Alwaght- Israeli Regime has imposed travel ban on 20 foreign NGOs over their support of the pro-Palestinian movement of Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS).
The NGOs were singled out by rightwing strategic affairs and public security minister, Gilad Erdan, for advocating boycotts of Israeli regime over its treatment of Palestinians, The Guardian reported.
While most of the organizations listed are local branches of the BDS movement around the world, others include Jewish Voice for Peace, which has 13,000 members, the US group Code Pink, prominent British campaign group War on Want, the British NGO the Palestine Solidarity Campaign of which Jeremy Corbyn is a patron, Nobel peace prize-winning US Quaker group and the American Friends Service Committee, which won the peace prize in 1947.
Tel Aviv regimes interior minister, Arye Dery, whose ministry is responsible for barring those listed, said: “These people are trying to exploit the law and our hospitality to act against Israel and to defame the country. I will act against this by every means.”
The travel ban is the latest in a series of populist moves by Tel Aviv, the most rightwing coalition in the country’s history. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he intends to remove 40,000 African migrants from occupied Palestine and expressed support for making it easier to hang people convicted of terrorism.
Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, criticized the publication of the list, saying it was “disconcerting but not surprising given the further erosion of democratic norms and rising anxiety about the power of BDS as a tool to demand freedom.”
She wrote on Facebook: “As someone with considerable family in Israel, this policy will be a personal hardship. But I am also heartened by this indicator of the BDS movement’s growing strength, and hope that it will bring the day closer when just as I go to visit my friends and family in Israel, so will Palestinian friends and colleagues be able to return home.”
Hassan Jabareen, of the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in occupied Palestine, said the travel ban was draconian and arbitrary. “This ban is an overt violation of the constitutional rights of Israeli citizens and the rights guaranteed to Palestinian residents of the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] under international humanitarian and human rights law. This move is reminiscent of South Africa’s apartheid regime which also prepared blacklists in order to punish people and prevent the entry of those opposed to its racist policies.”
In November, Israeli regime denied entry to a US employee of Amnesty International as part of its anti-boycott offensive under the same rules. Amnesty is not on the list of 20 groups published on Sunday.
