Chomsky awarded Sydney Peace Prize
Arch Israel critic Noam Chomsky has been awarded this year’s Sydney Peace Prize “for inspiring the convictions of millions about a common humanity and for unfailing moral courage”.
Noam Chomsky
Previous recipients include Palestinian propagandist Hanan Ashrawi, whose award triggered a storm of protest from Jewish leaders in 2003, and strident Israel critic, journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, who won the award in 2009.
Chomsky, 82, has been chastised by a chorus of critics, among them lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz, who last month wondered why “any reasonable person pays any attention to the ignorant rants of this America-hater, Israel-basher and conspiracy theorist.”
Chomsky sparked a furore recently when he said George W. Bush’s crimes “vastly exceed” those of Osama Bin Laden.
“We might ask how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at his compound, assassinated him and dumped his body in the Atlantic,” he said.
Chomsky said he was “honored to receive this prestigious award” and will fly to Australia in November to collect his $50,000 prize and deliver the City of Sydney Peace Prize lecture.
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff declined to comment.
Well Mendeds, Isn’t invading a country on fraudelent intelligence a crime ? Remember Powell and his pictures of trucks in the UNO ? And the invasion of Afhhanistan though most of the S11 attackers were from Saudi Arabia and the millions killed, maimed and made homelss in both countries ? Bin laden managed kill thousand in comparision.
Great Idea quoting Dershowitz on Chomsky! Dershowitz is along time defender of Isral’s colonisation of Palestine and has repeatedly been exosed as a liar in debates with Chomsky and Finkelstien. Finkesltien even showed how Dershowits plagiarised from the fradudelent work “from Time Immermorial” by Joan Peters. And Mendes upholds Dershowtz as a model of intellectual inegrity!
Its not just Chomsky, the great majority of Sydney Peace Prize winners have been notable critics of Israel. They include John Pilger, Irene Khan (of Amnesty), Arundhati Roy, Mary Robinson, Hanan Ashrawi, Desmond Tutu, Hans Blix. Many of these people were commendably active in other parts of the world, but the award of the prize came after they spoke out against Israel in their new role as an “eminent person” of international standing .
The organizers of this award aren’t shy about promoting their own political allegiances. Here they are pictured on their home page at a Friends of Hebron rally.
http://www.sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/
“Together with SPF Executive Officer Hannah Middleton and her husband Denis Doherty I distributed leaflets supporting the rights of the people of Hebron to move freely and safely around their city, free from harassment by members of several small Jewish enclaves in the middle of the city.”
But why are the City of Sydney and Sydney Uni prepared to lend their support to them?
Lars: the full detail of what Chomsky did during the Faurisson Affair is contained in my earlier article”Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Denial Controversy in Australia” in Political Expressions (Monash University Politics Department), Volume 1, No.2, 1996, pp.111-126. A shorter version was also published in the Australian Jewish Democrat, Spring 1995, pp.21-24.
Chomsky did not just defend Faurisson’s freedom of speech. He also wrote a supportive preface to Faurisson’s book denying the existence of the gas chambers.
Chomsky’s actions were exposed at the time by committed left-wingers: Pierre Vidal-Naquet in France, and Paul Berman in the USA. He was given ample opportunity then and many times since to admit he was wrong. He has never done so.
A number of us plan to say much more about this publicly when Chomsky receives his Peace Prize in November. If you want to be taken seriously in this debate, you will need to provide a far more honest and objective account of what Chomsky actually did than what you have written above.
Philip Mendes
@Philip Mendes
What you are saying is false. Chomsky defended Faurisson´s RIGHT to have an opinion and to express it. I.e Chomsky defended Freedom of Speech. Chomsky never defended or agreed to Faurisson´s claims about the holocaust only, as i said, his right to express the claims. Important difference! Many before you have tried to use that petition against Chomsky to discredit him but it´s just dishonest to do that. So stop it.
One of the most difficult problems has been finding the principal destabilising element in the function of Noam Chomsky’s rational against Israel and mainstream Jewish politcal manifestations.
Considering that, as a linguist and implicit logician,Chomsky posesses impecable faculties, in his other political critical works, on the war in Vietnam for example, he has produced irefutably valuable contributions, how is it possible that in matters Jewish he has persisted for a long time in digressing from the norms most Jews and Israel’s politics have embraced. How is it possible that Chomsky, only very consciously, has transgressed into obvious coincidental stances with the most devout enemies of Israel and by extention detractors of known Jewish values !!!
The answer is complex and it must be found in the psychological construct of anti Semitic traditions. I shan’t develop the whole issue here, but urge those with time ( some three months ) and application to look into the psychological side of anti Semitism as explained in the seminal work “Authoritarian Personality”. Sufice to say that Chomsky’s passionate enmity against most Israeli institutions and policies of survival has transformed an earlier eliptical take on Zionism to a much more inflexible, ostensive aversion to all matters Israeli. Yet, he remains impecably articulate and incredibly useful to the unashamed and openly virulent anti Semites.
As about the Sydney Peace Prize, they are not worth the paper I am writing on, however, they have delivered some kind of justice. Chomsky DOES belong in the same pod with Ashrawi and,mainly, the seriously disturbed Pilger !!!
The awarding of the Sydney Peace Prize to Noam Chomsky for his work on behalf of peace and human rights must be ironic given his past apology for those who abuse the human rights of Holocaust survivors.
In 1979-80, Chomsky defended the opinions of Robert Faurisson, a far Right anti-Semitic professor of French literature who denied that the Nazi gas chambers ever existed. Firstly, Chomsky signed a petition drawn up by prominent American Holocaust denier Mark Weber in defence of Faurisson’s civil rights. Chomsky also wrote a sympathetic preface to a book by Faurisson in which he stated that “the fact that Faurisson denied the existence of gas chambers plainly did not demonstrate that he was a Nazi or anti-Semite”, and that “denial of the worst atrocities, even the Holocaust, does not in itself suffice to prove racism or Nazism”. Chomsky concluded that Faurisson appeared to be a “relatively apolitical liberal”.
Chomsky’s failure to recognize the anti-Semitic implications of Holocaust denial, and his decision to provide a political character reference for a leading figure in the international neo-Nazi movement was astounding. The overall effect of his statement was to promote a reversal of the roles of Nazi persecutor and Jewish victim.
Philip Mendes
Noam Chomsky is the best among all western intellectuals. He is a star of the US and the world. I hope Alan M. Dershowitz can be a smarter person.