I see many people on here arguing that they wouldn't let someone who hated or spoke out against them into their homes. Exactly. And that's your inalienable right. Just as it is exactly Birzeit University's right to forbid Chomsky from speaking at it - but that's the complete extent to which you can take that analogy. Government institutions exist to protect public freedoms; only private institutions may restrict those freedoms. It is very much not the government's right to forbid people that it doesn't like from entering the country. This is the principle of free speech and is the cornerstone of modern democracy. If you really think that no one agrees with Chomsky, then why are you worried about him speaking? - his speech wouldn't change the mind of any of those people. The only reason to forbid free speech is, as the Israeli Supreme Court said, if it creates an imminent threat against public safety. Threatening your opinions is not an imminent threat to public safety. If you really think that Chomsky shouldn't be speaking, then you should be campaigning Bizreit University to not invite him, not campaigning for your government to refuse him any entry.

It isn't a foolish act. Nor is it an attempt to silence Prof. Chomsky. Chomsky has stated on any number of occasions that Israel is a "rogue" state. Well, if Israel is a "rogue" state, than someone like Chomsky has no business entering the country. Period. Full stop. He has only his foolish mouth to blame for being denied entry. If we're that bad, why does he want to come? Were it up to me, I would extend this ban for his lifetime. I would also issue a herem. The man is no Jew. He is a traitor. If he loves Palestinian terrorists all that much, they can have him. With pleasure.

Now israelis especially the TBs here would never complain when and if other countries would want to bar Israelis coming to the EU or the US to participate in events there because there views are considered to be anti democratic or rascist or whatever. I'm right on this am I not. Please respond and reassure me TIA

The majority of posters in their echo-chamber of denunciation applaud this blatant suppression of freedom of expression - after all, Israel can do no wrong, can it? However, a cursory examination of other forums - The NY Times, Huffington Post, etc, etc, - will show that the world overwhelmingly condemns this blatantly anti-democratic decision. Do any Israelis care?

She cannot stand the fact the Jews in Israel stand up for themselves and do not like to be pushed around by the likes of Chomsky Pompsky and a Pirate Sailor, both with no intimate. knowledge of the Middle East

with Israeli visas in their passports. Chomsky Pompsky visited Iran and Lebanon, both self declared enemies and at war with Israel. Israel is only only returning the favor. It is Israel's right to do so and without any explanation. You both obviously haven't been to Israel. Mind your own business and take care of the native remnants you stole their land and massacred, reducing them to an insignificant minority. If Israel did to Arab invaders what you did to natives it wouldn't have an Arab problem today.

Lars Viks life is being threatened by Muslims with no government effective reaction, Theo Van Goch murdered in Holland for supposedly insulting Muslims by exposing the truth in a movie, Muslims riot in Europe against Danish cartoons, Geert Wilders put on trial for supposed offenses against Muslims in a truthful documentary about Quran, Wilders, Feiglin from Israel and Savage from US denied entry to UK for fear of upsetting Muslims. Now, tell again your cliche about democracies?

Muslims will take over all of the European democracies in less than 30 years by outvoting them and then establishing Sharia. The US is going under because of its insistence on political correctness and refusal to use profiling. How long do you think democracies last? Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler, a Scottish historian who in 1787, writing about the decline and fall of the Athenian Republic over two thousand years before, said: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship." "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith From spiritual faith to great courage From courage to liberty From liberty to abundance From abundance to complacency From complacency to apathy From apathy to dependence From dependence back again into bondage". I'd personally far prefer to live in a non-democratic country that one ruled by Sharia. Mike

France has around 20 years to go before it ceases to be a democracy. Muslims will outvote the indigenous French and establish Sharia. Mike

Some folks here insist on Chomsky's "right" to enter Israel or the territories. "What are you afraid of?", they ask. The same could be asked when these same people push to block Wilders or Feiglin from entering the UK, protest the appearance of Amb. Oren at Brandeis (!), or shout down speakers they don't approve of. Netanyahu, Oren, Ayalon, and even Sharansky have shouted down, as have folks like Pipes, Spencer, Horowitz, Darwish and others. A few weeks ago the vice-Ambassador from Israel was physically attacked in the UK. Where is *their* freedom of speech?

