Defending Chomsky's Views on Israeli Policies

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Lori E. Fein's article, "Don't Legitimate Propaganda" (November 2), which supports Harvard Divinity School's refusal to allow on its premises a conference on Israeli-South African ties, deserves response on several counts.

Fein charges that MIT Professor Noam Chomsky "has long denied the right of Israel to exist," and is "known for anti-Zionism bordering on Anti-Semitism." The first claim is dead wrong; the second is libelous. Chomsky has long called for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. This is the position of most of the world, a growing number of U.S. Jews and of the Israeli peace movement. Chomsky opposes Israeli policies, many based on mainstream Zionism (not the Zionism of Martin Buber and Albert Einstein), which deny Palestinians basic human and national rights. Chomsky believes in a single standard, condemning anti-Arab racism as well as anti-Semitism.

Fein either has not read Chomsky's books or heard his many talks in the Cambridge area, or she knows his position. If the former, she is irresponsible; if the latter, dishonest. Neither is good journalism.

The attempt by Israel's supporters to smear critics of Israel and Zionism as "anti-Semitic" or "self-hating Jews" is simply Jewish McCarthyism.

Fein complains that Chomsky and Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi of Haifa University were not addressing their "area of expertise." What are Chomsky, a linguistics professor, and Beit-Hallahmi, a psychologist, doing talking about foreign affairs? This ad hominem reasoning would disqualify many of the leading critics of the Vietnam War, including Chomsky, and, for that matter, many leading supporters of Israel. Beit-Hallahmi, who appeared on WBGH's "Public Television Evening News" as an expert (along with Harvard's Nadav Safran), has written and lectured extensively on Israel's odious ties with South Africa.

As a Jew and a supporter of self-determination for Black South Africans, Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews, I find these ties, which include nuclear weapons cooperation and Israeli aid in maintaining apartheid, e.g., by giving South Africa counter-insurgency aid, repugnant. Rather than attack the messenger, Israel's friends, such as Fein, ought to heed the message. At the least, they ought to support the right of conferences, whether pro- or anti-Israeli policy, to be held at universities. Free speech is free speech, and we cannot allow the exclusion of meetings because they "would have obscured real debate." Edmund R. Hanauer   Executive Director,   Search for Justice and Equality   in Palestine/Israel