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Noam Chomsky and Israel
KCLU- Admin
- Posts : 234
Join date : 2010-08-12
Age : 38
Location : Tampa
- Post n°2
Re: Noam Chomsky and Israel
my fascination with politics starts with Chomsky. early on in college I got his Understanding Power anthology and much of it still informs my critical disposition.
besides being a modern polymath Chomsky's just a great source of Israel commentary given his background - he was very excited about a Jewish state in his youth, he and his wife even went to live/work on a kibbutz (utopian agricultural societies, a huge point of interest in anarchism studies being one of very few successful real-world examples). but since 1967 (the war w/ Egypt) he's felt nothing but disappointment and the entire project as it stands now is, in his eyes, a betrayal of its initial promise.
re: the Middle East in general, I did a paper on Saudi-U.S. relations for college and this:
besides being a modern polymath Chomsky's just a great source of Israel commentary given his background - he was very excited about a Jewish state in his youth, he and his wife even went to live/work on a kibbutz (utopian agricultural societies, a huge point of interest in anarchism studies being one of very few successful real-world examples). but since 1967 (the war w/ Egypt) he's felt nothing but disappointment and the entire project as it stands now is, in his eyes, a betrayal of its initial promise.
re: the Middle East in general, I did a paper on Saudi-U.S. relations for college and this:
..is all you need to know about U.S. interest in the region.in 1967, Israel destroyed the source of secular Arab nationalism -- Nasser's Egypt -- which was considered a major threat and enemy by the West. It is worth remembering that there was a serious conflict at that time between the forces of radical Islamic fundamentalism, centered in Saudi Arabia -- where all the oil is -- and secular Arab nationalism, centered in Nasser's Egypt; in fact, the two countries were at war. They were fighting a kind of a proxy war in Yemen at that time. The United States and Britain were supporting the radical Islamic fundamentalism; in fact, they’ve rather consistently done that – supporting Saudi Arabia. And Nasserite secular nationalism was considered a serious threat, because it was recognized that it might seek to take control of the immense resources of the region and use them for regional interest, rather than allow them to be centrally controlled and exploited by the United States and its allies.
KCLU- Admin
- Posts : 234
Join date : 2010-08-12
Age : 38
Location : Tampa
- Post n°3
Re: Noam Chomsky and Israel
(great post man, thanks! I hadn't read Chomsky in a long time.)