A Tale of two “dissidents”: Chomsky denied entry to West Bank; Wilders denied entry to Britain

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
20 May '10

Consider two examples of a western democracy refusing entry through its borders to a foreign dignitary on the grounds of a disagreement with his political beliefs.

In the first case, the man in question was denied entry for fear of offending a Muslim minority. He is in constant danger of assassination for his opinions, and he is being prosecuted for them by his home government. If that prosecution (which will start in October) is successful he could well become the first political prisoner on his continent since the end of the Cold War. To be sure, his views are controversial, and though he does not incite violence or racial prejudice he is sometimes abusive and insulting about the religion of Islam. However, he does not bear any grudge against the country that denied him entry, and has never defamed its reputation.

That man is Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who was denied entry to Britain by the Labour government in 2009. Much of the liberal intelligentsia in Britain was broadly supportive of the decision to ban him, and demonstrations were launched against him after the government finally did allow him into Britain in 2010.

Now consider the second case, of a man who was briefly denied entry to the West Bank by Israeli officials at the border with Jordan this week.

The man in question is one of the most prominent apologists for Islamist extremism in the world. More precisely, he is the leading evangelist for western self-hatred in the American and European opinion forming classes. Absurdly enough, he considers himself a “dissident” but lives a comfortable life free from any form of intimidation. He refers to the colonisation of the Americas by Europeans as a “Hitlerite” enterprise. He has consorted with Holocaust deniers, including Hezbollah. As far as the country which denied him entry is concerned, he despises it, he has built a career out of demonising it across the world, and he is fundamentally opposed to its existence in its present form. He is, another words, a far-Left extremist who has made of himself an implacable enemy of the country which denied him entry.

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