Noam Chomsky Denied Entry into Israel

[Echo In Light]

Left-wing linguist, who was scheduled to speak at Bir Zeit University, told by Israeli inspectors at Allenby Bridge that a reason for the refusal would be sent to the American embassy.
by Amira Hass

Professor Noam Chomsky, an American linguist and left-wing activist, was denied entry into Israel on Sunday, for reasons that were not immediately clear.

Chomsky, who was scheduled to deliver a lecture at Bir Zeit University near Jerusalem, told the Right to Enter activist group by telephone that inspectors had stamped the words "denied entry" onto his passport when he tried to cross from Jordan over Allenby Bridge.

When he asked an Israeli inspector why he had not received permission, he was told that an explanation would be sent in writing to the American embassy.

Chomsky arrived at the Allenby Bridge at around 1:30 in the afternoon and was taken for questioning, before being released back to Amman at 4:30 P.M.

Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad said Chomsky was turned away for various reasons but declined to elaborate. The ministry was looking into allowing him to enter only the West Bank, said Haddad.

In a telephone interview with Channel 10, Chomsky said the interrogators had told him he had written things that the Israeli government did not like.

"I suggested find any government in the world that likes anything I say," he said.

Chomsky is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is considered among the foremost academics in the world. He identifies with the radical left and is often critical of both Israeli and American policies.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/16-2

[sui generis]

1. the usual petty shit.

oh well, at least I'm not surprised.

I don't disagree that Israel should exercise whatever it believes in terms of limits of speech. What I disagree with is waiting until you are at the checkpoint or airport to pull that shit.

that's just small and petty.

[tavalon]

2. Not a big believer in the free speech thing, huh?

[sui generis]

3. I didn't say that.

I'm saying I respect Israel's right to manage entry to its country based on what it qualifies as undesirable ideas. I would certainly be banned myself, and I go to great pains to distinguish public policy from Judaism, and governance from the "people" of Israel. None of that matters to the browbeaters.

And by the way, since you brought up free speech let's have a chat.

No I do not believe in free speech to the idiotic extent that we're supposed clutch heart and grope the flag - I'm perfectly happy having Westboro's right to free hate speech at funerals curtailed.

I do not believe that inciting hate or disruptive speech has any place in America and that calls to violence, hatred, moral judgments and anything that incites people to take action, such as shooting abortion doctors is not really "free speech" in any context envisioned by the original essays on free speech. In fact I'd go so far as to say it's criminal and demeaning to have to even see "god hates fags" in public. That's not free speech in my book.

[tavalon]

4. Yeah, on that one area, I'm further to the left of you

I really, really dislike what the Westboro asshole patrol does and I applaud the people who stand in front of them to shield the funeral goers and I wish, wish they would shut the fuck up but no, I'm not willing to curtail their asinine free speech because that's a slippery slope we've already started to slip down and I don't want to see it become a landslide. Generationally, they have already lost, just like the KKK and they make themselves look the fools every time they show up anywhere but I'm still going to defend their right to show up as fiercely as I defend the right of those who would surround them with angel wings so that their message isn't as obvious.

I think public figures spewing hate to large audiences and spurring them to violence is akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater and in that regard, I think we should have some legal precedence for shutting that down.

My grandfather belonged to the KKK, I know little about my mother as she died when I was young but I know that I stood up to my grandfather and told him never to use n****r word in front of me again and I would like to believe that had I procreated, my child wouldn't even understand what the big deal about skin color is or ever was. That is definitely happening with people's opinions about gays - the middle schoolers today really can't seem to grasp why gay people can't marry or in fact do whatever they want, just like straights. Middle schoolers! So all the anti-gay rhetoric is already a lost war (some battles are still being won by the homophobes, but the war - over by age attrition) and we didn't have to curtail free speech, just mock it and the sentiment behind it and let time do its job killing off the old ideas. It's a really long, convoluted way of winning the war for liberal ideas but it doesn't include the slippery slope of curtailing free speech that certain groups don't like.

