’Unprecedented’: Israeli directive bans dozens of Americans, Europeans for advocacy
By Yasmine El-Sabawi in Washington | 2 July 2025 19:46 BST | Middle East Eye
▻https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/unprecedented-israeli-directive-bans-dozens-american-european-advocac
A new directive from the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs has banned dozens of political and legal advocates from the US, UK, Canada, and Europe from entering Israel due to their “intentional delegitimisation of the State of Israel and its defence forces”, the document said.
Entry visas will no longer be granted to those who “knowingly” and “publicly” called for a boycott of Israel; disseminated Holocaust denial content; denied the impact of the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023; or “supported or publicised” initiatives to hold Israeli citizens or soldiers accountable in a non-Israeli court of law, according to the text.
Among the targeted organisations is the Hind Rajab Foundation, named after the five-year-old girl in Gaza who was killed by a spray of Israeli gunfire as she waited for first responders. She had spent hours inside a besieged vehicle as the only survivor among the dead bodies of her relatives.
The group has been instrumental in tracking down members of the Israeli military, using their social media accounts and alerting international governments as to their whereabouts so they may be apprehended.
According to the document, the Hind Rajab Foundation “has submitted complaints against soldiers in at least eight countries, and filed information with the International Criminal Court accusing over 1,000 soldiers and officers of war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon”. (...)