I’m generally a big fan of Noam Chomsky’s work, but I’ve often\u00a0found myself disagreeing with some aspects\u00a0of his\u00a0analysis\u00a0of the\u00a0Israel-Palestine conflict. So I’m not especially\u00a0impressed by\u00a0his comments as reported here in the Guardian on BDS and the apartheid analogy.<\/p>\n
But that aside, what interests me more about his latest article, published in the Nation magazine, is what it reveals about the Guardian’s relationship with Chomsky. Most of the time, Chomsky’s\u00a0views \u2013 on the media, and\u00a0more generally his political analysis of current events \u2013 are treated by the paper with either sneering disdain\u00a0or a casual dismissal, typically for his presumed “anti-Americanism”. Remember, for example, the Guardian’s hatchet job<\/a> a few years back from interviewer Emma Brockes, who suddenly lost her recording of their meeting when challenged about the accuracy of her quotes. Or George Monbiot’s snide\u00a0suggestion<\/a>\u00a0that Chomsky consorted with genocide deniers.<\/p>\n But here the paper gives him a sympathetic platform\u00a0in its news pages. And I very much suspect this\u00a0sudden respect for the professor is not unrelated to the fact that he is saying something the Guardian sees as helpful to Israel’s cause, because it may damage the BDS movement and discredit the growing apartheid analogy.<\/p>\n The Guardian’s long support for Israel as a Jewish state \u2013 and its abhorrence of the occupation, in part because it might threaten Israel’s status as a Jewish state \u2013 has been documented in the book “Disenchantment”. It\u00a0recalls that the paper’s most important editor, C P Scott,\u00a0was the lynchpin\u00a0in\u00a0securing\u00a0the Balfour Declaration, in which Britain promised to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine.<\/p>\n Chomsky understands very well how the mainstream media work. So I suspect too that he may\u00a0be\u00a0prepared\u00a0to\u00a0concede\u00a0that in this case the Guardian and the Nation, liberal transatlantic twins who have never hidden their\u00a0sympathies for Israel as a Jewish state, are trying to harness\u00a0his reputation to\u00a0advance their own political agendas.<\/p>\n