I have this really unpopular point of view that all drugs should be legalized and doctors and pharmacists should lose the right to be dealers and every drug ever created should be out on the shelf, available for anyone to buy. Yeah, even heroin. It isn't a popular idea but I don't think I want my government to decide I'm not aloud to say that. I think my idea is a hell of a lot more reasonable that Westboro hate patrol's but there's your slippery slope. If I start picketing in front of Walgreen's demanding this, I'll have as much chance a the Westboro idiots of getting my way, but I wouldn't want to have someone decide that my free speech rights need to be curtailed because they don't like what I have to say.

[sui generis]

6. the nuance for me is

free speech DOES need "zones". There's the town square - have at it. City sidewalk in front of a federal building, no problem. Outside the courthouse, go for it.

Picketing the sidewalk outside my home because the sidewalk is public property - I don't believe anyone intended residential sidewalks to be a proper venue for "free speech".

I do think we need to consider what free speech means - I don't care what hate or obscenity or porn is spewed on the interwebs or private channels on tv, but I do care about having to step past someone in front of my home, and I do care about the right to free speech being held higher than a family's right to privacy at a funeral, and I most certainly do care about "free speech" that incites people to violence in any forum.

We do need standards, and if slippery slopes are the issue, then that's the problem space we need to address. The "all or nothing" rule is a contrived rule. If I lived in Dearborn, Michigan, I'd be angry if I heard a call to prayer at 5:30 a.m., AND if I heard church bells ringing matines, complines and angelines.

We need to have standards that are fair to everyone - and by that I mean the right to free speech should not be construed as the right to intrude on my privacy or personal space or safety.

[tavalon]

7. I think we both recognize that some nuance needs to be in place

and that a world where Westboro Asshats (have you noticed I have a plethora of names for them?) weren't picketing at funerals would be a nicer place, but I would rather see my fellow citizens handle it. I loved the angel wing coalition who cordoned off the Westboro freaks. See, when you say Free Speech zones I think of how we Democrats/Liberals/Greens were cordoned off, far, far away from the silverspoon sociopath Idiot in Chief for all of those years. I'm not okay with that.

And while I understand that you might not want people picketing you on the public (generally public) sidewalk in front of your house, I want to be able to picket war criminals such as GWB and Dick Cheney on the public sidewalks in the front of their houses. I want the Republicans to be able to protest my protesting in front of these war criminals houses, see?

[Echo In Light]

5. For those interested, there's a 100+ post debate on this at the source

[Echo In Light]

8. Bump

[Cleita]

9. Shows that Israel is sensitive to his criticisms of their treatment of the

Palestinians. I believe instead of putting their hands over their ears and shouting, "I can't hear you!" or in this case, "I refuse to hear you!", they should allow him to speak no matter how unpleasant it will be for the authorities in power to listen. Otherwise, they have just proved that they aren't a democracy any more.

[Echo In Light]

10. Bump

[Echo In Light]

11. More ...

"The young man asked me whether I had ever been denied entry into other countries. I told him that once, to Czechoslovakia, after the Soviet invasion in 1968"

Front-page coverage and heated morning radio discussions asked how Mr. Chomsky, an 81-year-old professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, could pose a risk to Israel and how a country that frequently asserts its status as a robust democracy could keep out people whose views it found offensive.

Mr. Chomsky, who is Jewish and spent time living on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1950s, is an outspoken critic both of American and Israeli policy. He has objected to Israel’s foundation as a Jewish state, but he has supported a two-state solution and has not condemned Israel’s existence in the terms of the country’s sharpest critics around the world.

The decision to bar him from entering the West Bank to speak at Birzeit, a Palestinian university, “is a foolish act in a frequent series of recent follies,” remarked Boaz Okun, the legal commentator of the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, in his Monday column. “Put together, they may mark the end of Israel as a law-abiding and freedom-loving state, or at least place a large question mark over this notion.”

<snip>

“There were two basic points,” Mr. Chomsky told the interviewer. “One was that the government of Israel does not like the kinds of things I say — which puts them into the category of I suppose every other government in the world. The second was that they seemed upset about the fact that I was just taking an invitation from Birzeit and I had no plans to go on to speak in Israeli universities, as I have done many times in the past, but not this time.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/world/middleeast/18chomsky.html?src=mv