Dear Professor Chomsky,

A petition is circulating with your signature on it. It is in support of an east coast blogger named Rania Khalek. Khalek has previously fabricated a non-existent UN report to allege that besieged Aleppo was suffering because of U.S. sanctions rather than Assad’s siege. There was no such report and The

Intercept had to issue a retraction. She was fired from Alternet for plagiarism. She was forced to resign from the Electronic Intifada because she went to attend a PR conference in Damascus while Aleppo was under assault. Over 100 Palestinian writers and activists have written an open letter disavowing her politics. But you have joined the pro-Assad Syria Solidarity Movement, publisher of the Iranian regime-backed conspiracy site MintPress, and journalists from Kremlin broadcaster Russia Today to support this blogger.

Does this reflect a change in your position on Syria?

Secondly: Do you believe people are entitled to platforms? Don’t organisers have the right to judge who is worthy?

Thirdly: what is your position on misogyny? Rania Khalek has publicly defended a sectarian Hizbullah activist (Ali Kourani) for threatening

multiple women online (he’ll hang them “by their clits” he says). She says he is a “good person”. Do you believe good persons threaten to hang their female critics “by their clits”?

Lastly: You are no doubt aware that the U.N. has accused the Syrian regime of the “crime of extermination”. Do you believe condemning the Syrian regime’s

crimes is a mere “political difference” as your petition suggests? Shouldn’t the lives threatened by the regime be of greater concern to you than an Assadists’ right to slander them?

I look forward to your reply.

— Idrees Ahmad