Criticisms about a new Israeli law restricting entry to anti-Israel activists is both “overwrought and hypocritical,” a legal expert asserted in an op-ed published Tuesday by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
According to international law “all countries have the express right to control their borders and bar entry to anyone,” Anne Herzberg, legal adviser to NGO Monitor wrote in the op-ed.
The United Kingdom, for example recently barred two American activists belonging to Stop Islamization of America for three to five years on grounds that the organization is a hate group, and the presence of the individuals in question would “not be conducive to the public good.” Similarly, Herzberg observed that “thousands of soccer hooligans are barred from traveling to prevent trouble at international matches.”
Israel, in barring activists who promote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, has acted “just as these countries have acted to maintain order,” Herzberg wrote.
According to Herzberg, Israel is facing “an army of political activists is provided tens of millions of euros, dollars and francs by the European Union, European governments, the United Nations, churches and private foundations to produce rank propaganda, harass and seek arrest warrants of traveling Israeli officials and advance economic warfare against the State of Israel.”
Israel has tried to discourage friendly governments from supporting these activists whose activities “go far beyond a critique of specific Israeli policies but are aimed at the country’s very existence,” but “Israel’s objections went largely ignored and the funding and political support continued.”
Faced with the growing anger of even centrists like MK Yair Lapid over activists who misrepresented their aims and disrupted life in Israel, the Israeli Knesset passed a law to bar BDS activists from entering the country.
Herzberg acknowledged that her preferred strategy for fighting BDS involves “a systematic and intensive diplomatic process with government officials and international organizations,” as well as “naming and shaming of funders” of BDS movement. Since diplomatic efforts have not yet borne fruit, Israel was forced to pass the law.
Because Israel has an independent judiciary, implementation of the law will change as standards evolve for applying it.
Given the situation Israel found itself in, at the very least Herzberg says the law has sparked a “long-overdue debate on foreign interference and funding in the Arab-Israeli conflict.” If the law provokes such a debate, she concluded, “it may have been worth it.”
[Photo: UCLUPiTV / YouTube]