person:lara alqasem

Israel’s Supreme Court grants Lara Alqasem’s appeal; she will be allowed to enter the country
Haaretz.com | Noa Landau and Jonathan Lis Oct 19, 2018 5:18 AM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-s-supreme-court-accepts-lara-alqasem-s-appeal-she-will-be-a

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U.S. student Lara Alqasem will be allowed to enter Israel after the Supreme Court accepted on Thursday her appeal against the decision to prevent her entry. Alqasem, whom the state claimed was a BDS activist, was held over two weeks in a detainment center at Ben-Gurion International Airport despite receiving a student visa from an Israeli consulate prior to her arrival.

Alqasem, 22, was detained at Ben-Gurion Airport upon her arrival on October 2 after she was flagged as a BDS activist. Alqasem, who has a student visa and is enrolled in a master’s program in human rights at the Hebrew University, has been detained ever since.

“I’m relieved at the court’s decision and incredibly grateful for the work of my amazing and tireless lawyers Yotam Ben Hillel and Leora Bechor as well as the support of my family and friends. I will be happy to say more when I’ve had a chance to rest and process,” Alqasem told Haaretz following her release.

“Since the appellant’s actions do not raise satisfactory cause to bar her to entry to Israel, the inevitable impression is that invalidating the visa given to her was due to the political opinions she holds,” read the verdict. “If this is truly the case, then we are talking about an extreme and dangerous step, which could lead to the crumbling of the pillars upon which democracy in Israel stands,” the verdict continued.

“The Law of Entry to Israel is intended to protect the state’s sovereignty, and the public’s safety and security. It does not have a component of penalty, or revenge for previous bad behavior,” Justice Neal Hendel said.

“Despite the obstacles in her way the appellant insists on her right to study at the Hebrew University. This conduct is not in keeping, in an understatement, with the thesis that the she’s an undercover boycott activist,” he continued.

“The Interior Ministry has openly admitted that it does not have any evidence of the appellant’s engaging in boycott activity since April 2017, except for mysterious ’indications’ whose essence hasn’t been clarified and regarding which no evidence has been submitted,” Neal noted.

“The material submitted regarding the appellant’s activity in the SJP organization shows that even at that stage the boycott activity was minor and limited in character,” Neal added. “There’s no doubt the SJP cell indeed supported boycotting Israel – and this position must be roundly condemned. It is also presumable that the appellant, who played a role in the cell and for three years was one of its few members, was partner to this unworthy activity. However, it is impossible to ignore the cell’s sporadic and relatively minor character. In itself, it certainly was not one of the prominent boycott organizations and it is doubtful whether the appellant could be seen as filling the criteria [required in the law?] even when she had a position in it.”

Neal continued, saying that “alongside the random indications of the appellant’s involvement in BDS activity during her studies, it is impossible to ignore the testimonies of her lecturers about her complex approach, the curiosity she displayed toward Israel and Judaism and her readiness to conduct an open, respectful dialogue – which is in stark contrast to the boycott idea.”

“The struggle against the BDS movement and others like it is a worthy cause. The state is permitted, not to say obliged, to protect itself from discrimination and the violent silencing of the political discourse. It may take steps against the boycott organizations and their activists. In this case, preventing the appellant’s entry does not advance the law’s purpose and clearly deviates from the bounds of reasonability,” Neal concluded.

Justice Anat Baron said that “there was no place to deny the appellant the entry visa she had been granted, because clearly she doesn’t now and hasn’t for a long time engaged in boycotting Israel, not to mention engaging in ’active, continuing and substantial’ work in this matter. The decision to deny the appellant’s entry visa is unreasonable to the extent that it requires intervention.”

#Lara_Alqasem #BDS #Douane #Frontière #Aéroport #expulsions_frontières (d’israel)

Liberté pour Lara Alqasem, l’étudiante américaine arrêtée à l’aéroport Ben Gourion
8 octobre | Haaretz |Traduction SF pour l’AURDIP |
▻https://www.aurdip.org/liberte-pour-lara-alqasem-l.html

Lara Alqasem, une étudiante américaine de 22 ans qui est arrivée en Israël la semaine dernière pour entreprendre un master à l’Université Hébraïque, entame lundi son sixième jour de détention à l’aéroport Ben Gourion. Son « délit », selon le ministère des Affaires Stratégiques, est, alors qu’elle était en licence en Floride, d’avoir présidé la section de cet état d’un groupe qui encourage au boycott, au désinvestissement et aux sanctions contre Israël, comme moyen de lutter contre l’occupation.

