Harbus

Issue date: 5/1/06 Section: News

Four hundred people packed into Spangler Auditorium last week to hear the legendary left-wing intellectual, Noam Chomksy. Another 200 had to be turned away and there was a large number of protestors and supporters outside the hall. The HBS Business, Industry and Government Club hosted Professor Chomsky, who has been a professor of Linguistics at MIT for 50 years and has spoken at HBS several times during this time.

Chomsky is credited with the creation of the theory of generative grammar, often considered to be the most significant contribution to the field of theoretical linguistics in the 20th century. However, Chomsky is best known for his political activism and is considered to be the leading intellectual figure within the left wing of American politics and an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy. His views on Israel are often contrasted with HLS Professor Alan Dershowitz, who spoke at HBS last November.

Chomsky began by describing the history of U.S. interest in the Middle East and Israel. In 1945 President Eisenhower described this as the "strategically most important region of the world." Chomsky believes "the reason for this is very simple - the world's major energy reserves. And not only are they valuable because of the enormous profit that comes from them, but control gives a veto power over others." According to him, it is against this context that US-Israel relations developed, since Israel was the most reliably pro-Western state in the Middle East.

He went on to describe the events in the region in the 1950s -1970s which reinforced the U.S.-Israel relationship. By 1976 recognition of Palestinian rights had raised international attention and the UN Security Council debated resolution 242, calling for Israel to leave the occupied territories. Chomsky said that the U.S.-Israel relationship had become so strong that the U.S. was the only country to veto the resolution, along with Israel. "From this point onwards the U.S. has been alone with Israel in blocking every UN resolution on Israel. There were almost annual votes of a similar nature at the General Assembly, usually resulting in votes of 150 to 2," he continued.

Moving to more recent events, Chomsky discussed the proposed settlement in 2001 under the Clinton administration to break down the West Bank into separate 3 cantons, cut off from East Jerusalem, that even Clinton recognised was unviable. Chomsky said that Clinton proposed new parameters that went some way to satisfy Palestinian rights and the final reservations were addressed in Taba. Both sides agreed that they could have reached a settlement with more time, but Chomsky noted that Israel "called off the negotiations 4 days early" and there have been no more agreements since then. "Israel has since undermined negotiations by increasing settlements by 7% each year," he continued.

Continued...

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