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Summary: An incredible analysis of US policy towards Israel-Palestine
Review: Chomsky does an excellent job of presenting the flip (out of the mainstream media) side to this delicate issue. His analysis of US policy towards Israel over the decades since 1948 is both fascinating and insightful. Although it covers the issue only to the early 1980's, this is an excellent text for anyone who is trying to better understand the factors that forged the current US-Israeli-Palestinian relationship.
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Summary: The complete truth about Zionist oppression of innocent civi
Review: Chomsky ranks with the the worlds best political analysts such as Edward Said and this book is a shining example. Most Americans do not know that U.S. aid to Israel is supplying a non-democratic/oppressive/racist nation in not just its campaign against the Palastinians and their land but through military transfers that have caused the lives of thousands in Latin America. A must read for anyone who cares for the truth!
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Summary: Rantings of a privileged white male from an ivory tower
Review: Chomsky's anti-America, anti-Israel screed is purely for those who live in a fantasy world where every problem in the world can be safely contained and blamed on America, and shades of gray are firmly verboten. For those who have to live and work in the real world, where bad people do bad things based on personal motives and desires that cannot be, somehow and inevitably, traced back to American government of business, it's utterly worthless.
There are much better books out there about understanding the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and/or the role of the US in that dispute or in the Middle East in general that take hard looks at the issue. Israel is certainly not without culpability in the ongoing problems with Palestinians, but Chomsky lacks the objectivity, apparently, to exmanine the issue in a productive, reasoned manner.
For those who are safely ensconced on a college campus somewhere, this may be a decent book that will support illusions about human nature and the badness of American government. For those who have matriculated out into reality, spend your money elsewhere on a better book.
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Summary: chomsky's rantings deceive only those who want to be deceive
Review: chomsky's books all share the same defining characterisic: rant. his arguments are irrational, his logic arcane, and his conclusions so far afield of history and sociology that one must conclude that he is quite literally trapped inside of his own ideology.He effectively ignores facts that undermine or countervail his pre-conceived notions, he cherry-picks those facts that fit his ideology, no matter how few and far between they may be, and he de-contextualizes those facts so that he can interpret them any way he wants. even the most cursory and superficial review of his book leads the reader to conclude that either he is psychotic, or a truly evil person. david Meir-Levi
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Summary: A modern genius at his best
Review: Dr. Chomsky is at his usual unstoppable best in this seminal tome, effectively demolishing mainstream, accepted ideas about Israel and the Middle East by quoting exhaustively from myriad sources. Read this book if you are interested in an honest, no-holds-barred picture of the modern Middle East. This book cuts so hard against the grain of American media coverage that it my fingers bleed just to hold it.
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Summary: An eye-opener, but which should be warily approached
Review: First of all, allow me to say that I consider this book to be a must-read for any person interested, beyond the vaguest outlines, in the Israeli-Arab conflict. Yes, Chomsky has often been criticized as biased and unobjective, and frankly I don't believe he should disagree with this judgment, as he makes no attempt to disguise these attributes - as he himself notes in his preface to the book. Throughout 'The Fateful Triangle', this lack of objectivity is made blatantly obvious in two aspects: The facts cited and the sources used. On the former count, Chomsky often attempts to incorporate events which fit in his own theory, while systematically leaving out others. This is especially obvious in his account of the Lebanon situation, which largely does not mention Palestinian atrocities, while focusing on Phalange ones. On the latter count, Chomsky's primary Hebrew resources are such which most Israeli readers would consider none too objective - 'Davar', the radically left-wing 'Al-Hamishmar', and the more objective but still selective 'Haaretz'. Why then is this book a must-read? Because Chomsky is far more courageous than other intellectuals, and therefore cites data which would be extremely hard to find in normal sources; I have not yet encountered, for instance, a fuller account of Israeli atrocities, atrocities which I believe it critical all Israelis be made aware of. He also shatters, in good time, some improbable myths surrounding Israel's foreign policy, as compared to the PLO's. Let me therefore sum it up: This is an important book which must be read, if only to expand the reader's views and choice of opinion regarding the Middle East conflict. However, it must be approached intelligently and critically, while being aware that one of the author's aims was to indoctrinate the reader to his view of the reality, rather than reveal reality itself.
