The “only democracy in the Middle East” once again resorts to force in order to silence dissent:
“[T]he American academic Norman Finkelstein has been arrested and ordered deported from Israel. Finkelstein arrived in Tel Aviv earlier today on his way to the Occupied Territories. He was immediately detained and told he is banned from Israel for ten years. He’s expected to be deported tomorrow. Finkelstein is known one of the most prominent academic critics of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.”
Apparently Finkelstein was arrested on “security” grounds, illustrating once again that Israel’s definition of “security” is far removed from the conventional use of the term. He can at least count himself lucky that he is not Palestinian, in which case he would now be facing the very real possibility of torture and years of detention without trial, or else he might simply have been shot.
Filed under: Israeli / Palestinian, News and politics, US | 19 Comments
Tags: "security", academic freedom, Norman Finkelstein
-
-
Subscribe to The Heathlander feed
-
Site Meter
Israel is the only democracy in the ME. No doubt! Democracies defend themselves from war mongers, hate spreaders and ill liars. And Israel is doing the right thing to defend normality around there.
Interesting that none of the major newspapers in Israel seems to have picked it up. When he was refused tenure they were all over it, now…not so much. Guess it’s easier when he’s the bad guy.
Shame on Israel. Refusing entry to and deportation of Finkelstein shows how low has this racist state sunken into. Who says that Israel has the right to prevent visitations to the Palestinians?
It is indeed people like Norman who revive brotherhood between Palestinians and Jews, and that is exactly why he is treated in this shameful way.
This is a sign of desperation if you ask me. Israel regularly denies people like us entry (ISM types), but someone more high profile like Finkelstein I would have expected them to let in. This gives them bad publicity (despite the best efforts of the NYT and WP to cover this up), and the Zionists are historicaly sensitive to public (Western, white) opinion. This is another sign that they are caring less and less about that and retreating into their own little corner. This is something Finkelstein has talked about, so ironically they are proving his point for him. Cretins.
To Mr Finkelstein I say: welcome to the club — it’s a badge of honor mate
In fairness Chris, they have started to cover it:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=986558
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3547270,00.html
“welcome to the club — it’s a badge of honor mate”
Exactly right. I agree with your analysis as well – as one of the articles you link to points out, Finkelstein has been to Israel (or rather, to the OPT through Israel) 15 times before. That he is now being blocked is is hopefully a sign that Israel’s desperation is increasing.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) has it right:
Norm reaped what he sowed.
Flying to Lebanon, meeting with Hezbollah leaders and coming publicly proclaiming, “We are all Hezbollah”, made him a security concern. Did Norm ask his Hezbollah hosts about the condition of the two Israeli POW’s kidnapped two years ago?
I doubt it.
Whether Norm answered all his interrogators questions sufficiently is anyone’s guess.
Bottom line, Norm had an opportunity to appeal and he chose not to.
Tough luck.
It’s not a crime to fly to Lebanon or to meet with members of Hizbullah while you’re there. Journalists presumably do it all the time. Proclaiming “we are all Hizbullah” at a time when Israeli jets were pounding southern Lebanon to dust does not make one a “security concern” – Finkelstein was clearly not about to blow himself up on a bus in Tel Aviv.
That’ is hardly the “bottom line”. It’s an unimportant side-note, at best.
You don’t have to commit a crime to be detained, questioned & denied entry when trying to gain entry to a foreign country. This kind of thing happens all the time in many countries (including the USA).
Well, clearly, as we’ve seen. But what shows is a) the fraudulent way Israel uses “security” to accomplish political goals, b) how frightened Israel is of allowing the truth about the realities in Gaza and the West Bank to be publicised and c) how Israel abuses its illegitimate control over the occupied Palestinian territories for its own political ends.
What Israel means by “security” threat:
“Bottom line, Norm had an opportunity to appeal and he chose not to.”
Not true. Read the articles closer.
” ‘Finkelstein was boarded onto a plane back the United States before dawn. When he arrived we will decide whether to appeal this decision,’ his attorney, Michael Sfard, told Ynet. Sfard said the entry ban could last 10 years. ” (Ynet)
Appealing the *ban*, not the deportation. They just put him on a plane, with no pretence of due process. The Israelis have a long record of doing this. Appealing the 10 year ban has never to my knowledge been successfull (there may be one or two marginal exceptions I have never heard of). If the political secret police (the Shabak/Shin Bet) want to keep someone out, all they need to do is show a judge secret evidence — “security reasons” — rendering a defence next to impossible.
