After Israel’s refusal to let US Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., enter the country, Tlaib submitted a request to enter on humanitarian grounds, to visit her elderly grandmother in the West Bank. Interior Minister Aryeh Deri accepted the request, but on several conditions unacceptable to the congresswoman.
Had Tlaib not gone back on her agreement to Deri's terms, the US congresswoman who has made headlines around the world would have surely been accorded VIP treatment at the airport and warmly embraced by her Palestinian grandmother.
On the other hand, had Tlaib been an anonymous American with an Arabic-sounding name who had once written posts advocating a boycott of products made in Israeli settlements, she would have ended up in a detention cell at Ben-Gurion International Airport awaiting expulsion. That happened less than a year ago, in October 2018, to American student Lara Alqassem, who had been accepted to Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her sin was once being a member of an eight-person student group that called to boycott Israel. It was only after the intervention of Israel’s highest court that the interior minister was forced to rescind Alqassem’s deportation order.
“While folks are shocked that this happened to us,” Tlaib said at an Aug. 19 news conference with her colleague Ilhan Omar, “Many have been barred from going to Israel. … They are fellow Americans who cannot visit their families or their loved ones.” The Americans to whom Tlaib referred were not all activists for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. For example, there was an American of Palestinian origin whose cousin was a member of a terror organization. Another had a partner living in East Jerusalem, raising concerns that he might wish to be united with her forever and, God forbid, pose other demographic challenges for Israel. The third was born in East Jerusalem and her entire family lives there, but unfortunately for her, her doctoral studies abroad lasted longer than seven years and she is no longer considered a resident of Israel.
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