Chomsky to deliver Bir Zeit lecture by videoconference

The 81-year-old American scholar Noam Chomsky will deliver his pla
nned lecture to Bir Zeit by videoconference, after he was denied entry to the West Bank by the Israeli Ministry of Interior on Sunday. Chomsky was travelling from Jordan via the Allenby Bridge, when he was interrogated for four hours before being turned back.

Haaretz newspaper reported today that, despite remarks by various Israeli officials, there was no official guarantee that he would be admitted if he presented himself at the border a second time. Chomsky reportedly said that he felt the Israeli authorities were “playing games”.

Haaretz — but no Palestinian media — reported that Chomsky also spoke over the phone with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who reportedly indicated that he “strongly condemns the decision of the occupying forces to prevent Chomsky from entering Palestinian land”. This report can be read in full here.

Well, as we used to say in New York, that and a subway token will get you … a ride on the subway.

Continue reading Chomsky to deliver Bir Zeit lecture by videoconference

Noam Chomsky speaks after Israel denies him entry to the West Bank

Richard Silverstein has posted on his blog, Tikkun Olam, here, a youtube video of an Al-Jazeera TV interview with a tired but fit Noam Chomsky in Amman on Sunday evening, after both he and his daughter were denied entry into the West Bank earlier in the day:

In the interview, Chomsky tells Al-Jazeera that he is “not angry, but disappointed and surprised”.

Asked to comment on the Israeli Ministry of Interior spokesperson’s remark that it was a “misunderstanding, Chomsky said “I can’t see anything to misunderstand”.

Continue reading Noam Chomsky speaks after Israel denies him entry to the West Bank

Gaza journalist forcibly undergoes stripping and full body cavity search by Israelis at Allenby Bridge

My friend and colleague Robert J. Parsons, a journalist in Geneva, sent me the news item below– a report from the Inter Press Service (IPS) about what happened to one of its correspondents.

Angry Arab also has a link to the Gaza Today blog here which picked up the same story as it was reported by the Palestinian news agency Ramattan (but I can’t find the story on Ramattan because their archives appear to be unsearchable…)

And, Reuters has picked up the story and added some more sickening details in a report that has been published by Haaretz, as follows:

“Mohammed Omer, who writes for the pro-Palestinian Washington Report, said he was strip-searched and detained for nearly four hours at the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge when he crossed from Jordan into the West Bank, en route to the Gaza Strip, on June 26.

‘They wanted to humiliate me. I collapsed in tears … I had to throw up twice and I fainted twice’, Omer said. ‘They asked silly questions about everything I had done during my trip to London and Europe and they made fun of me’.

An Israeli government spokesman declined immediate comment and said he would look into the incident.

Omer said that at the Allenby Bridge, he was forced to strip to his underwear by an Israeli officer who then ‘snatched it down off me’.

He said two officers dragged him by his legs, his head sweeping the floor, in front of other passengers.

After he vomited and fainted, Israeli security personnel summoned a Palestinian ambulance to take him to hospital.

At a hospital in nearby Jericho, he contacted Dutch diplomats who had facilitated his trip to Europe, and they drove him to an Israeli border crossing with the Gaza Strip.

Back in the Hamas-controlled territory, he was admitted to hospital where doctors said he had suffered a nervous breakdown and that several of his ribs had been broken”…

The full Haaretz report can be read here .

Photo of Mohammed Omer - IPS

Here are excerpts from the earlier IPS story:
“Mohammed Omer, the Gaza correspondent of IPS, and joint winner of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, was strip-searched at gunpoint, assaulted and abused by Israeli security officials at the Allenby border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank on Thursday as he tried to return home to Gaza.

Omer’s trip was sponsored by The Washington Report, and the Dutch embassy in Tel Aviv was responsible for coordinating Omer’s travel plans and his security permit to leave Gaza with Israeli officials.

While waiting in Amman on his way back, Omer eventually received the requisite coordination and security clearance from the Israelis to return to Gaza after this had initially been delayed by several days, he told IPS.

Accompanied by Dutch diplomats, Omer passed through the Jordanian side of the border without incident. However, after arrival on the Israeli side, trouble began. He informed a female soldier that he was returning home to Gaza. He was repeatedly asked where Gaza was, and told that he had neither a permit nor any coordination to cross.

Omer explained that he did indeed have permission and coordination but was nevertheless taken to a room by Israel’s domestic intelligence agency the Shin Bet, where he was isolated for an hour and a half without explanation.

‘Eventually I was asked whether I had a knife or gun on me even though I had already passed through the x-ray machine, had my luggage searched, and was in the company of Dutch diplomats’, Omer said.

His luggage was again searched, and security then proceeded to go through every document and paper he had on him, taking down the names and numbers of the European parliamentary officials he had met.

The Shin Bet officials then started to make fun of the European parliamentarians, and mocked Omer for being ‘the prize-winning journalist’.

The Gazan journalist was repeatedly asked why he was returning to ‘the hell of Gaza after we allowed you to leave’. To this he responded that he wanted to be a voice for the voiceless. He was told he was a ‘trouble-maker’.

The security men also demanded he show all the money he had on him, and particular attention was paid to the British pounds he was carrying. His Gellhorn prize money had been awarded in British pounds but he was not carrying the entire sum on him bodily, something the investigators refused to believe.

After being unable to produce the prize money, he was ordered to strip naked.

‘At first I refused but then I had an M16 (gun) pointed in my face and my clothes were forcibly removed, even my underwear’, Omer said.

At this point Omer broke down and pleaded for an end to such treatment. He said he was told, ‘you haven’t seen anything yet’. Every cavity of his body was searched as one of the investigators pinned him

When he came round his eyelids were being forcibly opened and his eardrums probed by an Israeli military doctor, who was also armed. He was then dragged along the floor by his feet by the Shin Bet officials, with his head repeatedly banging on the floor, to a Palestinian ambulance which had been called.

‘I eventually woke up in a Palestinian hospital with the doctors trying to reassure me’, Omer told IPS”

This report was published by IPS online here .