelical Christians and ultranationalists. "Basically, it’s a far-right issue."
"In fact, if you look in the polls, people who identify themselves as Democrats by now tend to support Palestinian rights more than Israel. That’s a dramatic change."
He said this shift is even more pronounced among younger Americans, and he has experienced it in his own life.
"Up until about maybe 10 or 15 years ago, if I was giving a talk at a university on Israel-Palestine, even my own university, MIT, I had to have police protection, literally," Chomsky recalled. "Police would try to prevent the meeting from being broken up. They wouldn’t let me walk to my car alone."
But now, that has totally changed.
"And it’s a very significant change," he said, adding that he hopes that sooner or later, it may lead to a shift in U.S. policy.
He posited that certain measures could dramatically change the situation in the Middle East. "One simple proposal is that the United States government should live up to U.S. law," he said, to audience laughter.
"The United States has laws, like the so-called Leahy Law, [the] Patrick Leahy Law, which requires that no military aid can be given to any military organization that is involved in systematic human rights abuses," he said. "Well, the Israeli Army is involved in massive human rights abuses. If the U.S. were to live up to U.S. law, we would cut off aid to the IDF, the Israeli Army. That step alone would have a major effect — not just the material aid, but the symbolic meaning of it."
That, with a corresponding change in public opinion, especially among younger people, could result in a call "for the United States to follow its own laws," he said.
Before taking audience questions and then chatting with attendees, Goodman brought out a cake. And rrom the pews, all sang to honor Chomsky’s 90th.
