Alan Dershowitz inoculated me early on against trusting anything from Noam Chomsky, no matter how benign. But it appears the vaccine wears off with time.
Chomsky derides the lack of skin in the game by opinionated parties far-removed (do his ears hear his own mouth?!), quoting Chaim Weizmann.
Proponents of each of the national movements are quick to dismiss the competing claims. I will not review the familiar debate. It is a simple and pointless exercise to construct an argument to demonstrate the legitimacy of the claims of either side and the insignificance of the demands of its opponent. Each argument is convincing in its own terms. Each claim is, in a sense, absolute: a plea for national survival. Those who urge the demands of one or the other partner in this deadly dance, deaf to conflicting pleas, merely help pave the way to an eventual catastrophe. Such behavior is pathetic on the part of direct participants; disgraceful, on the part of those partisans from afar who will not have to pay the costs of their fanaticism. One may recall Chaim Weizmann’s rebuke to American Zionists for urging “other people to the barricades to face tanks and guns”—“the speeches are made in New York,” Weizmann added, “while the proposed resistance is to be made in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.” The same might be said—and probably has been—by Palestinians with regard to those who urge them on towards self-destruction.
…
I almost believed him. Almost. Then I checked.
As it turns out, Weizmann was giving praise.
In October 1946 eleven new Jewish settlements were established in the Negev in a single night, aimed at ensuring that the Negev would be included within the boundaries of the State…
The 22nd Zionist Congress opened in Basle on 9 December 1946. The new Negev settlements, Weizmann told the delegates, ‘have, in my deepest conviction, a far greater weight than a hundred speeches about resistance – especially when the speeches are made in New York, while the proposed resistance is to be made in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem’.
…