Hossam el-Hamalawy's Library tagged Chomsky → View Popular

05 Nov 09

However, in my opinion, he seriously mishandled his central message which may even have deepened the sense of despair. This was because he gave the impression that Palestine was on the brink of a defeat so severe that Palestinians faced nothing less than in Chomsky’s words “the death of the nation”.
Just to underline the point, he used the ominous concept pioneered by the radical Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling: politicide – “to bring about the dissolution of the Palestinian peoples existence”. To make matters worse, on not one occasion did he even mention briefly the Palestinian liberation movement, appearing to give them no role in resisting the destruction of their own movement. This was to be left to the Boycott Disinvestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement in America and Europe. But even here he mishandled the argument by calling for the BDS movement to focus exclusively on US, UK, EU relations with Israel rather than on Israel directly.