Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Noam Chomsky and Israel

It’s nice to know that my country of residence still has its head on its shoulders in certain cases, especially when it comes to admitting entrance to pseudo-intellectual antisemites and apologists for genocide. I owe this cheerful realization, ironically, to Amira Hass, a dedicated partisan of the Palestinian cause who has just announced in Haaretz that MIT professor of linguistics and radical leftist cult figure Noam Chomsky has been denied entry at the Allenby Bridge and thus far prevented from appearing at Bier Zeit University in Ramallah.

I have no doubt that legions of the liberal (some of them, no doubt, Israeli) will shortly be descending upon us to denounce the decision and to sing the praises of this perennially worshiped leftist icon, who wrote himself into the history of intellectual infamy by denying the Khmer Rouge genocide and then spending the next four decades denying his denial. Chomsky’s reputation was further burnished by signing a petition in support of French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson. When French critics pointed out that the petition referred to Faurisson’s position that the Holocaust did not happen as historical “findings,” and that this was, needless to say, monstrous, Chomsky promptly accused them all of being agents of totalitarian oppression.