A reader asks: “What do you think about Noam Chomsky? I have noticed many Arabs and Muslims adore him, quote him- let him shape their world view.” Thanks so much for that question, and I will try to keep it brief, although Chomsky is, by definition a vast topic.

First of all, I’m not in a position to comment on most of Chomsky’s work as I know nothing about linguistics or the science of cognition. But in general, it’s very clear that Chomsky has a first-rate mind and a truly remarkable ability to absorb and recall data. In the political realm, Chomsky has played many different roles and I think there are two high points to his career as a public intellectual. First was his involvement in the opposition to the Vietnam War, in which he played a singular role in forcing academics, intellectuals and scientists to interrogate their own relationship to the war and to the state structures that were pursuing it. This intervention on the ethical responsibility of intellectuals continues to have an impact and influenced dozens of major public intellectuals, not least of them Edward Said. Second, Chomsky was an early and principled Jewish-American opponent of Israeli policies, especially with regard to the occupation, and a vocal critic at a time when questioning these policies was considered virtually anathema in most Jewish-American circles. Chomsky’s critique opened the space for Jewish Americans and others to think more critically about Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. For these two contributions, if nothing else, he will be remembered in the future as someone who played an important role in American political life in the 20th century.

However, while recognizing these contributions and his extraordinary intellectual capacity, I do have my doubts about Chomsky’s whole political approach. My very strong impression, although I’m not an expert on the subject, is that Chomsky essentially operates out of a classic anarchist model, not very far removed from the 19th century anarchism of Bakunin and Kropotkin. This means that, as a bottom line, Chomsky is fundamentally opposed first and foremost to the accumulation of all forms of political, economic and social power in human relationships. Perhaps this is slightly reductive, but I do think it boils down more or less to that. My impression is that he therefore tends to view political phenomena through the simple formula of asking what outcomes tend to accumulate rather than disperse power. As a consequence, he generally speaking tends to side simply with the less powerful against the more powerful. This explains his otherwise difficult to rationalize position during the first Gulf War, in which he first sided with Kuwait against Iraq, and then with Iraq against the United States — a position that otherwise might seem somewhat inexplicable. Because of this perspective, and some other crucial attitudes, Chomsky tends to take a reflexively anti-establishment and oppositional approach towards the US government and institutions, to my mind often without sufficient reflection on the virtues of the likely outcomes of what is actually at play.

Apart from this general oppositional stance towards American society and institutions, and an ardent rejection of American "imperial" power in the developing world, Chomsky’s main influence on contemporary Arab intellectuals may well be his position on the role of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. Like many major Jewish-American critics of Israeli policy, Chomsky does not acknowledge the full scope and power the pro-Israel lobby has wielded in shaping American policies towards the Middle East. It is perfectly understandable why some Jewish-American critics of Israeli and US government policies might nonetheless balk at a cold evaluation of the scope of the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, given the history of anti-Semitic agitation based on the specter of Jewish power in Western societies. However, as I have observed elsewhere, it is extraordinary that there are Arab-American political scientists who are willing to accept the idea that the pro-Israel lobby is merely convenient veneer for imperial interests that are produced by some sort of mysterious process that has nothing to do with the transparent give-and-take of a myriad of forces and influences in the American political scene that actually does shape policy. Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer got many of the details wrong, but their overall point about the power and influence of the pro-Israel lobby is both obvious and incontrovertible.

On the other hand, Chomsky’s stance on the one-state agenda is extremely sound. He supports it in theory, but recognizes that it is only attainable in the distant future, and by way of a two-state agreement that might, at some future date, give way to some kind of unification mutually agreed upon by Israelis and Palestinians. As for the one-state rhetoric that is currently in vogue on the US and British university campuses, Chomsky has correctly noted that, “Evidently, such stands are of only academic interest unless they are accompanied by programs of action that take into account the real world. If not, they are not advocacy in any serious sense of the term.” Since there has never been a programmatic approach for the advancement or realization of a one-state agenda between Israel and the Palestinians that indeed "takes into account the real world," mainly because it does not correspond to the fundamental national interests of Jewish Israelis as they see them today and will undoubtedly continue to see them for the foreseeable future, Chomsky’s description is absolutely apt: this is not advocacy in any serious sense of the term.

However, Chomsky’s reflexive and, in this case at least, stubbornly wrongheaded oppositional attitude towards virtually anything undertaken by the United States government has led him to completely misread the present attitude of the Obama administration towards Israeli-Palestinian peace. In spite of the President’s extraordinary early efforts to shift US policy and rhetoric, Chomsky has already concluded that, “Obama will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism.” This strikes me as unjustifiably pessimistic and thoroughly unfair to an administration that has gone further than anyone seriously expected in shifting the American stance on issues like the settlements and the urgency and centrality of Palestinian statehood. Moreover, Chomsky claims that the President is not serious about his engagement with the Arab Peace Initiative, writing, “Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization, studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its precondition.” In fact, Obama’s whole strategy is based on both main aspects of the Initiative: peace predicated on Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory and a regional dimension to bolster Palestinian-Israeli peace and expand its scope. Simply put, I think Chomsky is dead wrong about the attitude of the President and his administration regarding peace and Palestinian statehood, as well as the Initiative.

In short, while I respect Chomsky’s intellect and his political contributions, I think those Arab-Americans who regard him as a guru or an oracle are making a mistake on several levels. This assumption that President Obama and his administration are simply not serious about pursuing Middle East peace and Palestinian statehood when they clearly have demonstrated that they are is wrongheaded and leads to political mistakes. Even if it turns out that the new administration is insufficiently committed to overcome obstacles, or that these obstacles simply cannot be overcome no matter what the will in Washington may be, it is still pointless to take the attitude now, in advance, that our government is not serious when it begins to pursue the policies and approaches most Arab-Americans have been strongly advocating for decades. A more sensible attitude would be to recognize, applaud and embrace these changes, and work to extend and consolidate them. Dismissing them has no value whatsoever.

Finally, I think that Chomsky’s fundamentally oppositional attitude to the US government, system and institutions is not useful at all for Arab-Americans. Our community has no options for political empowerment and the pursuit of its objectives other than serious engagement with the political system as it exists in our country today. Giving too much credence to the views of intellectual gadflies, however brilliant, who would steer Arab-Americans away from political engagement and towards the margins of American politics and society is a surefire recipe for maintaining the disempowerment and alienation from which we have been suffering for many decades. Arguments that accept the idea that the pro-Israel lobby has had little to no effect on shaping the fundamental elements of US policy towards Israel and the Palestinians feed into that alienation and self-imposed marginalization. After all, if a lobby as seemingly powerful and effective as the pro-Israel coalition has only a marginal effect and serves mainly as window dressing for other interests, then Arab-American political engagement is essentially pointless. Thankfully, this is absolutely untrue. The fact is that there is nothing stopping us from acquiring more influence in shaping policy other than our own self-defeating resistance to getting involved with the political system and the policy conversation in Washington as they actually exist today on the terms presently available. Insofar as an excessive adherence to the views of Chomsky and similar oppositional public intellectuals steers Arab-Americans away from engagement and encourages their alienation from the political structures in our society, it is to be assiduously avoided. I read Chomsky’s work with interest, but always with ample supplies of salt at hand.