Norman Finkelstein is a citizen of a powerful country (the US) whose financial, political, and military support to Israel is a vital ingredient of Israel’s security, that has also allowed Israel to maintain its policy of colonial expropriation of occupied Palestinian and Syrian land since 1967.
In the past, the Israeli government has denied entry to its national terrain– and also to the occupied territories that it completely controls– to large numbers of US citizens, many or most of them US citizens of Palestinian heritage. Others denied entry have been associated with political movements, including the commitedly nonviolent International Solidarity Movement. Those acts of discrimination have been (somewhat feebly) protested by US officials, over the years.
With today’s reported blocking of Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s entry into Israel, that country’s government has reached a new low. I am not sure what difference it should make to us as US citizens, in this context, whether Finkelstein is Jewish or not (he is), or whether he’s the child of two Holocaust survivors or not (which he is, too.) What seems clear is that Finkelstein is being discriminated against in the present instance solely on the basis of his expressed views, rather than on the basis of any evidence of past wrongdoing or planned future wrongdoing.
Finkelstein is a committed supporter of the two-state outcome to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which implies that he entirely supports Israel’s continued existence as a majority Jewish state. What he has strongly criticized are many of Israel’s actions that have inflicted considerable harm on citizens and residents of neighboring polities with the aim of trying to force these polities to bow to Israel’s will.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have also criticized these actions. Does that mean that we will also be denied entry the next time we seek to visit Israel?
Why on earth should our government and our tax-dollars continue to prop up a regime that behaves in this notably anti-democratic way?
Richard Silverstein blogged the following last night:
- For those wishing to protest against Finkelstein’s detention, you may call, fax or e-mail:
Meir SHEETRIT
Minister of Interior
2 Kaplan St., Qiryat Ben-Gurion
P.O. Box 6158, 91061 Jerusalem
Tel. 972-2-670-1411 / 972-2-629-4722
Fax: 972-2-670-1628
Meir SHEETRIT
Knesset
Telephone 1: 972-2-640-8410
Telephone 2: 972-2-640-8409
Fax: 972-2-640-8920
Email: mshitrit@knesset.gov.il
If you are American, call the State Department’s Hotline for American Travelers: 202-647-5225. Let them know this is happening and is in violation of international law. Call your Congress member and senator NOW and advise them a U.S. citizen is being denied access to Israel.
Good advice (though technically, there’s no international law bar to Israel controlling its borders as it sees fit.) Realistically, it is probably too late now to prevent this deportation. But I think it’s important that US citizens should still make known to our own government and congressional representatives our continuing concern about Israel’s discriminatory and anti-democratic treatment of many of our fellow-citizens who seek to visit that country, and we can now add Dr. Finkelstein to the list of our examples.
My sympathies to Norman Finkelstein himself, meanwhile. I hope his treatment at Ben-Gurion was not too horribly humiliating.
“…that has also allowed Israel to maintain its policy of colonial expropriation of occupied Palestinian and Syrian land since 1967.”
LOL! In chipper form lately, aren’t we oh hateful one?
Anyway, your description of the ISM is laughable. They are committed to non-violence in the same way that a cornerman for a boxer is committed to non-violence. Israel rightfully decided not to let these people frolic around in the territories to assist the “resistance” (which is anything but non-violent). In one case, this led to the death of one of their volunteers. In another case, they prolonged a standoff at the Church of the Nativity for days if not longer.
As for Finkelstein? The articles only glancingly mention what appears to be the real issue, that he travelled to Israel for the purpose of unauthorized entry into the territories. You omit this fact entirely (Helena being selective with facts? Surprise surprise).
Personally, I think Israel can easily afford to have a failed academic like Finkelstein go to the territories. It’s not like he has the ability to do anything harmful. Nevertheless, for safety and security reasons, it’s legitimate for Israel to bar entry for people who plan unauthorized visits to areas which are part of a military dispute.
Admitedly, the articles do not go into a detailed explanation. But at the very least you, as the d journalist you purport to be, would do some investigation into the actual facts rather than make what appears to be an unsupported assertion that Finkelstein was barred entry into Israel for his opinions or prior statements.
But then again, you were the same person who bizarrely speculated that Israel was behind the assassination of Rafik Hariri, and didn’t even have the integrity to retract it when it became clear that this was conspiracy-mongering of the lowest form.
“Nevertheless, for safety and security reasons, it’s legitimate for Israel to bar entry for people who plan unauthorized visits to areas which are part of a military dispute.”
