Security Agents Deport Pro-Hizbullah Jewish Professor

Hana Levi Julian

American Jewish professor Norman Finkelstein, who recently met with Hizbullah in Lebanon and has slammed Israel for "occupying Arab land," was blocked by security agents from entering the country on Friday. He had planned to meet with Palestinian Authority officials.

Finkelstein was escorted on to a US-bound plane within hours and was informed that he is banned from Israel for at least ten years. The son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein is a political commentator and the author of a book called Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, in which he reviews what he calls Israel's "exploitation" of the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II.

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1953, he dedicated his first book to his parents, both of whom survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Maidanek and Auschwitz concentration camps, with the self-admonition: "May I never forget or forgive what was done to them."

It was Finkelstein's recent meetings with members of the Hizbullah terrorist organization in Lebanon that got him in trouble with Israeli authorities.

Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) officials said Finkelstein was told he must leave due to his contacts with "hostile elements in Lebanon" and his refusal to give a full explanation of his meetings with Hizbullah and other groups.

According to Finkelstein's lawyer, Michael Sfard, the anti-Zionist professor denied the Israel Security Agency's claim and said he was willing to answer every question the agents asked.

Both Sfard and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) have slammed the decision to deny Finkelstein entry to the country, saying it was "typical of a totalitarian regime." The controversial academic has met with fiery disapproval from many of his peers, including world-famous civil rights champion and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

Comment: Big mistake Israel. When the "Professor" was invited to speak at my home University, I put together a group thqt promoted the following idea: He has a right to speak a our University, he does not have a right to make up his own facts. To that end we created several information sheets that demonstrated his inept professorial "research" and handed these out at his lecture. We also attended, in force, his lecture and were prepared to ask him questions he had never been asked-the moderator knew we were in the "house" and conveniently never allowed for a Q and A session.

Israel you have given this man ammunition to keep him going for several years and he will use this experience to further damage us. I can even predict his initial comments-will focus on "democratic Israel" speaks with forked tongue and is not what it promotes itself to be-just wait a day or two and se if I am incorrect.