Premier Rock Forum

Rick Reuben wrote:The 'only democracy in the Middle East' earning their stripes:

democracy now, 5-23-08 wrote:The 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.

Updates:

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/

Rick Reuben wrote:Glen Greenwald at salon.com on the Finkelstein arrest:

On Friday, Israeli security forces, Shin Bet, detained Norman Finkelstein when he tried to enter Israel, kept him in an airport holding cell for 24 hours, ordered him deported from the country, and then imposed a 10-year ban on his entry. Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is a Jewish-American author and academic who has frequently criticized the Israeli Government and provoked extreme animosity among right-wing factions in the U.S. He had flown to Israel 15 times previously without incident and was never charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime.

This morning, I interviewed Finkelstein regarding this episode and related issues . I also interviewed Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, whose animosity towards Finkelstein is intense and long-standing. Dershowitz, to his credit (and, given the below-described events, somewhat ironically) was quite critical of Israel's exclusion of Finkelstein.

http://media.salon.com/mp3s/2008/may/co ... lstein.mp3

http://media.salon.com/mp3s/2008/may/co ... howitz.mp3

This morning, the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, published an Editorial emphatically criticizing the government's exclusion of Finkelstein, rejecting the notion that Finkelstein posed any remote security threat and noting: "Considering his unusual and extremely critical views, one cannot avoid the suspicion that refusing to allow him to enter Israel was a punishment rather than a precaution." Haaretz further highlighted the danger of allowing the Government to suppress viewpoints it dislikes:

[T]he right of Israeli citizens to hear unusual views is one that should be fought for. It is not for the government to decide which views should be heard here and which ones should not.

The decision to ban Finkelstein hurts us more than it hurts him.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/987465.html