Un rapport spécial du ministère sur ses activités politiques, exagérément qualifié de « sensible » inclut une information issue de cinq pages internet. Quatre d’entre elles viennent de Facebook et la cinquième vient d’un site internet appelé Canary Mission, qui exerce une honteuse surveillance civile sur des militants de gauche sur les campus des collèges universitaires américains. Selon la même information « sensible », lorsque Alqasem était membre de la section, qui comptait moins de dix membres, le groupe a promu le boycott d’une marque israélienne de Houmous, soutenu la pétition d’un auteur contre le financement par Israël d’un centre culturel et appelé une entreprise internationale de sécurité à cesser ses activités en Israël.

On a peine à croire que ce genre de raisons ridicules soient utilisées par un ministère gouvernemental, dirigé par le ministre anti boycott Gilad Erdan, pour justifier l’expulsion et la longue détention de l’étudiante. Dans son témoignage en cour d’appel (qui a rejeté sa demande de rester), elle a dit : « Je ne soutiens pas BDS. Si c’était le cas, je ne pourrais pas venir en Israël comme étudiante ». Alqasem a ensuite déclaré que pendant son séjour en Israël elle n’appellerait pas au boycott ni ne participerait à des activités de BDS. Pour autant, elle reste en garde à vue et son expulsion est prévue, en attendant un second appel qu’elle a interjeté près le Tribunal du district de Tel Aviv.

#Lara_Alqasem #Palestine #BDS #Douane #Frontière #Aéroport #expulsions_frontières (d’israel)
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It’s even allowed to hate Israel

If cabinet Minister Erdan, scourge of left-wing dissidents, visited Sweden, he certainly did not love the liberalism and equality there, yet Swedish airport officials wouldn’t have asked him about it

Gideon Levy
Oct 07, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-it-s-even-allowed-to-hate-israel-1.6532475

News flash for the minister in charge of combating hatred, Gilad Erdan: One is allowed to hate Israel. Sometimes one must even hate its policies. A democratic country doesn’t ask new arrivals whether they love it. It’s none of their business. The gates of democracy are open to everyone, as long as they don’t endanger its security. That is the test.
Erdan may also have visited a country whose policies he despised; he certainly did not love the liberalism and equality in Sweden, or Germany’s willingness to take in asylum-seekers – and nobody asked him what he thought. His colleague, Culture Minister Miri Regev, a sworn Arab-hater, intends to fly to Abu Dhabi soon. Will they deport her because of her hatred? If only. Maybe that way Erdan would learn.
>>Ex-Shin Bet chief on questioning of foreigners at Israel’s borders: Shin Bet becoming a problem
The world that Gilad McCarthy is building for us now, together with the Shin Bet security service that has long been in charge of this, is motivated by the darkness of a different worldview. Erdan described it well on Friday.
“Everyone understands,” he wrote, “that these are hypocritical organizations uninterested in human rights. They will never act to help the citizens of Syria or Iran. It’s not human rights that motivate them, but hatred of Israel.” Erdan tried to excuse banning the entry to Israel of the student Lara Alqasem and in so doing revealed his worldview once again.
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“Everyone understands,” Erdan? Well, almost everyone. Even the minister of strategic affairs can’t yet speak for everyone in Israel. Maybe he will be able to do so soon.
Meanwhile, there are also some people who don’t understand. Not everyone here has been brainwashed by the propagandistic lies. The “hypocritical organizations” are more interested in human rights than anything else. They are people of conscience. Some are veterans of long-standing work against the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa, some are young people who should be a source of pride. At a time when most Israelis their age are not interested in anything that doesn’t involve them directly, they are fighting for something. They are certainly immeasurably more moral than any settler in the territories.

