The Battle of Newton: Dershowitz vs. Chomsky
Last month, far-left icon Noam Chomsky spoke about Iraq to students at Newton South High School. He came at the invitation of the Massachusetts high school’s Social Awareness Club. The choice of speaker sparked no small measure of outrage (which isn’t surprising, given that it sometimes seems as if the famed MIT linguist never met a problem he couldn’t blame on American foreign-policy). The invitation to Chomsky — no great friend of Israel — particularly irked members of Newton’s large Jewish community. In response, the school’s Jewish Student Union is calling in the heavy artillery: Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who will speak at Newton South on June 5.
I don’t have much to add, except that this presents a convenient opportunity to recount a highlight from a 2005 debate at Harvard between Dershowitz and Chomsky. In the course of arguing that many countries have better human rights records than Israel when responding to terrorism, Chomsky declared:
Israel and the United States are both threatening Iran with destruction. Preemption, according to Dershowitz, would require that Iran be carrying out targeted assassinations in Israel and the United States.
What makes Chomsky’s statement that much more unhinged is that it came only a month after Iran’s president called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Talk about turning the world on its head…
You can watch the full video of the debate here. The bit mentioned above comes one hour and 20 minutes into the video.
UPDATE: Bintel Blog reader James Holstun disputes my characterization of Ahmadinejad as having called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30