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Summary: Formidable and comprehensive
Review: Formidable and comprehensive. For anyone interested in learning about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and US policies towards it, this book, in my opinion, is a must read. I have to disagree with a number of points put forth by different reviews on this site. Firstly, it is nothing short of dihonest propagandizing to reductively label this book as hatred or anti-semitism directed towards the Jewish people. Now on to some more specific points of refutation. It is reductive and false to characterize Chomsky's train of thought concerning the 6-day war of 1967 to being nothing more than Israeli agression. Chomsky does argue that this incident was marked by Israeli agression, although it is disingenuous to say that this point alone is enough to characterize Chomsky's argument. Sure, at the time the Arab states had stated more than once their view that the state of Israel was illegitimate and many openly called for its destruction. But just as is the case with many Israeli statesmen, there is often a stark contrast between what one says he will do and what one actually does. I am not making the argument here that the Arab leaders had no intention of using violence against Israel. What I am saying, however, is that there is no overwhelming consensus nowadays that Israel's existence was in fact seriously in jeopardy at the time. Chomsky does raise some interesting points, including quotes, among other forms of evidence, from many senior Israeli military officers and statesmen that explicitly stated there was no immediate threat to Israel's existence. The point here is that it is not carved in stone that Israel's existence was seriously threatened and it is important to any serious scholar to study and become familiar with all the different points of contention regarding an issue. Another point of relevance here is that Israeli policies, at the time, were as rejectionist towards the Palestinians as PLO and Arab policies were towards Israel, which Chomsky quite extensively covers. Would staunch supporters of Israel be inclined to believe that if Israel had a right to self defense through the use of military agression towards its enemy, should not then Palestinian agression towards their enemies also be equally justifiable? Surely, one must believe that the Palestinian people, as a whole, were, and continue to be, more in jeopardy of losing the very little that they have left than Israel was in 1967. Chomsky challenges the usual and mainstream lines of thought in this crisis in a thorough, and as I said before, formidable way. Another point I would like to mention here, in contrast to another reviewer's opinions, has to do with the claim of an argument made by Chomsky regarding the location of a Jewish homeland. One reviewer makes the claim that Chomsky suggested why the Jewish homeland couldn't have been set-up on US soil and then goes on to criticise Chomsky for his lack of common sense by saying that it just wouldn't politically work as the US would never allow this to happen. This reviewer has completely missed Chomsky's argument and point on this issue. What Chomsky does suggest is a scenario where an attempt would have been made to set-up the Jewish homeland on US soil. Chomsky brings this up to show the fact that the US would never allow this, despite having a large Jewish population. He is simply illustrating how reluctant any group of people of a land would be to give up a portion of their land for another group to pursue their own self-determination, especially if this new land were to be based upon a system of segregation, as is the case with Israel. The US is one example in which Chomsky uses to show the Americans, who have been so historically more supportive of Israel than of the Palestinians, how the native inhabitants of the land of Palestine must have felt when the UN partition of Palestine was announced in 1947 (without any regard for Palestinian wishes, mind you). The one criticism I do have of Chomsky and this book, however, is it's lack of depth regarding the dark side of Palestinian militancy. Nowhere does Chomsky justify the many morally reprehensible acts of violence and terror that have been carried out by Palestinian militancy; he does in fact criticise and condemn numerous atrocities carried out by the PLO and Arab states among others. He does not, however, go into this as deeply as maybe he should. Then again, the book would probably be a few hundred pages longer. In any case, this is a must read for anyone studying or simply interested in this everlasting conflict and US policies towards it.
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Summary: The Single Most Important Book On the MidEast Conflict
Review: I have bought this book for people, especially Americans, interested in knowing what is happening in Palestine and what's the role of the US in the crisis. Anybody interested in getting an informed understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict NEEDS this book.
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Summary: the confirmation bias at work?