Official documents prove: Israel bans young Americans based on Canary Mission website - Israel News - Haaretz.com

Some Americans detained upon arrival in Israel reported being questioned about their political activity based on ’profiles’ on the controversial website Canary Mission. Documents obtained by Haaretz now clearly show that is indeed a source of information for decisions to bar entry

Noa Landau SendSend me email alerts
Oct 04, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-official-documents-prove-israel-bans-young-americans-based-on-cana

The Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Ministry is using simple Google searches, mainly the controversial American right-wing website Canary Mission, to bar political activists from entering Israel, according to documents obtained by Haaretz.
>>Israeli court rejects American visa-holding student’s appeal; to be deported for backing BDS
The internal documents, some of which were submitted to the appeals tribunal in the appeal against the deportation of American student Lara Alqasem, show that officials briefly interviewed Alqasem, 22, at Ben-Gurion International Airport on her arrival Tuesday night, then passed her name on for “continued handling” by the ministry because of “suspicion of boycott activity.” Israel recently passed a law banning the entry of foreign nationals who engage in such activity.

>> Are you next? Know your rights if detained at Israel’s border

Links to Canary Mission and Facebook posts are seen on an official Ministry of Strategic Affairs document.
The ministry then sent the officials at the airport an official report classified “sensitive” about Alqasem’s supposed political activities, which included information from five links – four from Facebook and one, the main source, from the Canary Mission site, which follows pro-Palestinian activists on U.S. campuses.
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A decision on Alqasem’s appeal against her deportation was expected Thursday afternoon.
Canary Mission, now the subject of major controversy in the American Jewish community, has been collecting information since 2015 about BDS activists at universities, and sends the information to potential employers. Pro-Israel students have also criticized their activities.

Lara Alqasem.
This week, the American Jewish news site The Forward reported that at least $100,000 of Canary Mission’s budget had been contributed through the San Francisco Jewish Federation and the Helen Diller Family Foundation, which donates to Jewish education. The donation was handed to a group registered in Beit Shemesh called Megamot Shalom, specifically stating that it was for Canary Mission. A few hours after the report was published, the federation announced that it would no longer fund the group.
Over the past few months some of the Americans who have been detained for questioning upon arrival in Israel have reported that they were questioned about their political activity based on “profiles” about them published on Canary Mission. The documents obtained by Haaretz now show clearly that the site is indeed the No. 1 source of information for the decision to bar entry to Alqasem.
According to the links that were the basis for the decision to suspend the student visa that Alqasem had been granted by the Israeli Consulate in Miami, she was president of the Florida chapter of a group called Students for Justice in Palestine, information quoted directly from the Canary Mission. The national arm of that organization, National Students for Justice in Palestine, is indeed on the list of 20 groups that the Strategic Affairs Ministry compiled as criteria to invoke the anti-boycott law. However, Alqasem was not a member at the national level, but rather a local activist. She told the appeals tribunal that the local chapter had only a few members.

Canary Mission’s profile of Lara Alqasem.
The ministry also cited as a reason for barring Alqasem’s entry to Israel a Facebook post showing that “In April 2016 [her] chapter conducted an ongoing campaign calling for the boycott of Sabra hummus, the American version of Hummus Tzabar, because Strauss, which owns Tzabar, funds the Golani Brigade.” Alqasem told the tribunal that she had not taken an active part in this campaign. Another link was about a writers’ petition calling on a cultural center to refuse sponsorship by Israel for its activities. Yet another post, by the local Students for Justice in Palestine, praised the fact that an international security company had stopped operations in Israel. None of these links quoted Alqasem.
She told the tribunal that she is not currently a member of any pro-boycott group and would not come to study for her M.A. in Israel if she were.
The Strategic Affairs Ministry report on Alqasem is so meager that its writers mentioned it themselves: “It should be noted that in this case we rely on a relatively small number of sources found on the Internet.” Over the past few months Haaretz has been following up reports of this nature that have been the basis for denying entry to activists, and found that in many other cases the material consisted of superficial Google searches and that the ministry, by admission of its own senior officials, does not collect information from non-public sources.
skip - Facebook post calling for the boycott of Sabra hummus

The ministry’s criteria for invoking the anti-boycott law state clearly that in order to bar entry to political activists, they must “hold senior or significant positions in the organizations,” including “official senior roles in prominent groups (such as board members).”
But the report on Alqasem does not indicate that she met the criterion of “senior” official in the national movement, nor was this the case for other young people questioned recently at the airport. In some cases it was the Shin Bet security service that questioned people due to past participation in activities such as demonstrations in the territories, and not BDS activities.
“Key activists,” according to the ministry’s criteria, also means people who “consistently take part in promoting BDS in the framework of prominent delegitimization groups or independently, and not, for example, an activist who comes as part of a delegation.” In Alqasem’s case, however, her visa was issued after she was accepted for study at Hebrew University.