Israel under fire over BDS ban
Pro-Palestinian actor defies advice not to visit the country
HOLLYWOOD star Richard Gere arrived in Israel at the weekend to promote a new movie. However, his decision wasn’t easy and he nearly decided not to visit the country due to what he considers the unjustifiable Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
“Gere debated whether it would be a good thing for him to make the trip,” the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported.
“With Israel swerving even further to the right in the Trump era, and an increasing tendency by the progressive left to embrace the tactic of boycott to protest against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, many of Gere’s friends and colleagues in both the Israeli and US human-rights communities told him they feared a movie star’s presence in Israel ‘would be co-opted by a dark government’.”
Gere’s final decision to make the trip to promote his new film Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer came amid the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel and in the wake of the Israeli authorities passing a law to ban members of the BDS movement from entering the country.
On Sunday night, Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority and the Strategic Affairs Ministry prevented Hugh Lanning, the chairperson of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from entering Israel.
In a joint statement by the two offices, the ministries said the decision was due to Lanning’s ongoing efforts to advance a boycott of Israel and was reached following consultation with the foreign ministry.
Israel’s decision to ban BDS supporters has been criticised by American Jews, including the staunchly pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League organisation based in the US.
Meanwhile, it was a bloody Sunday night in Jerusalem and the West Bank with Palestinian protesters targeted by both Israeli and Palestinian security forces.
A Palestinian was shot dead in Jerusalem’s old city after he allegedly attacked two paramilitary border police officers with a knife.
The attack came as Israel sealed off the West Bank and Gaza, over the Jewish Purim holiday weekend, banning all Palestinians, with the exception of emergency cases.
The protesters were protesting against what they allege was the assassination of a Palestinian activist shot dead by Israeli soldiers last week in Ramallah.