The
controversy over the Guardian (UK) interview with Noam
Chomsky
October 31, 2005
Though flawed, the Guardian article by Emma Brockes had some interesting observations on Chomsky's attitude toward the Srebrenica massacre. The interview has been pulled from the Guardian's website but is available
here.
In an earlier interview, Chomsky stated,
Srebrenica was an enclave, lightly protected by UN forces, which was being used as a base for attacking nearby Serb villages. It was known that there’s going to be retaliation. When there was a retaliation, it was vicious. They trucked out all the women and children, they kept the men inside, and apparently slaughtered them. The estimates are thousands of people slaughtered.
The key words here are "retaliation," "apparently," and "estimates"; the slaughter "apparently" took place; the thousands killed were mere "estimates"; they were, in any case, simply "retaliation" for earlier Muslim crimes. While Chomsky raises doubts about the fact and scale of the killings, he is absolutely categorical that they were retribution for earlier Muslim crimes - the slaughter apparently took place, but if it did, then it was definitely retaliation. See Marko Attila Hoare's discussion of the Guardian interview and Chomsky's position on Srebrenica,
Chomsky’s
Genocidal Denial, by Marko Hoare, November 21, 2005
Protest to the Guardian Over “Correction” to Noam Chomsky Interview By a group of Bosnian genocide survivors, academics, journalists, and others with a specialization on the subject of the Bosnian war. December 8, 2005
Chomsky's Complaints Chomsky is liberal with his charges of ‘invented contexts’, but he is vague in stating what the inventions comprise. His statements fall squarely in the category of minimizing Bosnian Serb crimes - not by denying they took place but by deflating their moral significance.
Letter to the Guardian editor by Oliver Kamm, November 15, 2005
The Guardian, Noam Chomsky and the Milosevic Lobby
The Guardian interview exposed Chomsky's position on the Srebrenica massacre, which Chomsky described as "probably overstated" and which he has minimized at various times and in various ways. The interview also cited him as saying that reports of Serb concentration-camps were "probably not true," and that claims that these camps had been deliberately invented by the Western media to demonize the Serbs were "probably correct." By Marko Attila Hoare, February 4, 2006
An overview of the whole affair
By Alison Freebairn, BIRN, December 23, 2005