Passengers stand near an entrance to the terminal at Ben Gurion airport, near Tel Aviv. (Moti Milrod, Maan Images)

Unfortunately, Palestinians are no longer surprised at Israel's racist policies. Discrimination against Palestinians and those who support them has become the rule, not the exception. Still, when the Shin Bet, Israel's internal intelligence agency, banned renowned American academic and author Norman Finkelstein from entering Israel on May 23, even the Palestinians' jaws dropped. Finkelstein was reportedly interrogated for nearly 24 hours before being put back on a plane to Amsterdam and abruptly informed that he would not be able to return to Israel for 10 years.

Finkelstein, as the name suggests, is Jewish.

According to Israel's Law of Return, any Jew from anywhere in the world has a right to return to Israel and be granted immediate citizenship. As an American, however, his deportation was still within Israel's jurisdictions.

Hence, it is not the deportation order that is so surprising, even against a foreigner not of Palestinian origin. Over the past several years, hundreds of people sympathetic to the Palestinian cause have been informed by Israeli authorities that they are no longer welcome in Israel. Peace activists, teachers, even Palestinians married to Israeli citizens have been told not to return, banned entry from the various border crossings. Israel has always claimed it retains the right to ban entry to any non-citizen for reasons they do not necessarily have to disclose. In Finkelstein's case, the Shin Bet said Finkelstein "is not permitted to enter Israel because of suspicions involving hostile elements in Lebanon." This can only mean one thing in Israeli jargon – Hizballah. "He did not give a full accounting to interrogators with regard to these suspicions," they concluded.

Finkelstein, who did travel to Lebanon earlier this year and met with Hizballah operatives, begs to differ, insisting that he answered to the best of his ability all the questions posed to him by the interrogators. He also maintained he was only traveling to Israel to visit an old friend.

Related stories A way to reduce tensions Mideast peace will come through recognizing injustice The new Golda Meirs

It doesn't even matter what bogus excuse the Shin Bet offered to justify their deportation order. We all know why Finkelstein is persona non grata in Israel. Not only is he a harsh critic of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians, as a Jew he is also critical of Zionism and what he says is the exploitation of the Holocaust by the Jews. That is heavy stuff, especially for a country that has fooled most of the world into believing Israel is forced into these heinous practices against the Palestinians in defense of their security and that the establishment of the state was essential for the Jew's survival after the Holocaust. For a highly intelligent and educated man such as Norman Finkelstein to shoot these claims down is not exactly what Israel is looking for.

Norman Finkelstein is probably the least surprised of us all, having learned early on that his positions would come with a high price. Last year, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University in Chicago after his positions regarding the Holocaust came under attack by faculty members, who said they were "inconsistent with DePaul's values."

In 2000, Finkelstein published a book entitled "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish Suffering" in which he said Jewish activists, including the well-known Elie Wesiel were "exploiting the memory of the Holocaust as an "ideological weapon," so that Israel, "one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, [can] cast itself as a victim state" in order to garner "immunity to criticism."

To read the full article please visit MIFTAH.