On Gaza, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky says the debate inside the Israeli government is whether to allow “bare survival” or to inflict “misery and starvation,” as a former Israeli national security adviser recently proposed. “Israeli experts have calculated in detail exactly how many calories, literally, Gazans need to survive, and if you look at the sanctions that they impose, they’re grotesque,” Chomsky says. “I mean, even John Kerry condemned them bitterly, they’re sadistic — just enough calories to survive.” Chomsky also addresses the widespread focus on the Hamas charter platform calling for the destruction of Israel. “The only people who pay attention to it are Israeli propagandists, who love it,” Chomsky says. “It was a charter put together by a small group of people under siege, under attack in 1988. And it’s essentially meaningless. There are charters that mean something, but they’re not talked about. So, for example, the electoral program of Israel’s governing party, Likud, states explicitly that there can never be a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. … And they don’t only have it in their charter, their electoral program, but they implement it.”
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I am so glad that Dem.Now/Amy Goodman could work out a schedule for the interview, done last Thursday and played in two parts on DemocracyNow. I was waiting from July 11 until Amy got to interview Noam Chomsky, a regular guest over the years.
The interview is so powerful. It is also available in transcript for people who are deaf at the website.
Chomsky was concise and clear and so much is memorable from the interview. He has been characterized, or I should mischaracterized in his views by various critics.
The interview was nice in tandem with the Ilan Pappe interview of some days earlier. When Amy mentioned that Pappe and Chomsky had done a book together, I found it as an ebook and bought it: The Crisis of Gaza, updated, released Dec. 2013.
I have been “glued” to my radio to listen to Dem.Now the entire coverage of Gaza in this ugly round of aggression by Israel, since July 11, (on WBAI NYC 99.5FM of the Pacifica Network, where the show originated around 17 years ago). I have been a regular listener since day 1, knowing Amy Goodman’s work at WBAI before DemNow started.
My own knowledge and feelings about Israel in re Palestinians has evolved since the early 1990s when Chomsky and Phyllis Bennis’ visits/interviews on Dem.Now (she’s another long time regular) got me out of “not wanting to hear about Israel and its aggression”, which is where most of my relatives still are. Some of my views are in my art on my Flickr public photostream page, the newest is the strongest:
(at the top of the page):
#44 in page of that many pieces of protest art, the most being in protest of drones by U.S. gov’t and U.S. support of Israel’s murderous policies towards Gaza. The first one, down on the bottom, is also a protest of the Gaza suffering, done Jan. 3, 2009.
The newest is my REJECTION OF MY ‘RIGHT OF RETURN’ a bit in advance of the Jewish New Year
5775, after several years of thinking about doing it.
http://www.Flickr.com/photos/sanda-aronson-the-artist/
Wonderful interview with Noam Chomsky who bears witness to truth again.
Very good interview Ms. Goodman.