Review: I have to admit that I find it frustrating how many people seem to have their biases confirmed by Chomsky's writings, and then to treat his writings as though they were a definitive source for that very reason. What is valuable in this text is that it challenges many widespread assumptions about, and interpretations of, the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, it is a mistake to think that all of those traditional assumptions and interpretations are false simply because they have been challenged. Admittedly, Chomsky's tone is persuasive, but I counted well over a hundred points in the book at which he suppressed information required for an informed assessment of his claims. These are pitfalls for the unwary reader. To take one example--raised by the previous reviewer--there is Chomsky's treatment of the 1967 war. Chomsky attributes to Moshe Dayan the claim that Israel was never existentially threatened by the forces gathered on its border. As Mr. Abbot correctly points out, the question of how serious a threat Israel was under is important for a thorough understanding of this war and its origins. But, notably, Chomsky is hardly one to attempt such an understanding. True to style, he merely tosses out the Dayan attribution as though it were somehow a damning indictment of Israel's motivations. Yet careful thinkers will ask: so what if Dayan believed this? This is, after all, the same Moshe Dayan who disastrously underestimated the threat of an Arab attack in 1973. More importantly, even if it's true that Israel's military leaders never perceived a genuine existential threat, why should this matter? The fact remains that Egyptian troops were massed on the Israeli border (officially, an act of war), Egypt illegally re-closed the Straits of Tiran (officially, an act of war), and Nasser had expressly vowed to annihilate Israel in the impending war. (True to style, Chomsky conveniently omits all of these details.) Faced with this situation, what country wouldn't try to ensure that the impending war would begin on terms favorable to it?--What exactly was Israel supposed to do? This is a question to which every fair critic owes an answer. Perhaps Chomsky was trying to make the point that Israel cynically exploited a legitimate defense situation for territorial gain? If so, this needs to be said explicitly, and that would require, at a minimum, acknowledging the reality of the threat, existential or not. (It should be remembered that threats can be serious even when they are not existential.) The fact that even this fairly obvious level of analysis is consistently lacking makes it hard to understand why anyone would see this as an intellectually serious contribution to the subject. A related case in point (noticed by another reviewer), is that Chomsky takes Begin's description of the highly successful 1967 war as a "war of choice," in plumping for an invasion of Lebanon, at face value. That is, instead of seeing this as a cynical exploit on Begin's part, to drum up support for a dubious adventure in Lebanon, Chomsky treats this as a sincere histroical commentary on the earlier war. Since it is hard to believe that anyone is that naive, it seems that he is being deliberately manipulative. Finally, at that time of the 1967 war, we should keep in mind that Egypt, not Israel, was occupying Palestinian land, and (especially during the 50's) dispatching bloody terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Somehow, the question of what entitled Egypt to indulge in such bloody provocation escapes Chomsky's attention.
Rating: 
Summary: Good analysis, very detailed but not a general review.
Review: I'm going to break with the convention of the other reviewers and give this book a 3. The first thing prospective readers should know is that this is not (despite the implication of the title) a general review of of Israeli-Palistinian-US relations. Almost half of the book is taken up by a detailed review of the 1982 war in Lebanon. This would have made sense in 1983 when the book was originally published, but 20 years it later makes for a skewed focus. The first few chapters provide some rather spotty background history. And the additional material in the new addition is essentially a few slightly reworked Z Magazine articles which are not really integrated into the rest of the book. Even for the events focused on, this book is not designed as a complete history. In classical Chomsky style, it is designed to be an antidote the to incomplete history provided by the mainstream media. The style of the book is also classical Chomsky, an almost stream of conciousness flow of information demolishing the standard historical explination and bolstering his own. However, put together, these two factors make the book difficult to follow for a reader not already well versed in the events. Despite this negative begining, don't think that I'm one of those Chomsky-bashers who give 1 star to everything he's ever written. I actually like Noam. And I am generally persuaded by his analysis. However, after slogging through this book I felt that the lasting knowledge I will take from it could have been fit into 100 pages rather than 550. So unless you have a serious interest in the 1982 war in Lebanon this probably isn't the book for you.
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