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Israeli Minister Rejects U.S. Student's Promise Not to Promote BDS While in Israel
(Times of Israel) Michael Bachner - Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said Thursday he had rejected a letter sent to him by the lawyers of U.S. student Lara Alqasem, 22, promising she wouldn't participate in boycott activities during her stay in Israel. Erdan said the letter "reveals the fact that she backs the ideology of the boycott and isolation of the State of Israel." Alqasem, who has Palestinian grandparents, landed at Ben-Gurion Airport last week and was barred from entering the country and ordered deported as an activist in the boycott movement. Israeli officials say she is free to go back to the U.S. at any time, but she has appealed the decision in Israeli courts. Erdan said, "I want those boycott activists to understand that their actions come with a price. I'm not putting them in jail, not doing anything physically to them, but they won't enter Israel, gather information and misrepresent it around the world." Israel enacted a law last year banning entry for any foreigner who "knowingly issues a public call for boycotting Israel." Alqasem is a former president of the University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine which is associated with the BDS movement. Erdan said, "Every day, thousands of people are stopped at the entrance to the United States and Britain, and nobody in the hypocritical international media writes articles about it or questions [authorities] on why they decided it will maybe harm national security." Israel says the BDS movement is anti-Semitic and masks its motives to delegitimize or destroy the Jewish state. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino said Wednesday, "Our strong opposition to the boycotts and sanctions of the State of Israel is well-known. Israel is a sovereign nation that can determine who enters."