Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 03:56:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: Scott McLemee <mclemee-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: M-I: On Chomsky's Notices




>From Milan Rai, CHOMSKY'S POLITICS (Verso, 1995), pp. 2-3:

[Chomsky] point[s] to the very different reception his political
writings receive in the United States compared to other Western
societies.  For example, consider the reaction to Chomsky's
examination in THE FATEFUL TRIANGLE [1983] of US foreign policy in
the Middle East.  Barely mentioned in the US press, the book was
reviewed in every major journal in Canada, and in many minor
journals, including the FINANCIAL POST, Canada's equivalent to the
WALL STREET JOURNAL.  The was also reviewed in the Canadian
equivalents of TIME and NEWSWEEK.  Chomsky comments, "If the
judgement is one of quality, then it's striking that the judgement
is so different across the border."  Christopher Hitchens
investigated the treatment of THE FATEFUL TRIANGLE in some depth:

"Consider:  One of America's best-known Jewish scholars,
internationally respected, writes a lengthy, dense, highly
documented book about United States policy in the Levant.  The book
is acidly critical of Israeli policy and of the apparently
limitless American self-deception as to its true character.  It
quotes sources in Hebrew and French as well as in English.  It is
published at a time when hundreds of United States Marines have
been killed in Beirut and when the President is wavering in his
commitment, which itself threatens to become a major election
issue.  It is the only book of its scope (we need make no judgement
as to its depth) to appear in the continental United States.  The
screens and the headlines are full of approximations and guesses on
the subject.  Yet, at this unusually fortunate juncture for
publication, the following newspapers review it:  (1) the LOS
ANGELES HERALD-EXAMINER; (2) the BOSTON GLOBE."



	



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