A leading left-wing political thinker who was denied entry to the West Bank by Israeli border guards has accused the Jewish state of acting in a “paranoid” fashion reminiscent of South Africa during the apartheid era.
Noam Chomsky, the Jewish American professor famed for his ground-breaking work on linguistics as well as his critical studies on the media and politics around the world, was trying to cross the Israeli-controlled border from Jordan to the West Bank on Sunday when he was detained for prolonged questioning and then told that he could not enter.
Mr Chomsky, 81, an outspoken critic of Israeli and US policy, had been invited to deliver lectures at Birzeit University in the Palestinian city of Ramallah. He was also due to visit a site where regular Palestinian demonstrations are held against the construction of a controversial Israeli security barrier that cuts through the West Bank, and had been scheduled to meet Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister.
“They apparently didn’t like the fact that I was due to lecture at a Palestinian university and not in Israel,” Mr Chomsky said afterwards from Jordan.
Israeli immigration officials called the refusal a “misunderstanding” between various branches of military and civilian bureaucracy at the border crossing. Mr Chomsky, however, said that in the course of his three-hour questioning his interrogator had been in frequent telephone contact with the Interior Ministry.
“They told me they didn’t like the kind of things I said about Israel,” he told The Times yesterday. “Israel is articulating its insistence that it controls who Birzeit is allowed to invite.”
His daughter, travelling with him, was also denied entry. “I really don’t know of any other examples outside of totalitarian states where people are denied entry because they are going to talk at a university. It may in part be just a reflection of the change in climate in Israel; the country has visibly got much more paranoid, circling the wagons and so on,” he said. “In fact, it is rather reminiscent of South Africa in the early 1960s, when it began to be recognised that they were becoming a pariah state and reacted pretty much in the way that Israel is reacting now.”
Mustafa Barghouti, the Palestinian opposition leader who had invited the American professor to talk in Ramallah, called the decision “a fascist action, amounting to suppression of freedom of expression”.
There was widespread condemnation of the move in Israel. “I would not prevent the man from entering, unless I had information that his statements would pose a danger. Every person has a right; it is his right to enter and his right to leave Israel,” said Yaakov Turkel, a former Supreme Court judge.
Commentary in the mass circulation Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth went farther: “It would not be an exaggeration to say that the decision to shut up Professor Chomsky is an attempt to put an end to freedom in the state of Israel,” a writer thundered. “I am not talking about the stupidity of supplying ammunition to those who say that Israel is fascist, but rather about our concern that we may be becoming fascists.”Some, however, defended the decision to bar Mr Chomsky. “It’s good that Israel did not allow one of its accusers to enter its territory. I recommend [Chomsky] try one of the tunnels connecting Gaza and Egypt,” said Otniel Schneller, an MP of the opposition Kadima party.
Israel has recently tightened the regulations for entry via the Jordanian border, with some aid groups saying that their workers have often been refused entry to the West Bank.
Readers’ favourite
· Noam Chomsky was born in 1928 in Philadelphia to Jewish parents from Eastern Europe. He claimed to have written his first political essay at the age of 10
· Came to prominence in 1967 with an essay arguing that academics had a duty to oppose the Vietnam War
· Has derided Israel as “essentially a US military base”. Visited Lebanon after the 2006 Israeli offensive to meet Hezbollah leaders
· In 2005 he was voted the world’s top public intellectual by Prospect magazine readers, seeing off the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Umberto Eco
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