On the Emails Between Jeffrey Epstein and Noam Chomsky

I am heartsick.

As a young boy, I experienced horrific sexual violence, which I have written about before and which continues to mark me even decades later. It means that I cannot tolerate anyone who exploits young children in a way that is not merely moral but physical: I am utterly repulsed by anyone who harms children and shudder when I hear anyone who even disciplines a child. Two of my children are adults, and two are still children and with each of them I have felt and feel deeply about their fragilities and their futures. For me, there are no second chances for a person who violates a child.

I read about the Jeffrey Epstein case because it hurts me greatly to read about the dangerous violence inflicted on children and young people.

But of course, it was impossible to ignore the emails between my friend and collaborator Noam Chomsky and Epstein. I have read what I can, and I have seen what I need to see. Noam has been a great mentor for me, and we have made two books together (the last one, his final book). Both books were written around the time that he was in correspondence with Epstein. But nothing in our many discussions brought up any of the themes in that correspondence or of the fact that he was meeting Epstein. Noam and I talked about US imperialism and its crimes, and then about Cuba. The only personal other thing we talked about other than these political matters was our love of dogs and the Arabic language.

Since Noam cannot speak or write and explain his relationship with Epstein, the matter is fraught. There is nothing to say on his behalf. When the photos and emails appeared, I was immediately disgusted by Epstein’s paedophilia, and so by Noam’s friendship with him. There is no defence for this, in my view, no context that can explain this outrage.

I asked Jeffery St. Clair, the editor of CounterPunch, what our common friend Alexander Cockburn would have made of these revelations. ‘Alex would have been troubled, I think’, Jeffrey wrote, ‘about Noam having such a close relationship with an ultra-Zionist, and probable Israeli agent…Seriously bad judgment from someone who usually makes such considered and thoroughly reasoned decisions’. Epstein was a man of the Far Right and a Zionist – an accumulator of men of power and influence who want to turn the world into their paradise and our hell. He introduced Noam to Ehud Barak, a man who had faced corruption allegations in the early 2000s and who had committed war crimes during his tenure as Israeli Prime Minister. In 2009, Barak conducted a terrible war against the Palestinians in Gaza, murdering about 1500 Palestinians in cold blood. The United Nations investigation committee, chaired by Richard Goldstone, found in its report that the Israeli government – led by Barak – had committed war crimes. When Barak visited the United Kingdom that year, solicitors took a case to the City of Westminster to ask for a warrant under the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, which provides for universal jurisdiction in war crimes cases. No such warrant materialised. Why would Noam meet a war criminal in 2015, six years after these events? When I asked Noam in 2021, for our first book The Withdrawal, if he would have gone to meet with Henry Kissinger, he laughed and said, no. And yet, he had earlier – unbeknownst to me, met with a war criminal.

Why consort so freely with a person of that disposition? Why provide comfort and advice to a paedophile for his crimes?

From my side, I am horrified and shocked.

Vijay Prashad

Santiago, Chile

* Vijay Prashad’s most recent book (with Noam Chomsky) is The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US Power (New Press, August 2022).