Nobody here 'fears' this Stalinist relict. He has repeated stated that his opinion is the only thing that counts and that he never bothers with the facts. Humm sounds like a lot of the morons posting here. Every country in the world including all the democracies have the right to determine who can and who cannot enter. Stop singling us out over the exact same actions that the UK, US, Canada etc do on a daily basis.

that you would gladly rake Naturei Karta over the coals. Chomsky is simply the secular equivalent. Why do you not rake him over the coals? Expel him and Naturei Karta as well. There's moral equivalence that works!

They're splitting hairs with the funny Hamas

No. We don't. Trust I have answered your question.

Right to free speech and right to enter Israel are two separate issues. Unlike Soviet people of old Israelis have access to foreign press, tv and the internet. Free speech has not been threatened by banning him from entering Israel.

I don't agree with the view to bar him entry from speaking at Bir Zeit, as I feel it wouldn't be doing major harm to have him speak, however invective it may be. However, the state had the right to deny entry to him, so stop moaning "fascism", Boaz. If this was a fascist country, you'd be jailed for writing this article...Instead I look forward to reading your next piece of paranoid hyperbole soon.

to answer your question, it's China. See the comments on this paper. From almost every country in the world, that's free or from people who live in places that are trying to be free. Meanwhile more English, German, Russian, Arabic , etc.. words to promote revulsion against Jews and Israel have been written and read in the heart of the cannibal Han homeland. Chomsky is highly quoted there as an enemy of an imaginary American empire. Combine that with the plagues, famines, and vermin that the world is forced to live with on their account and the "west" may once again see the actual multi billion person mess we are in.

as those who will not see. Unfortunately, a realistic article decrying the lack of freedom of speech and opinion is widely derided by the sight-impaired. They would rather have the government protect them from ideas which do not comport with their comfortable group-think. The government suppresses ideas and they applaud, yet very few even wonder at, the moral cowardice such action implies. If you don't like the message, shoot the messenger. That seems to be the Jewish Israeli view in a nutshell. The truly sad side effect of such thinking comes from the Talkbackers who call themselves American. I am truly ashamed that those purporting to be from the US proudly applaud state censorship. Perhaps our educational system has really fallen on hard times when we have US citizems who apparently never read, or do not understand, the First Amendment of the US Constitution. I apologize for these idiots for they know not of what they speak.

I didn't hear you complaining when Tatiana Suskind was locked up for the crime of drawing a picture of Mohammed ten or so years ago. It wasn't the beginning of fascism then, it won't be now either. Stop behaving so silly.

Silly you. There's free speech and there's license. Guess which applies here.

He's just been banned from delivering a lecture at Birzeit University. This is *not* silencing Chomsky. Newspapers, magazines, lectures, books, etc.. - this man is not in any danger of being silenced! I wouldn't mind his incessant lecturing except that I don't believe he has much of anything worth hearing. He says pretty much the same thing about - against - Israel whenever he speaks. I can sum up in a few words what Chomsky says every time he speaks about Israel - "Israel is bad. Israel is very very bad." -- This is the essence of what he would have said at Birzeit University.

I don't see what good his visit could do for the country. It would be divisive for Israeli society and is not good for the morale of the country. Even if he were to go to Israel, the man and his politics are not separable-especially when he chooses to go to area A. There is a red line he is crossing when he so blatanly helps enemies of the country. Israeli society as a whole already has many divisions as it is. It does not need yet another one.

That was the right decision.

Denying entry to criminals like Noam Chomsky and Norrman Finkelstein shows that Israel is at last beginning to behave like any civilized country behaves: keep criminals out of their borders. Noam Chomsky is a criminal supporter of terrorism, a proponent of racist anti-semitism and an apologist for the massacre of civilians by Hizbullah and Hamas, Iran, Al-Quaida, Taliban and all their sisters. He is the acting Quisling big-mouth megaphone for all these beasts. Noam Chomsky is a self-avowed enemy of Israel and should not be let inside its borders.

It's true.And self-defense it has turned to be just an excuse for Israel to behave like a fascist country.You also have a lager called gaza.