U.S.
Blocks BDS Co-Founder Barghouti from Entering the Country
by Steven Emerson
IPT News
April 11, 2019
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 Omar Barghouti, a
co-founder of the movement to boycott and sanction Israel, a movement which
many backers hope will lead to Israel's elimination, was supposed to arrive
in Washington, D.C. yesterday to give two lectures and to meet with members
of Congress.
Instead, he's back at his home in Israel.
The Arab American Institute, one of Barghouti's hosts, announced
Thursday morning that Barghouti, "prominent Palestinian human
rights activist, was denied entry into the United States at Ben Gurion
Airport despite having valid travel documents. We at AAI invited him to DC
to participate in a number of speaking engagements and educational
programs."
The announcement came less than a half an hour before the first of those
engagements started.
Arab American Institute founder and President James Zogby promised to
litigate the issue. "Our regressive, discriminatory discrimination
laws are an impediment to free speech," he said.
But Barghouti is not being silenced. He appeared via computer link and
engaged in the same question and answer session with journalist Peter
Beinart that would have happened had he been allowed into the country.
That didn't matter to Barghouti, who also claimed he was kept out of the
country in an attempt to silence him. And he accused the United States of
acting not in its own interests, but as a "proxy" for Israel.
Denying him entry, he said, is "part of an ongoing repression by
Israel, or by proxy, by the United States on behalf of Israel to silence
human rights defenders in the BDS movement, be it Palestinian, Israeli or
international human rights defenders who are active in the BDS
movement."
He also said he would never accept Israel without a Palestinian
"right of return." But that has the potential to flood the state
demographically, resulting in Israel's ultimate elimination.
It isn't clear why Barghouti, who frequently visits the United States,
was not allowed in this time, but it is believed to be based on national
security matters and a tax evasion case against him.
The Immigration and Naturalization Act allows people to be denied entry
for terrorism issues, which the Capital Area Immigrants' Rights Coalition defines as "any terrorist involvement whatsoever,
including incidental, that DHS 'knows or has reasonable grounds to believe'
is true."
As the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported
Wednesday, a Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center report detailed Barghouti's opposition to Israel's
existence and any Palestinian acceptance of, or coordination with, the
Jewish state. In 2010, he spoke of "a moral and legal right to an
armed resistance" against what he called "legitimate
targets," including Israeli civilians living in the West Bank.
In addition, he told a UCLA audience in 2014 that Palestinians have a
right to "resistance by any means, including armed resistance."
He denied that Jews were indigenous to the land and denied their status as
a people with a right to self-determination.
In a 2016 Portland State University speech, he said that
"the U.S. intelligence community created the beginnings of ISIS"
and created the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Immigration law also allows people to be denied entry into the United
States for "crimes of moral turpitude."
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has found that tax evasion amounts to a crime of moral
turpitude, which is among the justifications that can be used to deny
people entry into the United States or to remove immigrants convicted of
such crimes.
Israeli officials arrested Barghouti in March 2017 and accused him of
evading taxes on more than $700,000 in income. Some of that money came from
speaking fees from his U.S. travel. Other money reportedly came from his
business, the Ramallah-based National Computing Resources company.
Barghouti lives in Acre,
Israel, a coastal town north of Haifa, but was accused of stashing
money in a Ramallah account.
Barghouti helped launch the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) in
2007 and continues to lead it, the Meir Amit report said. BDS seeks to
isolate Israel economically, politically and culturally with many leaders
holding the ultimate aim of destroying it. It is considered anti-Semitic
because it targets the world's only Jewish state while ignoring other
countries, including Muslim-majority nations, with far worse human rights
records.
During a BNC conference last month, several speakers discussed the
importance of "popular resistance" as an element of BDS. That's a
term which at best is open to interpretation. While BDS claims to support
nonviolence, Palestinian leaders often use "popular resistance"
as a veiled reference to terrorism and violent Palestinian campaigns
targeting Israeli civilians.
Hamas's formal name translates
to the Islamic Resistance Movement.
Barghouti, who reportedly was trying to line up meetings on Capitol
Hill, also was supposed to speak
tonight at a separate Arab American Institute event "to dispel the
myths around the movement and engage in a candid discussion on the struggle
to advance Palestinian rights in the current climate." He also was set
to appear Monday with former CNN pundit Marc Lamont Hill and Rebecca
Vilkomerson, director of the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace, at New York University.
CNN fired
Hill last fall after he concluded a United Nations speech with a wish
for "a free Palestine, from the river to the sea." That slogan,
which is a staple of anti-Israel events, envisions a future in which Israel
does not exist, and is replaced by a Palestinian state. While some argue
Hill's firing shows people cannot criticize Israel, his entire speech was
devoted to doing just that. His firing came only because he wished for a country's elimination.
The two also are slated to appear Sunday at Uncle Bobbie's, Hill's own bookstore
in Philadelphia.
Barghouti's U.S. tour also was supposed to include a talk April 17 at
Harvard University as an extension of "Israel Apartheid Week"
there. Organizers with the Palestinian Solidarity Committee said they originally planned to have him appear last Saturday via
Skype, but delayed that when they learned he planned to be in the country.
"We apologize if this comes as a disappointment for some of
you," they wrote, "but we are very excited to have Omar Barghouti
speak in person on April 17th, and we invite you to join us for that
event!"
Related Topics: Steven
Emerson, Omar
Barghouti, BDS,
entry
visas, Arab
American Institute, James
Zogby, Peter
Beinart, Marc
Lamont Hill, Immigration
and Naturalization Act, BDS
National Committee, anti-Semitism,
Jewish
Voice for Peace, Rebecca
Vilkomerson
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