Instead, Noah Cohen compounds the incoherence of his first response (”Noam Chomsky and 'Left' Apologetics for Injustice in Palestine”) with further inaccuracies and fudged logic in his second response (”Chomsky's 'Realism' and 'Advocacy': Advocacy for what and for whom?”). It was easy enough for Noam Chomsky to dismantle the argument in Cohen's first article, or whatever part in it that was sufficiently coherent. For the informed, it doesn't take much to see through the jumble of half-truths in his second article.

To illustrate, I skip most of the rambling in Cohen's second response, and consider the last two paragraphs in it — reproduced here in full:

[H]ere is a typical statement of the “one-state” position from the PLO emissary to the UN, Saadat Hasan, in 1969:

“The Palestinian revolution is humanitarian in its goals. It seeks the establishment of a just and democratic society that guarantees to all its citizens, irrespective of their faith, the same rights and responsibilities and the same duties. It seeks the establishment of a society free from racism and bigotry, free from repugnant concepts of supremacy and racial purity, free from economic exploitation and social ills. It seeks the establishment of a State and not a beachhead for perpetual waves of invasion by followers of one faith or another. It seeks the establishment of a democratic secular State — a pluralistic State — for all its people.”

This is not just an isolated statement, but the main current of much of the Palestinian thought of its time and through the 1970s. More importantly, this is not just a documentary or historical question. I personally can say that I have found the spirit of commitment to pluralism, and against racism and religious intolerance, very much alive everywhere I have traveled in Palestine.

This passage lifts the statement by Saadat Hasan out of its historical context, which is no more “typical” than other PLO statements advocating a “two-state” position. Contrary to what Cohen writes, it is not true that the “one-state” position is “the main current of much of the Palestinian thought” through the 1970s (or later).

The impression Cohen conveys is that Palestinians have consistently maintained, since at least 1969, a uniform view of what their liberation entails: a single “democratic secular state … for all its people” over all of historic Palestine. In support of this view, Cohen writes “this is not just a documentary or historical question. [T]he spirit of commitment to pluralism … [is] very much alive everywhere” today, as if such a commitment necessarily implies a “one-state” position. In fact, Palestinians have not maintained a single uniform view of the form their liberation will take. Pluralism and democracy are nice general ideals that everyone will support, but there has been no such thing as a fixed Palestinian understanding, unchanged since 1969, of what they mean in practice.

Totally absent in Cohen's piece is the intense debate among Palestinians of what their struggle should achieve: What forms of government will allow the preservation of their communities and the exercise of self-determination on their own land. A history of this debate explains why, at different times over the years, some Palestinians would advocate a one-state position, others a two-state position, and several variations within each position. Some one-state proponents have talked of a binational state, others of a state based on the principle of one-man-one-vote without reference to national or religious identity.

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The meeting of the Palestine National Council (PNC) in 1969 formally adopted the goal of a secular democratic state in the whole of historic Palestine — a state for all of its inhabitants classified according to religious affiliations (Muslims, Christians, and Jews) not according to national identities. There was no mention of a single binational state.

Around 1972-73, one of the PLO groups, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), initiated a discussion around a transitional “Palestinian authority” on any liberated part of Palestine, which became the official platform of the PLO at the PNC meeting of 1974.

After 1974 a Palestinian authority came to mean a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with different emphases among different Palestinian groups on the need for a transition towards a single state over all of historic Palestine in some undetermined future. Again, there was no mention of a binational state, and if there was mention of a single state it was invariably qualified as “democratic secular”, meaning it would not discriminate according to religious identities, but glossing over national distinctions or avoiding them altogether.

At the PNC meeting of 1988 in Algiers, the PLO formally adopted a program that would recognize two separate states in historic Palestine, one for Iraeli Jews and one for Palestinian Arabs. This in effect formally recognized the existence of two separate national groups, one Israeli and one Palestinian.

Since the late 1990's, after the failure of the Oslo agreements and the unrelenting Israeli policy of expansion into areas nominally assigned to a future Palestinian state, some Palestinian activists abandoned the “two-state” position and started examining the option of binationalism and conditions for its realization. Most prominent among these are the Knesset member Azmi Bishara and the late academic Edward Said. The occupied territories having been transformed into a patchwork of entrenched Israeli settlements, they argued in effect that the task of removing the settlements would be more formidable than a struggle to dismantle the apartheid system to which the Palestinians are now subjected in all of historic Palestine.

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This is an on-going debate among Palestinians. Outside supporters should be careful in inserting themselves into it. Taking position in America in support of Palestinian rights is certainly an important task for all progressives, but they should not take position at the expense of distorting Palestinian views — for or againt “one-state”, for or against “two-state” — nor on the presumption that they know better what is good for the Palestinians.

Noah Cohen could have learned a little and avoided the pitfalls of a truncated history, had he taken the time to check the relevant documents — or found someone to check them for him (if he doesn't read Arabic).