Chomsky then sees nothing wrong with denying that the worst crime in human history ever occurred. What strikes him as vicious is that the Holocaust is allegedly used to generate sympathy for Israel.
Chomsky also wrote what Werner Cohn has described as an enthusiastic endorsement right on its cover of a book by the late Hebrew University professor Israel Shahak which attacks the Jewish religion as being inherently racist (Jewish History Jewish Religion. The Weight of Three Thousand Years). According to Chomsky’s cover note Shahak is an outstanding scholar with remarkable insight and depth of knowledge. His work is informed and penetrating a contribution of great value.
One of the publishers of Shahak’s book Noontide Press summarizes Shahak’s magnum opus this way in its catalog advertisement:
This stunning powerful work with a foreword by Gore Vidal is essential reading for anyone interested in the eternally vexing ‘Jewish question.’ Drawing on a masterly study of the Jewish Talmud and rabbinical laws Shahak brilliantly traces the long Jewish record of vicious hostility toward non-Jews and particularly against Christianity. He reveals the destructive role Jews have played throughout history on behalf of tyrannical rulers….Deeply probing the roots of Jewish chauvinism and arrogant hostility toward non-Jews Shahak shows how Jews are encouraged to regard non-Jews as spiritually and morally unclean subhumans. As a result warns Shahak ‘Israel as a Jewish state constitutes a danger not only to itself and its inhabitants but all Jews and to all other peoples and states in the Middle East and beyond.’
Among other things Shahak claims that Jews worship Satan and utter a ritual curse whenever they pass by a non-Jewish cemetery. This is the book that Chomsky finds informed and penetrating a contribution of great value.
Chomsky also gave a joint lecture with Shahak at M.I.T. on November 3 1994 on the announced theme of Jewish Fundamentalism. First both Chomsky and Shahak spoke at great length about the supposed crimes of Israel; then Shahak launched an attack on what he called Jewish tradition. The particular object of Shahak’s ire was of all things the musical Fiddler on the Roof which Shahak described as a Jewish conspiracy to represent Israel and Judaism in a favorable light to an ignorant public which knew no better. Chomsky stood by while his lecture-partner made this bizarre presentation offering no objections.
When Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia in 2003 made public remarks at an international Islamic conference that no one could deny were anti-Jewish Chomsky took a slightly different tack: while Mahathir’s comments were of course deplorable he probably didn’t really mean them but was merely playing to his audience:
So it may well be … [Mahathir’s] comments on world Jewry on which Western ideologists fixated with great joy (ignoring the context) were basically ‘throwing red meat’ to the constituency as when people in public life in the U.S. (since Carter) pretend to be devout Christians or ostentatiously shoot pheasants (greatly impressing the press) whatever they may think in private…. The ‘great joy’ [supposedly of conservative journalists] has to do with the enormous effort which goes back over 30 years to seek somewhere signs of anti-Semitism.
There is quite an industry devoted to that task among intellectuals something I wrote about almost 35 years ago (some of it recently reprinted) and flourishing today. That’s one of the techniques that was devised to undermine activist elements of the left and the more vulgar and grotesque practitioners of the art (like Irving Howe) are greatly honored for these performances.
That’s a very useful picture for ideological fanatics in the U.S. and it is interesting that this intriguing conception is featured in the more liberal of the foreign policy journals and probably believed by many of the readers for whom it is a very welcome message as similar fabrications have been since the 60s. In the case of Mahathir it wasn’t fabricated though it is very likely that the standard image was seriously distorted.
