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[h=1]Interview With BDS Co-Founder Omar Barghouti: Banned by Israel From Traveling, Threatened With Worse[/h]
Read more @: Interview With BDS Co-Founder Omar Barghouti: Banned by Israel From Traveling, Threatened With Worse
This kind of behavior by Israel should be appalling to any proponents of free speech. Its also incredibly ironic that the Israeli state is not allowing him to leave Israel and also threatening him, when Netanyahu took part in the "free speech" march in France in memory of Charlie Hebdo. Its shameful to claim to be in favor of free speech but in one case ban a man from traveling and threaten to remove his residency rights and even some state officials are making calls for the Israeli state to engage in targeted assassinations of BDS leaders all because they disagree with his peaceful movement and is punishing him for engaging in peaceful political activism.
Despite having lived in Israel for 22 years with no criminal record of any kind, Omar Barghouti (above) was this week denied the right to traveloutside the country. As one of the pioneers of the increasingly powerful movement to impose boycotts, sanctions and divestment measures (BDS) on Israel, Barghouti, an articulate, English-speaking activist, has frequently traveled around the world advocating his position. The Israeli government’s refusal to allow him to travel is obviously intended to suppress his speech and activism. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the world leaders who traveled last year to Paris to participate in that city’s “free speech rally.”As the husband of a Palestinian citizen of Israel, Barghouti holds a visa of permanent residency in the country, but nonetheless needs official permission to travel outside of Israel, a travel document which – until last week – had been renewed every two years. Haaretz this weekreported that beyond the travel ban, Barghouti’s “residency rights in Israel are currently being reconsidered.”
The travel denial came after months of disturbing public threats directed at him by an Israeli government that has grown both more extreme and more fearful of BDS’s growing international popularity. In March, Israel’s Interior Minister Aryeh Deri threatened to revoke Barghouti’s residency rights, explicitly admitting that this was in retaliation for his speech and advocacy: “he is using his resident status to travel all over the world in order to operate against Israel in the most serious manner . . . . he took advantage of our enlightened state to portray us as the most horrible state in the world.”
Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch told The Electronic Intifada that “Israel’s refusal to renew Barghouti’s travel document appears to be an effort to punish him for exercising his right to engage in peaceful, political activism, using its arsenal of bureaucratic control over Palestinian lives.” She added: “Israel has used this sort of control to arbitrarily ban many Palestinians from traveling, as well as to ban international human rights monitors, journalists and activists from entering Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.”
Regardless of one’s views on BDS and the Israeli occupation, anyone who purports to believe in basic conceptions of free speech rights should be appalled by Israeli behavior.
Read more @: Interview With BDS Co-Founder Omar Barghouti: Banned by Israel From Traveling, Threatened With Worse
This kind of behavior by Israel should be appalling to any proponents of free speech. Its also incredibly ironic that the Israeli state is not allowing him to leave Israel and also threatening him, when Netanyahu took part in the "free speech" march in France in memory of Charlie Hebdo. Its shameful to claim to be in favor of free speech but in one case ban a man from traveling and threaten to remove his residency rights and even some state officials are making calls for the Israeli state to engage in targeted assassinations of BDS leaders all because they disagree with his peaceful movement and is punishing him for engaging in peaceful political activism.