LOLZ right back atcha–in your zealousness, you prove Helena’s point. *All* of the settlements are in fact unauthorized, or to put it more strongly, illegal, yet the Israeli government tacitly supports them, and even provides armed support for the ‘settlers,’ who, after all, are also ‘unauthorized persons.’ Yet, these lawbreakers, who are endangering Israel with their illegal activities, are allowed to ‘frolic’ freely–why is that?
Btw, this is another area where Israel has clearly violated the Geneva Convention–from Wikipedia:
Occupied territories are lawfully occupied only by military personnel, and such civilians as are necessary to support the military occupation of that territory. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids the transfer of civilians from or to occupied territories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied_Territories
A cynic might well think that Finkelstein and others are being barred from witnessing and reporting the atrocities that occur daily in the Occupied Territories at an overwhelmingly lopsided ratio.
Nice way to dodge the point entirely, Davey.
Elsewhere Finklestein elaborated his prediction that a 2 state solution would probably only be transitory, because of demographic and political trends, but this is of no moment to me, as someone who supports the ultimate right of return and a general plebiscite determining how the land in question should be governed.
I don’t see the dodginess of Dave’s comments at all. Instead he makes a cogent argument using facts which are perpetually left out of the Zionist mythology skewing the US media’s portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this way Dave’s comments are like the entire body of work Norman Finkelstein has produced.
Finkelstein is an anti-Zionist supporter of a secular one state resolution to the conflict, a position which any honest secular Israeli would embrace.
Probably what got Finkelstein barred from Israel is his principled argument that just as Palestinians in Gaza were justified in setting explosives to the wall separating them from Egypt in the south because they were desperate to access resources necessary to sustain life (no point remaining imprisoned in a ghetto enclosure and starving to death!), the Palestinians in the West Bank would also be justified in setting explosives to the Apartheid wall in and around Jerusalem, Ramallah, Qalqilliyah, etc. because the wall was built illegally by Israel on occupied land and it restricts many Palestinians from enjoying their right to free movement.
No doubt Finkelstein, being the clear-headed and outspoken activist intellectual that he is, planned to use his visit to Israel, much like Ronald Reagan in Berlin during the late 1980s, to plea with Ehud Olmert “Tear Down This Wall!”
Perhaps there will be more American citizens in the near future who will travel to our special friend and ally in the Middle East to voice the same plea. Imagine the impact of a future courageous US president like Barack Obama making the case that if the racist South African government can speak truth and reconcile, and if the Protestants and Catholics of Ireland can negotiate and reconcile, then it is past time for the Israeli government to do the same.
Joshua, you’re back. Sadly though, in your vacation from commenting here you didn’t seem to gain any more idea of how to conduct a serious, friendly discussion about significant issues on which reasonable people may, certainly, disagree quite strongly. But the strength of that disagreement should not preclude mutual respect. Indeed, it makes it even more necessary if we are to hold an informative discussion.
If you persist with your name-calling and your snarky put-downs, don’t expect to continue to be given space here.
You might want to refresh your familiarity with JWN’s commenter’s guidelines?
All I have to say to Joshua is:
Mordecai Vanunu.
Now to the rest of you I say, Vanunu was a threat to Israel’s political elite because the exposure of its nuclear arsenal would destroy its buffer-zone argument for expansion of settlements.
Israel, like the US and UK is a real estate bubble propped up by a high-tech defense bubble. Expansion of the settlements is as vital for Israel as the imminent bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for America and Northern Rock for Britain, to keep the bubble and its attendant political corruption going a little while longer.
Why would a country with 200 nukes need to piddle around with stealing olive groves from old men? Even hard-pressed Israeli taxpayers might start asking questions if they knew the sheer size of their deterrent.
Instead, it’s one buffer zone after another, all the way to Greater Israel and the water and oil resources that will make many fortunes. At some point, an Israeli prime minister will have to explain to his people why giving up the Golan Heights is irrelevant as long as he controls weapons that could annihilate Syria and Iran many times over. But it will cost him – and I bet the cost will be campaign contributions from developers. (Perhaps all the way from Long Island.)
I didn’t say any of this to Joshua because he knows why Vanunu was a threat. It’s hardly a secret to Israelis that their country has become a financial racket. Jack Abramoff, jumping from Indian reservation casinos to Palestinian reservation casinos? What more need I say?
Helena, I’m really not sure how my comment violates any of your guidelines.
True, it did point out how you jumped to conclusions, spoke out of ignorance, and demonstrated bias and prejudice as opposed to analysis. But the comment was no more a violation of the guidelines than your own diatribes.
I realise I’m outside the guidelines saying this and that my comment will be deleted, but I’m going to say it anyway. Joshua, you are a tool.