Oh yea and Jamie is right again: while this sort of thing does happen in other “democracies”, Israel is an extreme example, both in the frequency and lack of even pretence of due process.
Bluster aside, I suspect that possibily the main reason they are doing this was his visit with Hizb’allah people (he also met with all the other Lebanese factions, including the pro-US ones, but no one seems to mention that — and Hizb’allah are part of the government after all — again). I suspect Israel want to send a message to academics with international profiles not to meet with or legitimize Hizb’allah. I think they are fighting a loosing battle there.
Of course, the ever-present urge to suppress the truth about the conditions of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is probably as important as this.
Just read the JP piece, and you’re right to highlight that quote Jamie:
“Officials said that the decision to deport Finkelstein was connected to his anti-Zionist opinions and fierce public criticism of Israel around the world.”
If true, that means the Israel authorities stated reason for his deportation had nothing to do with Hizb’allah or whatever and it was baltently and openly just because of his political views! He’s not even anti-Zionist strictly speaking!
ZAHI
IT IS TIME THAT IRAN BE DISARMED BEGINNING WITH H AND H, AND THAT PALIS BE TRANSFERRED; IT IS TIME FOR THE PUNKS LIKE THIS TRAITOR NF TO BE PUNISHED
(NF IS A DISGRACE AND SHOULD BE CONSIGNED TO A SOUTH AMERICAN MOUNTAINTOP).
NOT ONE INCH TO THE ISLAMOFASCIST JIHAD KILLERS.
ISRAEL SHOULD RETAKE GAZA, THE NEGEV!
WE STAND WITH ISRAEL!
Norman Finkelstein is charged of incredible crimes against Jewry, such as exposing poisonous Zionists who exploit Holocaust victims for their own selfish endeavors (The Holocaust Industry, ISBN 1-85984-773-0). He is a hero, and is part of a much-slandered group of moderate Jews who are against the takeover of world Jewry by right-wing zealots, who do nothing to secure Israel. The people who suffered The Holocaust have been themselves reduced to Nazis, in respect to the 60-year hell they have inflicted on the indigenous Palestinians. Yes, there are many good-hearted, justice-loving, tolerant Jews, and Norman is one of them. Like Finkelstein, another courageous “self-hating Jew”, Ilan Pappe, a once history professor at Haifa U. was completely blackballed in Israel for the crime of being a Jew with the integrity to call what is happening in Palestine since 1948 what is is–planned and executed ethnic cleansing. Pappe was harassed to the point where he left Israel in 2007, and now lives in the U.K. He’s better off.
God help Israel when the now-in-collapse USA Empire, aka Israeli Colony, can no longer support this terror state. They will be completely isolated in the entire world, surrounded by enemies. And they won’t be victims. They created this situation. Never forget that terrorism was introduced to that land by the Jews. The Stern Gang, Irgun (Menachim Begin). What goes around comes around and the chickens are going to eventually come home to roost in that “country”. Heros like Finkelstein, Pappe, and ex-Mossad agent Victor Ovstrovsky are all Jews who see the destructive path these neocon nuts are taking Israel, and are trying to stop it by exposing it, to the risk of their financial livelihood, and their lives themselves.
I’ve left Chris’s (sorry, CHRIS’s) comment up because it’s quite amusing.
Norge, I’m sorry but the idea that the American Empire is an “Israeli Colony”, or that Israelis are Nazis, or that Finkelstein and Pappe are risking “their lives” by opposing Israeli crimes is ridiculous.
The truth is bad enough: why exaggerate? If anything, Israel is more of a US colony (although even that is an over-simplification — offshore military base maybe). It is anti-semitic to infer that “the Jews” are responsible for the crimes of the state of Israel.
Ha’aretz editorial:
The editorial is a mixed bag, but it makes the key point that Finkelstein – regardless of who he has met and what views he holds – is clearly not a “security” threat. That is, the reason he was refused entry to visit his friends in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories was not because he posed a security risk but because of his political views.
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Manhattan.