26th May 2008
Finkelstein was recently arrested by the Israeli state.
He is quoted as saying that apart from having no relation****p with
alleged terrorist organisations, as =91Always sup****ting the two state
solution based on the 1967 borders. I am no enemy of Israel=92
Savvas Michael newspaper 7th June 2008
US academic de****ted and banned for criticising Israel
* Toni O'Loughlin in Jerusalem
* The Guardian,
* Monday May 26 2008
* Article history
Norman Finkelstein, the controversial Jewish American academic and
fierce critic of Israel, has been de****ted from the country and banned
from the Jewish state for 10 years, it emerged yesterday.
Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor who has accused Israel of
using the genocidal Nazi campaign against Jews to justify its actions
against the Palestinians, was detained by the Israeli security
service, ****n Bet, when he landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion air****t on
Friday.
****n Bet interrogated him for around 24 hours about his contact with
the Lebanese Islamic militia, Hizbullah, when he travelled to Lebanon
earlier this year and expressed solidarity with the group which waged
war against Israel in 2006. He was also accused of having contact with
al-Qaida. But Finkelstein rejected the accusations, saying he had
travelled to Israel to visit an old friend.
"I did my best to provide absolutely candid and comprehensive answers
to all the questions put to me," he told an Israeli newspaper in an
email exchange.
"I am confident that I have nothing to hide. Apart from my political
views, and the sup****ting scholar****p, there isn't much more to say
for myself: alas, no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with
terrorist organisations. I've always sup****ted a two-state solution
based on the 1967 borders. I'm not an enemy of Israel."
Finkelstein is one of several scholars rejected by Israel in the
increasingly bitter divide in academic circles, between those who
sup****t and those who criticise its treatment of Palestinians.
Last year, Israel's most contentious "new historian", Ilan Pappe, left
his job as senior lecturer in political science at the University of
Haifa after he endorsed the international academic boycott of Israeli
institutions, provoking the university president to call for his
resignation.
Finkelstein was also refused tenure last year at Chicago's DePaul
University for attacking several staunch Israel sup****ters and
academics such as Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said the de****tation of
Finkelstein was an assault on free speech.
"The decision to prevent someone from voicing their opinions by
arresting and de****ting them is typical of a totalitarian regime,"
said the association's lawyer, Oded Peler.
"A democratic state, where freedom of expression is the highest
principle, does not shut out criticism or ideas just because they are
uncomfortable for its authorities to hear. It confronts those ideas in
public debate."
Finkelstein said he was held in a cell and encountered "several
unpleasant moments with the guards" and that eventually he borrowed
the mobile phone of another detainee and called a friend who in turn
called a lawyer.
Although entitled to appeal against the entry ban, Finkelstein said he
would not contest it.
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