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Jewish academic Chomsky barred from Israel

The Jewish-American academic Noam Chomsky has been barred from entering Israel. The Interior Ministry says he is not on a blacklist. But Chomsky, a critic of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians, said officials made it clear that the government did not like his statements or the fact that he was invited by a Palestinian university.

AFP
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Chomsky was on his way to give two lectures at Bir Zeit university about American policy when he was stopped at the Allenby Bridge border with Jordan.

He was at the border for five hours, where he was interrogated, before he retreated to Amman, in Jordan.

“I was disappointed and surprised,” Chomsky told Al Jazeera. “The government of Israel does not like the things I say, which puts them in to the category of, I suppose, every other government in the world.”

He said the officials at the border were receiving instructions from the Ministry of the Interior.

“They were also upset about the fact I was taking an invitation from Bir Zeit and had no plans to go on to speak in Israeli universities,” said Chomsky.

A spokesperson for the ministry said there had been a misunderstanding and that officials are trying to get clearance from the Israeli military to let Chomsky into the country.

 
Chomsky, a linguistics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has in the past called the US-Israeli invasion of Gaza a “murderous assault”, and written of “hundreds of Palestinian children being butchered by US arms”.

He has also said the use of US arms in Gaza is in violation of international and US law.

“What Israel has done is a totalitarian action, and it reflects a serious shift in Israel towards extremism and racism," said his Palestinian host Mustafa al-Barghouti. "Their arrogance and feeling of impunity to international law have led them to committing an act that can only be described as stupid, because what they’ve done has no justification and it only happens when people believe they have superiority and power beyond any control.”

The Association of Civil Rights in Israel said it was characteristic of a totalitarian regime.

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