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by A4ET8a8uTh0 1526 days ago
I followed a chain of links to see if I can pinpoint the origin of the quote, but that only resulted in, as you indicated, in Chomsky's own words[1]. As such, you are right, for that reason his credibility is more relevant since I was not able to verify Eban's words.

Separately, I did some basic googling of Eban quotes and his positions[2] do not seem at odds with the gist of Chomsky's quote though:

"One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all. Anti-Zionism is merely the new anti-Semitism….”

I only started reading the link you provided so it may take a while before I respond.

[1]https://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/27/noam_chomsky_at_unit... [2]https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/18/corb-n18.html

1 comments

>his positions[2] do not seem at odds with the gist of Chomsky's quote though

I would like to differ slightly. Chomsky has it that Eban wants to tar criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitic* - which leads to the 'oh well, they just accused Corbyn of antisemitism because of his Israel position' argument you see in the comments.

Eban wants to argue against a specific ideological position which at least is aimed at completely modifying the Israeli state (not 'policy criticism') and he has his argument for it - an argument we can safely say Israel has lost in the West. People may defend Israel, but they usually do not consider their opponent antisemitic per se.

* There's also the 'neurotic self-hatred' part, where Eban supposedly is naming Chomsky specifically, but I think we can safely discard that.