2The Rest Is Commentary
Thank you for Joshua Leifer’s review
of my book The Lions’ Den: Zionism and
the Left From Hannah Arendt to Noam
Chomsky [“A Tense Relationship,” Feb-
ruary 24]. Though he did not like the
book, I appreciate the seriousness and
thoughtfulness of his review.
However, I would like to clarify two
things. Contrary to what Leifer writes,
I do not criticize Chomsky for making
“mistakes.” I criticize him—and docu-
ment my statements thoroughly—for
manufacturing entirely fictitious claims
and then basing his political analysis
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on
them. There is a big difference be-
tween making mistakes and telling lies.
The latter has always resulted in politi-
cal and moral catastrophe for the left.
Second, nowhere have I “somehow
justified” the expulsion and massacre
of the Palestinians in 1948 (or ever)—
any more than I justify the expulsion
and massacre of Jews in those towns
where the Arab forces prevailed. What
I pointed out is that there would have
been no Palestinian refugees had the
Arab states accepted partition—and
the concomitant proposed Palestinian
state; instead, they tried to exterminate
the nascent Jewish state. I do indeed
see this as “a world-historic mistake,”
and I suspect there are many people
in the Mideast, and not only in Israel,
who think likewise. Susie Linfield
brooklynJoshua Leifer Replies
I greatly appreciate the opportunity to
respond to Susie Linfield’s letter, and
I am grateful that she took the time to
read the review. I doubt I will be able
to convince her that Chomsky is not
a “nightmare” of the American left or
guilty of misleading “generations of
young people.” However, the moral
balance sheet of his career finds him
on the right side, more often than
not, on some of the most importantmatters, from the Vietnam War to
Israel’s occupation, neoliberalism,
the Iraq War, and US war making
more generally. Because I agree with
Linfield that there is “a big difference
between making mistakes and telling
lies,” I’d gladly side with Chomsky
against the advocates of “humanitar-
ian intervention” or, say, the signa-
tories of the Euston Manifesto, who
laundered unjust wars.
Second, it is an American liberal
Zionist fantasy that “there would have
been no Palestinian refugees had the
Arab states accepted partition.” There
is ample historical evidence that Zion-
ist settlement in pre-1948 Mandate
Palestine resulted in the disposses-
sion of Palestinians from land their
families had lived on for centuries.
The reality of such displacement is
also attested to in Zionist mytholo-
gy, Hebrew songs, and the debates
among early Zionist intellectuals over
whether building a Jewish state would
require the subjugation of the native
Palestinians or their expulsion.
In fact, even before the 1920s,
Zionist writers and intellectuals like
Moshe Smilansky worried about the
violent displacement that accompa-
nied Jewish settlement. As Tom Segev
records in his biography of David
Ben-Gurion, Smilansky “recounted
seeing fellah women weeping and
lamenting the lands and homes they
had lost, without compensation.
Jewish settlers had chased them off
with sticks.” In the 1930s it was pre-
cisely this issue that led philosopher
Hans Kohn to resign from Brit Sha-
lom, the binationalist Zionist organi-
zation. In his letter of resignation, he
denounced the “immeasurable bar-
barity” of the eviction of Palestinian
tenants from land bought by Zionist
settlement organizations, like the Jew-
ish National Fund. Joshua Leifer
brooklyn
[email protected]STACEY ABRAMS
MARGARET ATWOOD CHARLES
M. BLOW SHERROD BROWN
NOAM CHOMSKY GAIL COLLINS
MIKE DAVIS ELIZABETH DREW
BARBARA EHRENREICH
DANIEL ELLSBERG FRANCES
FITZGERALD ERIC FONER
THOMAS FRANK HENRY LOUIS
GATES JR. MICHELLE GOLDBERG
AMY GOODMAN CHRIS HAYES
MARGO JEFFERSON DAVID
CAY JOHNSTON NAOMI KLEIN
RACHEL KUSHNER VIET THANH
NGUYEN NORMAN LEAR GREIL
MARCUS JANE MAYER BILL
MCKIBBEN WALTER MOSLEY
JOHN NICHOLS LAWRENCE
O’DONNELL LAURA POITRAS
KATHA POLLITT ROBERT
REICH JOY REID FRANK RICH
ARUNDHATI ROY BERNIE
SANDERS ANNA DEAVERE
SMITH EDWARD SNOWDEN
REBECCA SOLNIT MARGARET
TAL B OT CALVIN TRILLIN
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL
YANIS VAROUFAKIS JOAN
WALSH AMY WILENTZ GARY
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